Jon Parsons

Jon ParsonsJon ParsonsJon Parsons

Jon Parsons

Jon ParsonsJon ParsonsJon Parsons
  • Home
  • About
  • Selected Work
  • Resume
  • Publications
  • Audience Insights
  • Contact
  • More
    • Home
    • About
    • Selected Work
    • Resume
    • Publications
    • Audience Insights
    • Contact
  • Home
  • About
  • Selected Work
  • Resume
  • Publications
  • Audience Insights
  • Contact

Audience Insights

I help B2C companies gain clarity on their audience through academic-quality research.


Before you commit your marketing budget to another campaign you're not sure will land, confirm your audience's real motivations.

book a discovery call

The Four Big Mistakes

Not asking, "How do you know?"

If you're launching a campaign or investing in advertising, you need to understand what actually motivates the people you're trying to reach. Ask youself, or ask your marketing leader, "How do you know?"

Confusing data with insight

Many organizations are drowning in dashboards, metrics, and data. It's important to have hard data, but data will never tell you "the why" behind decisions or experiences. To get at the motivations, you need a deeper research approach.

Believing the focus group

Traditional audience research gets caught in the "say-do gap." When people participate in focus groups and surveys, they tell researchers what they think they want to hear. What people say doesn't always explain what they actually do, or why they do it.

Acting on belief alone

Without understanding the motivations, sentiments, and deeper psychology of customer behaviour, marketing and sales programs are at best a process of trial and error and at worst a shot in the dark. It is better to know than to believe.

who I work with

B2C organizations

Significant audience decision

Significant audience decision

You have customers, clients, prospects, or an audience you need to understand in a deep way. I don't typically work in B2B.

Significant audience decision

Significant audience decision

Significant audience decision

Your customers are making a significant decision that has psychological depth, tension, or underlying motivation.

Findings lead to action

Significant audience decision

Findings lead to action

You are looking to do something with the research, such as in your marketing, advertising, or sales approach.

Openness to discovery

Established audience base

Findings lead to action

You recognize there is a gap between what you believe and what you know about your audience.

Established audience base

Established audience base

Established audience base

You have a baseline audience volume so understanding their behaviour is a meaningful business asset.

Already doing marketing

Established audience base

Established audience base

In most cases, you will already have a functioning marketing program and want to make it more effective.

About me

PhD background

That's me in the picture, wearing the silly hat and outfit. I was receiving my PhD in literature from Memorial University. I did research in phenomenology and discourse analysis, and that's how I approach my current research projects in audience insights.


Phenomenology is a terrible name for a marketing research method. But it is an incredible method for uncovering the deeper meanings, sentiments, and emotions that drive decisions. Phenomenology accesses "pre-reflective" lived experience. For example, we experience a brand, product, or offering and have already formed much of the meaning before we engage our thinking mind. We experience something before we reflect upon it.

Marketing and communications professional

After I finished my PhD, I started working in marketing and communications. First, I worked with private and public organizations to develop CSR programs and the accompanying marketing. Later, I went into marketing and communications in the post-secondary sector. My last post was as a director of strategic communications at a large Canadian research university.


I'm a little embarrased to say, but in many of the organizations I worked with we didn't have a clear understanding of our target audiences. Often we had good data on our customers, prospects, or clients, such as demographic information or digital metrics. But the big gap was always in the deeper motivations driving customer decisions. It was through my work in marketing and communications that I came to see the importance of audience insights, and why I'm doing this work now.

Use Cases

Gain clarity

Optimize marketing spend

Optimize marketing spend

You know what motivates your customers to act, so you don't have to rely on mistaken assumptions.

Optimize marketing spend

Optimize marketing spend

Optimize marketing spend

Make sure every dollar you spend on marketing and advertising is as effective as possible.

Open new markets

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage

Discover how a new market segment thinks and makes decisions, so your marketing actually speaks to them.

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage

Access unique insights and market intelligence that give you an edge over the competition.

Ready to take the next step?

book a discovery call

Audience Insight Project Overview

There is no one-size-fits-all audience insights project. Every client I work with has a slightly different question they are trying to answer, and so in each case we need a unique research design. Below is a template that tends to guide the design and timelines in some projects.

Phase 1: Scoping study (1 week)

This initial phase involves background research on the general audience experience identified with the client. I source all available existing research relevant to the topic, identify what is most useful, and prepare a report with the key findings. Then, in consultation with the client, we refine the question that will drive the next stage of the project.

Phase 2: Insights discovery (2 or 3 weeks)

In Phase 2, I will typically run in-depth interviews with research participants, and then do a phenomenological analysis to map the experience under study. I also include in the analysis any insights pulled forward from Phase 1, any cultural references that intersect with the project, as well as any influential ads and campaigns. I produce a report on the findings as well as providing all the primary materials.

Phase 3: Positioning and messaging (1 week)

I don't just leave you to figure out what to do with the findings on your own. I help translate the insights into core messaging, brand positioning, and customer personas. Because I have a professional background in marketing and communications, I know how to make the insights actionalbe and can work with your team directly.

Phase 4: Activation (ongoing)

Once the marketing program or ads are in the field, I help monitor effectiveness and make any further refinements. When we work together it's a relationship, and I am always available to support you.

Case Studies

The following cases are offered as illustrative examples based on previous projects or background research in particular sectors. They are not a limit on the kinds of projects I work on.

Context: A large hospital foundation is launching a new campaign, specifically to target the broader public in its annual appeal.

Question: How do regular people decide to give to healthcare organizations?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews, uncovering the motivations and hesitancy for regular people to give money to healthcare.

Outcome: Improved messaging and ad effectiveness, significantly increasing annual giving.

Context: A provincial tourism board is seeking to cut through the marketing noise to reach their target audience.

Question: How do people decide on a tourism destination?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to investigate the psychological drivers for people to choose a tourism destination.

Outcome: Improved messaging and brand alignment to accentuate the underlying motivations and sentiments behind tourism destination decisions.

Context: An aesthetic medspa is creating a new service offering and attempting to open up a new market.

Question: How do people in this new demographic approach aesthetic treatments?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to understand the lived experience of deciding to get an initial aesthetic treatment for this demographic.

Outcome: Created messaging that spoke to the underlying tensions and improved prospect conversion.

Context: A jewelry retailer is expanding its offering of lab-grown diamonds.

Question: How do customers perceive lab-grown diamonds, both initially and over time?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to understand the hidden dynamics of purchasing lab-grown diamonds.

Outcome: Improved messaging, ads, and sales approach that accounts for the social and emotional undercurrents.

Context: A large, research-intensive university attempting to connect with prospective international students in a saturated market.

Question: What are the sentiments and decision drivers that motivate prospective international students to choose one university over another?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to uncover the lived experience of choice of an international student.

Outcome: Improved messaging and recruitment efforts that more effectively target the underlying motivations.

Context: An insurance broker wants to better connect with a new generation of prospective clients, who may not have the same motivations as an older generation of clients.

Question: What motivates this younger generation to see insurance as a worthwhile investment?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to better understand the younger generation's perception of insurance.

Outcome: Improved messaging and alignment with the desires and tensions of this generation towards insurance.

Context: A large hotel brand is creating a new service and accommodation tier and wants to understand the luxury audience they are targeting. 

Question: How do luxury customers expect to be treated in a hospitality setting?

Work: Design and execute a research project with 1-1 interviews to understand luxury purchases in the hospitality sector.

Outcome: Improved messaging and satisfied guests, leading to higher revenues and repeat bookings.

Context: An NGO wants to reach a broader audience and get its message out in a way that will land.

Question: How does the public perceive this NGO and its messaging?

Work: Design and execute a research project involving 1-1 interviews to get at the deeper meaning of this NGO to public audiences.

Outcome: Improved messaging and public advocacy strategy, leading to greater buy-in from public audiences.

Frequently Asked Questions

Traditional qualitative research focuses on opinions, preferences, and rationales. It delivers what people say they do. My phenomenological approach focuses on lived experience, embodied habits, and pre-reflective choices. It delivers the underlying structures of how people actually experience it.


When market research companies offer “in-depth interviews,” they are usually just long, semi-structured Q&As bound by a client’s preconceived framework. They ask people why they buy something, get rationalized post-hoc explanations, and call it a day.


By contrast, coming from a PhD-level phenomenological background means I know how to suspend assumptions, explore the pre-reflective lived experience, and map the deeper meaning of how people interact with products, brands, and environments.

That's actually quite common. I'm not looking to replace your agency. We help organizations understand what their customers actually value, so your agency can build campaigns on a stronger strategic foundation.


If an audience insights discovery helps make your marketing investment 20% more effective, it's one of the highest-return investments you can make.

No. It’s true that AI tools now offer fast $10 qualitative summaries. And lots of marketers are already using these AI tools. But marketers frequently confuse surface-level thematic coding with actual human insight.


The future of market research belongs to a bipolar model:


The Automated Operating Layer: AI will handle 80% of routine interviews, survey synthesis, and rapid feedback loops. These produce surface-level analysis.


The Human Authenticity and Depth Layer: As basic qualitative research becomes automated, the premium value shifts entirely to deep, contextual, human science inquiry, such as phenomenology. This produces real audience insights.

Great! I love to work with internal marketing teams, and I can provide them with significant insights to use in ongoing marketing programs. Internal teams excel at product metrics and operational data, but they struggle to uncover unconscious buyer motivations due to internal bias and lack of specialized research design.


Where I supplement internal teams is in uncovering the hidden 'say-do' gap. When customers talk to your internal team, they unconsciously filter their feedback to protect the relationship or sound rational. I use specialized phenomenological frameworks to uncover the unstated psychological drivers they don't tell your team.

Let's connect

book a discovery call

Copyright © 2026 Jon Parsons - All Rights Reserved.