Research that
speaks human.
Ask your customers what they really think. Ask Colin captures how real people speak and feel about your business, then turns their words into data you can use, in days, not months.
Are you listening?
Most business decisions get made without the customer in the room. The problem? Organisations often rely on assumptions, gut feel and generic data that never quite paints the whole picture. Customer needs are partially met or, worse, overlooked entirely.
The customer is talked at, not heard
An annual survey isn’t a conversation. Neither is a dashboard. Numbers capture what people did, not the language, sentiment and nuance behind why.
Strategic decisions are based on assumptions
Teams move forward on a sliver of information and a gut feel, then hope their customers respond positively.
By the time insights land, the moment has passed
Traditional research is slow, expensive and often narrow. Company timelines and budgets put proper listening out of reach for most projects.
Effective communication is a two-way street. Ask Colin hands the walkie talkie to your customers and removes the static.
Ask Colin: Your customer, in their words.
Ask Colin is a dynamic research tool that captures video and audio conversations with real people in real time. The raw data is then curated into practical insights, recommendations and strategy for agencies, teams and organisations, delivered in days (not months).
Ask Colin captures genuine conversations with the people you serve, turning what they say, and what they mean, into data you can use.
- Real conversations with real people, in their own words.
- The colour and context of what your customers really think and feel.
- Findings shaped into something your stakeholders and clients can engage with.
- Delivered in days, ready to steer your next decision.
How Ask Colin actually works.
Frame the right questions
We help you define the conversation, map the objectives and pin down the right audience.
Approve the script
You preview the conversation exactly as your audience will experience it, then sign off before anything begins.
Hear from real people
Ask Colin puts open questions to your audience and gives them room to answer in their own words, capturing their language, tone and emotion.
Put the insights to work
You receive the conversations, insights, recommendations and strategy in outputs your stakeholders can watch, hear and engage with.
What you get.
Your customer voice in a format your stakeholders and clients can engage with.
Video and audio of your customers responding directly to you.
Insight summary packs led by your objectives, testing your thinking and informing your strategy.
Recommendations and strategy to apply the findings in a practical way.
Add a curated video reel, purpose-built to bring your customers right into the room with you.
How other businesses use Ask Colin.
Customer experience
research
Understand the real friction in your customer journeys and where to fix them first.
Message
testing
Find out whether you’re speaking your customer’s language before you commit budget and resources.
Audience segment
videos
Curated customer videos bringing your segmentations to life, beyond a slide of demographics.
Campaign
benchmarking
Hear where your audience stands before you launch, then go back and measure what shifted.
Built for teams who pair evidence with expertise.
For creative, PR and communications agencies.
Walk into pitches and presentations with real audience evidence. Ask Colin gives strategists and account management teams credible insight at agency pace, giving clients confidence in the work without the cost or timelines of traditional research.
For enterprise marketing, product and insights teams.
Validate assumptions before big decisions, uncover blind spots and bring stakeholders together around what customers said in their own words. Ask Colin complements your existing research capability rather than replacing it.
How much does Ask Colin cost?
Every project is tailored. These packages anchor where most projects start.
Insight Whiz
Rapid audience validation for campaigns, messaging, concepts and decisions. Raw responses and transcripts.
from $6,000
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Participant screening so you only hear from the people who matter to you
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Conversations designed and built for you, up to 7 minutes each
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Video and audio answers in people’s own words
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A full transcript of every conversation
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Every raw response, yours to keep
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In field within a week, back with you in under 7 days
Insight Expert
Everything in Insight Whiz, plus analysis of every conversation and an insights pack with recommendations purpose-built to fulfil your objectives.
from $8,000
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All features in Insight Whiz plus
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Every conversation watched and analysed, start to finish
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An insights pack written around the objectives you set
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Themes and sentiment mapped across the whole sample
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The exact words your audience uses
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Quotes evidencing every point we make
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A debrief call to walk you through what we heard
Insight Guru
Everything in Insight Expert, plus curated customer videos wrapped into a branded two-minute reel.
from $10,000
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All features in Insight Expert plus
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A two-three minute insight reel, cut from the real conversations
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Your audience on screen and in their own words, ready for the room
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Supplied to drop straight into your decks and internal presentations
Workshop add-on. From $1,500. A facilitated session turning insights into strategy.
Ongoing research retainers are available for teams with regular audience questions.
Twenty years of asking one more question.
Ask Colin is the brainchild of Kathryn Priestly, a skilled researcher who has spent more than 20 years asking the next question. Having worked inside leading agencies then outside, directly consulting with major brands, she regularly identified a common problem: too many organisations were stuck having a one-sided conversation with their customer. The business talked, the customers were never asked, and the research meant to fix it arrived late, blew the budget and ended up in a bottom drawer. Ask Colin uses innovative technology to meet customers where they are, facilitating genuine two-way conversations at the pace modern decisions demand, with an experienced researcher validating every project.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Most projects move from brief to live data in days, not weeks or months. Once the questions and audience are agreed, Ask Colin gets to work quickly. Early signals will be available to you well before a traditional research timeline could confirm a sample. A clear timeframe is outlined at the start so you can plan with confidence.
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Traditional research tends to be slow, expensive and built for researchers rather than the people tasked to act on it. Ask Colin is built the other way around. We capture how your customers genuinely think, feel and talk, then deliver it in a format your team and stakeholders can engage with, including video and audio. You get the human depth of qualitative research without the wait, the price tag or the report nobody reads.
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Every response comes from a real person, not a synthetic profile or a generated summary. Every conversation is with a genuine member of your audience, captured in their own language, tone and emotion. We use technology for the heavy lifting and AI helps us analyse and bring the findings to life. The human voice stays at the centre of the work, the part that makes the insight worth trusting.
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Through trusted research panels, screened to match your customers, so we reach the specific people you need to hear from. If you’re validating a campaign, we find the people it’s aimed at. If you’re testing a product decision, we find the people who would use it. You approve the audience before any conversations begin.
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Insights you’ll use straight away. A clear summary led by your objectives, recommendations and strategy to guide your work, and the raw data, video and audio of real people responding directly to you. If you want the whole story in a shareable format, add a curated two-minute video reel so you take your customers into the presentation with you.
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Each project is scoped individually, and packages start from $6,000. Ask Colin removes much of the overhead of traditional research, so you get genuine qualitative depth at a fraction of what a comparable traditional study costs. Some audiences are harder to reach than others, so we confirm the investment upfront, as well as the timeframe.
