Our work

Selected outcomes for brands you know. One case study per area, same shape each time: the challenge, what we did, the results.

Case studies

OUTDOOR & PERFORMANCE APPARELGrowth & expansion

A heritage outdoor, ski and performance footwear and apparel brand

Strong brand love, but boxed in. The brand was strongly associated with one or two categories, which capped its permission to grow into apparel and everyday occasions. Leadership had no shared, fact-based picture of where future demand sits, by need and occasion rather than by demographics alone. Brand strengths, white space and consumer perception varied sharply from one country to the next. Without a map of the market, investment risked chasing head-on competition instead of the spaces where the brand could win a disproportionate share.

12k: Consumers surveyed across five European markets, on their last purchase occasion
11: Demand spaces mapped, each sized with its own profile and need set
30+: Functional and emotional needs decoded per occasion

Read the case study →Download

OMNICHANNEL RETAILGrowth & expansion

A leading UK omnichannel retailer in fashion and electricals

Strong on the basics, but no reason to choose. The retailer competed against more than 20 established players across fashion and electricals, two of the most fiercely contested categories in the UK. Broad awareness and solid performance on trust, value and delivery were not enough, because the drivers that actually decide a purchase were being ceded to rivals. Leadership needed an evidence base for three questions: who the most valuable shoppers are, what truly drives their choice, and where to focus to win.

10k+: Shoppers surveyed, anchored on their most recent purchase
11: Demand spaces defined per category, sized, profiled and scored on need
263: Index in the client's strongest space: 13.4% penetration vs a 5.1% market average

Read the case study →Download

RETAILMedia & marketing

A global consumer retailer re-pitching its media account

The retailer had outgrown its incumbent media partner. Performance had plateaued with a technology partner that brought limited strategic thinking and leaned on black-box automated buying, with no path to step-change growth. The in-house paid media team was absorbed by executional admin, leaving no capacity for innovation, learning agendas or meaningful media governance. With no competitive market intelligence, the business was negotiating fees in a vacuum and held no leverage.

9 → 1: Agencies assessed to one confident, defensible choice
8: Weighted evaluation dimensions, scored independently by two senior consultants
100%: NDA completion across the longlist, full competitive tension held

Read the case study →

SPORTS RETAILMedia & marketing

A global sports retailer's performance media pitch

A first structured, competitive RFP for performance media. Without one, the client had no way of knowing whether the incumbent commission rate was competitive, no accountability structure tying agency fees to results, and no leverage on fees, technology costs or growth commitments. Media investment, agency fees and the way performance was measured had never been benchmarked side by side.

£107.5m: Minimum three-year revenue uplift, contractually committed
3x: Spread in commission rates revealed: 2.5% to over 10%, worth £11.25m over three years
50%: Of the annual retainer, £1.275m, placed at risk under a binding malus

Read the case study →

ONLINE RETAILData, AI & content

A leading UK online retailer's content studio, rebuilt

A £6.76m studio cost base that could not scale to meet a structural shift. Content is now made for three audiences at once: the customer who buys, the platform algorithm that decides who sees it, and the AI assistants increasingly answering the question of what to buy. Meta and Google reward volume and variety rather than one hero asset, and on a media budget of £40m to £60m the studio is the largest lever the business holds. The advantage also compounds, because every cycle of better creative teaches the platforms and sharpens the next one. None of it scales by hiring.

£2.0–3.4m: Annualised production efficiency, proven on live briefs
−30 to −70%: Cost per asset, with 2x to 5x more assets produced
3–4 mo: To self-funding, with the capability owned in-house by month six

Read the case study →

LUXURYCustomer, loyalty & CRM

A leading luxury jewellery house

A high-value, relationship-led client base the team could not see or act on in one place. Customer intelligence lived in CSVs and spreadsheets, so knowing what data existed, where the gaps were and which attributes mattered meant digging through files by hand, and some attributes covered only 15 to 50% of customers with no way to see it. Relationship managers and client advisors had no single place to see a customer in full, because value, persona, channel, product history and risk flags sat across separate analyses, spreadsheets and tools. Prospecting meant more than 30 minutes of manual searching per name, and media spend was set without a grounded picture of who the customers are or which channels genuinely reach them.

100+: Customer attributes audited, documented and governed across eight categories
57% / 3 types: Of the client base sits in only three household types, on 1,431 customers profiled
30 min → 1 step: Prospect research, from manual searching to one-step dossiers

Read the case study →

What clients say

Most firms hand over a deck and disappear. REAL stayed through the awkward part, where the plan actually meets the shop floor. They were still in the building when the new range went live, sorting out the snags as they came up rather than leaving us to it.

Operations Director, multi-site fashion retailer

The person running our project had spent twenty years doing this exact work at one of the big firms, and you could tell in every meeting. No junior analyst learning on our budget. We had someone senior who had seen the problem before and knew where the real risk sat.

Managing Director, premium drinks brand

We agreed up front that part of their fee rode on hitting the numbers, so I knew they believed in the plan they were selling me. The cost came in well below what we were quoted elsewhere, and the margin gain had paid for the work twice over by year end.

Finance Director, hospitality group

Every engagement begins with a conversation.

Bring us your challenge, and we will give you an honest assessment and a clear point of view.