• About Us
• Experience
• Our People
• Clients
• Specialties & Methods
• Branding & Communications
• Anthropology & Ethnography
• Semiotics
• Technology/
  Industrial Markets
• B2B/ Executive Interviewing
• Worldwide Research Capabilities
• Our Work
• Pictures & Video
• Publications

Branding and Communications

Branding

Brands are fundamentally subjective. As abstractions that exist in the minds of your customers, they're based on a broad (often surprising) range of feelings, perceptions, and cultural experiences. Further, they're often complex and difficult for people to access and communicate. Even the most expressive people sometimes have difficulty in painting a clear picture of what a brand means to them, descriptively and emotionally.

Understanding what brands mean in the minds and lives of your costumers requires skill and practice in facilitating the expression of abstract brand meanings in tangible, coherent, and meaningful ways. This is even more important when understanding how your brand relates to competitors and when evaluating the options available to your brand. We bring much experience to the task.

Branding Exploration Tools

To get at how people think and feel about brands, we rely on a variety of data collection formats and tools, including standard focus groups and ethnography as well as non-traditional forms of partnering with respondents, for instance, with video diaries and blogs. We also have considerable expertise in the use of projective techniques to draw out perceptions that participants cannot always directly express. Some examples:

• Brand Drawings: Participants use crayons to draw (or scribble) their top-of-mind associations with the brand or scenarios in which the brand may have some relevance.
• Brand Collages: Participants use a deck of images to put together collages that capture their perception of the cultural essence of the target brand and key competitive brands.
• Brand Planets: Participants develop and describe their image of a "new planet" that embodies the essence of the target brand.
• Brand Pairing: Participants pair the target brand and key competitors with a set of famous brands to elicit metaphors helpful in understanding brand meanings.
• Personification: Participants describe the brand in human terms.

Brand Icon Analysis

The use of brand icons in advertising (e.g., the M&M characters, Mr. Peanut) has enjoyed a resurgence recently.  We help clients develop a nuanced understanding of what makes their particular brand icons tick.  This understanding can pay large dividends in advertising and other communications that fully leverage the icons for the brand.

Positioning

An effective concept is a necessary start — but so too is touching on just the right cognitive, symbolic and emotional chords for an effective positioning. Our years of experience in evaluating positioning statements makes us sensitive to the uses (and abuses) of research, as well as the creative spark on which effective advertising is based.

Concept Development & Evaluation

Effective concept development is often the foundation for creation of great products and services, as well as for the development of great creative. We have written countless advertising concepts. We understand the role they play in underpinning great advertising.

Creative Development Research

We'll help you figure out whether you're on the right track with your advertising ideas and, more importantly, help you get to insights on how to make them better. With many years of ad agency experience, we provide a sensitive understanding of consumer responses and new avenues for exploration, both in the development and evaluation phases of creative development.