‘So what do you do?’
The question we all get asked and probably usually answer by describing what we don’t do… Like ‘no, not advertising’. So, here it is in a nutshell (Mom). What we do.
We inspire action and drive growth for companies that offer products and services to people.
We usually work for people in the marketing department. Marketing people, Branding people. Market research people. Foresight people. Strategy people. Also Advertising agency people. Among others. Helping them solve problems and make sh*t happen.
At the core we do market research or marketing research. But that is just a means to an end. What do is answer questions for our clients. Questions about the people they serve or sell to. But we don’t just write about ‘findings’ or quote what people said. We create stories that bring people to life and, more importantly, we advise our clients on what they should do. To better serve the the people that buy and use their products and services. To be more successful.
Don’t have time to read the rest? We got you, watch this little video on recent projects.
What We’ve Been Up To – July 2022 from The Sound on Vimeo.
So how do we inspire action and drive growth?
Our process is very simple. We think simple is good if it makes things clear and helps get you to what you need to make things happen. There are only 4 steps:
- Smart Interrogation. We get asked lots of questions and get sent lots of briefs. Surprisingly, often they don’t describe the question that really matters. So putting time and effort into really understanding where we need to get to is pretty important. It helps to know where you’re starting from too.
- Fearless Empathy. Understanding people is at the heart of everything we do. If you don’t know what the people who are buying your products or services are really like, what they’re really doing and most importantly why, it’s pretty hard to make good decisions about how you communicate with them… or what you can do to make them happier, or solve their problems, or come up with innovations they will like. One of the biggest challenges? The real people out there just aren’t the same as the people who are our clients. For lots of reasons. So, whether you are talking to people, watching them, or analyzing data about them, remembering that they are real people and working really hard to understand them and to connect with them is critical.
- Honest Collaboration. It’s our style and part of our process. How we work in the team, how we work with people, and how we work with clients. Questioning, challenging, re-working and story building. Trying to get to an answer that works. Making sure what we deliver takes the business forward. Always.
- Beautiful Simplicity. Everything is about action and outcomes. So we work hard to distill things down, bring things to life, and make analysis smart, but not overly complicated. We use film and design (among other things) to capture and create emotion. We run activation workshops all about the next steps. Anything we can do to inspire and drive growth. Because, frankly, a project without action is a total waste of time and money.
So, we do big data analysis and one-on-one interviews. Focus groups and ethnographies. We do lit reviews and social listening. We do brand strategy and portfolio analysis. We do innovation and foresight. We do market research. Both qualitative, and quantitative. And we work to understand people, segments, and culture.
All to inspire action and drive growth (aka make our clients more successful).
Oh, and we have a lot of fun along the way. Life is short and work can be way too serious :).
