John Kearon Unveils System1 Group

This morning BrainJuicer announced to the investment community their decision to rebrand as System1 Group, an integrated insights and creative agency that incorporates System1 Research (formerly BrainJuicer) and System1 Agency, their already established creative agency.

Shareholders are being asked to approve the Company’s proposed change of the name from BrainJuicer Group PLC to System1 Group PLC

Here is a summary from the release:

Over the last 16 years BrainJuicer has built an international business by applying Behavioural Science to predicting profitable marketing. At the heart of Behavioural Science is the notion that people use instinct, intuition and emotion to make most decisions.  This is known as, “System 1” thinking.  Having adopted the System 1 approach to market research and successfully launched our System1 advertising agency (‘System1 Agency’), we believe the company’s growth will be better served by adopting the System1 name across the group. Within the System1 Group, we will have, System1 Agency to produce profitable marketing and System1 Research to predict it. As the ‘System1’ name becomes synonymous with ‘profitable growth’, the business will be in a great position to help clients move towards 5-star marketing and the exponential growth that comes with it.

Why is this worth covering on the blog? Because BrainJuicer has been recognized as the “Most Innovative Supplier” in the GRIT 50 list for 5 straight years; they arguably have more brand equity established than almost any other research company, and certainly more than any of the “next gen” companies that have emerged in the past decade. They are masterful marketers who practice what they preach and have had an extraordinarily successful history in a short period of time. They also have been a primary driver within the industry in bringing attention to the topics of behavioral science in all it’s many forms, taking the ideas of behavioral economics and applied neuroscience from a niche to a very mainstream topic.

For a company with all those claims to fame to make a shift in their branding and to double down on a very specific direction is news worthy indeed, perhaps even inspirational.

I had the opportunity to sit down with John Kearon, the Chiefjuicer himself (I forgot to ask if his new title will simply be #1 Guy) to dig deeper into their thinking behind the rebrand, what it means for the company and their clients, and his view on the industry over the next few years.

As always, John is a joy to chat with; he’s funny, smart, and provocative with that innate British coolness we Americans are secretly deeply jealous of. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.