Adience

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Managing Director of Obvious

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Helping founders and innovators build value-based brands that command authority, convey value, and create advantage.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Adience to accomplish?

• Customer Discovery Research
• Go-To-Market Research

SOLUTION

How did you find Adience?

Online Search

Why did you select Adience over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Adience were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

On behalf of a client, Adience was engaged in conducting market research for an innovative new water conservation product. Adience's research team did a series interviews and desk research to glean insights around: 

1. The potential use cases for the product, and the market size of those use cases 
2. Which market segments might have the highest propensity to buy and why
3. The status quo perceptions and current habits of the target audience 
4. The decision-making process for buying this kind of solution
5. The competitive landscape — including white space, competitor weaknesses, unmet needs
6. Document audience reactions to the product idea 
7. Positioning insights around key desirable features for the target audience. 

The research was used to inform a go-to-market strategy for the product, including: 

1. Targeting (of key market segments and key personas within companies)
2. Messaging/positioning/marketing 
3. Value proposition development 
4. Pricing and packaging 
5. Product development

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

In short order, the Adience team conducted thorough customer discovery interviews and presented a concise report filled with relevant, helpful insights that the client's executive team and their marketing agency partners were able to use to develop a go-to-market strategy, differentiated marketing messaging, brand identity design, and digital marketing campaigns.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The experience was excellent and professional from start to finish and the team was accommodating and quick to answer client questions along the course of the project. Everyone we engaged with was sharp, intelligent, and brought value to the project.

What was your primary form of communication with Adience?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Great agency to partner with, as an agency or as as direct client. Adience offers the rare combination of high quality research, relevant, actionable insights, and "implementation-ready" strategy, delivered in a timely and flexible manner.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Adience could have done differently?

Not from my POV. It was an excellent experience, start to finish. They made us look good to our client, and delivered us the research we needed to produce the right brand work for their business and audience.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as a senior market and consumer insights manager for the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Adience?

We hired them to help us conduct market research for the new products that we’re developing. Our goal is to understand to what extent our products are needed and to what extent our potential clients like them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Adience helps us with market research. We’ve already worked together on 6–7 projects, during which they’ve conducted qualitative and quantitative research. Their work involves creating questionnaires and interviewing some of our clients directly.

How did you come to work with Adience?

We found them through a Google search. Our first impression of Chris (Managing Director) was very positive, so we decided to go with their company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2022, and our engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We really like the quality of Adience’s outputs and inputs — they’ve given us great insights about our products and recommended which ideas have potential and should continue to be developed. Also, it’s very easy to work with them.

How did Adience perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been extremely responsive, and their responses are always accurate and delivered in a pleasant and friendly manner. Their team also sticks to their commitments. For communication, we use email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re very impressed with the responsiveness of their team. We always get quick feedback that’s on point and easy to understand. Moreover, we like how they communicate and present the results to us; it’s straight to the point. Overall, Adience has been one of the easiest agencies we’ve ever worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve on?

I honestly can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and flexible, and you can expect that from them in return.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I lead the brand strategy team at global creative agency that helps brands in moments of growth & transformation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Adience?

We brought on Adience as a partner to support us recently with two different B2B qualitative research projects. One to help us find, recruit, and interview people in very niche roles in 3 countries as part of a large segmentation project, and one to gain in-depth insights about healthcare professionals to inform a large-scale positioning, naming, and branding initiative for a healthtech company.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Having worked with a large number of B2B clients, our team has often struggled to design & execute research plans with other market research companies because they can't always deliver on the audience specs or exceed our budgets due to the high recruiting and incentive costs for B2B execs and niche roles. With Adience, we were excited to work with a partner that not only specializes in B2B market research, but also understands our research goals and was able to provide a strategic lens to the entire process.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

After an initial briefing to walk through our research goals, discovery work we had done to date, and how the research would be leveraged, Adience took the lead in designing the screeners and discussion guides, handling recruiting, facilitating the interviews, reporting back updates during fielding, summarizing the key takeaways and producing a final report with insights and implications.

What was the team composition?

We just worked directly with Chris as our main point of contact, but understood there were other team members assisting behind the scenes throughout the project work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Not only were we able to meet our timelines and stay within budget, but the research yielded valuable insights that helped to educate our clients about their target audiences and help support our recommendations for how the brand and messaging could resonate with them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Working directly with Chris, the workflow process was extremely efficient - he was not just highly responsive, but proactive in sharing updates throughout the project. We were able to leverage tools like Slack and Google Docs to stay collaborative and communicate updates.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a deep understanding of the B2B universe - they have a unique approach to recruiting to ensure we're finding and speaking to the right people but also knowing the right questions to ask, and the ability to surface meaningful insights and implications from conversations (not just reporting back what was said.)

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

Would be interested to understand more about the recruiting process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Osborn Barr Paramore is a marketing and communications agency that specializes in agribusiness and rural lifestyle client work. We’re based in Saint Louis, Missouri with other offices in Kansas City, Missouri and Nashville.

I’m the account director, and I am responsible for managing the projects for one of our agricultural clients in the area of sustainability communications. I mostly work with the United Soybean Board account.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Adience?

One of the challenges that the United Soybean Board has is connecting with their end-users of US soybeans. That would be consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and food, feed, and industrial companies.

The United Soybean Board has not done much work with their end-users or connected very closely with them in the past. They understand that those companies are making sustainability claims that start with the ingredient products that they use, and soybean is a large ingredient product for many of those companies.

The United Soybean Board really wanted to make sure that we understand the influencers of that CPG audience, and a large category of influencers for those companies would be green investors or impact investors.

We commissioned Adience to help us study the green investor or impact investor audience to find out what their motivations were for investing in companies that use soybean ingredients. We also wanted to understand what their attitude about the sustainability of those ingredients is and also get a look at what they think the future of food trends looks like and where soybeans may have an advantage.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We commissioned Adience to study a small group of green or impact investors from a variety of investment categories, from small mom-and-pop partnerships to venture capitalists and angel investors.

We did this so that we could get a variety of personas on those investors and start to understand how they differ in making the decisions they do about investing in food companies. They talked to about 15 different investment company representatives from a variety of those categories, and they drew out those differences for us.

What is the team composition?

We only worked with one person from the company, Chris (Managing Director). I believe he's the founder of the company as well as the account manager and strategist for them. I know that he worked with a team of other people to make the calls to this audience, but I'm not sure how many people were on that team.

How did you come to work with Adience?

We actually did some Google searches. We have never hired a firm like Adience before to do the kind of research that we have them do. This was a brand new audience and a brand new tactic for our United Soybean Board client.

I actually was not the person that found them. Some of our strategists delivered 3–4 different firms and their contact information to me. I'm not sure how they weeded out everyone else and supplied those three, but I know that we have not ever worked with Adience in the past.

I would say that the reason we chose them was their proposal. Out of the three that we chose out of the group as finalists, Adience's proposal was well thought out, clear, and easy to understand. Their steps were clearly outlined, and their estimate was on budget for us.

In addition to the proposal that they submitted, Chris asked for a meeting with us to go through the proposal in detail. He was very thorough during that RFP process and explained every step that they would take to research this audience and even provided his expertise in explaining his RFP and experiences with the audience. That really sold us on his capabilities and his company strengths.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just under $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Adience from July–September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They delivered exactly what we scoped and provided a really detailed and thorough analysis and a report at the end of the project. I know that that report is definitely something that we'll use in our agency to build our audience strategy and also build our client offerings.

They uncovered some details in their study about our target audience that was very insightful and something that we can definitely use to build our strategy in the future.

How did Adience perform from a project management standpoint?

I would say A+ there. There were absolutely no issues — they met every deadline and completed the project on budget and in the scope.

Chris representing Adience was very well organized. He clearly communicated his project timelines, and he kept to those timelines. He provided timely and thorough updates of his work along the way.

He knew just when to engage us in the process and was really attentive to our feedback along the way. For instance, he really gave us some time to study the screening guide that he would use to talk to these investors, and he listened to our feedback about the edits that we gave him for the questions that we wanted to ask. There weren't actually many edits, but he really understood what we were trying to get at when we were working closely with him on that guide.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think Chris' communication with us was outstanding. He really involved us at every step of the process. His emails with updates were very timely, and I never once had to reach out to him and ask what was going on with the project or where they were. He always supplied that before I asked.

Chris is a very thoughtful individual, and you could tell by his comments and the way that he listened to us that he has a lot of experience in this area. We really counted on him for that, and it paid off.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really can't think of anything that they could improve. While I said this is the first time that we've worked with a company to study audiences in this category, we have worked with other research firms in the past, so I do have that comparison. However, I cannot think of anything that I would tell Adience to improve, I just think that they hit the mark in every way throughout this project. I highly recommend them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say to be very clear about your request for work or your scope of work at the beginning. However, also to leave yourself a little bit of room to be flexible after talking with Adience and really understanding the expertise that they can bring to your project.

Doing that allowed us to get better outcomes and rethink what we thought we knew about the audience in a way that provided some details that we would not have gotten if we weren't open about the type of information that we could ask and research.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Marketing Manager of The National Council for Mental Wellbeing

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Mental health education to teach adults how to recognize and respond to mental health and substance use awareness.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Adience to accomplish?

• Persona development
• Identifying the messages that will resonate most given personas' needs and pain points.
• The service and product benefits and differentiators that will most appeal to the target audience.

SOLUTION

How did you find Adience?

Online Search

Why did you select Adience over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Adience were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We partnered with Adience on a market research project to help us better understand our highest priority customers across the MHFA brand. We’ll walk away understanding the target audience's mindset, decision-making processes, competitive landscape, competitor value propositions and messaging strategies to better align with the audience's needs and preferences. We’ll also develop 5-6 personas to align internal efforts, keep us customer-focused and make lead/buyer paths more efficient.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Better understanding of our target audience as well as how to reach them with messaging that resonates.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Adience was incredible to work with. They have been incredibly responsive and professional from the start. They provide realistic expectations and always deliver what has been promised.

What was your primary form of communication with Adience?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Communication, thoughtfulness, expertise, project management and results.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Adience could have done differently?

Nothing, they have done an excellent job!