Your customers are not lying in your surveys. They simply do not know why they do what they do.
Cop a copy of my books NOW:
https://mybook.to/TheAI-PoweredFuture
https://mybook.to/HumanLedFinance
Host live webinars and restream them to LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook: WebinarGeek (paid link): https://webinargeek.com/product?red=kdemsc
Get paid to put your expert judgement to work training AI: Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw
Earn from your professional expertise on frontier AI projects: Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb
Turn customer insight into a boardroom-ready deck in minutes: Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h
Automate the analytic grunt work so your team can focus on the human questions: Make (paid link): https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=kingdemspodcast
Johanna Faigelman is a cultural anthropologist, speaker and the founder and CEO of Human Branding, the Toronto consultancy she launched in 2006 to apply anthropology to business strategy. She is the pioneer of Applied Anthropology Thinking (AAT)™, studied at York University and ran planning at a large advertising agency before going out on her own. Human Branding now has more than 40 people working across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, with clients including 11 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies and brands such as Nestlé, Visa and Logitech.
She is an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 Ontario finalist, an EY Winning Women 2025 honoree and a 100 Women to Know Winner 2026.
In this episode:
- Why Johanna works on the principle that roughly 80 per cent of decision making sits at the unconscious and subconscious level (her working rule, not a cited study)
- Why she places almost zero value on the answer to a direct question
- Every business problem is a human problem: why doctors who say in surveys they will prescribe a drug still do not
- Applied Anthropology Thinking (AAT)™, the approach she created when she founded Human Branding
- The Who Say Do principle: who people are, how they say things and what they actually do
- Ten years with no holidays: the unglamorous reality of building a bootstrapped consultancy
- Why saying no protects a company's vision more than saying yes
- How Human Branding uses AI: a closed model built about five years ago, with Johanna reporting 30 per cent efficiency gains overall and 80 per cent on analytic grunt work
- Where they differ: Ademola asks what AI will do better than humans in anthropology, and Johanna is not convinced it will do anything better, only that it frees people for the human work
- Her one piece of advice to women founders: your difference is your advantage
Johanna Faigelman, cultural anthropologist and founder and CEO of Human Branding, on consumer behaviour, decision making, Applied Anthropology Thinking, bootstrapping and human-led AI, on The King Dems Podcast and Diary of a CFO with Ademola Odewade.
What is Applied Anthropology Thinking?
It is Johanna Faigelman's approach to using anthropology's methods, especially ethnography, to uncover the hidden drivers of customer behaviour and turn them into marketing and strategy. She built Human Branding around it in 2006.
Can AI replace market research?
Johanna's view is no. AI speeds up the analysis of transcripts and data, but the insight that changes behaviour depends on human wisdom that is often not captured in language at all.
More from Johanna Faigelman: https://humanbranding.com · linkedin.com/in/johannafaigelman
Hosted by Ademola Odewade: chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich) and Founder of K-DEMS Consulting.
The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.
This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
#BusinessAnthropology #HumanLedAI #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast
