Meet our Partners

Our experience has taught us how to capture the most valuable and actionable insights and data. As a result, we have developed partnerships with two nationally recognized research firms and an award-winning advertising agency. SimpsonScarborough, the definitive leader in higher education market research, will provide clients with customized quantitative and qualitative studies. In addition, with over 20 years of experience, SimpsonScarborough also provides full service branding from research, to strategy to creative execution.  Feedback specializes in ethnographic research via online monitoring, observation and analysis and will provide clients with actionable, target-audience insights. Our third partner is Anstey Hodge, a full-service and often lauded advertising agency with experience in the higher ed sector. Anstey Hodge will provide design services and digital/social media strategy and execution.  

For over 10 years, SimpsonScarborough has designed customized research methodologies to gauge perceptions and attitudes of the people who matter most to colleges and universities: prospective students, alumni, donors, influencers, faculty, staff and students. They explore alumni engagement, drivers and motivators for giving, awareness and brand, and even demand for new academic programs.

For each project, SimpsonScarborough customizes a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore each client's unique institutional challenges,

Once they've gathered the data, they group, analyze and interpret the findings to discover new insights about clients’ operations and brands. 

Located in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, SimpsonScarborough has partnered with over 250 colleges, universities, associations and councils of higher education. They understand the nuances of working with faculty and boards, the preferences of students and parents, and relationships with guidance counselors, staff and alumni. 

Feedback is a leading digital and social media firm specializing in ethnographic research, strategy development and innovative digital communications. Feedback was founded to support leading brands, higher education and healthcare organizations, creative agencies and marketing organizations that needed additional firepower in the research, strategy and digital implementation space. 

Feedback’s special brand of market research has helped colleges and universities, development departments, alumni associations, parent councils, and more for over a decade by providing a comprehensive look at how audiences speak to peers, make education decisions, and compare institutions. 

While surveys and focus groups showcase how your many audiences (from the prospective student to the friend of the college) speak when prompted, our digital ethnographic approach using actual behaviorists to analyze how discreet audiences discuss, ask, respond, interact, and simply behave in all corners of the internet helps build a more complete picture. This work explores all online channels, including discreet college-choice message boards of local geographic forums. Studies can also combine with existing and future research by helping to ask better questions in surveys and focus groups while challenging or validating internal assumptions. 

Feedback's research has been used to uncover new opportunities and audiences, hone messaging, improve targeting, showcase the interactions of audiences, and inform internal efforts (including enriching the work of other market researchers). 

Applications of our research include:

· Exploring how audiences make decisions, including who they listen to, who asks questions, who answers, and what does the lurker see?

· Developing or validating personas

· Providing deeper understanding how demographic, geographic, and condition-specific topics and channels interact and impact opportunities

· Identifying and analyzing how a brand or program is spoken of

· Competitor profiles and brand sentiment

· Channel and influencer (real, demonstrable influence) identification

· Examining receptivity of potential strategies, messages, and tactics 

· Understanding whole-community behavior and best practices

· Crisis and reputation management its founding in September 2009, the firm has grown from three founders into a leading provider of effective solutions to leading brands and their agencies in more than 50 countries.

Based in Roanoke, Virginia, Anstey Hodge was founded in 2003. Their print and interactive work has received local, regional, and national accolades from the American Advertising Federation, The Public Relations Society of America, the International Academy of Visual Arts, and the American Association of Museums. But the accolades they are most proud of are from their clients and the trust they place in Anstey Hodge to generate calls, clicks, sales, tweets, and results for over a decade. 

Colleges and universities inspire students, alumni and donors every day. Our inspiration is in helping them tell the story. From view books to alumni magazines to extensive admissions recruitment and brand campaigns, Anstey Hodge has learned a few things about higher education marketing. And with diverse audiences, they know how to speak the language and get results. The seasoned professionals on their team and partner vendors have years of experience in higher education marketing and communications. They've helped build enrollment, grow graduate programs, and appeal to alumni and donors alike. They know the challenges and have exceeded expectations, including regional accolades from CASE, the American Advertising Federation, and the Public Relations Society of America. Staying up to date on the industry and new methods, Anstey Hodge's higher education work is “one for the books.”