Brass Tack

Overview

Brass Tack is an online research company, providing analysis of information in the public domain to underpin market research projects, marketing campaigns and strategic planning.

If you're looking to move into new regions, or find out what makes your potential customers tick, you need an in-depth understanding of the market, to discover what's gone before and what's influencing consumer behaviour in the present.

We look to use creative methods to deliver and communicate our research, to ensure that our work engages the widest audience possible.

This approach has served us well since we came into being - we've worked with some of the largest corporations on the planet, as well as SMEs across a wide range of fields. The fundamentals of our work do not change according to a client's size - we want to provide you with as great an insight as we can from secondary research, so that you can better pinpoint your services or products to keep your customers happy.

Photos from Flickr - thanks to Stuck in Customs

Research buyers

If you're looking for context and data to underpin your company's strategic objectives, whether it be for product development, market analysis or media monitoring, we can be of help.

If you're thinking about moving into new markets, a lot of groundwork can be achieved through desk research. Finding out market size, investment risks, product positioning and so forth is vital for business development. We create intelligence reports for companies around the world, helping you get a foot ahead of the competition from the outset.

Our work delivers classic secondary research outputs such as:

• industry, country or product analyses
• market intelligence
• competitor positioning
• market feasibility studies
• emerging trends
• social/web analytics and monitoring

We also have experience in primary research, and are happy to work with you to develop your qual/quant requirements.

Market research agencies

We are not your competition - we are your allies.

We work for market research companies around the world, to varying levels of involvement. It depends on what we are needed for: for some, we are integral to the company and considered their off-site desk research team; for others, we are introduced directly to the clients as external desk research specialists; for others still, we are used as a 'Google and go' resource, providing quick answers to a checklist of specific questions. We're very flexible, and our international team helps us to work across time zones.

An example of how we can help: cultivating a winning proposal takes time, which you may not have in abundance. We provide you with the information you need to both create context to the brief and direction to your proposal, from clarifying the terms and issues raised, to teasing out critical sector/competitor information, all in the format you specify.

In general: we deliver macro and micro information on your chosen industry, sector or product. Some examples of the areas covered -

• industry, country or product analyses
• market profiles
• competitor positioning
• emerging trends
• social media monitoring: text & sentiment analysis, keyword tracking etc

We look across all online media, from the big hitters to micro-blogs. If you want further detail on the methodologies we use, please get in touch with us, and we can discuss further

For SMEs

If you're setting up a business, wanting to refine your business plan or if you're looking to develop your marketing, please use us to help you join the dots.

We can provide you with:

• an overview of your market
• intelligence on your competitors
• sector trend reports
• social media analysis
• communications audit
• Product/sector SWOT analyses

Market research can help prepare your company for growth, pinpoint areas of weakness, or simply provide you with a greater understanding of the market in which you operate.

An invaluable service, however you want to use it.

Thanks to Timlings from flickr for the image

How we work

We make sure we define all project requirements, and limitations, before we begin. Here's a simple visualisation of how this works:

We compile our reports with information taken from sources such as:

• national statistics databases
• corporate communications
• news outlets (e.g. national and regional newspapers, online specialist magazines)
• blogs
• social networks
• forums
• government information sources
• academic research
• other research studies

For more detail, please drop us a line.

Our reports

Our findings can be presented in pretty much any format you want. If you want it to arrive with you client-ready, we can design an attractive PowerPoint report, or even mock it up as a magazine with InDesign. If you just want the information so that you can modify it yourself, or pull out sections for your own presentation, we'll send it over as a Word document.

Any serious statistical breakdown is provided as an Excel spreadsheet, alongside any other work we are providing you with.