Key terms & definitions
The industry uses the terms ‘research’, ‘insight’, and ‘strategy’ to mean a messy amount of different things, so we’ve written this glossary to ensure we say what we mean, and mean what we say.
Strategy
We define a strategy as a plan of action designed to achieve an agreed goal. This can be in support of a brand, communications, products and services, or acquiring new audiences and consumers.
Brand strategy
defines what the brand stands for, a promise they make, and the personality they convey. It is a long-term plan that helps every employee communicate about the ideas upon which a brand is built and/or the plan to systematically express those ideas through identity and brand experience(s).
Communication strategy
a plan to achieve communication objectives; internally and/ or for marketing and public relations through defining goals, target audience and channels.
Innovation strategy
a plan to improve market share, performance or perceptions through product and service innovation. These changes can be incremental, disruptive, architectural and radical to product, process or business model.
Expansion strategy
a plan to improve market share, performance or perceptions through product and service innovation. These changes can be incremental, disruptive, architectural and radical to product, process or business model.
Insights
An insight as a profound and sometimes uncomfortable truth about a person and/ or peoples evidenced by their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs and desires, which provides a business or brand with an opportunity for innovation. If insights are left ignored, they may become a risk or threat to the business.
To define an insight, we explore the drivers, motivations, influences and values of people, and at every stage ask - what are they doing, why are they doing it, and why is that important.
Insights can come from qualitative and quantitative research. A valuable insight helps businesses understand the drivers of changing consumer behaviour; they aren’t the behaviours themselves.
Qualitative research
The industry uses the terms ‘research’, ‘insight’, and ‘strategy’ to mean a messy amount of different things, so we’ve written this glossary to ensure we say what we mean, and mean what we say.
Quantitative research
is used to answer questions like “how much” or “how many.” Quantitative data is structured, ie numbers and values, making it a more suitable candidate for data analysis.
We conduct quantitative research via surveys, experiments, and market reports.
Changemaker
We define a Changemaker, as someone who is embracing, encouraging or even creating change.
In other agencies or businesses, they are often labelled early adopters or progressive consumers. Not to be confused with Influencers, Changemakers influence the early majority and mass audiences and are crucial for a business to gain advocacy to create long-term appeal over the short term ‘hype’.
Futures
aka trends
A Futures are a directional change. They are a shift in a community's values and/or needs. This shift is felt and seen in culture - behaviours, products, services, events etc. - on a macro and micro level. Futures are spread by Early Adopters – of which our Changemakers are a specific subset – into the mainstream over time. Types of futures include:
Mega
are large-scale societal drivers/ forces. One framework to examine these frameworks is PESTLE:
- Political changes
- Economic changes
- Societal changes
- Technological changes
- Legislative changes
- Environmental changes
Macro
are the changing values, needs, and mindsets that are the consequence of mega-trend and are the root of micro-trend
Micro
are the manifestations of a macro-trend – the tangible evidence that a macro-trend has arrived.
Fad
is a spin on a micro-future, in which a social group has created a collective attitude about a novelty display of a micro-future. Fads come and go quickly.
Audience typology
We define typology as a way to ‘type’ your consumers into audience groups that give any business focus and should be the foundation of any communication or marketing strategy. *This is different from segmentation, which uses demographic data or behaviours to group people.
Typologies are centred around psychographics - attitudes and value systems. Helping brands predict behaviours of people based on these beliefs. They can help businesses identify their muses or ideal audiences and their core targets and how each group influences each other. Defining each group’s set of needs and expectations, though they are as much about finding universals between ‘types’ as they are about defining differences.
Brand architecture
is a way of organizing a brand's different parts and how they each relate to one other. Brand architectures helps businesses understand:
- how their products, services or content platforms work together and complement one another.
- if their brands is over-indexing in any given area or
- if the brand is under-indexing in a given area, the opportunities for business and brand growth.
A good brand architecture brings a business's product portfolio and service offering into focus, and helps the business at every level understand how the brand is navigated and understood by its consumers. Brand architectures are built from brand strategy and audience typologies.
Reintroducing – the akin
You might notice that we look a little different this week.
Over the last 4 months, we've thought long and hard about our approach to work and the brand we’re building. It has been challenging, enlightening and uncomfortable at times, but we are so so proud of the outcome. We're still the strategy and insights studio you know and love – just with a bit more clarity. We'll share this work in full over the next 4 weeks, but in the meantime, here's the executive summary.
Allow us to reintroduce ourselves.
We're the akin (/əˈkɪn/) – a consumer research and strategy studio. We understand that research isn't neutral or objective, so we are clear about the futures we want and the research needed to back them up.
We're in business to bring about a world that is intersectionally feminist; ecologically regenerative; and anti-racist.
We offer strategy and insights for purpose-led businesses. We recognise the role of business in our fight for change so we help them define the futures they want and help build a practical roadmap to get there. You can find a list of our Services here.
Likewise, we're committed to becoming more transparent about how we build our own preferred futures. Read more about our guiding principles here. We will share how we approach our practice, conduct research, and build strategies and publish our findings here, in our Latest section. It’s our hope that together we can learn to collectively design futures we can be proud of.
As well as a clearer proposition, we have also have a new look and feel. This includes a new logo, and typeface designed by Simon Whybray; and a new website created by Jase Coop. Click here [add link] to see the bits of the rebrand we're most excited about and the thinking behind each of them.
We will continue our much-loved substack next week, with a new name – the akin’s Substack (because the Quaranzine can't live on forever). It will appear in your inboxes every two weeks with our musings about the utopias being built today, and people and projects that are important to know about.
Until next week with semi-normal programming,
TA x
Reintroducing – the akin
Hi! Allow us to reintroduce the akin. Over the last 4 months we've thought long and hard about our approach to work and the brand we’re building. Scroll down to see the elements we're most excited about and the thinking behind each of them. But first, some context:
The Akin: 2017 – 2021
The akin is a strategy and insights studio that was started 4 years ago (today!) to change the way agency models were run. We built an operating model around radical transparency between the client // the agency // and freelancers. In practice this new operating model looked like:
- a new procurement approach with clients: frustrated by big agencies who pitched for work that they didn't have the staff for, we successfully lobbied our clients to implement transparency measures into their procurement process so that small agencies could fairly compete with the big ones.
- a new payment model for freelancers: the burden of payment shouldn't rest on the shoulders of our most vulnerable workers so we ensure: fair day rates at each seniority level; payment within 30 days on invoice no matter what; upfront payment of any hard costs within 7 days of kick-off.
the akin's next chapter
Over the next 4 years, we want to apply this radical transparency to our work – systemic changemaking. We recognise the role of business in this fight for change so we help businesses examine and exploit their business sphere of influence to meet business goals and their responsibilities as critical decision-makers in our global society.
Specifically, we're aligning our work with teams who want to build the same futures we do – futures that are intersectionally feminist; ecologically regenerative; and anti-racist.
Don't worry, we're still the strategy and insights studio you know and love – just with a bit more clarity. To hold ourselves to account, we've committed to be more transparent about how we approach our practice, and our business so that we can together learn how to collectively design futures we can be proud of.
In addition to the clearer proposition, we have also have a new look and feel! This includes a new logo, and typeface designed by Simon Whybray; and a new website created by Jase Coop. Below we highlight the elements we're most excited about and the thinking behind each of them.
our logo
Designed by Simon Whybray
Our old logo was meant to be a temporary placeholder. Four years later, we’re happy to introduce our new logo inspired by the structural architecture of the Pompidou Centre.
In support radical transparency, we wanted the logo to showcase the inner workings of our practice – all the bits hidden behind closed doors, we want to air them in the light. This logo uses elements in support of one another – the T within the A – to create a strong stand-alone icon.
our wordmark
Designed by Simon Whybray
With our old wordmark, people would pronounce our name as “the AY-kin”, instead of “the uh-KIN” like we intended (like the phrase “akin to…”). This new wordmark brings us closer to our original intent, plus, it’s pretty and sits in nice contrast to our utilitarian logo.
our typeface
Designed by Simon Whybray
Our wordmark comes with a custom typeface that puts the fun in functionality. Bonus: we can type our new logo directly from the keyboard ;)
our website
Designed by Jase Coop
Similar to the old logo, our last website was thrown up four years ago with the help of our dear friend Ali Issac. While there were parts of the old site we loved (like the ‘soft’ entry into the akin world on our homepage), we knew the website wasn’t working as hard as it could. These are the elements of the new site we’re especially proud of:
Audio support
For when you'd rather hear someone say it outloud.
We recognise that our work can be complex, and as people who have reading difficulties, we know that written documents can add yet another barrier to shared understanding. So we’ve added sound clips to each of our main pages so that you can read through the site in your preferred style. Let us know what you think! It’s an experiment so your feedback is very welcome.
Added context
Culture is always changing and so is language. We find ourselves learning or relearning key words and phrases all the time. We wanted to be explicit about what we mean when we use certain words and phrases so we’ve added tooltips like this one shown here so that we minimise miscommunications, especially around socially sensitive topics.
