engage research at MRS 2014
We are presenting a paper at the MRS Conference on 19th March. It's a case study based on work with eBay - leveraging ad hoc U&A research in tandem with database analytics to understand who you are targeting and how best to go about it. Would love to see you there!
Weds 19th March – room 1 - 10.45am
From data to delivery: Ideas for smarter commercial decisions through analysis
find out more
Engage Research is a leading insight consultancy offering full service research globally for some of the world’s biggest brands. Our philosophy is simple. We use our wide experience to design innovative methodologies which drive engagement to deliver intelligent, commercial solutions for our clients’ strategy and innovation needs.
In short, we offer “inventive solutions”
Industry leading experts on respondent engagement and gamification
Brand new approaches combined with new twists on classic methods
Our award winning proprietary techniques ensure that our research fully engages respondents, making proper use of cutting edge tools and techniques to generate the best quality consumer input to inspire brand teams.
Click here to learn more about our engagement and gamification research.
What our clients say
“What a delight to see evidence of the impact of gamification principles based on long term experimentation”
Our innovation and strategy tools blend science, art and our years of experience to ensure that our clients have metrics that matter and a deep understanding of the reasons why, so that findings can be actioned effectively and easily.
Clients are loving our experiential approach to qual and we will be launching more exciting qualitative tools this Summer, so check back!
Click on the link to learn more about our areas of expertise.
What our clients say – “We have worked with Engage on a number of high profile and complex multi-country projects. Engage are:
We bring eclectic influences into our research design and like to share what inspires us to add impetus to our clients. We routinely workshop our debriefs and are always looking for new ways to help stakeholders engage with the findings, whether by staging Christmas in July or creating a human bar chart! Our graphic designers create deliverables that live far beyond the presentation. Who doesn’t love a set of brand Top Trump cards?
What our clients say
“That was one of the best debriefs I have attended, you really told the story and made it come alive!”
We are at the forefront of industry discussion, continually challenging and improving established thinking
We lead industry conversation in many areas; we have presented at many conferences; had articles published on topics ranging from behavioural economics to consultative moderation and our blog has been read over 50 000 times. We create original thinking to share with the industry – Deborah Sleep will be speaking at this years MRS conference on ‘Ideas for smarter commercial decisions through analysis’.
What our clients say
”This paper is a must read for all quantitative researchers looking for practical evidence about this emerging paradigm”
New and different ways to ensure our findings are fully understood and embedded
We are at the forefront of industry discussion, continually challenging and improving established thinking
Experiential qual to understand brands & inspire their future development
Our well-proven tool to drive successful brand and marketing strategy
ALIVE: Brand uses our experiential client-consumer workshop approach to bring brands to life. Deep level brand exploration requires the extensive use of projective and enabling techniques, but these work best with respondents who are happy and able to take that step into the wackier side of qual!
ALIVE drives high levels of engagement, giving respondents the enthusiasm and confidence to take part in all sorts of weird and wonderful techniques, to build up a clear picture of the brand and inspire all sorts of ideas for where it should go next.
Case study
Our client’s brand had received little marketing support for too long and was slipping off the radar. With a particularly qual-resistant audience of traditional, middle-aged men and a fading brand, it took all the excitement of ALIVE sessions with clients, consumers, illustrators & a riot of projective techniques to bring the brand back to life.
What our clients say
“Engage is a key research partner & they really are seen as part of our extended team. They consistently go above & beyond the call of duty. We value their technical research expertise and also their advice which demonstrates that they really understand our business.”
Brandnostic allows our clients to gain an in-depth understanding of where and how their brands play on the context of the market as a whole in order to optimise brand positioning and monitor brand health over time.
What our clients say:
“Engage have delivered a robust and flexible way of tracking the performance of our new brands as they launch into the market, with each wave of output providing clarity of direction in their increasingly competitive environment. “
Brandnostic enables clients to:
• Understand market drivers – what they are and how powerful each is in driving brand preference
• Gain a detailed view of each brand on key functional and emotional drivers
• Assess brand strengths and weakness, enabling a clear direction to successfully grow brands
• Pinpoint competitive threats
• Monitor the impact of brands’ strategy and marketing actions over time
Engage can help with both classic, strategic and in depth U&As as well as the more tactical, issue-focussed pieces. The best U&As do not come out of a box, but are tailored to the business and its needs. There may be a role for some tried and tested modules but we leverage extensive experience in this area to create bespoke studies designed to answer key business objectives. We’ve run many such studies internationally and using a range of data collection techniques appropriate to market in order to deliver the best cost and time effective solutions per market.
U&A data is often detailed and complex, to the point that it can become so overwhelming that it is not fully used. Our job is not finished until the project is assimilated & acted upon.
So we tailor the content and format of deliverables, often workshopping outputs and delivering alternative reporting formats to encourage future use and help embed the research findings within the business.
What our clients say
“Engage take all the complexity and headache out of working across borders. They are nimble, flexible and good value for money. They know how to get the details right but also know how to ladder up to big insights. I could not manage the massive category deep dive studies for our business without their dedicated and hard working team”.
Whether you are segmenting to identify white space, key brand strongholds, people or occasions to target, Engage can help.
We have run segmentations of almost every type imaginable – attitudinal, behavioural, demographic, occasion & needs based – and can guide clients as to the most appropriate segmentation solution and segment prioritisation for their needs.
Segmentation data is often detailed and complex and can’t be fully leveraged until it is assimilated and acted upon. So we tailor the content and format of deliverables, often workshopping outputs and delivering alternative reporting formats to encourage immersion and activation.
“Despite their success and associated growth I’m pleased to say that Engage have stayed true to their ethos of senior team members truly being hands on with all projects. It makes a massive difference and gets everyone to better outcomes. I’ve been impressed with the creativity and flexibility the team apply to their proposals and their effectiveness at delivering the resulting insights and opportunities back to the business”
Understandable U&As to help understand consumers
Divide to conquer – our approach to segmentations
Our experiential approach towards qualitative consumer workshops
Fast & effective prioritisation tool
Guidance on a range of business decisions from early innovation to product and range optimisation
ALIVE is our consumer-client workshop approach. We mix consumers with stakeholders in inspiring venues, test and sample products, refine concepts, develop R&D briefs… all in a couple of days or less.
Case study
Food company had six prototype product flavours, a basic concept and a handful of claims. We conducted four x three hour ALIVE sessions each mixing 12 consumers with eight clients in a cookery school venue. The result: refined concept, narrowed product range, clear R&D spec, viable claims. Happy client.
What our clients say
“As always I think you did a fantastic job – well done. Thanks for a great day yesterday – entertaining as well as educational!”
Identifies which early-stage ideas represent the best opportunities for success and allows our Clients to direct resources at their best ideas, FAST!
The technique works for concept ideas, claims or recipes.
It can cover a 20-60 ideas, which would typically be a short description.
Case Study: Our Client had over 40 ideas generated via a qualitative brainstorm, they needed to work quickly to understand which were the best 10 to take into further development.
Engage Solution: Online interviews using PRIORITISE, best ideas identified in 2 weeks
Client action: 5 ideas now in final product development. These will form the base of a totally new range that will be launched at the end of this year.
What our clients say
“fantastic value for money, clear advice at each stage means we genuinely could fast track this innovation when it normally wouldn’t be possible!”
Evolve scope provides guidance on a range of business decisions from early innovation through to product and range optimisation.
The technique works for traditional product ‘ideas’, as well as claims, recipes, pack formats & magazine coverlines.
It can cover a small number of ideas – up to a maximum of 30.
What our clients say
“One of the team’s greatest assets is their ability to simplify complex projects, & present the learnings in a way that’s easily understandable for the wider business. They are always able to accommodate our changing demands – with a smile!”
Case Study
Our Client has a large and complex range, with products that are rotated on a seasonal basis. We needed to understand which range has the best potential to drive penetration/ reach – could this be different across accounts?
Engage Solution:
Online interviews using our Scope method (+ accompanied shops & eye tracking to understand the in-store environment in more detail)
Client action:
Identified short term wins, as well as portfolio planning for two and five years.
Our evolve mix concept and product testing framework…
…Is rigorous but flexible
…Provides clear direction & depth of understanding
…Allows R&D to be as clear as possible on how to take products forward
Our approach makes maximum use of diagnostics through both direct consumer feedback and smart analytics to ensure that our clients know what elements of the mix are working, which aren’t and why. We can also incorporate volumetric output into our final mix framework. Our approach is very open in order to take the pain out the process!
What our clients say
“I highly regard engage as a very professional international research agency. I like the good consultancy, the high level of business understanding and the seamless and quick handling of projects. I have had a very good experience for concept testing, product and claims testing in multi-country projects. I can highly recommend to work with engage in this areas of research.”
Our approach to pack testing provides a flexible framework in which to test your packs at different stages of development. It is specifically adapted to take account of the role that packaging needs to play in terms of the key pack KPIs of attraction, differentiation, persuasion and targeting.
We employ a mix of both hard and soft metrics and make use of the latest eye-tracking technology to enable quick and actionable decision making.
What our clients say
“I find that working with Engage is a most pleasant experience. I know that I can count on precise work with creative and thoughtful analysis. I highly recommend Engage for both Qualitative and Quantitative consumer research.”
Finding the right price point is a critical step in the innovation process – and controlling the price of an existing product is a necessary component of successful brand management. We blend the latest pricing tools with our distinctive gamified approach to guide brand teams to make the best pricing decisions.
Areas we regularly advise on are
1) Entry Strategy – what is the opimum pricing strategy for my new product?
2) Handling Change – what happens when we change price, or other brands change price?
3) Can we charge more if we innovate – if we add features or improve the product how much more could it be worth?
4) Promotions – what is a product offer worth compared to other product offers?
What our clients say
“Always a pleasure working with a team that can distil the complex into practical solutions and deliver output in such a compelling way.”
Our unparalleled expertise in concept/product & final mix testing means you get the best possible advice
Leading edge pack testing framework employing the latest technology to generate powerful learning
Identifying the optimal price for a new product
As an engaging agency we are always thinking and writing. Our blog is the repository for our latest thoughts and opinions.
Click here to read more...
Quantitative research specialist
Research expertise:
Innovation, volumetrics, brand health, pricing & promotions projects that look impossible! Multi-country product testing
Research super-skill:
Can win over the biggest of research doubters!
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Loud, positive, honest, engaging (living the brand!), on the money
Passionate about:
Exercise (usually seen at work in gym kit), food (working my way through the list of worlds best restaurants), trainers (best not to ask!) and Clyde my Springer Spaniel (loves the office but so far has resisted my attempts to teach him excel)
Combined quant & qual expert
Research expertise:
Multi-country U&As and segmentation, qual & quant in combination, NPD, gamification
Research super-skill:
Making research more engaging for respondents and clients alike
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Good story teller, un-phaseable, tactfully truthful, bilingual
Passionate about:
Pintxo the office dog, Radio 4 at 6.30pm, wine tasting drinking , my robot vaccuum and Arsenal (not really, but please don’t tell)
Quantitative research specialist
Research expertise:
Innovation, pricing, conjoint & volumetrics. Combining qual & quant – quantitative research with a qualitative soul
Research super-skill:
Business development queen. Project management – there is always a way…!
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Curious, quick to think of a solution, unflappable
Passionate about:
Family & fitness – keeping fit so I can keep up with my two little ones!
Research expertise:
One of the most experienced canine researchers in the UK!
Research super-skill:
Ability to identify a winning product in blind taste tests
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Oh my, what a bouncy dog!
Passionate about:
Biscuits, being scratched behind the ears, snoozing, squirrel chasing, the book he features in – signed copies available here.
Quantitative research specialist
Research expertise:
NPD, U&As, comms and complex multi country projects
Research super-skill:
Strong analysis and interpretation skills. Insightful presentations
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Safest pair of hands possible and dedicated
Passionate about:
My family, cycling, reading, films, and eating out
Quantitative research specialist
Research expertise:
NPD, brand equity – health & evolution. Purchase/shopper behaviour, segmentation, media, FMCG & leisure
Research super-skill:
Actionable insight, clearly communicated
Most likely to be described by clients as….
Insightful, proactive, positive, realistic and honest even when sometimes it hurts
Passionate about:
Playing and watching tennis whenever and wherever I can. Long walks with Jaygo the cocker spaniel. Spending time with friends – chatting, drinking, eating
Research expertise:
Branding, NPD, comms development, ethnography, purchase/shopper behaviour
Research superskill:
Remaining calm in research storms: always proactive in finding solutions
Most likely to be described by clients as…
Dedicated, Reliable and Flexible
Passionate about…
laughing, eating, asking questions (conversations often segue into accidental interviews), occasional running, remembering random facts
Research expertise:
U&As and segmentation, brand tracking and mystery shopping
Research superskill:
Charting Jedi!
Most likely to be described by clients as…
A confident, focused, work-horse
Passionate about:
Football, all things geeky, the Arctic Monkeys and summertime
Research expertise:
Project management, segmentation and branding research
Research superskill:
Charting, project management, questionnaire development
Most likely to be described by clients as…
Curious, dedicated and reliable
Passionate about:
My friends, scuba diving, food and football!
Research expertise:
Brand & Comms, Customer Experience, U&A including segmentation, NPD and Pricing across a broad range of categories from finance to retail to media
Research superskill:
Staying on top of challenging, complicated projects and be smiling at the end. Well, most of the time!
Most likely to be described by clients as…
Hard working and flexible
Passionate about:
Kernow (aka Cornwall), reading, exploring the great outdoors both at home and further afield and cooking (most recently experimenting with making jam and chutney)
Research expertise:
Innovation, qual into (or out of) quant & big data. Experience across many categories (ask me – I’ve researched ALL sorts!)
Research superskill:
Future thinking and a terrier-like determination to (cost-effectively) unravel all the layers. Making research fun!
Most likely to be described by clients as…
Relaxed/intuitive moderator, confident and engaging presenter, commercially savvy
Passionate about:
Knitting (don’t judge), Portugal (for the seafood), crime fiction (I’m confident I could execute the perfect murder)
