Ideally Co-Founder and CEO James Donald
There used to be a tradeoff in agency life. You could move fast, or you could move with evidence. You couldn’t really do both.
The brief lands Friday. The pitch is Tuesday. The category truth your planner is leaning on is six months old. The research budget is already spoken for. So you make a call on instinct, hold your breath, and hope the room agrees.
That tradeoff is starting to break.
We’re seeing a shift across the industry. Agencies are no longer treating research as something that happens upstream of creative, on a separate timeline, run by a separate team. They’re treating it like a creative tool. Something you can pick up mid-brief, pressure-test a hunch with, and put down again the same day. And increasingly, something that earns the agency authority in its own right.
For VML, embedding Ideally into its workflow has turned insight into a strategic growth engine, fuelling continued success in government pitching. The team has turned a 3 month research process into something that fits inside a five-day pitch window.
“Pitch timelines keep shrinking. We’re being asked to turn things around in five business days. Ideally helps us accelerate through that, and cut straight to the interesting parts of the data,” VML Head of Strategy Andrew Kolb said. “Speed of access to insight is a super important part of what we do.”
For Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier, Ideally has helped the agency get closer to consumers through the planning and creative testing process.
“I’ve always thought a strong insights-driven brand should have a bunch of consumers in a cage in a cellar underneath HQ, where people could wander down and ask their opinion on any ideas they’re developing. Ethics, morals, legals and logistics have prevented this from happening. Ideally is the next best thing,” Ferrier said.
Clemenger BBDO is using research to lead the conversation rather than support it. Instead of letting insights sit in pitch decks, they’re shaping them into reports, media stories, conference talks and distinctive points of view.
Fast Feels, the agency’s ongoing series, shows how research can become a living platform.
Capturing real-time consumer reactions to cultural moments from the Tesla backlash to election day to surprise interest rate changes, Fast Feels turns quick-turnaround insight into sharp public commentary. Clemenger responds to what’s happening in the market with evidence, not just opinion, and it’s become a recognisable way for the agency to share its thinking consistently.
They take the same approach with client partners, tracking major behavioural shifts or brand impacts to provide evidence-based tactics, real-time.
“Emotion and evidence always trumps opinion. Ideally has helped us bring our belief around customer-centred cultural insight to feeds and our client partners’ attention, fast,” said Matt Pearce, Clemenger BBDO.
The pattern is the same across all three: agencies turning research from a stage gate into a megaphone. Faster decisions on the inside. Sharper authority on the outside.
Speed to evidence isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what separates the agencies leading the conversation from the ones catching up to it.
The good news? As the official insights partner of the 2026 Effie Australia Awards, we’re giving entrants and paper authors complimentary research credits to back their work. Drop in a hypothesis. Get a nationally representative read, overnight. The output is submission-ready data. Explore the Ideally platform now.
To claim your credits, email effies@goideally.com.
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