The time a company’s existence was on the line.

Our client—a national tax consulting firm—found itself facing a potential existential threat when a lower-priced, digital competitor entered the marketplace.

In order to assess the danger, we needed to speak with our client’s customers, asking them questions that investigated their needs, their current satisfaction, and their existing knowledge of and perceptions about the new competitor.

While the present threat was low—due to high satisfaction with our client’s current service and limited awareness of the competitor—the research identified potential risks down the road. Further, we found those risks could be avoided with proactive attention to customer service, the addition of some digital tools, and a commitment to staying at the leading edge of knowledge in the tax consulting space.

The research findings both reassured our client and provided a blueprint for the future.

When our client wanted to measure brand awareness, but got so much more.

A prominent non-profit organization needed to know how much the community around them knew about the organization itself. Just about everyone was aware of the organization, but how deep did that knowledge go?

Of course, our research answered the basic awareness question. But, because the client really wanted to know how best to communicate its strengths, we also did a deep dive into the core values and priorities of the community as they related to our client’s mission. The learning from this exploration was critical for understanding what mattered to the larger community. 

While surface awareness was high, it turned out that much of this particular community was not specifically aware of the scope of the work this organization facilitates. When respondents were exposed to this information in the course of the research, they were both surprised and impressed. The organization was doing work that resonated strongly with our respondents’ values and desires, the community just wasn’t fully aware of it. 

Equipped with a deeper understanding of its audience, our client was able to build a campaign to not only raise awareness, but to strengthen its relationship with its community.

When you have to fight to stay on top.

One of the nation’s leading graduate business schools knew that the competition was increasing and that in order to stay in the upper echelon, they would need to keep track of how they were perceived relative to other elite programs. 

An annual survey of its admittees allowed them to get near real-time data on how their school is perceived in terms of reputation, the admissions process, and direct comparison to their closest competitors.

Impressions can turn quickly, and with social media, word of perceived problems can spread near instantly. Monitoring what their newest students know and believe about the institution allowed the business school to identify relative weak areas when it came to the admissions process, facilities, and scholarship opportunities. 

Being strong is about identifying weaknesses before they become a problem, and research that allows for regular monitoring can save significant time and money.

When you’ve got a great product, but you’re not sure how to go to market.

A leading golf cart manufacturer knew they had something special on their hands with a suite of new after-market products based on GPS technology. Knowing the precise location of your golf cart relative to the world around you is undoubtedly useful, but to whom? And how much are they willing to pay for it?

This is when you go straight to the source, first doing in-depth phone interviews with current distributors of golf carts to mine their expertise of the marketplace. These expert interviews were then followed by two surveys—one with golfers and the other with golf course owners and managers.

It turned out lots of people in the golf world wanted this product, but for different reasons.  Golfers were interested in features like an animated hole flyover, and readouts on distance to the pin and any hazards between their ball and the hole. 

Courses, on the other hand, wanted to know where their carts were at any given time so they could protect their investment. Geofencing technology makes sure the motor is killed before an expensive piece of equipment is driven off the property or into a pond. 

The research insights drove the creation of different product bundles for golfers and golf courses, with particular emphasis on how to target and hook the early adopters.

When you need to reinvigorate your membership.

At Willow, we believe our work is best done in collaboration with clients, by starting with understanding their unique problem and then providing research that best meets their needs.

In the case of a prominent legal professional organization that was struggling to maintain membership, we needed to be both researchers and strategic consultants. Current members weren’t renewing, and new prospects weren’t joining. A professional association without members ceases to exist. This was an existential threat.

We started with a review of prior research that informed the issue before moving to focus groups and then a large-scale quantitative survey with both existing and prospective members. Pretty standard stuff.

But in this case, the key to helping the client was a strategic work session, in which Willow’s knowledge of the research intersected with the client’s expertise. 

Working together, and informed by the research, we identified specific and targeted initiatives for new members to be introduced to the organization and to better serve the unmet needs of the current members.

When you want to build your brand through thought leadership.

Our client, a provider of financial products and services to hospitals and health systems knew a lot about how changes in the industry impacted their clients and customers, and they wanted to use their expertise to both help their clients and boost their status as the go-to place for navigating these turbulent waters.

They commissioned Willow to do a series of research studies utilizing a combination of secondary research, in-depth interviews, and quantitative surveys with three key industry segments: Hospitals, Health Insurers, and Employers to understand what was at the top of their minds in terms of industry trends, challenges and responses.

The result was a series of white papers that built on our client’s status as an industry leader who is anticipating customer needs. This research has been purposed and repurposed into conference speaking materials, webinars, PR for media and press distribution, and even sales materials. 

When you want to lead, knowing more than everyone else is an invaluable advantage.

When you’re worried your message isn’t getting across.

The administrative leaders and teachers at a Jewish day school knew they were doing a good job. They saw it daily in their work with students and interaction with parents, but in a world where education is viewed as more important than ever and operating in an area with quality public schools, they wanted to know more precisely how their school is viewed and valued.

Interviews with feeder pre-school directors and parents of prospective students revealed that the school was hitting the target in terms of what parents were looking for when it comes to their children’s education: strong academics in an atmosphere where students are treated with care and respect. 

The school was reassured that they were not only fulfilling a mission aligned with their values, they now had evidence to show current and prospective parents, and to share in their annual report. 

Knowing they were on the right track, the school could focus on enhancing its success, rather than worrying about threats which weren’t real.

When you need to know if it’s time to change course.

We’d previously completed an in-depth study for a prominent non-profit organization to help them better understand how the community viewed them and their work. 

This prior research paid off when it came time to evaluate the ongoing efficacy of a fundraising campaign that had been going on for better than twenty years and raised significantly more money than originally hoped for.

On the one hand, the campaign was working. On the other, maybe it was time for a new approach. Because of the prior research, this organization knew that they could go to the source—their donors—to help them gauge whether the campaign was still delivering value. Their donors’ investment in the well-being of the organization meant they could trust their input and use their opinions to shape future fundraising plans.

The result? Donors respect and appreciate the past as embodied in the campaign, but also see an opportunity to refresh the approach for the future and to meet the needs of a changing world and changing membership. 

Empowered by connecting with their donors, the organization can now plan their next campaign with confidence.

The time we helped a leading trial attorney unpack a really complicated case.

For over two decades, Willow President, Sara Parikh, has conducted jury research for one of the nation’s leading trial attorneys, working on dozens of trials. But even a long-standing client relationship can deliver surprises.

In this case, it was a big, existential, possibly unknowable question, “Does the truth still matter?”

Confronted with a complicated, class action lawsuit against an insurance giant and potential  co-conspirators, involving hidden and intricate financial transactions, a complex legal theory, and hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence, our client wondered if the jury would find all this to be “business as usual” or if Americans could still be shocked by corruption and corporate malfeasance. Could he get jurors thinking about right and wrong, about truth in the jury room to deliver justice to the millions of plaintiffs who had been harmed?

Using an iterative series of “guided deliberation” focus groups with prospective jurors in the trial jurisdiction, Willow scripted the case, presented the central arguments and identified the particular pieces of evidence that best supported those arguments from the jury’s perspective.  Through this process, we helped our client simplify the case narrative and prepare for trial. And, most importantly, we helped our client understand that the truth does still matter, as long as it is anchored with meaningful evidence.    

The result? A research strategy that delivered conclusive wins in mock trials and  gave our client the confidence to settle the case for hundreds of millions of dollars on the first day of trial.

The time we customized an app to test a product.

It’s rare that we roll out an off-the-rack bit of research for our clients, but this project required even more creativity than usual. Not only that, it had to be conducted with a rigor that could potentially stand up in court. 

A global feminine hygiene brand was about to launch a competitive advertising campaign for its tampon. To make sure the claims were defensible, the client needed to know whether their tampons leaked less, more, or the same amount as their closest competitor.

We developed a double-blind experimental design in which research participants were given our client’s product and the competitor’s product to try out over a menstrual cycle. 

And rather than relying on a standard questionnaire, we employed a customized smartphone app, where women not only recorded their impressions of product performance, but uploaded photos to validate their leakage reports. Compliance was monitored daily, to make sure the research data was reliable and of maximum utility to our client. 

Care in the design and execution was crucial for substantiating our client’s advertising claim and withstanding a potential challenge from the competitor.