Jacob Cook

Senior Project Producer (APAC)

Hailing from Tasmania, Jacob studied at the West Australian Academy Of Performing Arts in Perth, graduating with a BA in musical theatre. Following four years of performing around the world (from the Arctic to the Caribbean), he made the move into insight. Joining Crowd DNA as a project producer (he’s now worked in our London and APAC offices), he previously worked at Flamingo, and brings experience across a broad range of methods. He relishes the challenge of finding the unicorns who add their special ingredient to a project; be it an expert, leading-edge consumer, innovator, or influencer. He has cast concept development panels for fashion clients, athletes for sportswear brands, tech experts for social media clients, the list goes on… Oh, but he can still be found paying tribute to Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons as part of the vocal group, Walk Like a Man. Jacob has kindly offered his services for Crowd DNA weddings and birthdays, but strangely is still awaiting a response…

Narrated Galleries

We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words
Crowd Communities

We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform
Pinterest

We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.
Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.
Network Audits

If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.