Hi. I’m Sam Knowles. I’m the Founder & MD of storytelling consultancy Insight Agents. With more than 30 years’ experience working with companies and brands to tell powerful and purposeful stories, I specialise in using data and statistics as the foundation stones of corporate narrative with impact.

Originally a classicist – the source of my love of story, myth, and storytelling – I went back to school 2000-2004 to take a Master’s and then a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology. That’s where I fell in love the language of statistics and honed my understanding of human motivation and behaviour.

In 2017, I drew the diverse strands of my business and academic career together into my book Narrative by Numbers, which Routledge published in April 2018. I wrote the book because I am convinced that the key to better corporate and brand stories is a blend of the rational and the emotional, of data plus humanity. Over a varied career, and I’ve absorbed and magpied, honed, and developed six golden rules of data-driven storytelling and I’m on a mission to persuade others to use these skills in their narrative development.

We live in an age when many more voices matter. Narrative by Numbers explains to communicators of all stripes how to become better, more empathetic storytellers, speaking that rarest and most effective dialect of “human”. It’s a deeply practical primer, full of examples from public, private, and third sector organisations, from Tesco and easyJet to Dove and Sport England, from Spotify and Apple to Government departments.

Thanks to Narrative by Numbers, I’ve given more than 50 talks in the past year, including half a dozen keynotes at leading marketing industry events, across Europe. My training practice – direct with clients but also via third parties including the Account Planning Group, Market Research Society, and Public Relations & Communications Association – has expanded very rapidly. And the principles and sheer existence of the book have opened more doors to more consultancy work than I’d imagined possible.

I’m thrilled that Narrative by Numbers has been so well-received, has been critically acclaimed, and – of course – has been shortlisted in the Business Book of the Year Awards.

Now just to write the sequel, How To Be Insightful, contracted by Routledge and coming to a bookstore near you in 2020.

Narrative by Numbers has been shortlisted for the Sales & Marketing Category of the Business Book Awards sponsored by Bootcamp Media. To get your copy of the book Click Here