Michael Nicholson – författare

Drawing on 25 years of research, consultancy, and teaching experience in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, Primal Marketing reveals the hard-wired motives driving customer behaviour and the secrets of leveraging these to craft higher-impact marketing strategies.

While markets, technologies, and media channels have transformed rapidly, the human mind that buys, chooses, and connects has remained fundamentally the same. By introducing an evolutionary approach to marketing, the book argues that effective marketing works not by manipulating desire but by aligning brands with deep, enduring human needs. Structured around ten major product categories – including food, fashion, health, home, play, technology, transport, and finance – the book shows how everyday consumption reflects primal drives related to survival, belonging, status, attraction, care, and learning. These insights are organised through the PRIMAL framework, a practical strategic tool designed to help marketers diagnose what truly motivates their audiences and translate insight into clear positioning, storytelling, and brand decisions.

Written primarily for marketing practitioners, brand leaders, and strategists, and supported by examples suitable for students and educators, the book bridges theory and application. Readers will gain a powerful lens for understanding consumer behaviour, sharpening brand strategy, and future-proofing marketing decisions by grounding innovation in timeless human psychology.

Drawing on 25 years of research, consultancy, and teaching experience in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, Primal Marketing reveals the hard-wired motives driving customer behaviour and the secrets of leveraging these to craft higher-impact marketing strategies.

While markets, technologies, and media channels have transformed rapidly, the human mind that buys, chooses, and connects has remained fundamentally the same. By introducing an evolutionary approach to marketing, the book argues that effective marketing works not by manipulating desire but by aligning brands with deep, enduring human needs. Structured around ten major product categories – including food, fashion, health, home, play, technology, transport, and finance – the book shows how everyday consumption reflects primal drives related to survival, belonging, status, attraction, care, and learning. These insights are organised through the PRIMAL framework, a practical strategic tool designed to help marketers diagnose what truly motivates their audiences and translate insight into clear positioning, storytelling, and brand decisions.

Written primarily for marketing practitioners, brand leaders, and strategists, and supported by examples suitable for students and educators, the book bridges theory and application. Readers will gain a powerful lens for understanding consumer behaviour, sharpening brand strategy, and future-proofing marketing decisions by grounding innovation in timeless human psychology.

A powerful blast blows away a bank wall and five innocent people – and 4,250,000 in gold bars disappear.

A coolly-plotted assassination seems accidental, as a militant left-wing labor leader, on the eve of a paralyzing national strike, takes a fatal fall down the world’s longest escalator.

Off the Yorkshire coast, an oil rig the size of a football field is firebombed and totally destroyed.

The UK suffers blindly under a series of tragedies with no visible link.

Then, a defector appears at Cannon Row police station and spells out the threat from the sinister group CORDON – a right-wing takeover of Great Britain is imminent. Only 12 days remain.

The Prime Minister orders his intelligence chief to recruit a new agent. The assignment: stop CORDON, no one can be trusted. CORDON has penetrated every level.

From its top secret files, the Special State operations department pulls a dossier on Tom McCullin. A case-hardened former Belfast sniper, veteran of many dirty campaigns, McCullin is a hard-drinking recluse with a talent for destruction.

As he is led – and misled – to the truth by his own government, a small secret army is ready on the South Downs; vehicles stand poised to deal death to England’s ghettoes with lethal gas; and fascist rallies pack London meeting halls as CORDON prepares for a ruthless coup d’etat.

As the days tick off, McCullin races toward the explosive climax in The Partridge Kite as England faces its greatest crisis, one that could very well be taking place right now.

William Faraday, a raw young recruit to television news, longs to join the close jealous band of foreign correspondents – that exclusive, hard drinking, hard swearing, whoring world of the cynical professional.

His break comes when he is sent to cover a Marxist coup on a tiny coral island in the Indian Ocean just off the east coast of Africa.

But Faraday is quickly disillusioned. Nothing matches his expectations. The Marxist takeover is less of a coup than

a hiccough, and the famous globetrotting war correspondents seem nothing more than middle-aged, drunken hacks.

But history turns in a second and Faraday finds himself suddenly in love and in the middle of the biggest story in Africa.

His innocence is lost in the violence of war. Faraday is bloodied. Brutality, murder and rape all play their part in a

plot that ends in a deadly explosive game of hide and seek.

It is a story that is already secretly happening in Africa. It is a story that could hit your headlines tomorrow.

Veteran reporter Matt Franklin liked the thought of a trip to a warm climate in early December – he could escape the northern winter, reassess his marriage, and get the big story that would restore his byline to the front page of The New York Times. But it wouldn’t have seemed such an attractive idea if he’d known he was to be drawn back into active service for the CIA and caught in the middle of a revolution.

Set in the Middle East, the United States of America and the rough snowbound terrain of England’s Lake District, Michael Nicholson’s powerful new novel takes place over just four days.

But they are four dangerous days in which the balance of world power wavers unsteadily as opposing factions battle for control of Riyadh and Saudi Arabia’s oilwells, Whitehall wonders what to do, and an abrasive new US President strives to retain control over the oil his country depends on.

Meanwhile, Franklin finds himself on the dangerous trail of a notorious and beautiful terrorist...

Michael Nicholson’s extensive experience as a foreign correspondent ensures authentic backgrounds to the tautly-woven plot of this, his third novel, while the heady mix of sex, intrigue and power politics makes it a compelling read.