We map what you say, what you sell and what you measure — and everything anyone else has already published on it. None of it tidy, none of it connected. Two maps.
| Brand Map | What is yours, and what could prove it |
|---|---|
| Field Map | What is already told |
Nothing is recommended until both exist — and you see them before you are asked for anything.
Claims you keep making, a line from the sales deck, data nobody has opened, a competitor's report, a half-formed idea from a planning meeting. We also work through everything you have published and everything your competitors have, which is why nothing needs to be connected to start.
What your company already says, sells, believes and might be able to measure: public pages and posts, product language, sales claims, customer segments, internal data you may hold, and the beliefs and objections you repeat.
Asked a second time, the same record answers a different question — where the numbers could come from, and what they would cost to get: internal systems, customer or product records, survey and interview routes, public datasets — and the routes that are too weak or too expensive.
What we ask you to do: confirm what is real, correct what is wrong, and add what we cannot see from outside.
What anyone has already published on a subject — not only your competitors. A university, a nonprofit or a journalist claims ground exactly as a competitor does: published studies, repeated narratives, common statistics, and the claims already owned by someone. Built from what has been published — enough to show a subject is thin, or unstated. Never that it is absent.
What is happening outside your category feeds the same map: new regulation and the deadlines it creates, new technology, incidents. That is the half with a clock.
What we ask you to do: tell us where the field is more nuanced than the public record suggests.
Why two, and not one. Use only the Brand Map and you get topics you already talk about. Use only the Field Map and you get gaps that may not be yours. The value is in the overlap: something yours, unstated enough to matter, and provable.
The overlap decides what is worth proving. The clock decides what just became worth proving.
The maps are drafts addressed to you, not verdicts about you. The rows we get wrong are the fastest way we learn what you actually are.
Every idea has to answer the same two things: what would settle it, and why would it be yours? An idea with no answer to the second is not an idea, it is a topic.
Almost every idea is plausible on its own, so they are compared on the same three things: could somebody else publish it tomorrow, can the data be reached, and does it still work if the number surprises you.
Every idea is kept with its reason and ranked on value and confidence, but you decide which one becomes a brief. The testing happens before you see any of it — on one recent shortlist two ideas broke the first time we tried them. A first idea being wrong is not a failure of the process. It is how the process finds the right one.
One page, and this is the whole of it. The testing happens without you. The committing never does.
Narrow enough that there is one right answer.
We run it before you get it — better an hour here than three weeks in public.
A story whichever way the number falls — or flagged as a gamble.
Five decisions, the same three answers every time. Nothing moves to the next row unless you say so.
Every answer is yes, no, or tell me more — and every “no” is kept with your reason, which is what makes the next board better.
The trail above is part-way through: step 03 came back for a change, which is the ordinary case, not the exception.
One question, answered, with the evidence behind it. That is one page — and it is the part that keeps working after the page is published.
What we will not promise. A number of links, a ranking, or a volume of coverage. Anyone offering you those is either guessing, or counting something that does not require anyone to have read the work. Every row above is something the work makes possible — none of them is a promise about what other people will do.
We watch your category, your competitors, and what is being said about you. Most of what we find dies, and you see that too.
Nothing here becomes a brief on its own. It enters as raw material and is tested like everything else — or it does not run at all.
Something is always at some stage. One idea is a pairing worth looking at, another has an angle but no source yet, another has a verified source and is waiting on a first real number. You answer yes, no or tell me more at each step, and there are always several in flight.
Underneath that, three things run whether or not you are looking. Your category moves, and a question that was open last quarter closes. You create new raw material yourself every time you take a position with nothing behind it. And every idea you turn down, with a reason attached, narrows what comes next.
The watching is continuous — researching your market the week something happens costs nothing, and finding out late is the only expensive option. Hearing from us is not continuous, because a feed of everything we looked at is noise. Two things reach you the same day: something that threatens a brief you are already paying for, and an event with a deadline attached. Everything else arrives on a regular note, paced to how quickly your market publishes.
Bring an idea, unused data, or neither. We use the same records either way.
You can, and for plenty of this you should. But ask a model what nobody has covered in your field and it will confidently make some up — something being missing from what it read is not the same as it being missing from the world. “Nobody in your category has said this” is a claim you can only make after going and checking, and most of what this does is the checking.
Honest limit: do it once, carefully, and you will get something decent. The difference is doing it repeatedly, grounded, and checked.The opposite, and it is the reason the watchlist shows you the kills. "They published X, here is our X" puts you permanently a week behind, which is the position we exist to get you out of. An event can tell us when something is worth measuring and what the subject is — the claim still has to come from your own records, and it goes through the same testing as an idea nobody prompted.
Honest limit: a deadline is the one thing that genuinely will not wait, and we will say so when the window is the story.The rest of what people ask — what actually arrives, who does the work, whether your legal team will stop it — is answered on the FAQ →
Tell us who you are and we will research what you have published. If there is a story in there worth proving, you get the brief.
Every brief is built for one company, so places are limited. We reply within a week.