Expertise

We’ve spent over 20 years evolving effective and powerful strategies to help people explore and express their thoughts and views.

 “I’ve seen Alison get hesitant teenagers sparking and young lads full of bravado reflecting: she connects with a huge array of respondents brilliantly, from vulnerable pensioners to time-poor health professionals… she’s an outstanding researcher and immense fun to work with”  (Adrian Haldane, BIS)

Early adopters of online qualitative approaches

We’ve spent the last 10 years developing ways of harnessing the web, mobiles, social media and DTV to deepen our insight and strengthen the voice of the audiences we work with.

“I’ve just completed a fantastic online study with Alison and was impressed by her professionalism and eye for details, not to mention her warm, fun personality which made the day-to-day so much easier and enjoyable. I’m certainly hoping to work with Alison again.” (Stephen Cribbett,  Co-Founder and CEO of Dub)

And we know we need to keep scanning the horizon to make sure we see, grasp and use the opportunities and tools emerging to make us better listeners in this digital age and tools like Social Boosting to get to bigger audiences to share more to rest of the world.

We’ve learned to apply our significant listening skills to online conversations, but we never forget that the point of all we do is to make sure we hear real people, in the real world.

Taking a holistic view

We always start by scoping the conversations going on around our clients and their audiences – using social and traditional media analysis tools – then we’ll put together an approach which uses one or more of the following :

  • listening to what’s happening ‘in the moment’ in a respondent’s life e.g. blogs, tasks, video/ photo journalism;
  • charging participants with putting together their family, peer group or community’s view via co-creation, story-telling, research and reporting;
  • building a view shoulder to shoulder with participants using immersive research;
  • visceral and spontaneous responses gathered via live online group discussions;
  • deeper, more reflective responses gathered over a longer period via online forums;
  • building trust and relationships over time via online insight communities, it becomes possible to really understand how views and behaviour evolve over time, and what potential really means;

We also make share our insights and outcomes in effective and appropriate ways : from customised desk drops (for instance with profiles, vignettes), to cascading workshops or Board/ Council/ Departmental presentations.

“Alison has undertaken complex projects for me with different types of target audiences.  She brings creativity, depth of expertise and a real sense of purpose and fun to all her projects… Her research debriefs are very clear and have the real ring of true insight” (Stephen Hooker, ex-COI)