The problem
Big-company questions, without a big-company team
We’re most useful at turning points – a new leader, stalled sales, a new market or a rebrand – when the questions are as big as any corporate’s but there’s no insight team to answer them.
A big corporate has an insight team, an agency roster and a research budget. A business with a few hundred staff usually has a marketing director, a stretched team, and an ad or design agency whose answer, quite understandably, tends to look like the thing they make.
Our answer
The insight team you don’t have
With over 30 years of experience developing brands, messages and propositions for some of the biggest businesses around, we help growing companies define the question they need answered, then deliver a complete answer: a proposition, positioning or go-to-market strategy ready to act on.
We engage the people whose views matter, put your team in front of the customers who count, build and test the ideas, and stay with you until the strategy is in the bloodstream of the business and its agencies.
Why the usual options fall short
Plausible isn’t the same as right
The shortcuts
A quick survey to the customer database, a few conversations with friendly customers and, increasingly, an afternoon with AI. We use AI every day, and there’s a lot it does well. But plausible isn’t the same as right, and it’s not the same as something the people inside a business will commit to.
Agencies that just answer the brief
Many research agencies see their job as collecting the data and telling you what it said. Few have the business know-how, processes and frameworks to frame the question, ready the ideas, deliver a complete strategy and build buy-in.
Our output is a complete answer you can act on. The real pay-off is a business that believes in it.
The benefits
Big-company insight, built for your business
- Research built around your commercial challenge, not just the questions that are easy to ask.
- Answers that draw on the right mix of qual and quant, plus expertise in propositions, branding, CX, behavioural science and psychology.
- Customer reactions you can trust, because ideas are shown as fully formed concepts, as they’d appear in the real world.
- Confidence that no opportunity has been missed, with every idea made test-ready and properly evaluated.
- Leaders who’ve seen their customers’ world first-hand, felt the opportunities and faced the difficult truths.
- Stakeholders who leave with a shared vision they believe in.
- Agencies that are clearly briefed, and a better way to judge their work.
- A strategy everyone understands, buys into and acts on, not just a report.
Going to where the answer is
Whatever method fits the question
Regional broadband network
We followed people from first hearing about the service through to installation, to see exactly where interest leaked away.
B2B software business
In-depth conversations with the people who sign off the purchase, mapping the barriers and the things that tip a decision.
Premium heritage brand
Up against cheaper copies and challengers, we heard in people’s own words what they really valued about it and what they’d lose with a lookalike.
How it works
Five workstages, from question to action
We act as your insight team throughout, engaging stakeholders and getting the thinking into your bloodstream. More often than you’d expect, the brief changes.
01 · Workstage 1
Defining the question and building buy-in
We talk to the people whose views matter, gather hypotheses and agree the question, audiences and what success looks like.
02 · Workstage 2
Uncovering needs and opportunities
We get under the skin of customers’ needs, journeys and decisions, and the moments that win or lose them.
03 · Workstage 3
Responding to customer realities
Your team sees the world through customers’ eyes and develops ideas. We craft the strongest into positionings, propositions or journeys.
04 · Workstage 4
Testing and refining
We test with the customers who matter most, using techniques that build on and optimise ideas, not just capture reactions.
05 · Workstage 5
Getting it into your bloodstream
We develop the strategy and bring it to life across your organisation and agencies, so everyone knows what it means for them and acts on it.
Thought piece
Big decisions without a big team
