Research, Strategy & Planning

We help clients understand their market and their audiences. We offer a range of services all focused on helping clients to establish facts, acquire knowledge or reach conclusions. We have expertise across a variety of research techniques from quantitative, qualitative, stakeholder engagement to ethnographic and can work alone or with partner agencies. By generating insight, we can pin-point opportunities, inform strategies and support decision making. This helps us develop great creative work, informative white papers, crucial behaviour change and leads to commercial results.

We use our industry knowledge and analytical skills to provide clients with consultancy services. We immerse ourselves in the organisation and offer evidence-based advice to help organisations review their goals and optimise their strategies.

To do this, we usually follow a 5D approach:

• Discover (the insight)
• Define (the problem)
• Develop (the solution)
• Deliver (the strategy)
• Debrief (the results)

In addition to research, we help clients to understand the specifics about their audiences and rationalise them into sub-sets. We support clients who want to group their audiences based on shared characteristics. We take their existing data (or help them commission new data) and divide their audiences based on shared characteristics. We then paint a picture of these audiences not as market data but as human beings – who they are, what they think, how they behave, what opportunities do they present. In addition to this, we write pen-portraits – which means taking data and evolving it into relatable and memorable presentations of the audiences.

Most strategists have one thing in common – they love talking about strategy. Though this can be a curse if you’re down the pub with us, it can be useful if you’re a client who is looking for support with workshopping or internal training. We offer training on a variety of subjects – from evaluation, behaviour change, campaign planning to AI. We can even design bespoke training to meet specific requirements. We can also design and mediate workshops, providing a neutral presence to help manage feedback or generate ideas.

Our team is experienced at taking an overall strategy and translating it into an actionable communications plan. We can help clients break down the overall strategy into different phases, messages, and channels. This information can be presented via detailed comms plans, messaging matrices, strategic frameworks, consumer journey plans and market profile pages.

We work with organisations to help them understand and develop their brand. We start by researching general awareness and perceptions of the brand in the market before setting clear objectives on how the brand needs to develop. We then follow our rigorous 5D process (Discover. Define. Develop. Deliver. Debrief) as a framework for development so that we ensure every element of the brand (from vision, to values, to architecture) is aligned strategically. In addition, we work with clients to ensure the whole organisation understands and supports the brand development through a combination of research, workshops and events.

We understand that behaviour change is rarely about a one-size-fits all approach. There are seldom eureka moments when it comes to overhauling established, ingrained behaviours. That’s why we work with clients to identify the numerous, small-scale interventions needed to help people change their behaviour. We support clients to research the audiences’ capabilities, opportunities, motivations and barriers to a given behaviour and use this insight to inform the behaviour change model we use. Our models are designed to be simple and user-friendly, offering clients a digestible format to tackle behaviour change.

This is the cornerstone of marketing communications – without it, marketers simply cannot hope to prove their contribution nor improve their work. In communications planning, evaluation is crucial – it shows impact and accountability and helps to gain understanding and optimise activity. We help clients make evaluation a priority whenever they’re engaging in any strategy. We design holistic measurement steps across entire process. We analyse regularly offering opportunities to optimise along the way. And we debrief clearly, so there’s opportunity to learn and plan for future activity.