We are Labrador Agency.
WHO WE ARE
Built on the belief that better questions lead to better answers.
Labrador is a consumer research and strategy firm for the decisions that define businesses. We work alongside senior leaders and insights teams on the briefs where getting it right is the only option and where a deck full of findings isn't enough.
We are collaborative by instinct, rigorous by training, and always willing to say what we actually think. That's not a positioning statement. It's how we've always worked.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Research should know where it's going before it begins.
Most research starts with a methodology. We start with a decision. What does this business need to know, and what will it do differently once it knows it? Every study, every conversation, every insight we generate is designed around that question.
We believe the most valuable thing a research partner can offer isn't data. It's clarity. The ability to look at what consumers are telling you and say, with confidence: here is what it means, and here is what to do about it.
That's the standard we hold ourselves to on every engagement. Not findings. Answers.
The briefs we're built for.
Brand repositioning
When a brand needs to understand where it stands, where it could stand, and what it would take to get there.
Consumer segmentation
Finding the audiences that matter most. Not just who they are, but how they think, what they value, and how to reach them.
Innovation & new product development
Identifying unmet needs, pressure-testing ideas, and helping teams build products that earn a place in people's lives.
Cultural & trend research
Tracking the shifts in consumer values and behaviour that will define a category before the category knows it.
New market entry
Understanding a new audience, category, or geography before committing resources, and knowing what it will actually take to win.
Brand strategy
Positioning, proposition, and architecture work grounded in what consumers actually think and shaped by what the business needs to do next.
OUR FOUNDER
Benjamin Allen
Founder & President
Wieden+Kennedy Advertising
Hal Riney & FCB Advertising & strategy
Tattoo Brand Strategy President
Sterling Brands EVP Brand Transformation
THINK Conservatory Founding Partner
Benjamin Allen started his career working third-shift at a gas station in rural southwest Ohio. It was there, on quiet overnight shifts, serving truck drivers and insomniacs, that he learned two things that have shaped everything since: the value of hard work, and the uncomfortable truth that hard work alone doesn't guarantee success. You also need to understand the people you're serving.
"The advertising was just the output. What got me most excited was uncovering the insight — the thing that could actually move a brand, a product, a message forward."
He drove across the country to work in advertising. First at Wieden+Kennedy, then Hal Riney and FCB, where he learned to take care of clients and tell compelling commercial stories. But it was the upstream work that captivated him: the consumer truth underneath the brief, the strategic tension that made an idea worth having.
That instinct led him fully into brand strategy and research. As President of Tattoo Brand Strategy, EVP of Brand Transformation at Sterling Brands, and Founding Partner of THINK Conservatory, Benjamin spent two decades working with some of the world's most demanding clients — Oprah, Cirque du Soleil, Microsoft, American Express, Lexus, the NFL, Levi's, Condé Nast, and the Government of Costa Rica — on the briefs that don't allow for wrong answers.
He founded Labrador to build the firm he always wanted to work with: boutique by design, senior by default, and always willing to say what it actually thinks.
TEAM
Senior expertise across every engagement.
Labrador is boutique by design. That means every client works directly with senior strategists and researchers who bring genuine category expertise, not junior teams managed from a distance.
Our team brings deep experience across qualitative and quantitative research, brand strategy, innovation, and cultural analysis. We work across CPG, technology, luxury, and beauty and wellness — and we bring the specific fluency each category demands.
We don't scale by diluting. We grow by staying selective.
Based in New York. Available anywhere.
CONNECT WITH US
The answer is out there.
Let's find it together.
If you're facing a decision that matters, a question the business is depending on, we'd like to hear about it.