Braden Fieldwork & Advisory

11/03/2026

10/29/2026

Seventeen years ago, I began developing a framework for understanding the different ways media influences human behavior.

I called it SLICED.

Social. Location. Iconic. Creative. Echoic. Directional.

It grew out of my work in radio, newspapers, online directories and eventually social media. Each environment revealed something different about how people encounter, remember and respond to brands.

For thirteen years, the original framework remained unchanged.

Earlier this year, I added another dimension: three behavioral phases that consider how media influence changes throughout a person's relationship with a brand.

What's stayed consistent is the underlying approach: observe first, understand the environment, and resist the temptation to start with the platform.

That approach is also at the heart of what I now call Fieldwork.

Here's the history of SLICED, seventeen years in:

Three Phases of Media Influence on Behavior

10/22/2026

I've been thinking a lot about the provenance of Fieldwork lately. Not just where the name came from, but where the thinking originated.

One place I keep returning to is SLICED.

I developed the framework seventeen years ago, early in my career, as I began noticing that different forms of media influenced behavior in fundamentally different ways.

What started as observations from working in radio eventually expanded into a broader way of understanding media, brands and human behavior.

SLICED has evolved over the years, but the curiosity behind it hasn't changed much.

In many ways, I think that's where Fieldwork began. Long before I knew to call it that.

I wrote a little about the history here:

Three Phases of Media Influence on Behavior

10/19/2026

10/15/2026

Long before Braden Fieldwork had a name, I was already doing fieldwork.

Seventeen years ago, while working in radio, I started questioning how different forms of media influence human behavior. Radio, newspapers, directories, social media. Different environments, different influences.

Those observations eventually became SLICED, a framework I've carried with me through much of my professional life.

What's interesting to me now is that SLICED wasn't just an early framework. Looking back, I can see it as something of an origin point for Fieldwork itself.

Observation. Discovery. Connecting things that might otherwise seem unrelated.

I recently revisited the framework, including a new dimension I introduced this year, and wrote about its evolution.

Seventeen years of SLICED:

Three Phases of Media Influence on Behavior

10/14/2026