STEER
Big Questions.
Made Manageable.
Senior advisory work. Before you spend a penny on research.
We find the decisions that will move your numbers. What is blocking them. Who owns them. You get a costed path forward, in stages your exec team can approve and act on.
In partnership with Steadman, our AI strategy and transformation practice.
Start the Conversation
Two connected problems
The urgent one
Getting AI into the business
You have been asked what you are doing about it. Honest answer: a list of pilots.
Your teams already use it. With or without a policy.
You want a position you can lead with, not a box ticked.
Work that used to need a data programme first can start sooner with AI.
Delivered with Steadman.
The long game
Getting audience to the heart of strategy
Analytics knows what customers do. Research knows what they say, think and feel. Different departments. Rarely joined up.
Insight feeds operational decisions, but never consolidates into the strategic ones.
Every business area holds a fragment of the customer. Nobody sees the whole.
We start with the decisions, not the data. Which ones move your results, and the fastest route to an answer you can act on.
Both come down to one question. Where will better information, or better capability, change the decisions you make?
Nobody has this cracked. Not your competitors. Not the speakers on the conference stage.
The advantage goes to whoever gets organised first. We build AI and audience strategies that are clear, owned and woven into the way the business already works, so every area pulls in the same direction. The result: an organisation that runs faster, leaner and more joined up.
What you get
Executive listening
Confidential, one-on-one conversations with your leadership.
The priorities
Which decisions will move the dial, and what each one unlocks.
An honest read
Where your data, spend, team and AI position stand, and what is missing.
A path forward
A sequenced plan with owners. Some of it starts this month. Most can wait.
A case for sign-off
The same path, in the language your business uses to approve investment.
A route to delivery
Executed by our team, yours, or both.
How it works
Stage one
Listen
One-on-one with your exec team and the people who serve them.
Stage two
Frame
What we heard, clarified and structured. One page. Your words.
Stage three
Prioritise
The long list becomes a short one. A working session to agree the path, the sequence and the owners.
Stage four
Hand over
A scoped plan. A case ready for sign-off. A named team.
Three ways to work with us
A session
A one-off half day with your exec team.
A deep dive
All four stages, start to finish.
Standing advice
A senior adviser, month by month.
We have done this from the inside
We have consolidated insight so that it serves the exec team and the individual departments at the same time. We have woven AI and insight into the way businesses run day to day, rather than leaving them as projects running alongside.
Who you'll be getting
David Boyle
Founder & Director
20+ years building audience intelligence and strategy capabilities inside many of the world's biggest brands.
Sarah Clerkson
Insight & Strategy Director
20+ years turning audience and customer data into decisions senior teams can act on. Built Channel 4's first integrated insight function.
Questions we get asked
Nobody has this cracked. Why would you?
Anyone offering a finished answer on audience strategy or AI is selling last year's version. What we have is decades of doing this inside large organisations, so we know which approaches have already failed and why.
We already have an insight team. Why would we need this?
Most of our clients do. The problem is rarely a shortage of insight. It is that insight serves day-to-day decisions and never reaches the strategic ones. We build the route between them.
Why pay for this before the research?
Because the research budget gets set before anyone has agreed which decisions the research is for. Money starts to flow without any assurance it is going to the right questions. Steer settles that first, so the rest of the spend lands where it changes something.
Our data is not in good shape. Should we fix that first?
Not necessarily, and that instinct has delayed a lot of good work. Language models have lowered the cost of getting a usable answer out of imperfect data. We can establish what you can decide with what you already hold. Some data work will still be needed, probably less than you think.
We are under pressure to make this quarter. Why take the long view now?
Quarterly tactics often draw down on the customer relationship. Audience understanding is the one view that does not get lost in siloed metrics serving a single business area rather than the health of the company.
How is this different from your other services?
Now+Next, Pulse and Music & Culture answer audience questions with research and data. Steer comes before that. It establishes which questions are worth the budget, and makes sure the answers land somewhere they can be acted on.
Where does Steadman fit?
Steadman is our AI strategy and transformation practice. Operating model, governance, capability and rollout: Steadman leads. Audience understanding and growth: we do. Most executive conversations touch both.
Steer is for you if you have been asked what you are doing about AI and the honest answer is a list of pilots. If your insight reaches every decision except the ones that matter most. Or if you are about to commission research and are not certain it is the right research.
Tell us the decision you are stuck on.
Start with half an hour. No charge, no pitch. You will leave with a set of smaller decisions you can actually make.
Get Unstuck