2. It's an interactive learning process

You can use qualitative research as a sampling exercise to collect usage and behavioural data passively.

It is a much more effective investment if you treat it as an interactive learning process. We approach research groups as brainstorms to which we invite a brand's stakeholders, treat the 'respondents' more like 'delegates', make sure all the projective exercises are stimulating not patronising, and it's amazing what they can come up with.

3. Never underestimate body language

'That's rubbish' said with a grin is a frequent response. The person behind the one way mirror who doesn't like the idea will write down 'rubbish' and underline it. But it's often a positive. It means the idea is engaging, daft, quirky and not bland. One of the hardest parts of the moderator's art is simultaneously coming up with working hypotheses to run past people and keeping the door open to new interpretations.

It's 3D chess we're playing out there.

4. Brutal but honest

Research sessions can easily get bogged down in criticism. It is much easier to kick an idea than identify its potential. We encourage people to be honest, dump the negatives, move on and look for the positives.

Lots of research companies can show you a turkey, but we can point out the ugly duckling - and help turn it into a swan.

5. Death to the Grattan man

Agencies and brand owners spend weeks word-smithing concepts but a picture says a thousand words. The 'Grattan man' style of 1950s catalogue illustration is used on nearly every story board. It often gives a bum steer - it suggests private education and a middle class brand. Collages of magazine images and TV programmes take longer but are more helpful.

It bugs us that our industry is always searching for new research methodologies but is still using the same stimulus that our forefathers used.

Grattan man suggests a middle class lifestyle	The Nursery man has less connotations

6. We hire drug abusers and bishops

We ensure the very highest quality of recruitment by developing the best relationships with our front line staff, the recruiters. We do this through our own recruitment company, Safari, who can find us everyone from drug abusers to bishops and are always training up new recruiters to ensure we see fresh faces.

7. Search for the brand's deeper metaphors

A very effective methodology for NPD or a brand health check can be to use semiotics to explore cultural contexts and set up active hypotheses for qualitative research to explore. This helped us develop a much better understanding of the biggest grocery brand in the UK, Stella Artois.

Learnings from neuroscience are starting to filter through into qualitative research and they also indicate the need for greater focus on understanding a brand's deeper metaphors.

8. None of us is as creative as all of us

New methodologies don't always produce fresh insights. If you want to talk to premium spirits drinkers you can hang out in pre-club bars and sidle up to blokes at the urinals but in our experience this results in bruises and broken teeth as often as real learnings.

Group discussions are nothing new. But the group discussion ain't broke. 8 people is the ideal dinner party, 8 is also the optimum military unit. House prices or hit squads, the power of 8 gets things done.

9. International cultural understanding

When it comes to international projects, we prefer to work with people who share our constructive approach to research. Wherever projects take us we're looking for cultural fluency and an understanding of how brands communicate rather than a track record in general market research.

To see where we've worked click here
To suggest some new destinations give us a call

10. Global network of trusted researchers

In the major markets of Europe, North America and Australia we work with researchers we know and trust week in week out. This means we can handle quick turnaround projects by phone and email, but where time allows we can get the extra level of understanding from meeting up and discussing. Just think about the extra detail you get from us in a face to face meeting over a telephone top-line…

To visit some of our favourite colleagues, click here

11. Upstream and below the line

Our experience is in advertising, but our expertise applies to brands however they communicate. We've learned that applying our principles of constructive research to early strategic thinking produces more useful, useable creative strategies.

Many of our clients spend more of their budgets below the line, but finding experienced, constructive researchers for promotions and packaging is even harder. We find these briefs just as challenging and treat them with the same developmental approach as a big TV campaign.