MindMarket

A brand strategy consultancy asked MindMarket to test a major rebrand for one of the world’s largest asset managers with the actual decision-makers who hire asset managers: CIOs, Heads of Fixed Income at pension funds and insurers, top-tier consultants, fund selectors and private-bank gatekeepers across seven markets (USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan). These audiences are highly protected (assistants, compliance, booked calendars) and the required profile filters produced an incidence below 2%. The stake: the client needed a definitive answer that the rebrand would not block mandates and needed market-by-market, audience-specific guidance to decide whether and how to launch.

A celebrated London restaurant group ran two concepts under one brand: a flagship dining room with real cultural cachet and a smaller, more intimate bar. Both were thriving in London and the group was planning to open in several new UK cities. The data could not answer the questions that mattered: do guests see the two concepts as one brand or as two destinations, what drives the choice of the bar over the restaurant on a Friday night, and would the equity built in London travel to cities where neither concept existed? The group needed to hear it from guests in the moment, while the experience was still fresh.

A global consulting firm working with Ajinomoto, Japan's leading seasoning manufacturer, needed to know whether a flagship MSG seasoning could find a place in Egyptian kitchens, a market with limited official data, a culinary culture built on generations of family recipes and strong loyalty to local brands. Desk research and surveys could not show how Egyptian households and professional chefs use seasonings, what drives their preferences, or whether there was real appetite for an international product. The decision at stake was the market entry itself: positioning, channels, pricing and timing.