You received something a little different in the mail - an invitation.
Your curiosity will be rewarded.
Your data tells you what happened. We tell you why it mattered.
Olson Zaltman is The Meaning Company. We help leadership teams get underneath the metrics, to the emotions and unconscious drivers that are actually moving people.
We Go Where the Data Can't.
How can peanut butter make a grown man cry?
Olson Zaltman was founded on a simple but radical idea: that the most important things people feel about a brand are the things they've never said out loud.
Our methodology, ZMET® (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique), developed at Harvard, uses visual and metaphorical thinking to surface the unconscious mental models that drive real behavior.
It changes how leadership teams think about their customers, their category, and their next move.
YOUR FREE ZMET®AWAITS:
Most firms will sell you a methodology. We'd rather show you what it finds.
A Free ZMET session is a real application of our approach, applied to a question your team is actually sitting with. In roughly 20 minutes, you'll experience firsthand how meaning-based research surfaces things that conventional methods miss.
No pitch. No obligation. Just a different kind of conversation.
Experience how we bring actionable insight to your trickiest questions.
The Meaning Gap
We are drowning in data, yet starving for meaning.
And yet the hardest questions still don't have answers. Because the answers aren't in your data.
They're in the meaning your customers attach to everything before they can articulate it. That meaning lives below the surface. It drives everything. And most research never reaches it.
TRADITIONAL MARKET RESEARCH LACKS DECISION-MAKING DEPTH
Standard surveys, focus groups, and behavioral data capture what people are willing and able to say.
But 95% of human decision-making happens unconsciously.
That's not a data problem.
That's a meaning problem.
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“I have worked with OZ for many years. Their results inspired commercial program campaigns and challenged our thinking around brand perception through the lens of metaphors. I highly recommend the talent at OZ for their consultancy expertise as well as their ability to reveal what truly lies beneath.”
Cerita Bethea, Director of Behavioral Science, The Coca-Cola Company
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“ZMET is a research methodology that we continue to turn to over and over again. It has helped us thoroughly understand our brands and the people that appreciate them at a deeper level. The insights we gathered with the help of Olson Zaltman continue to live on and influence our most strategic decisions.”
Julie Hertel, fmr Associate Insights Manager, Molson Coors
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“Olson Zaltman’s work for us uncovered deep metaphors, emotions and images that continue to provide unending inspiration to our internal team and agency partners. What makes Olson Zaltman’s work so valuable - especially for creative work - is the deep emotions they are able to uncover which provides particularly rich fodder for agency briefings.”
Laura Engstrom, Global Consumer Insights Manager, General Mills
Clients who've trusted us with their hardest questions:
