Commercial
Research, development, and analysis work in the commercial arena is qualitatively different from similar efforts for government clients. Businesses focus their efforts on the bottom line and contract for services that contribute to their productivity, profitability, and competitive advantage. Commercial clients also expect their projects and their identities to be fully shielded from outside knowledge. EBR understands these differences and has been successful in meeting these challenges in a variety of ways.
- EBR can carry out cost-effective analyses of international companies, industries, key groups or individuals in order to support investment, merger, acquisition and executive recruiting decisions. These projects are best executed early in order for them to inform detailed negotiations and decision making later. They must also often be done “invisibly” so the target individuals or organizations are not aware of the interest in them. These efforts involve the use of open source (internet) and emerging media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) to first capture and then analyze the myriad of information available. EBR has developed a suite of tools and techniques that make its inquiries all but impossible to detect or trace. These projects generate detailed profiles of the people or organizations of interest and comprehensive link analyses showing first, second, third order relationships (or greater when relevant). Data may reflect personal linkages, business relationships, financial patterns, historical networks, shared experiences or other significant details. This work can be done very rapidly (a few days is normally sufficient). The results provide important competitive advantages.
- Our team can also conduct campaigns of research to measure the “image” of a commercial client. Most companies rely on standard survey techniques which force respondents to focus on issues identified in advance by the research team and structure the analyses to focus directly on these pre-specified issues. These efforts are inherently ineffective in that they reflect relatively shallow attitudes, failing to illuminate causal factors and values underlying those attitudes. EBR’s team starts from those survey results, but creates sets of structured focus groups and in-depth interviews with opinion leaders and statistically selected respondents representative of the target population to link the attitudes expressed to the patterns of association that arise when the client is mentioned. These are carried out in a “blind” test where the client of interest is not the only subject, enabling the research team to differentiate the client’s image and the values associated with it from others. The results prove highly effective, enabling the client to create cost effective public relations and advertising campaigns to improve its image.
- EBR also has the capability to measure the propagation of an idea (or rumor) through a population of interest. More important for commercial clients, this capability also enables EBR to track competing ideas or efforts to combat false or misleading information through such a population.
- The company also has the capacity to develop persuasive communications packages for differentiated audiences. These audiences might differ by age, education level, geographic region, ethnic background, or other selected demographics. A combination of structured focus groups, in-depth interviews, review of online dialogues, and targeted media materials yields a clear pattern of the words, images, and arguments most persuasive to a specific audience or set of audiences.