Author photo supplied by Emli Bendixen

Mark Earls is an award-winning writer, speaker and strategist whose work to champion the application of contemporary behavioural and cognitive science to the practice of marketing and behaviour change has had a significant effect on how those disciplines understand human behaviour. In particular, it is his championing of our social – or HERD – nature that has impacted on practice in fields as disparate as political campaigning, the intelligence services and the green movement (as well, of course as marketing and behaviour change).

His previous books, Welcome to the Creative Age (Wiley 2003), HERD (Wiley 2007-9) and I'll Have What She's Having (with Profs Alex Bentley and Mike O'Brien, MIT Press 2011) are both widely translated and discussed.

In a previous life, he held senior positions in creative businesses such as the revolutionary St Luke's Communications and the all-conquering Ogilvy Worldwide. He now works independently under the banner of HERD, in collaboration with a handful of partners.

Mark is a fellow of the Marketing Society and the Royal Society for the Promotion of Manufacturing and the Arts, an honorary Fellow of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and an active member of Creative Social.

He is based in London, but is mostly to be found at an airport near you. But on the whole, he'd rather be fishing.