David Allison
Learn the Operating System that Drives Human Behavior
Topic Categories:
Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- Behavioral Science Expert
- Founder of Valuegraphics
- Leader of the Disrupt Demographics Movement
- Author of The Death of Demographics – #1 on Amazon
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
David’s career is a testament to the power of understanding people’s values and motivations. As a copywriter and creative director in advertising agencies, he used his talents to create campaigns for a wide range of products and services, including everything from hotel rooms and hot dogs to telephone services and lawyers. But David’s true gift was his ability to see beyond demographics and understand what truly motivates people.
Alongside his work in advertising, David also taught marketing courses at the university level, passing on his knowledge and experience to the next generation of marketers. Eventually, he started his own branding company, which grew to include 40 employees working on campaigns for hotels, condo towers, resort properties, and office towers around the world. He was also VP of marketing at Sotheby’s International Real Estate luxury project division, where he used his skills to market resort homes and luxury condominiums around the world.
These experiences helped him realize that people’s behavior could not be accurately defined by demographics alone. He understood that there had to be a better way to understand what drives people’s decisions, and the Valuegraphics Project was born.
Today, David uses his expertise to help some of the world’s biggest brands better understand their customers. Brands like PayPal, the United Nations Foundation, and Lululemon have all benefited from David’s unique insights into what truly motivates people. He is also a sought-after speaker, sharing his insights on stages around the world.
David’s impact on the world of marketing extends beyond his work with clients. In 2018, he published his best-selling book, We Are All the Same Age Now, which was named one of the ten best leadership books of the year by INC Magazine. The book explores how technology and changing attitudes have blurred traditional demographic boundaries, making it more important than ever to understand people’s values. In November 2022, he released his latest book, The Death of Demographics, an instant bestseller, hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “Convincing, insightful and…revolutionary.”
Outside of his work, David has a passion for contemporary art and weightlifting. He lives in a retrofitted Vancouver office tower complete with a video studio, He writes in a heritage cottage up the coast in British Columbia, Canada.
Answer the burning question: “How can we engage people, and influence the decisions they make?”
Discover the specific shared values of customers, prospects, investors, members … any group of people your audience wants to reach.
Learn how to use custom research findings to reach people deep inside their hearts, and engage with them like a trusted friend.
Create values-driven solutions that will resonate deeply – 8X more powerfully than ever before – with the people you care about most.
Understand how values drive the agenda for everything in the world today.
See how we waste trillions of dollars each year using demographics to understand people, with eye-popping statistics from the global value graphics database.
Learn how human values can transform the way we work, and the kind of world we live in tomorrow.
Be inspired to change how you look at people and leave with the tools you need to succeed in a values-driven world.
Event planners are searching for more engaging and collaborative educational programs. Adding Micro-Workshops to your event gives your attendees both a transformative keynote speech, plus the opportunity to custom-tailor the take-aways in a private one-on-one consulting session. Each 30-minute micro-workshop guides just one person (or one team from one company) as they use the custom data from the keynote, roll up their shirt sleeves and actually get the work done. They will leave with an implementation plan to engage and influence the people they want to reach with the enormous power of shared human values. Because it’s all about values. Always has been and always will be. When you know what people value you can speak directly into their heart, and engage them like a trusted friend.
Format: Ten time slots can be pre-booked for a 30-minute micro-workshop, for each day, for the duration of your event. Micro-workshops can be scheduled to take place before or after David’s keynote. Micro-Workshops are led by the VP of David’s research company.
David begins this fast-paced and engaging TED-style presentation with a question: at a time when nobody acts their age anymore, why are age-based stereotypes still so prevalent? Boomers aren’t all bad with technology. Millennials are no more afraid of commitment than anyone else. And Gen Z are not all the same as each other. Age based profiling is no more than business astrology. In fact, we live in a post demographic world where surface-level labels like age, gender, income, race, and education only describe what people are, not who they are on the inside, where it counts.
David unpacks the data that proves how demographics are a deficient legacy system that leads to more harm than good. He explains how companies waste trillions of dollars a year using demographics the same way our ancestors did. And the room falls silent when David connects the dots between the way we use demographics at work, and the stereotypes behind ageism, racism, sexism, homophobia and more.
Then David takes the audience in another direction entirely. He shares the heartwarming story of hope that emerged after 750,000 surveys across 180 countries revealed how much we all have in common. Regardless of demographic labels, we share the same core human values all around the world. Valuegraphics can replace demographics as a more accurate and unifying way to understand the people we want to reach.
He concludes with a series of simple takeaway tools:
-A method everyone can use to find the shared values of the people they want to reach
-A brainstorming model that leads to values-driven ideas
-Easy-to-share short stories to help explain the power of shared human values
Everyone sees how simple it is to create products, services and brands that people care about, change the way we look at the world, and disrupt demographics for good.
David builds every custom keynote with one-of-a-kind data about the people you want to engage. You can choose customers, prospects, investors, members, potential employees…whoever your attendees want to motivate most. He delivers the findings in a dynamic TED-style presentation packed with insights that answer the burning question: “How can we influence the people we want to reach?” These insights are the secret weapon used by global brands like lululemon, PayPal, and the United Nations Foundation…and now your audience too.
Based on principles of behavioral science and nearly 750,000 surveys from around the world, David’s firm built the first global inventory of core human values: The Valuegraphics Project. It’s a complex directory of how people make decisions about everything they do. This database pinpoints the precise values that people share, and David teaches your audience to activate them more powerfully than ever before.
Your attendees will learn:
-How to use their custom data to create values-centric strategies that resonate deeply
-How to use the Values Thinking Process to solve problems in a values-focused way-
-How to create buy-in for becoming a values-driven organization
-What’s in the downloadable toolkit: a takeaway version of their custom research findings
This is an enormous advance in the science of influence – specifically tailored to your situation – that gives everyone in the room a completely unfair competitive advantage over those who stayed away.
Want to bring David Allison to your next event? Please tell us a little about your event, and we will get back to you shortly!