About Us - Our Brand Strategy & History

Every company has a unique story that shapes its philosophy.
At Material, ours begins in the science of deep human understanding and
finds its hero in customers, for whom we turn insight into unparalleled experiences.

While the connection between insight and action may seem obvious, it is often missed as a result of signal loss that comes from not understanding your “hero” well enough, from unclear next-best actions, and technology gaps that make it much harder to act on that understanding. At Material, we have seen that deep human understanding creates exponential value when effectively put to work.

In our high-rate-of-change world, companies that recognize customer experience as a growth catalyst must know their customer much better. They must also turn that understanding into action at the pace that customer moves through the world and then continuously learn, adapt and improve as that understanding increases over time. At the core of building durable, high-value relationships is the ability to rapidly apply deep and contextually rich customer insights through a design innovation system that enables experiences with modern technology.

The failure rate of doing this is unbelievably high. Most experiences fail to deliver, let alone delight. Our proprietary science and systems approach is Material’s response to this challenge. We are purpose-built to help our clients create value in the context of evolving and ever-changing customer expectations.

Harnessing the powerful combination of data, human psychology, and culture, shaped and translated through design and technology, we speed engagement and drive growth for the world’s most recognizable brands and innovative companies.

Material believes that businesses grow when they deepen customer relevance.
Brands have relevance when they create desire, stimulate demand and earn loyalty.

And relevance is not new frontier for brands.

Business has long understood that differentiation and relevance are critical vectors for competitive advantage. But relevance has been treated as a monolithic concept. Because of the impact of pervasive technology, the longstanding relevance principle can be and must be decrypted. Material’s [proprietary approach? / governing framework/] discerns big R Relevance from little r relevance – distinguishing how we connect to customers / consumer over the long term through impressions, create expectation and build identity-based bonds.

A reasonable synonym for Big R relevance would be “resonance”.

Little r relevance, on the other hand, is achieved by connecting with consumers in the rich and detailed context of their near-term needs and influences.Put another way, businesses grow faster when they understand not only where their customers are in their lives but also in the context of their journey, as relates to a given product or service.

This is increasingly challenging in a high-rate-of-change world. And getting both right is difficult for businesses. The temptation to focus only on relevance in the moment is a race to the bottom, while the inclination to over emphasize Big brand relevance is a invitation to disruption. For high growth business, customer intimacy that drives their R value through the application of design to both channels to market and product experiences, is a performance imperative. Material combines behavioral science, design and technology to understand, influence and anticipate what matters to customers in the moment, and in their lives.

Customer intimacy = R/r > Growth

Material is a customer-obsessed strategy partner built around a powerful consumer insights and analytics core. We deploy insights as an operating system for driving customer-centered growth.