listen to them
Ultimately, if you are going to interview people, what you really need to be able to do is listen hard.
That might sound simple, but it isn’t all that easy, which is why we’ve spent our best university years learning how to do it, and the rest of our working lives to perfect it. Most healthcare researchers we’ve met were either science graduates, linguists or economists. In other words, they were good at understanding either your product, your brand language or your business, but had to pick up their people skills as they went along.
We did it the other way around. We are people experts who’ve picked up marketing and business skills over the years. And, as social scientists, we are still focused on the people, because they are what we get excited about. Sure, we will engage with your business issue, but we’re ever more interested in helping you to engage with the people who represent your customers.
talk to them
You are probably used to being pitched countless fancy qualitative models, tools, packages and branded methodologies. We urge you to beware.
More often than not, these are just sales aids designed to divert your attention from the fact that qualitative research is about talking to people. That is what we have been doing for as long as we can remember and we do it very well. We have been formally trained to interview people and interpret their attitudes and behaviours.
If there is a respondent population you are interested in, we’ve almost certainly spoken to them. Likewise, if you are keen on any qual methodology or projective technique, we’ve almost certainly used it.
the good, the bad
and the quanty
After 10 years of running quantitative studies, but never actually having admitted to our capabilities, we’ve decided to do two things.
Firstly, to acknowledge that, even though we are known as a high end qualitative team, we do actually have the skills and experience required to conduct top notch quant studies too. So… yes, we do numbers! Quant studies account for about 28.5% of our projects. That’s just over a quarter, and just under a third. Or 57/200, if you like fractions.
And secondly, we’ve decided to make things official by building a proper data science team. Like everything Brains+Cheek, it is small, but it’s shiny and perfectly formed!
healthcare credentials
You’ll want to know which therapy areas we’ve worked on and you are absolutely right. So, here it is, just for peace of mind.
Aesthetic medicine
Auto-immune diseases
Cardiovascular diseases
Central nervous system
Dentistry
Dermatology
Diabetes
Diagnostics
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
Haematology
Infectious diseases
Lab technology
Life sciences
Medical devices
Next-generation Sequencing (NGS)
Oncology
Orphan and rare diseases
OTC products
Pain management
Respiratory
Rheumatology
Transplantation
Urology
Vaccines
We go beyond market research. These are the kind of things we do these days.
Ad boards
Brand and Communication research
Change management programs
Co-creation workshops
Digital strategy
Disconnects
Emotional insights
Ground-breaking market understanding
Internal stakeholders’ reviews
Patient journey
Segmentation
our methodologies
Here are the methods we have mastered in the past decade or so.
Case histories
Conflict groups
Creative groups
Desk research
Duos
Ethnographic interviews
Family groups
Focus groups
Friendship groups
Guerilla research
In-depth interviews
KOL interviews
Market optimisation
Mini-groups
Mobile-enabled real-time research
Mock consultations
Mock MDTs
Narrative research
Open Space workshops
Physician-observed patient groups
Pricing and uptake studies
Online qualitative methods
Online forums and message boards
Stakeholder interviews
Supergroups
Telephone interviews
Trade-off exercises
next generation
reseach agency
The 21st century research is about new ways of engaging with your target audience, about generating excitement around the research results and about making your life easier.
More recently, it’s also about machine learning. And about humans learning, about machine learning. Is your team hungry for debriefs that supersede the inevitable ‘death by powerpoint’? Are you prepared to try generating insights using online and mobile methodologies wherever appropriate? Are your marketeers asking after broadcast quality research videos and animations?
If you’re thinking yes then look no further for solutions that will make you look great in front of your internal audiences.
Animated video summaries
Broadcast quality video deliverables
Cloud-based, on-demand project management
Dashboards
Interactive debriefs
Infographics
Screencast presentations
Simulator tools
artificial intelligence
Here is a thought. An actual thought, by a human brain, rather than predictive text by a large language model.
Artificial Intelligence is our friend. When we look at AI, we see yet another labour saving device. Plus, we believe that, like with any paradigm shift, we should never allow a good crisis to go to waste. So we are riding the wave.
We are now using AI models to look at and predict System 1 responses to visual stimuli. (Oh, and they are beautiful to look at!) We are also beginning to see AI producing content analysis to a reasonable standard.
There is still a way to go, and human supervision remains essential. Ask us again in 12 months’ time though, and we might have a significantly updated view!
We welcome these developments because they add a string to our bow and make our lives easier, even while they help us produce improved quality outputs for our clients. If you’d like to know more: talk to us. It makes for fascinating conversation. Even if only with a human.
time, our most
precious resource
We believe that anything worth doing is worth doing exceptionally well.
We value our time very highly - after all, it’s our only life. So the last thing we want to do is to waste it. Therefore, when we work with you, rest assured that we will spend our time in the best possible way.
memberships
+ compliance
Yep, got those. Memberships are pretty important in looking the part, right? So there, we’re members, just like you’d expect.
When it comes to compliance, we are all the highest-ranking officers. We have our own Head of Enforcement who keeps us all in check. We take our client obligations and respondent rights extremely seriously, complying with ethical and legal guidelines, codes of conduct, adverse event reporting and GDPR, of course.
We are deeply involved with the work of our industry association, the BHBIA, where our Captain Bors currently sits on the board of directors.
These are the professional
bodies we belong to:
the green bandwagon
We have been Certified Climate Neutral since day one. We support carbon reducing initiatives, and, as is the right thing to do, we also reduce our own emissions.
We are very aware that carbon credits get a bad rep, and not without reason. For one, companies that keep using credits to maintain their levels of emission have misunderstood the concept of carbon offsetting. The idea is that we continuously reduce our emissions, and offset only our residual emissions, on our journey to net zero. We can’t keep on emitting, and hiding behind carbon offsets. Secondly, not all carbon credits are created equal. For instance, rainforest credits, which many big polluters use, have been largely discredited as of limited benefit, and sometimes even harm. Ethical offsets involve genuine carbon removals, not just putting a fence around a bit of rainforest and calling it an offset.
This is why we use MyClimate, a Swiss climate charity working with developing countries to install carbon-saving solutions. The carbon offsetting scheme offered by MyClimate is sustainable and ethical. For example, our money goes towards replacing coal burning stoves in Sub-Saharan Africa for solar-powered stoves. We also invest in micro-hydroelectric dams along the Amazon river basin, which replace diesel generators in remote areas where the electric grid doesn’t reach. Such dams have the capability to provide continuous, free and environmentally friendly energy to small communities along the rivers contributing to the Amazon. We have been certified Climate Neutral since 2011 and we’re proud of it.
