Faster Horses

Faster Horses is a research, insights & strategy consultancy in Vancouver, BC.

We specialize in mixed-methods research and foresight built from respondents who have higher emotional proximity to the topic at hand, and have more to offer, as a result.

We believe that meaningful differentiation is built at the edges.Most people are fashion-followers, not trend-setters. Research about what the average person thinks has a role to play, but it also has its limits. The insights that provide the building blocks for meaningful differentiation rarely come from the top of the bell curve. They come from the edges — in attitudes and behaviours that the average person can't yet express. When research is built from authentic characters with compelling stories, alignment comes more naturally, and so does the confidence to act.

Our approach is ideally suited for brand strategy or innovation projects, where insights need to translate into action today, and endure well into the future.

— Typical projects involve qualitative research built on active recruitment, where we pursue specific individuals whose stories and relationship to a topic make them exactly right for what you're looking to uncover. Filmed interviews, in-home and cultural ethnography, netnography, focus groups. Most projects have a full slate within two weeks, and you will never find professional respondents in our work.

— This is often followed by quantitative research to validate what we find in qual. We use survey-based approaches like Conjoint or MaxDiff, as well as advanced analysis to translate findings into materials they use for retailer sell-in, internal business cases, or strategies to future-proof their business.

Our latest report on young people & money: https://www.fasterhorses.ca/young-people-money-report

Clients include lululemon and lg2. Our team has also had a hand in work that shaped Colgate-Palmolive, Decathlon, Kraft Heinz, Olymel, PayPal, PepsiCo and Suntory.