Jake Renk

Jake Renk

Culture Club (New York)

Jake likes thinking about QVC shopping addicts and tennis and singers. On singers he has some opinions. Tom Waits is the best vocalist, Nina Simone has the best voice, and Roberta Flack has the most raw talent. Key tracks for those three: ‘If You Knew / Let It Be Me (Live At Vine St. Bar & Grill/1987)’, Nina; ‘First Time I Saw Your Face’, Roberta Flack. And then you have to listen to at least two Tom Waits songs to hear how good his delivery is, so, ‘God’s Away On Business’ and ‘Way Down In The Hole’ (if you hate ‘Gods Away On Business’, listen to ‘Martha’). Honorable mentions, Dylan, Byrne, Isaac Wood, Kendrick Lamar, David Berman. Oh yeah, and he’s also part of our Culture Club internship scheme.

  • 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.