Because farmers Deserve to be Understood
our mission.
We are unconventional. We rebel at the idea that you can create great experiences for farmers without acknowledging that farmers are people first. We believe that using human centered design principles can help organizations achieve more powerful, differentiated and sustainable results. Using a blend of techniques – some familiar and some novel – we help to reveal deeper insights that become a catalyst for innovation.
We cultivate wisdom. We explore a variety of vantage points in order to provide a fresh perspective to any given situation. We recognize great insights come from listening to farmer’s stories about what makes them who they are and want to be, not by measuring what they do. And we know we have arrived when the results are filtered through the considerations of desirability (to your customer), feasibility (from a technical perspective) and viability (to your business).
founders
Maurice Allin
Founder and President
Maurice has a rebellious nature, but he is a rebel with a cause. With an innate curiosity and a different view of the world he pushes the boundaries of conventional thinking in order to discover a new and better way.
Maurice is fascinated by how humans, particularly farmers make decisions. His career is devoted to developing a better understanding of how a customers self-story or sense of identity interacts with the stories that brands tell. He has a strong belief that the “farmer as a person” has been overlooked when marketers think about appealing to the farm community and started CentricEngine as a vehicle for increasing our understanding of the farmer as a person first, farmer second.
Maurice has a long history of providing customer insight and strategic planning services first with Deloitte Consulting (11 years) and with Quarry Integrated Communications (20 years).
His clients include organizations such as Syngenta, John Deere, BASF, Hyland Seeds, Novartis Animal Health, Elanco, Gilead, Symantec and Shopify. His experience covers virtually every sector of farm production – including intensive livestock, row crop, small grains, specialty livestock and fruit and vegetable production.
Maurice teaches strategic planning through the Institute of Canadian Advertising’s Certified Advertising Agency Practitioner (CAAP) program. He was raised on a beef farm in Durham County, Ontario, and received a B.Sc. Agr from the University of Guelph with dual majors in Soil Science and Resource Economics.
Robert Wilbur
Bob’s exploring nature has him constantly hunting for new roads. He is driven by the prospect of undiscovered nuggets that can propel organizations to success. He harnesses radical discoveries and molds them into ideas with relevance and impact.
Along with his work at CentricEngine, Bob runs an independent consultancy, Robert Wilbur Strategic Perspectives. He likes to focus on “gnarly problems” with clients in the agricultural and animal health industries helping to develop a deeper understanding of their customers and their markets in order to create differentiation and maximize opportunities. An experienced researcher, facilitator and idea generator, Bob is an excellent communicator who is able to bring clarity to complex situations.
Bob is a graduate of the University of Guelph (BSc Agr) and has experience across a broad spectrum of agribusiness including work with leading organizations in Canada, the US and Global markets. Previous clients include BASF (Canada, US and Global) Elanco Animal Health (Canada), Novartis Animal Health (Canada, US and Global) and Syngenta (Canada including the NK seed brand in Canada and the US).