The Unoptimised Human — Monthly Roundup (July 2026)
If there is one thread that runs through everything I wrote this month, it is this: the organisations that will survive the next five years are the ones that...
The Big Idea: Identity Is the New Strategy
If there is one thread that runs through everything I wrote this month, it is this: the organisations that will survive the next five years are the ones that understand identity. Not demographic identity. Not the version that fits neatly into a spreadsheet. The real kind. The messy, tribal, psychologically complex version that actually explains why people do what they do.
I spent June exploring this from every angle I could find. From Belgian sommeliers manufacturing reality with a €2.50 bottle of wine, to Starling Bank shredding the psychological contract in public, to the Vespa scooter turning 80 and still meaning something to people. The pattern is consistent: brands, organisations, and leaders who understand that identity is not a segmentation variable but the operating system of human behaviour will outperform those still fiddling with demographics.
Here are four pieces from the month that I think are worth your time.
1. The Confirmation Economy: How Modern Branding Manufactures Reality
A Belgian sommelier took a €2.50 supermarket wine, gave it a label, a backstory, and a gold medal, and proved that the product was never the point. This piece uses that experiment as a launchpad into something much bigger: how modern branding systems, and increasingly AI, manufacture reality through cognitive bias. If the sommelier can make experts believe a cheap wine is premium, what happens when algorithms do this at scale, building persuasion profiles that map individual biases and trigger them dynamically?
2. When Your Bank Replaces You With an Algorithm: The Starling Problem
Starling Bank announced 130 job cuts this week. The stated reason: to redirect the savings into AI investment. Not a crisis. Not declining performance. A deliberate choice to replace humans with algorithms. This piece examines what Self-Determination Theory, the Big Five, and Dual Process Theory predict happens psychologically when organisations frame redundancy this way. The answer is not what most leadership teams expect.
3. The Wowcher Catastrophe: When a Marketing Email Goes Horribly Wrong
Wowcher sent an email so badly received that it went viral for all the wrong reasons. But this is not a “worst marketing fails” listicle. It is a case study in how Appraisal Theory explains why certain communications trigger disproportionate emotional responses, and why the Realist and Socialiser archetypes were hit hardest. If you are sending emails at scale, this one is worth five minutes.
4. Twelve Million Fans, One Identity: What the FIFA World Cup Teaches Us About Tribal Belonging
The World Cup gave us a masterclass in Social Identity Theory in real time. Twelve million fans, drawn from every demographic category marketers love to use, united by something no segmentation model can capture: tribal belonging. This piece explores why identity fusion, the psychological state where individual and group identity merge, is the mechanism that actually drives loyalty. And why most brands are nowhere near triggering it.
What I’m Watching: The AI Trust Paradox
Two numbers caught my attention this month. Fractl’s Q2 2026 report found that trust in AI has dropped 28 points in 12 months, even as AI usage continues to climb. And Harris Poll found that 78% of consumers now find AI-forward brand messaging “cringey.” We are in a strange moment: people are using AI more than ever while trusting it less than ever. The brands that will navigate this are not the ones shouting about their AI capabilities. They are the ones quietly using AI to deliver better human experiences without making it the headline. The Gartner finding that only 11% of consumers trust AI to make decisions for them is not a technology problem. It is a communication problem. And a leadership one.
The Question
Starling Bank told 130 people they are being replaced by AI. The psychological contract between employer and employee just got rewritten in public. Here is what I keep coming back to: if your organisation announced tomorrow that it was replacing a team with AI, would the remaining employees see it as progress, or as a threat to their own future?
The answer tells you more about your culture than any engagement survey ever will.
David Chadderton spent his twenties and thirties teaching people how to make life-or-death decisions at forty thousand feet. He now applies the same principles to consumer psychology, which, depending on the brief, can feel equally high-stakes. He’s the creator of the STAR Framework and the author of The STAR Framework: Rewriting the Rules of Consumer Engagement (NYC Big Book Award 2025), The STAR Operating System: Decode Mindset, Understand Motivation, Transform Human Behaviour, and Dear Algorithm, It’s Not Me, It’s You. By day, a Chief Marketing Officer. By night, a behavioural science obsessive who writes The Unoptimised Human because he can’t stop thinking about why people do what they do.
The STAR Framework
If you enjoyed this essay, you'll find the full argument — and the framework behind it — in the book.