Donald J. Sutman has an idea that horrifies some who hear it. Others immediately grasp its potential as a weapon in the commercial wars, and it stokes the flames of cupidity in their hearts.
Sutman has become a frequent subject of conversation in certain faculty lounges and online forums where people deeply versed in the field of applied statistics convene, though, as is often the case with topics that generate rampant speculation, no one knows exactly what is at the bottom of it all. The speculation, however, centers on the idea that he has found a way to turn violent, heart-rending crimes into marketing coups for paying clients.
Sutman has consistently refused to discuss his work with any media outlet. But an investigation by The Stoneslide Corrective has turned up new information and we believe we can now put all the pieces together. The picture we see is more than a little unsettling.
Sutman was a star as far back as we can find any record of him. He graduated top of his class in high school and went to Columbia University. There he won the top prize in the psychology department and went on to earn a PhD in that field. He completed his degree in a remarkable four years and secured a faculty position at Wye Sprite University. Over the next fifteen years, he moved adroitly up the professional ladder. He earned significant grant money. He won best paper awards on two occasions. He became a well known and highly cited expert in his chosen specialty. But it’s his recent move into private enterprise that has really caused a stir. Sutman has formed a new venture called Sutman Knowledge Consultancies (SKC), which seeks to monetize and further develop some of his research. According to our sources, he has already signed agreements with a major retail brand and a global online service company, among others, to provide services that until now have remained murky.
Sutman has left his post at Wye Sprite University and has no known place of residence. SKC provides no information about its products or services. Its website is a single email contact on an otherwise blank page. Several attempts to reach the company went unreturned. However, through a friendly source, The Stoneslide Corrective was able to track down Sutman as he left a meeting on Madison Avenue in New York City. He again refused to answer questions, merely shaking his head as he rode off in the backseat of a black Mercedes. At least we can tell you what he looked like. He is in his early forties, with blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His frame is narrow and pinched at the waist, but he moves quickly and assuredly. He wore a pin-striped suit and glossy maroon shirt.
Despite his sphinx-like silence, we have conducted extensive interviews and other research, and we believe we have uncovered what Sutman wants to keep secret.
The key to what Sutman is offering his corporate clients can be found in a series of papers he wrote over the last decade and a half. Broadly they fall into the field known as deep analytics or big data, in which psychologists and statisticians attempt to find exploitable patterns in the detailed repositories of purchasing decisions held by today’s behemoth retail operations. One example that recently got a lot of attention was Target’s program to determine whether women are pregnant based on their purchases and then present them offers for relevant products, such as infant formula.
Sutman’s doctoral thesis, “A Multivariate Analysis of Decision Factors in Comparative Shampoo Shopping, a Theoretical and Empirical Approach,” was one of the early breakthroughs in this field and is widely cited. He moved on to what initially seemed a more abstruse interest and studied the relationship between various forms of purchasing data and crime data.
“This is the work that got him tenure when he was just 30,” said Roland Braithwaite, a former colleague in the university’s psychology department. “He was our enfant terrible. No one had thought to combine these kinds of data sets before him.” Sutman showed, first, that certain patterns in purchasing were correlated with high or low crime rates in surrounding neighborhoods. He then looked at the individual-level data and found a core set of predictors for later criminal behavior. Braithwaite provided one example: “I’ve always chuckled at this: consistent purchases of pre-packaged processed meats without any corresponding deodorant or oral hygiene purchase.” This work was widely admired for the ingeniousness of Sutman’s mathematical models, as well as the sheer mass of data he wrangled. “We never thought it could have any real-world application—precisely why it was so admired,” says Braithwaite. “It was pure scholarship.”
One other key study you need to understand to grasp Sutman’s current pursuits is one he did with Amelia LeGarde, a professor of meme studies at Wye Sprite University. The two looked at media coverage of crimes through the discovery, investigation, trial, and post-trial phases, and identified seven factors that contribute to what they call “high-exposure narratives.” For instance, magnitude of crime, in dollars or lives lost, is a major driver. But so is racial and ethnic difference between perpetrator and victim, as well as a factor they called “cultural transgression,” basically elements not criminal themselves but considered taboo.
What Sutman appears to be doing now is combining these areas of interest and offering companies with large consumer data sets the ability to predict who among their consumers are likely not only to commit crimes, but to become notorious criminals. How he proposes companies profit from this information is the last piece of the puzzle.
We had dozens of conversations with Sutman’s former colleagues and one-time rivals in the academy. They universally admired his acumen and ability to wring ideas out of data, but no one could make the leap to guess how he might be selling his services. We talked with executives, marketers, and customer advocates, but again no one saw the connection. So, you suspect one of your customers will commit some horrendous crime. What do you do with that information? Go to the police? There’s no profit in that. No one would pay Sutman for that.
Our break came when an acquaintance of one of the people we’d already spoken to contacted us through an anonymous email account. This source said he had been in a pitch meeting at which Sutman offered his wares. Needless to say, we were excited, but the source would only agree to meet with us if we guaranteed him anonymity. He had signed a harshly punitive non-disclosure agreement with SKC and had no doubt the company would pursue all remedies against him if they found out he talked to the press.
Imagine this setting: the board members of a multi-billion dollar regional beverage distributor gathered around a conference table in a meeting room at one of the most expensive hotels in New York City. Sutman will only talk with the top decision makers at a firm, and he refuses to meet on a company’s grounds but always requires a neutral location such as this. Sutman stands in front of a screen illuminated with his PowerPoint slides. Our source says that as Sutman worked through the background research, the board seemed disinterested. “It was a typical meeting; they were tapping at their iPhones and scratching themselves, waiting to collect their checks.”
But then Sutman proposed the following: identify future criminals and you can use special offers and giveaways to associate them with particular brands. At first the board was nonplussed, but Sutman explained: crime has a powerful effect on the psyche. We are fascinated with certain narratives of violation, even despite our best intentions. They break down some of the normal defenses of the superego and carry information and impulses straight to the heart. A brand and a brand idea can be carried along. Of course, you have to be incredibly careful in doing this; only certain associations will drive positive retail results. But Sutman said his extensive databases gathered over many years of research gave him predictive power and his analytical algorithms could identify the most beneficial combinations of crime, product, and audience segment for any company. According to our source, Sutman gave the following example: “An energy drink used by a certain kind of spree killer who demonstrates not only a criminal will that far exceeds the norm but a kind of physical exuberance that will strike normal people as almost superhuman will produce significant benefits. A poisoner or mailbomber would be counterproductive with such a brand.”
At this point, reports our source, the board became very excited and began offering its own suggestions. Sutman promised his system could drive $50 million in sales inside of two years. The company closed a deal with SKC within a week.
In the board meeting, Sutman claimed his system had already generated significant successes, but he wouldn’t divulge the identities of any clients. We can only guess at what these successes might be. Is it the Windham Downs Killer’s fondness for eating Starburst candies while on his long, patient stakeouts? Could Sutman be behind the congressman arrested for inappropriate contact with a young woman, who was wearing Gucci sunglasses and t-shirt on his perp walk? Without proof, we risk seeing Sutman everywhere.
Unlike the company board we learned about from our source, we recoil as we learn more and more about Sutman’s ideas. What was fascinating as pure research becomes odious when used to manipulate real people’s lives. Is he causing these crimes? No. Is he even encouraging them? No. But there’s something more insidious happening here. He is inserting commercial concerns into the most basic dilemmas of good and evil. He’s branding morality.
We sought input from others to help us understand what to make of this, starting with branding guru Johan Immerswe. He replied, “It’s just a form of sponsorship. It’s the same concept: you associate a person with a product in the public mind. I see no problem.” Immerswe also argued that once an idea like this gets out in the market, you have to use it or be at a competitive disadvantage. He did place some limits, however: “If they actually set up a crime or gave someone a drug knowing it would push them over the edge or even framed someone associated with a brand, I think that would step over the line. But these things are very hard to judge. It’s a competitive world.”
We also spoke with Sheila Caper, a professor of insistent ethics at Upland Downs University. When we described Sutman’s work, she said she was “disgusted.” Asked for an explanation, she said, “Isn’t it self-evident? I mean, look at what he’s doing. It makes my skin crawl. That’s an important moral test, probably formed by millions of years of evolution as a collaborative tribal species. Someone who makes your skin crawl is bad for the tribe. You just know it.” Asked about Immerswe’s contention that this was just a form of sponsorship, Caper replied, “So, you’d put product placements in In Cold Blood? That’s cold-blooded.”
The bromides on either side didn’t satisfy. Something in Sutman’s work continued to upset us. A part of it was the idea that he could see through us, and so many others, and manipulate us so easily. We each want to feel that our choices are made with discernment and volition. That what we desire and what desires we act on define who we are. That is the scaffolding on which we erect a belief in selfhood. We are who we are and that is expressed in our choices. But if Sutman, or someone like him, could know our own choices better than we knew them ourselves, if he could turn us toward this or that outcome without our detecting the influence, then who are we? Toys? Phantasms cast on the wall of his imagination? Are we just the organic fuel cells that keep the corporate machinery spinning? A corporate machinery that becomes more and more powerful as it spins up greater maelstroms of desire in us, desire that tortures us until we relent and shell out for its object?
That we should be manipulated through such horrid crimes, acts that should be set aside for purely moral judgment, made all this worse. We felt that, if this was true, all our desires might be tainted and destructive.
We felt it was imperative to get some answers directly from Sutman, and so we refocused our investigation on finding a way to reach him.
