Understand What Matters to Your Target Customers Beyond Your Product Category—and See How Those Wider Interests Could Help You Shape Your Next Campaign or Reach a New Audience
The Fitting Call is complimentary and lasts 30 minutes
THE AUDIENCE DOSSIER
We research your product category and three other parts of your customers’ online lives. You’ll see the TikTok videos, Reddit threads and social posts behind our findings, along with four ways your brand could use what we uncover.
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You want your brand to take part in the cultural conversations your customers care about. Choosing a popular topic or cultural moment isn’t enough. If you copy a community’s language or visual style without understanding what the people in it value, customers may find the campaign forced, scrolling past it or calling it out. Instead of seeing your brand as culturally relevant, they see that your team noticed the trend without understanding why it mattered.
Getting the culture wrong can make your brand look out of touch
You’ve read the trend reports and seen how other brands are responding. They can show that a topic is growing across the market, but not whether the women you want to reach care about it. The same topic can matter to different groups for completely different reasons. Before you commit, you need to know whether those women talk about it online and, if they do, which parts matter to them.
A trend can be real without being relevant to your customer
Your customer profiles and past research may explain what she buys, why she chooses one product over another and which benefits matter to her. They were designed around your category. We also look at who she follows and which conversations she joins elsewhere online, so you learn more about her wider interests and priorities. You can use what we find to develop campaign or partnership ideas without repeating the same product benefits and category trends.
You have detailed category research, but less information about her wider interests
Good Research Can Still Be Too Broad for the Decision You Need to Make
THE RESEARCH GAP
HOW THE RESEARCH WORKS
Trend reports, agency research and social listening tools can all be useful, but they’re usually answering separate questions. One report may cover a broad market shift while another studies customers inside your category, so your team still has to work out whether both sets of findings apply to the women your brand wants to understand and how they relate to each other.
We start with women who already show an interest in your product category, then look at the other accounts they follow and the conversations they join online. A woman in that audience may work in finance, spend her weekends at ceramics classes and follow conversations about gut health or dating. The creators and brands she follows outside your category can affect what she expects from your brand, so we use what we find to choose the three wider areas for your Dossier.
We Choose the Three Wider Areas After We See Where Your Target Customers Spend Time Online
Once we’ve chosen those areas, we compare what the same women say in each one with what they say about your product category. If they express the same idea or expectation in more than one context, we explain the connection and what your team can learn from it. Each area includes a Way In based on the priorities you share with us at the start, so you can use what we find in the work you already have planned.
We Begin with the Decision Your Team Needs to Make and the Women Your Brand Needs to Understand
The Audience Dossier is a custom research project. Over three to four weeks, we study what your target customers say, watch, buy and debate in your product category, then choose three other parts of their online lives to explore. In the finished Dossier, we explain how the four areas connect, show you the posts and conversations behind our findings and include a Way In for each one based on the priorities you share with us.
WHAT THE AUDIENCE DOSSIER IS
Who it’s for
What it isn’t
The Audience Dossier isn’t a social listening platform or an ongoing trend subscription, so it won’t give you regular monitoring of everything changing across your category. We also don’t create or deliver the work that follows the research. If you need either of those, this isn’t the right service.
This is for you if you’re a founder, head of brand, marketing director or innovation lead at a brand with customers and sales. You may be planning a campaign or partnership, considering a new audience or trying to understand customers in a market your brand plans to enter. You already know which decision you need the research to help you make.
Your Finished Dossier Has Six Sections Covering the Question You Brought Us, What Your Customers Say and Do Online and How Your Brand Could Use What We Find
THE MARKET RESEARCH AREAS
The opening pages explain what you wanted to understand and summarise the most important findings. Anyone on your team can read this section first for a clear overview, then use the rest of the Dossier to explore each area in more detail.
The Research Summary
What you wanted to understand · The main findings
After researching your product category, we develop one Way In around the priorities you shared at the start. It shows one direction your brand could explore within the category, using what your customers already say and do online.
The Category Way In
One direction based on the product-category research
We begin with your product category, looking at the conversations your customers join, the people and brands they follow and what they buy. This helps us understand what already matters to them in your category before we look at the rest of their online lives.
Your Product Category
The conversations · The people · The brands and spaces
We choose three other parts of your customers’ online lives from the accounts they follow and the conversations they join. In each section, we show who the same women pay attention to and what they discuss beyond your category. Together, the three sections give you a fuller understanding of their wider interests and priorities.
Three Wider Research Areas
A closer look at what your customers care about beyond your category
We develop one Way In for each of the three wider areas, using what we found in that section and the priorities you shared at the start. That gives you three directions your brand could explore as new questions and opportunities come up.
Three Wider Ways In
One direction for each wider research area
We place the posts, videos and conversations behind each important finding alongside our analysis. You can see how we reached our conclusions and return to the original material whenever your team uses the research.
Source Material Throughout
TikTok videos · Reddit threads · Social posts
When You Understand More of What Matters to the Women Your Brand Wants to Reach, You Can Use the Research in More Parts of Your Work
USING THE RESEARCH
When you’re presenting an idea you believe in, leaders or partners are likely to have questions. You can show how it relates to what your customers care about, then use the posts and conversations behind the research to talk through those questions together.
Help Leaders and Partners See the Value in Your Ideas
Your Dossier is organised around the questions your team began with, so you can quickly understand what we found and why it matters. The summary gives everyone an overview, while the individual sections are there when you need a fuller explanation.
Understand the Findings Without Having to Decode the Research
Looking beyond your category introduces you to references and conversations your competitors may not be drawing from. That gives your brand more room to do something distinctive while keeping it connected to what your customers already care about.
Find a Direction Your Competitors Aren’t Already Taking
Your role: Complete the Strategic Intake before our Briefing Session. You can work through it in your own time.
Your Private Client Hub
Once your project is confirmed, we give you access to your private client hub, where you can follow the timeline and message us throughout the project. Your Strategic Intake is there too. It gives you space to share what your brand already knows about its customers and what you’d like the research to help you understand.
Immediate access
The Briefing Session
In this one-hour call, we talk through your intake and spend longer on anything you want to explain. Together, we make sure we’re clear on the women you want us to study and the questions you’re most curious about. We also discuss where the research might be useful, so we can keep those priorities in mind as we work.
60 minutes · Week 1
Your role: Join the call and talk us through anything you’d rather explain in conversation. We’ll take the research from there.
Two Research Check-ins
We check in twice while the research is underway. In the first, we show you the wider areas we’re considering and explain what led us to them. Midway through the project, we share what we’ve found so far and ask which parts you’d like us to explore in more detail.
Week 1 and mid-project
Your role: Review what we share at each check-in and tell us where you’d like us to spend more time.
The Reveal Session
90 minutes · Weeks 3 to 4
In the 90-minute Reveal Session, we present your complete Audience Dossier and talk you through each research area. As we go, you’ll see the posts and conversations behind the findings, along with the four Ways In we developed around your priorities. We send you the digital Dossier after the call.
Your role: Join the session and ask questions as we work through the Dossier together.
Your Creative Strategy Session
45 minutes · BOOK WITHIN 60 DAYS OF DELIVERY
Your Dossier includes a 45-minute Creative Strategy Session, which you can book at any point in the 60 days after delivery. You can use it however you like. Bring an idea you’re developing or questions that came up once you started using the research, and we’ll spend the call on whatever would be most useful to you.
Your role: Book the call when you’re ready and tell us what you’d like to cover.
Here’s What to Expect Once Your Project Begins:
THE PROCESS
HOW IT WORKS
Years leading strategy for global brands — now applied to yours.
A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
Hi, I’m Lara!
I’ve spent the last 7 years helping global brands connect with the women they sell to in smarter, more meaningful ways
During my seven years in agency life, I got to work on some really cool campaigns, including one for Milani’s Make It Last setting spray with four female Olympians. While developing the strategy, I found that for many women, doing their makeup was part of how they prepared mentally for the day. I wanted to spend more time understanding why routines like that matter and what else is going on in the customer’s life.
I now publish my own research on Substack and have analysed tens of thousands of posts from online communities. I look at what women care about outside the product category and how those interests affect what they expect from brands.
I’m also a third-culture kid who grew up across Mozambique, Portugal, Spain and England, and I’ve always been nosy about why people like what they like. I’m quite selective about the brands I work with, too. I only take on brands I’d genuinely buy from because I’m going to spend weeks thinking about the product and the women buying it, and I want to be interested in both.
WHAT CLIENTS SAY
Sara Wilson
Founder & Principal, SW Projects
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The Kind of Research That Goes into an Audience Dossier
A LOOK AT THE RESEARCH
We use social listening to find patterns across thousands of online conversations, then read the posts behind those numbers to understand what people are actually saying. The example below comes from research Lara published on The Sheo® Way.
FROM THE SHEO® WAY
What 50,000 Reddit Beauty Posts Tell Us About What Makes Community Work
Sephora’s official community had millions more members than r/Sephora, yet the smaller subreddit generated far more conversation. That led Lara to look into what was keeping the more active communities going – since member counts clearly weren’t explaining it.
50–75
regular contributors were key to keeping the most active communities alive.
4.4x
more posts per member on brand focused communities versus retailer communities.
69%
higher average comment score for product questions and tutorials than for sale alerts.
These insights help founders and marketing teams understand what keeps a community active and whether their brand needs to create its own or could support one customers already use. Community was the focus here. In your Audience Dossier, we use the same research process to look into what you need to understand about your customers.
Read the full article ↗
Everything Included at a Fixed Fee
The investment
£5,700
A 60-minute Briefing Session to talk through what you want the research to help with and what you already know about your customers
Two 30-minute Research Direction Checkpoints: one to look over the areas we plan to research, and one to discuss the early findings and anything you’d like us to explore further
A 90-minute Reveal Session to take you through your complete Audience Dossier and answer your questions
Your complete Audience Dossier deck, sent to you on the day of the Reveal Session
A 45-minute Creative Strategy Session, available to book at any point within 60 days of delivery
What’s Happening in Your Business
You can tell us why you’re looking at customer research now and what you hope it will help with. We’ll also ask whether you’re working towards a particular date.
What You Know About Your Customers
We’ll talk about any customer research you already have and what your team has learned so far. You can also tell us what you’d still like to understand.
Whether This Is the Right Research for You
By the end of the call, you’ll know whether the Audience Dossier covers the questions you want answered. If another kind of research would make more sense, we’ll tell you.
What We’ll Talk About on Your Complimentary Fitting Call
THE FITTING CALL
Before you book, we’ll spend 30 minutes talking through what you need from the research and whether the Audience Dossier covers it.
What Do Your Customers Care About When They’re Not Thinking About Your Product?
ONE LAST QUESTION
