Wim Vermeulen

Social Norms Researcher | Strategist | Author | Filmmaker

Europe is quietly changing its mind, and most leaders have not noticed. Beneath the noise of loud minorities and AI models repeating them until the echo sounds like a majority, a silent majority is already shaping what comes next. Wim Vermeulen, social norms researcher and strategist, reads that shift before it reaches the markets, the polls and the boardroom.

Employability:: Keynote speaker, Training, Workshop
Languages:: Dutch, English, French
Categories:: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Communication

Leadership & Strategy

Marketing & Sales

Sustainability & Environment

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About Wim Vermeulen

Every leader reads the room. Most of them read it wrong. Loud minorities set the tone online, in the media and in the meeting room. AI models repeat them until the echo sounds like a majority. So companies conclude that European consumers have hardened and that society is turning inward, and they build their plans on that conclusion. Wim Vermeulen’s research with Ghent University shows a quieter Europe that thinks otherwise. He measures what customers, employees and citizens really believe, and turns that gap into decisions for companies such as Nestlé, Polestar and ENGIE. On stage, he shows boardrooms, marketers and policymakers where the room really stands, and what to do about it on Monday morning. Every keynote combines a live measurement of the audience, film and debate, so people see the gap in their own room before they see it in the data.

Wim Vermeulen helps leaders see what their customers, employees and citizens really think, before the market or the ballot box tells them. A social norms researcher and strategist, he is a partner at the research and communication agency Bubka and a guest lecturer at Vlerick Business School. His career took him through London, New York and Moscow. With Ghent University, he developed several frameworks that make the invisible measurable. Companies such as ENGIE, Nestlé, Lidl, Polestar and D’Ieteren work with him to read their markets and their people.

A bestselling author, Wim returns in every book to one question: how do companies and political parties read the people they serve, and speak to them in a way that is believed? He wrote Marketing for the Mad (Wo)Men of Tomorrow (2018), Speak Up Now! (2022, PIM Literature Award) and Unscripted AI. The Future in Us, written with Gino Verleye, appears with Bloomsbury in February 2027. As a documentary and short film maker, he made The Decade of Action and Strengthen the Rope, screened at the Munich Security Conference.

He holds master’s degrees in political science and in communication science from Ghent University, studied management and marketing strategy at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and corporate sustainability at London Business School. He speaks English, Dutch and French.

Topics

1. Trust the signal, not the noise

Why the norm system is the operating system of society, and every strategy is an app that runs on it

We watch technology and we watch policy. Those are the loud signals. Technology changes what is possible. Policy changes what is mandatory. But norms change what is tolerable, and tolerability is the gate that every new technology, law, product and campaign must pass through. Wim calls the norm system the operating system of society. Nobody owns it. Everyone writes code for it. And when an app breaks its rules, the app crashes, however good the code.
The cases come from The Future in Us. Elon Musk kept building the same cars, yet many European buyers no longer found the brand tolerable. De Beers spent decades teaching the world that a diamond means forever. Then laboratories learned to grow the same stone. Technology made it possible; the norm decides whether people still see it as a real diamond. The Baltic Way showed the other side: a norm that had been running silently for years became visible in one human chain.
Wim then gives the audience a ladder to judge what they see. Most change is hype, which passes. Some is an update, some a rewrite. A few moments are an overwrite, when the whole system changes at once. Today we live in what Wim calls normative fog: technology, policy and norms move at different speeds, and the noise drowns out the signal.

Your audience takes home:
1. A simple model to tell noise from signal: possible, mandatory, tolerable.
2. The change ladder, to judge whether a shift is hype, update, rewrite or overwrite.
3. Three questions to test any strategy, product or policy against the norm system before launch.

Best for: executive committees, innovation and technology events, public affairs and policy audiences, marketing leadership.
2. Reading the Room

Why leaders keep misjudging what people really think

The loudest voices set the tone. The polls look divided. The safest move seems to be to say nothing. Yet when you ask people privately, a different picture appears. Most of them agree with each other. They simply believe they are the exception, so they stay silent, and the room looks more hostile than it is.

This keynote is built on the European Social Norms Survey, the research behind Wim’s book The Future in Us (Bloomsbury, 2027), carried out with Ghent University. It shows where European consumers privately stand, where they think everyone else stands, and how wide that gap is. Then it shows what that means for a brand: which loud signals to ignore, which silent majority to serve, and why opinion stops sliding and starts to leap.

Your audience takes home:
1. Why the room they see is rarely the room they are in.
2. How to spot a silent majority among their customers, staff and stakeholders.
3. When speaking up is the risk, and when silence is the bigger one.

Best for: leadership teams, marketing and communication conferences, brand and customer strategy sessions, board meetings.
3. The Future in Us

Europe is pregnant with different futures. Which one is born depends on what we already believe.

Boardrooms plan with growth forecasts, technology roadmaps and coming regulation. Policymakers plan with polls and election cycles. Both treat the future as something that arrives from outside. Yet the next Europe is already here, carried inside its citizens, in the norms they hold privately and rarely say out loud.

This keynote takes the audience inside the European Social Norms Survey, the research behind Wim’s book The Future in Us (Bloomsbury, 2027), written with Prof. Dr. Gino Verleye of Ghent University. It shows what Europeans really think, how far that sits from what they believe others think, and which groups carry which future. Then it shows why those futures arrive suddenly. When a silent majority recognises itself, as it did in the Baltic Way, years of quiet agreement can become visible in a single day.

The argument for leaders is simple. A strategy built on what people say in public is built on the wrong map. Norms are among the earliest signals of the future, yet they rarely make it into a strategy deck or a policy note.

Your audience takes home:
1. Which futures Europe is carrying, and which of them is closest to being born.
2. Why change in norms arrives as a jump, and how to see the jump coming.
3. How to bring norm intelligence into strategy, scenario planning and policy.

Best for: boards and executive committees, scenario and foresight sessions, policymakers and political leaders, European affairs events.
4. Reading the Room Inside
How leaders learn what their people really feel about change

The CEO steps on stage and launches the transformation. Here is why we do this. Here is what we must achieve. Here is the proof, in a spreadsheet. Here is the timeline, the internal champions, the corporate sponsors. It is clear, rational and complete.
In the room, people hear something else. How much energy will this cost me? Will I be able to do it? Is my job still safe? Why again, and why now? Every one of those questions is emotional, and almost none of them is asked out loud. People nod in the town hall and doubt at the coffee machine. Leadership reads the nods and concludes that the room is on board.

This keynote turns Wim’s work on silent majorities inward. It is built on the Transition Tracker, developed by Bubka with Ghent University. The Tracker measures how people really experience a transformation, across ten dimensions: awareness, understanding, communication, change readiness, involvement, engagement, skill development, sentiment, leadership support and acceptance Every result is compared with a benchmark of Belgian companies across industries, hierarchical levels and functions.

That is how leaders see what the town hall hides. The people who want to motivate their colleagues are the real champions, whatever their title. The departments where worry and doubt run high are the pockets of resistance. And the distance between the board and the shop floor shows exactly where the story never arrived. The rational case stays. It finally gets an emotional answer.

Your audience takes home:
1. Why a rational case meets an emotional response, and how to speak to both.
2. How to find the real champions and the pockets of resistance, by level and by department, with data instead of gut feeling.
3. How to keep a transformation on track: when to listen, when to adjust and when to push on.
Best for: CEOs and executive committees, HR and transformation leaders, internal leadership events, the kick off of a change programme.
5. Talking to the Machines
How to make AI models find, trust and recommend your brand

Your next customer may never see your website. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot which car, kitchen or bank to choose, and they get one tidy answer. Some brands appear in that answer. Most do not. And nobody in the marketing team chose which.

Wim develops Share of Model, Bubka’s tool that measures how AI models treat brands. It tracks how often a model names a brand when people ask what to buy, what share of all brand mentions that brand gets, and how the model speaks about it when asked directly. Wim shows what the tool found for real brands in Belgium, such as Polestar. A model working from memory can repeat old news long after the facts have moved on; a model that searches the web comes closer to the truth. The lesson: honest, verifiable content is what models end up trusting. No tricks. Bubka refuses manipulation, because what fools a model today damages trust tomorrow.

Your audience takes home:
1. How often AI models name their brand, and how to check it themselves.
2. Why credibility is the strongest signal a brand can send to a machine.
3. Three steps to become the brand the model recommends.
Best for: marketing, digital and e-commerce events, retail and FMCG audiences, executive teams preparing for AI search.
6. Workshop: Goosebumps Create Margins
Why the messages that give people goosebumps are the messages that pay

We have learned to treat emotion as the soft part of communication. The part you cut when budgets get tight or the board asks for facts. So we send rational memos, careful corporate statements and campaigns built for clicks. Employees skim them, stakeholders forget them, customers scroll past.

Goosebumps are the body’s own verdict on a message, whether it is a town hall speech, a brand film, an annual report or a call to action. Psychologists call the emotion behind them kama muta: being moved. It arises when we see people suddenly grow closer, and when it is intense enough it brings “tears, goosebumps or chills” and “feelings of warmth in the center of the chest”. Those who feel it feel connected to the characters who moved them, across cultures as different as Norway, China and Portugal. With Kippevel, Wim measures that intensity and finds the emotion that fits an organisation, a brand or a cause best.

Then the workshop follows the money. In advertising, the effectiveness research of Les Binet and Peter Field for the IPA puts fame building at the heart of what works: messages that get noticed and talked about. Wim walks the team through the chain, from goosebumps to fame, from fame to preference and support, and from there to sales, engagement and influence. He shows which links research has proven and which it has not. Then the team works on its own communication, whether internal, corporate, marketing or advocacy: which emotion fits it, how to measure it, and how that becomes a brief.

Your team takes home:
1. A business case for emotion that holds up in the boardroom.
2. A first measurement of the emotion that fits their organisation, brand or cause.
3. Three questions to ask before they sign off the next speech, campaign or report.
Best for: communication, marketing and HR teams, corporate affairs and advocacy teams, agency and client pairs, follow up sessions after a keynote.