Moving business ideas forward
Progress isn’t perfection, but a step in the right direction
Ideas drive progress. Too often, the good ones get stuck, lost in noise, drowned by distractions.
We’re here to change that. To give the great ideas the momentum they need to thrive.
We are Critical Truth
Where data science, social science, and marketing science converge.
We blend innovative research methods with advanced analytics to bring clarity, objectivity, and direction to every stage of your commercial journey.
We cut through the noise and ensure the best ideas rise to the top.
We’re for people who want more than just a seat at the table.
People who crave progress over process. Momentum over meetings.
From natural language processing to custom software solutions, we bring the expertise to help great ideas see the light of day.
We focus on what matters; helping you promote good ideas and quickly demote the ones that are… how should we say… not so good.
If that sounds like your kind of partnership, let’s chat.
How we work
Research
Great ideas die if they can’t be defended, and defense comes from specificity. We reject generic insights and biased methods.
With proprietary innovations in natural language processing, we simplify vast, complex cultural data into actionable insights.
Our first step goes deeper than most competitors’ final. We map categories, forecast growth areas, and define likely customer segments before even thinking about paying for focus groups or surveys.
Experiments
Ideas only move forward if their economic potential is undeniable.
People struggle to articulate what they want, so we don’t waste time or money pretending that they can. Instead, we use advanced research methods to uncover what they want and why. Our focus is on testing; will they pay for it, how much, and how many are willing and able to do so?
This is why we distinguish between research and experiments. We’re not asking naive questions; we’re testing hypotheses and turning data into decisions.
Analytics
Defending an idea within a business requires mastery of its data.
Too often, this is hindered by the cost of maintaining in-house expertise or overpriced, one-size-fits-none SaaS solutions. These systems overpromise, underdeliver, and leave teams spinning their wheels.
We provide flexible, tailored solutions that help you maximise the value of your data, without the overheads. Whether it’s quick questions, big questions, or complex ones, we will dig into your data and find the answers. No pomp. No puffery.
Critical Truth Reports
Recent client work
Category and cultural trends for social media marketing
Hootsuite is world-leading social media analytics and management platform. They pride themselves on understanding the forces influencing social media marketing. To help this, we’re creating a picture of the trends influencing categories they service, with a particular focus on financial services, government, healthcare, and education. To enable this, Critical Truth have handled all aspects of delivering surveys and experiments with both marketers and consumers, analysing industry media, and analysing posts published through the Hootsuite platform.
“Working with Critical Truth has been an eye opening experience. We're collaborating on an industry report with them and the way they are thinking about the market, the data - has us all thinking about the potential of this report differently. They are truly creative with their analysis and for so long I thought that was an oxymoron. The fact that they’re nimble and more collaborative than other partners is icing on the cake!”
Billy Jones, VP Marketing, Hootsuite
Cultural trends for sports events
The Tourism Australia strategy and insights team helps sports bodies gain government support for hosting key world tournaments. Critical Truth is helping them understand the historical impacts of major events globally and of the recent Women’s FIFA World Cup, with regards to outside perceptions of Australia as a tourist destination.
“Tourism Australia’s Major Events strategy is to turn moments of natural interest in our country as a sporting location towards Australia as a destination brand. It would be easier to measure ticket sales but that’s just not what we do. Critical Truth have helped us bring together a wide range of data sets to help prove the value of events on destination perceptions and then on visitation. This is a groundbreaking piece of analysis in this space with lots of interest from TA’s myriad partners who also work in this space. What’s more they’re super smart, highly collaborative, and really nice to work with”
Rob Dougan, Executive GM, Research and Strategy
Segmentation build to support loyalty approaches
Kitchen Warehouse is a leading kitchenware retailer for those who enjoy cooking. To help them tackle their goal of creating greater customer loyalty, we’re providing a forward-looking view of category trends, conducting exploratory data analysis of Kitchen Warehouse customer and transaction data, and survey-based experiments with known customers to build their segmentation solution and improve commercial measures.
About us
Across his experience as a data scientist and marketing strategist, Mark Razzell became frustrated that market research was not taking advantage of the latest data-driven tools, methods, and resources. In 2017 he became inspired to set about developing new approaches that would quickly and accurately deliver category and cultural insights to help with market orientation.
Jonathan O’Hara’s complementary skill set supercharged this development. Together, they dove deep into Natural Language Processing; a fast-moving research area dedicated to deriving insights from unstructured data. These advances are the backbone of the current revolution in AI tools, creating amazing opportunities to conduct rapid quantitative and qualitative assessments of categories and culture.
Mark Razzell
Mark has 13 years experience in marketing strategy and data science. He studied evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology in undergrad and postgrad, and worked in veterinary science before making the leap to the commercial world via the pharmaceutical industry.
Once in the world of consumer marketing, Mark worked in strategy roles and quickly discovered that his quantitative skill set could be leveraged to develop plans that would ensure commercial success.
Jonathan O’Hara
Jonathan is a versatile data scientist and social researcher with a strong skill set in research, data management, and education. He earned his PhD in Social Psychology in 2015 and spent eight years in academia. His research primarily focused on health equity, carried out within Deakin University’s Health Services Improvement Unit and the Royal Children’s Hospital quarterly child health poll.
His career transitioned into delivering research projects for government entities like VicHealth and the National Disability Insurance Agency. Later, he moved into cultural research, supporting marketing strategists and planners at Clemenger Group. In this role, he conducted research spanning retail, banking, automotive, and sports sectors.
Scott Balalas
Scott has joined as Managing Director of Critical Truth, bringing a wealth of experience from leading global advertising agencies. As Managing Partner at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, he managed one of the agency’s largest brand portfolios. He led successful campaigns for brands including VB, Carlton Draught, Great Northern, and Swisse, and secured new business wins with Solo, Schweppes, Cool Ridge, and Carlton Dry. Notably, he spearheaded the launch of Carlton Dry’s “Drylandia” campaign, introducing an eccentric, faraway world to engage a new generation of drinkers.
Prior to this, Scott served as Group Brand Director at 72andSunny New York, overseeing the launch of Goldman Sachs’ first digital consumer platform, Marcus, and managing accounts such as Smirnoff Vodka and BetMGM. He also held key roles at Anomaly New York, leading Super Bowl campaigns for Budweiser, and at BMF Sydney, managing accounts for Commonwealth Bank and XXXX. With a background in Exercise Science and Marketing from Australian Catholic University, Scott combines strategic insight with a passion for creativity, driving impactful results for clients.
Contact us
Got a question about your business or ours? Send us a message and we’ll have a chat.
