About Us

Favouite outsider is Franklin D. Roosevelt .
I admire Roosevelt for overcoming his disability and leading his country through dark times and into the light. A rising star in the Democratic party when polio struck him leaving him with paralysed legs, he was determined to walk again and resume his political career, setting himself a stiff regime of exercise. He never achieved his goal of walking, but did re-entered public life. At a time when disabled people were often sent to asylums, Roosevelt and his insistence on “good cheer” won the hearts of the voters, who elected him president not once but four times. Leading the country through the Great Depression and World War II, he never ceased to advocate for the disabled.

Steven Lacey is a foresight specialist, cultural insight specialist, commercial anthropologist and a strategist who has extensive experience in advising Governments, opposition parties, Global brands, international advertising agencies and activists.

He has built a well-deserved reputation as a leading light in behavioural change research, with a particular understanding cultural changes both in the UK and Globally.

When Steven founded The Outsiders his goal was to establish an insight agency that was radical, straight-talking and challenging.

In many ways Steven is the archetypical Outsider being working class, physically disabled and neuro-diverse.

He brings to his work a depth of knowledge and expertise, as well as a personal passion, that has developed during years of work with an extensive range of diverse clients.

As a former planning director with Baby Creative, Steven was in charge of advertising accounts for Action Aid, Action for Children, Greenpeace, Motor Neuron Disease Association, VSO, RSPB, and Freedom From Torture.

Prior to this, Steven was a senior planner at Farm Communications, where he headed up accounts for the Department of Education, Department of Health (smoking cessation campaigns), Food Standards Agency and the Electoral Commission.

He has a number of thought pieces on such topics as “Global attitudes towards masculinity”, “The rise of Populism”, “Why the White working class voted for Brexit”, “Disability in the UK”, “How to conduct hard to reach research”, “The future of youth”, “How to communicate diversity” “Britishness”, “Mass Mainstreams attitudes to Covid” and “Russian Cultural codes”

Steven regularly appears in the media and is often consulted about culture by leading brands and advertising agencies. He has been a guest speaker for P&G, Talktalk, Asda, Gambleaware as well as at ad agencies such as Adam & Eve, BBH, Mother and St Lukes and is renowned for making the policy, communications and advertising industry think.

In 2017 he set up the Cultural Insights Forum to share insights in order to make the world a better place.

Favourite Outsider is Grace Jones
For me, Grace Jones is an icon of outsider culture. She took the experience of being ‘othered’ and subverted it. Challenging gender, race and power stereotypes, she resisted definition. She self-created, taking total ownership – and she made no apologies.

Zoe McQuillin has over twenty years’ experience as a qualitative researcher. Before working with The Outsiders she was Research Director at Egg Research & Consultancy.

Zoe has lots of experience researching Mass Mainstream brands such as Dove, Impulse, Rexona, Surf, Persil, Smirnoff, Highland Spring, Cadbury, Max Factor, and Kettle Chips

She has worked extensively with hard to reach audiences, including disabled people, BAME, LGBT and vulnerable adults. She holds a MA Social Anthropology, with a particular focus on health inequality and social exclusion.

She is renowned as a sensitive, empathetic researcher, working on projects that other researchers might find too challenging in terms of sensitivity, such as fundamentalism, sexual behaviour and debt. She holds a counselling certificate and has also volunteered as a community befriender to people with complex mental and physical disability issues.

Favourite Outsider is Edward Scissorhands. Embracing life on the outskirts of polite society and with the right balance of contempt and respect for it, he gently snips at suburban stereotypes and timid thinking.

Daniel Baldwin is a media and communications specialist, wearing two hats. He is an award winning Producer Director at CDC Films (www.cdcfilms.co.uk), telling stories for people and organisations engaged in positive social change and a freelance ethnographic videographer with 12 years experience working with some of the UK’s most respected agencies on projects for companies including Apple, the BBC, Channel 4, Google and ITV. Influenced by an academic background in Anthropology and Documentary Directing (University College London), his work is carefully observed with a softly emotional human touch.

Favourite Outsider is J.D. Salinger
“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”
“Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.”
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.
(JD Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye)

Mike Stonelake is an art director and graphic artist. After studying a degree in Fine Art, painting giant, abstract, canvases, Mike moved into the design and communications industry. He has a wide range of skills and clients, including book design, typography, identity, corporate communications, illustration and animation. Many of his clients are in the arts sector, including art galleries, publishers of art books and classical music organisations.

Mike has had a passion for comics since his childhood and particularly enjoys ‘Bande Dessiné’ (European cartoon books) and alternative comics. In the nineties Mike co-founded the comic ‘The Winebibber’ and continues to write and draw his own cartoons.

He has designed many art books, particularly with contemporary photographers, and helped run an art gallery for many years, exhibiting work from the former Soviet Union.