Ex-Cambridge Analytica scientist co-launches Capuchin

Advertising agency executives James Cragg, formerly managing director of Tug, and Dan Thwaites, a former managing partner at Karmarama and prior chief executive of Crayon London, will lead the new company alongside Fagan.

The company claims it will offer “scientific thinking for irrational minds” and says it aims to work with “any organisation that wants to change audience behaviour”, including brands, agencies, political organisations and NGOs.

Fagan, who is a part-time lecturer in behavioural science at universities including Goldsmiths, said: “Natural human-to-human intuition doesn’t automatically scale with marketing technology. We design empathy architecture, guiding organisations and their audiences in realising each other’s value for hard commercial results.”

Thwaites added: “Capuchin provides a way to apply the science of the human mind in a way that’s as rigorous as a technology stack.”

According to Capuchin’s website, it will use a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies including techniques such as implicit testing, facial coding and EEG (electroencephalogram) to develop hypotheses and interventions.

Fagan said: “At Capuchin we are committed to empathy – taking the subconscious intuition we all have in face-to-face interactions and helping businesses to scale it across large audiences.”  

Cambridge Analytica closed in May 2018 after it emerged the company had harvested personal data of Facebook users for political advertising purposes.

Pictured (left to right): James Cragg, Dan Thwaites, Patrick Fagan