Centres of Excellence

Nestle wanted some tangible ideas quickly that could credibly differentiate and maximise the opportunity in the snacking category. We reviewed existing internal knowledge and immersed ourselves within this crowded and confusing market to develop hypotheses which we gained initial reactions from online snacking diaries.

Using this output, we ran client and agency ideation workshops to pool collective thoughts and ideas to create developed concepts for group discussions. We delivered a brand strategy including brand essence, pen portraits and core design guidelines to enable on-point briefings for internal and partner stakeholders, ensuring the right healthy and tasty messaging for a swift brand launch.

Shiseido asked us to explore the needs, values, lifestyles and attitudes towards beauty and skincare amongst one of their core luxury segments. In quarterly waves, we had premium/luxury skincare users take a brand health survey while also completing homework tasks with products prior to a group discussion. This way, we captured brand perceptions over time but also understood wider trends around health, beauty, make-up, sustainability, social media, packaging and more.

Over the year, we regularly fed the global Shiseido team and their agencies with fresh cultural and behavioural insight, as well as informed and developed innovation concepts, brand messaging, pack designs, tone of voice, cultural expectations and more, with the brand successfully launching a host of new, innovative products.

Bonhams Auction House asked us to establish a customer experience tracker to speak directly to a range of their discerning clients, across sellers and buyers. Whilst headline NPS data was provided to gauge high-level brand (and competitor) performance, broader diagnostic metrics were also included, to help them determine key areas of focus so they can reach their customer excellence goals.

Due to the success of the project, we have since been helping the business to dive into specific business functions, providing further targeted insight for development, as well as working on a study to determine pertinent retention levers that can be pulled at will, in line with the incoming CX scores.

Pinterest wanted to untangle the sticky subject of inspiration globally and create visual and strategic guardrails to help creators maximise the potential return and impact of their content. Through a blend of experts, qualitative, quantitative, stats modelling and semiotic AI machine learning we were able to develop a tangible definition of inspiration, distil it down into sub-dimensions and, crucially, make it usable. 

Our work produced clear recommendations in terms of what images resonated with users, and the compelling messages Pinterest’s Business team could leverage when talking to brands and encouraging engagement from creators. This was featured in Pinterest Presents 2022, went on to delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in touched revenue, and won the ESOMAR Gold Research Effectiveness Award 2023. Inspirational, indeed.

Our home security client came to us with a problem: they knew their smart locks were incredibly popular but didn’t know why. We sought to unpick how and why they came to be so popular in this market, so they could share the learnings across their EU and MENA teams.

Working with our local cultural partners, we explored the forces at play that might be accelerating the growth of the smart locks category. Using a STEEP framework, we looked at the key drivers of acceptance to unpick the cultural meanings at play, delivering a framework that decoded local understanding of security across a range of markets, as well as guidelines to focus on for future category growth and expansion.