Welcome

A research and strategy consultancy for brands and agencies.

Giving your brand the edge through Sharper Thinking... thinking that has a point, that’s more incisive and most importantly results in real creative and commercial traction.

What we mean by Sharper Thinking

Planners, strategists, researchers!

At their worst, they can be fluffy, precious and evasive.

OK, some might come up with strategies that look good on paper.

But good on paper doesn’t always translate into ideas that make a difference.

We’re different, our edge lies in the way we think.

Our thinking is sharper and to the point.

We root out the bits that matter, the interesting perspective, the game changing thoughts.

In our minds it’s simple.

Sharper thinking gets you to bigger ideas and bigger ideas have a bigger effect on the bottom line.

What is Traction and why does it matter?

Imagine.

You’ve worked for months researching, developing and crafting a strategy and then a new idea, only to find 6 months down the line that your idea is going... nowhere.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TRACTION.

Thinking and ideas need to create Impact, Engagement, Activation and Advocacy.

When you can make a real difference across all of these you have TRACTION.

That’s the difference Sharper Thinking makes.

About Us

Interested in our backgrounds?

We’re two senior strategic planners and between us we have over 50 years experience across pretty much every category, channel and challenge you could imagine.

We‘ve won awards working both agency and client side, and in small independent agencies as well as big global networks.

We’ve added real value through front-end strategic thinking and where rubber hits the road activation.

Our experience, boundless energy, approach to insight and pragmatism put us in a unique position to add real value to your business.

Experience

Categories of clients we’ve added value to...

Automotive

Car brands, dealerships and online and offline selling channels - mix of brand and activation.

Numerous IPA winning papers in this category.
B2B

House builders, financial services, food and hospitality industry, legal services.
Charities

Cancer, homeless, drugs charities creating increased awareness and driving ROI.

IPA winning papers in this category.
Drinks

Beers, wines and spirits - brand development, audience engagement, activation and innovation.

Numerous marketing awards including sponsorship activation strategies.
Gaming / Entertainment

Brands and high street retailers – Brand building, experiential and activation.
Finance

Retail banking, building societies, cards, commercial and corporate banking, financial aggregators, mortgage products, saving products.
Foods

Baby foods, cereals, cheeses, coffee, confectionery, meal solutions, tea.
Healthcare

Brands, ethical healthcare, OTC, pharmaceuticals, vitamins, minerals and supplements.
Lifestyle & Fashion

Lifestyle retailers, hair and beauty, on and offline catalogue companies.
Retail

Gaming/bookmakers (on and offline), grocery, quick service retail and DIY.
Social Marketing

Drink driving, drug driving, cancer awareness, domestic abuse, healthy eating, mental health, smoking cessation.
Technology

Console gaming and mobile phones.
Tourism, Leisure & Travel

Airlines, devised strategy for destinations, hotel groups, resorts.

Won world's best marketing campaign at the World Travel Awards.

How we Create the Edge

So how do we create the edge?

We can work with you on a day or project rate basis looking at brand, comms development, customer experience and engagement, insight generation and creative thinking.

Or we can use one of our proprietary products to give you the edge.


Brand Body Language

It’s easy to look at the obvious aspects of branding but there’s lots of stuff beneath the surface that can help your brand create that all important competetive advantage.

Brand Body Language uses semiotic analysis to identify brand meaning and behaviour, creating platforms for deeper engagement with your audience.
Innovation Edge

Innovation is the lifeblood of all brands and companies.

Innovation Edge is a collaborative workshop based approach, carefully developed and refined to help inspire innovation in product, engagement and beyond.

Our approach ensures focus on those ideas that are genuinely innovative and commercially viable.
Insight Edge

There’s always a lot of talk about insights, but knowing where to find one, what makes a good one and what to do with one can be a real challenge.

It’s a challenge we’re up to.

Our interactive workshop will help make sure you and your people are too.
Qual Research

Most research amounts to expensive and unnecessary time consuming reportage.

Qual LiteTM is a uniquely focused qual approach which gets to the interesting stuff quicker, at a fraction of the cost of traditional research and with more actionable results.

Our standard qual approach is different too – we offer a unique workshop style debrief that avoids the dull reportage and ensures actionable insights as well as buy in from key stakeholders.
Traction Test

Most research focuses on theory rather than the real world.

Traction testing is a qual and/or quant approach looking into brand traction across 4 key drivers…Impact, Engagement, Activation and Advocacy in a competitive context.

The methodology revolves around your brand’s T-score – the score that reveals how your brand is performing versus its competitors, gets under the skin of issues and unleashes ideas across the 4 traction components.

Stuff We Love

It's amazing how, just by keeping your eyes and ears open, you see cool stuff that with a bit of tweaking could successfully cross one category into another.

Here's some cool stuff we've seen recently and love...

Ad Placement

Contact Us

We’d love to talk about how Sharper Thinking could help your business.

Contact us anytime at…

david@brand-edge.co.uk or 07966923055.

ben@brand-edge.co.uk or 07930397473.

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