Our work

Case studies, example sectors we work in, and what people say about us:

FMCG

Some of us come from FMCG backgrounds ourselves and we work in this most sophisticated of sectors often. Two examples:

Nestle

Identifying growth sectors within a new attitudinally based audience segmentation
Setting brand priorities
Proposition option development and evaluation to arrive at new brand propositions for a portfolio of brands
A two and half year project

ABInBev

Evaluating and redefining the Stella Artois target audience
Sizing the opportunity in view of the redefined audience
Gaining belief in the analysis across the organisation and identifying what needs to change as a result of our work via company-wide conferences and workshops

Not for profit

The charity sector has made significant strides to match its commercial contemporaries in terms of business best-practice. Nowadays the not-for-profit employs many of the most up to date marketing and fund-raising methods and is setting the standard in áreas such as digital (you can read more about this here on our blog). Our initial experience in this sector came through our cultural clients but we have since gone on to work with a number of charitable organisations which include:

Amnesty International: Digital research and strategy development
The Art Fund: Brand tracking, audience identification, membership research and new product development
The Fairtrade Foundation: On-site evaluation of fund-raising events
The National Literacy Trust: Development of a strategy to engage hard to reach groups
World Child Cancer: Production of a marketing strategy and advertising to raise awareness

We engaged them to work on a youth targeted music project. They suggested specialist input might help. They ran a co-creation process with DJs, club promoters, music journalists. The work evolved significantly and sailed through research

O2

Stella Artois

See case study here

Pharmaceutical

We have worked with a number of the worlds leading pharmaceutical companies, on projects as diverse as:

Pain relief
Vitamin supplements
Erectile dysfunction
Digestive health

And on everything from advertising development to insight generation to process development.

Placemaking

Thanks to introductions from Siren design we have worked in this sector increasingly as it becomes more sophisticated in it’s understanding of brands and end users.

As some examples, we have worked on:

Battersea Power Station
Redevelopment of Digbeth, Birmingham
Blackwood, Moscow, Russia
NOMA, Manchester
Crown Estates
Review of luxury property developments for a leading advertising agency
National Trust

For an example of our work in this sector, go HERE to see our work for Battersea Power Station

Thank you for the session on Thursday. It met all the questions and issues that the planners had in their heads, and went beyond that to give us all new ways of looking at the purpose, preparation and running of workshops. …. All in all changing ‘workshop’ from a pressure and a formula into something quite inspirational.

Fallon

V&A

See case study here

Retail

Not one sector but several really.

Our work for Waitrose is very different than that for Windsmoor, as is the nature of their businesses.

We have worked on areas such as:

Defining attitudinally based target audiences and identifying their needs, brand definition and how that definition comes to life in practice, including staff engagement workshops
Campaign planning processes and principles
Environmental issues: consumer attitudes and retailer response
NPD launch communications planning

Culture

We find ourselves working here because one of our publishing clients took us with her when she became Marketing Director of one of the world’s major Museums. Now we deal with lots of museums, galleries and arts venues across the world.

For the V&A in the UK we have conducted two audience segmentations, then identified perceptions of the Museum among visitors and similar non visitors. Using qualitative research and our panel. Messaging has then been developed to attract disposed non visitors
For the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace in France, we have worked on the optimal proposition and execution for a new children’s area within the museum
We have worked on numerous membership projects including benefits evaluation, pricing, and member satisfaction tracking

We have conducted over five hundred projects in this sector.

I just wanted to say that I’ve just been through your debriefs again today and I think they are great pieces of work. Many thanks for all your efforts on this.

Cadbury

The author, Minette Walters

See case study here

Publishing

A friend of ours was at dinner with the Publishing Director of a major book publisher. She had a problem with sales of one of her authors and so he recommended us to her.

A project followed and the author went to No. 1 in the bestseller list, never having been in the top 10 before.

Since then we have worked with some of the world’s leading authors and have also worked on imprint portfolio management and imprint naming. We have worked with most of the world’s leading publishers, whether book or magazine publishers. In the ever changing world of magazine publishing we’ve worked with Hachette, Emap, Future and Hearst in their various guises, on everything from gaming to celebrity to fashion. aaa

IT/Digital/

Mobile/Tech

‘Nokia unveils the world’s first media phone for Internet access’ Nokia press release dated February 23 1999. Internet on a mobile phone has existed for barely 15 years. It has been in widespread use for an even shorter period. Some of our clients in other sectors have brands that are over 100 years old. Telephony, IT and internet businesses face unique challenges, often trying to assess the potential of markets and the appeal of products that have never existed before. Markets and competitors are constantly changing. This requires ways of identifying and evaluating opportunity that are more projective than those in more established sectors. Examples of our work include:

Working with Microsoft looking at structure and culture to put the consumer closer to the center of thinking
Working with O2 to develop and evaluate music offerings for the youth market and with a number of clients to evaluate the impact of online social media on brands and communications
Evaluating one of the biggest digital marketing campaigns to have ever run in the UK
Developing an added value app for a membership scheme

We started off expecting to improve our website and finished up with a completely different view of our business. A much bigger view.

Jaguar Land Rover

Battersea Power Station

See case study here

B2B

B2B and service businesses have a lot in common. People often deliver the brand and service experience and there are moves to work more online, bringing +’s and -’s. We have run global projects, for example for the Swiss based medical testing equipment business, Tecan, defining what positively differentiates them from competitors in the eyes of different customer sectors and how that is built upon and communicated. You can find out about Tecan HERE. We have run a similar global project for ASG, the print and packaging supplier to the film, music and gaming sectors. you can find out about ASG HERE. We have also run local projects for UK businesses. For example, defining the proposition for PwC’s strategic consulting division, which is less well known and so perception is led by the perception of the accounting practice. You can find out about PwC Strategy HERE.

Financial services

Systems limitations, regulatory control and the frequent delivery of brand experience by people can create as much frustration for managers as for consumers.There is no other sector where the nature of our experience is so diverse:

Direct Line: NPD
NatWest: ln branch literature evaluation and rationalisation
Invesco Perpetual: Developing a Marketing Strategy, putting evaluation mechanisms in place and auditing departmental skills
HSBC: Global integration of an acquired bank
BUPA: defining health care need states and consequent product offerings

My team felt it was the best training they’d had.

It provided theory backed up by real examples, and processes that have given us a framework which is being used daily.

Thank you very much

Tesco

About the title image:

Soho Square was originally known as King Square after Charles II, whose statue stands in the square today. At the time it was one of the most fashionable places to live in London.

21 Soho Square was home to the White House brothel, described by social researcher Henry Mayhew as a “notorious place of ill fame”. It later became the offices of Crosse and Blackwell, before their sale to Nestle.

Media businesses abound around the Square now, and it is often asked what the significance of the famous timber framed black and white building in the picture above is. It is nothing more than a gardeners storeroom!