Communications Research Consultancy

We uncover what your employees and stakeholders really think, so your communications are built on evidence, not assumptions. From surveys to message testing, we turn insight into clear, actionable strategy.

The Importance

Why Evidence Beats Assumption in Communications Strategy

Every communications decision made without research is a bet. Research replaces guesswork with stakeholder voice — revealing what employees actually understand, what messaging resonates and where communication gaps are creating strategic risk.

Corporate Crayon conducts communications research for organisations throughout Australia. Since 2016, the team has delivered employee listening programs, engagement surveys, communications audits and stakeholder research for corporate, government and not-for-profit clients.

About Our Communications Research Services

Our Communications Research Services help organisations develop insight-led strategies grounded in employee, customer, and stakeholder perspectives through audience research, engagement surveys, wellbeing assessments, and sentiment analysis.

Our Research & Analytics Solutions focus on how your organisation listens and adapts. We conduct employee listening programs tracking engagement and culture through pulse surveys, plus communications audits examining channel effectiveness and content performance. We provide message testing to validate campaigns and positioning before launch, building analytics dashboards and optimisation protocols that track performance, demonstrate ROI, and guide improvement.

Who Should Invest in Communications Research Services?

Our communications research consultancy services are ideal for:

CEOs and Executive Teams needing evidence to guide communications strategy, validate initiatives, and understand stakeholder perception during growth or transformation.

Communications and Corporate Affairs Directors seeking data to inform strategy, measure effectiveness, and demonstrate communications impact.

HR and People & Culture Leaders requiring employee listening programs, engagement surveys, wellbeing assessments, and culture diagnostics.

Organisations of all sizes across Australia and worldwide looking to ground communications in stakeholder insight and optimise based on evidence.

Whether you’re testing messages, auditing communications, launching employee listening programs, or building measurement frameworks, our solutions provide the insights that drive strategic decisions.

Key Benefits of Evidence-Led Communications Research

Reduces Strategic Risk: Research validates messaging before launch — preventing costly missteps and ensuring communications resonate with target audiences.
45% higher campaign effectiveness
Improves Employee Engagement: Employee listening programs identify barriers to engagement and guide targeted communications interventions that drive results.
Demonstrates ROI: Analytics frameworks and reporting dashboards connect communications activity directly to business outcomes over time.
Enables Optimisation:Ongoing measurement reveals what is working, what is not and where to adjust strategy for greater impact and efficiency.
3–6 months earlier risk detection

How To Execute Communications Research Strategies Step-by-Step

1. Research & Discovery

Analyse research objectives, stakeholder landscape, and existing data to identify gaps and determine the most actionable methodologies.

2. Strategy & Methodology Development

Design research frameworks, survey instruments, interview protocols, and analytics approaches connecting research questions to business decisions.

3. Data Collection & Execution

Conduct engagement surveys, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, message testing, and communications audits with rigorous research standards.

4. Analysis & Insight Development

Analyse quantitative and qualitative data to identify patterns and translate findings into actionable communication strategy insights.

5. Reporting & Recommendations

Deliver executive-level reports with evidence-based recommendations, dashboards, visualisations, and benchmarking to guide strategic decision-making.

6. Continuous Measurement & Optimisation

Establish ongoing analytics frameworks and performance tracking to measure communications effectiveness and inform continuous improvement.

Why Choose Us for Communications Research?

At Corporate Crayon, we combine expertise in communications research, behavioural science, and strategic advisory to deliver insights that drive business decisions:

Expert-Led Approach

Our consultants bring deep expertise in research design, survey methodology, qualitative analysis, and communications measurement. We deliver evidence-based frameworks grounded in behavioural psychology and proven research practice.

Custom Solutions

We offer tailored research reflecting your strategic questions, stakeholder context, and business priorities. From employee listening programs to message testing and communications audits, every project is designed for your specific needs.

Proven Results

Our research has helped organisations across Australia validate strategies, improve employee engagement, optimise communications, and demonstrate measurable ROI. We deliver actionable insights not just data that inform decisions and drive performance.

Communications Research in Australia — Key Insights

45%

Orgs that test messages before launch achieve 45% higher campaign effectiveness.

3–6mo.

Employee listening programs identify engagement risks 3–6 months earlier than annual surveys.

68%

Of employees say they don’t get enough information about what’s happening in their organisation — Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2024.

What Australian Clients Say About Corporate Crayon

Disrupting all the typical patterns of a corporate off-site with innovative thinking extending into everything they do. All delivered with a balance of sophistication, creativity & authenticity to make innovative change happen in an multi-national.

Corporate Crayon offers a great service with creative ideas and tools to strengthen and enrich the content of the custom-made programs they create. They are flexible and very diligent and an ability to leverage diverse thinking based on their past professional HR experience in Asia.

We engaged Corporate Crayon to help us with a culture transformation project we were undertaking across our business. What I found so refreshing about Corporate Crayon was their ability to balance the strategic objectives of the company while engaging the human side of the workplace through their creative approach, which gives them a unique and special quality.

We recently partnered with Evelyn Jackson and the Corporate Crayon team to ideate and then deliver on our employee conference in March 2021.

With this conference we wanted to achieve two things
1. We wanted to kick start 2021 and bring our team together to reconnect after being apart in 2020.
2. We wanted to launch our global behaviours in a fun and engaging way that made them come to life off the page.

Evelyn was fantastic in helping me realise and unpack what I wanted to achieve from the day, but more importantly she brought a real creative flare on how our goals could come to life.

The Team came up with some great ideas which really play into the concept of making work more fun and playful, and we have had nothing but compliments from our employees on how much they enjoyed the day.

If you’re looking to create something fresh and interactive at your next event, this is definitely the team to partner with.

We engaged Corporate Crayon to assist us with the creation of the OPSM values, back in 2016. It was important to us to work with a team that would create the values through data collected directly from our employees to ensure our Values were genuine. We also wanted our values to be easy to remember, inspiring and creative. Corporate Crayon delivered all of this and more! The OPSM employees absolutely loved the values when we launched them, and I am happy to say the OPSM Values are still lived today.

I’m pleased to highly recommend the team at Corporate Crayon for their exceptional expertise in people and culture related initiatives. I have engaged Evelyn Jackson and her team of talented experts to assist my team with building a refreshed careers website, defining our Values, communicating our Employee Value Proposition, creating internal communications collateral and developing innovative eLearning training modules. All assignments were very well executed and met the project briefs. I have no hesitation in referring Corporate Crayon to other organisations.

Corporate Crayon worked in partnership with our teams to deliver visible culture change through the development and communication of our company values.

The team used an insights-based approach, with a keen focus on understanding our strategic goals and our people. Their focus and care to ensure the desired impact and their creative execution is second to none.

Evelyn and the team at Corporate Crayon took us through each step of the process with professionalism, patience and valuable insights. We could not have developed such a strong EVP without their support.

The Corporate Crayon team are communication pros! Their deeply researched approach and incredible expertise in internal communications deliver strategic solutions that truly move the needle. The team’s understanding of employee motivation was key to driving engagement and action, and they’ve consistently gone above and beyond to ensure our actions are aligned with our goals. We couldn’t be more impressed with their professionalism and results!

Evelyn and the team at Corporate Crayon helped us develop and implement an EVP that united our teams across the Suntory brands. With their focus on understanding our people and cultures, extensive research and authentic creative they captured the essence of who we are. If you are looking for an agency that will work in partnership and deliver great work, look no further.

Communications Research Across Australia

Corporate Crayon conducts communications research for organisations across Australia, with offices in Sydney and Brisbane.

We use employee listening, engagement surveys, message testing, and stakeholder research to ground communications strategy in evidence rather than assumptions. Our research programs uncover what employees and stakeholders actually think, identifying perception gaps, risks, and opportunities.

We translate insights into clear, actionable communications strategies that improve alignment, strengthen engagement, and support better decision-making.

Supporting Australian organisations since 2016, we combine research expertise with practical application to ensure findings lead to meaningful outcomes.

FAQs

1. What is a communications research consultancy and why is it important?

Communications research consultancy helps organisations understand stakeholder perceptions, validate messaging, and measure communication effectiveness through evidence-based methodologies. It replaces assumptions with data, guides strategy with stakeholder voice, and demonstrates ROI through rigorous measurement. Strategic communications research reduces risk, improves engagement, and ensures every communication investment delivers measurable business impact across Australia’s competitive landscape.

2. How does Corporate Crayon help develop employee listening programs?

Corporate Crayon combines survey design expertise, behavioural science, and analytics capability to create employee listening programs that track engagement, wellbeing, and culture over time. We design employee engagement surveys, workplace wellbeing surveys, pulse programs, and diagnostic assessments aligned with business priorities. Our approach includes benchmarking, sentiment analysis, trend tracking, and action planning to ensure research insights drive meaningful improvement.

3. What's the difference between communications research and market research?

Communications research focuses on message effectiveness, stakeholder perceptions, channel performance, and the validation of communication strategies. Market research typically examines product preferences, customer behaviour, and commercial opportunities. Corporate Crayon operates as a communications research consultancy — not a market research agency — helping Australian organisations understand how stakeholders receive, process, and respond to communications across internal and external contexts.

4. How can message testing improve campaign effectiveness?

Message testing validates positioning statements, campaign concepts, and key narratives before launch through qualitative and quantitative research with target audiences. We identify which messages resonate, which create confusion, and how to refine language for maximum impact. Research shows that organisations that test messages before launch achieve 45% higher campaign effectiveness than those that launch without validation, reducing waste and improving ROI.

5. Do you offer communications research services across Australia?

Yes! Corporate Crayon has offices in Brisbane and Sydney, serving clients across Australia. We partner with organisations of all sizes to deliver strategic communications research across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and throughout Australia. Our services include employee listening programs, employee engagement surveys, workplace wellbeing surveys, stakeholder research, message testing, communications audits, and analytics frameworks that guide evidence-led strategy.

6. What is a communications audit and what does it reveal?

A communications audit examines channel effectiveness, content performance, message comprehension and audience reach across your organisation’s entire communications ecosystem. Corporate Crayon audits identify gaps between what leadership communicates and what employees actually understand, revealing where channels, content or messaging need to change. Audits typically take 2 to 4 weeks and deliver an actionable recommendations report.

7. How much does a communications research consultancy cost in Australia?

Communications research consultancy investment depends on methodology, scope and program complexity. Employee listening programs, message testing projects, and communications audits each carry different fee structures. Corporate Crayon offers project-based research engagements and ongoing measurement retainers. Contact Us.

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