Julia Smaldone

Julia Smaldone

Director, Cultural Strategy (USA)

Julia fell in love with research through months spent traveling the UK visiting different archives to access materials in support of her BA in history. After graduating, she entered the marketing world, spending five years at a media agency servicing clients in categories such as finance and CPG. For each brand, Julia helped create a robust communication and media execution strategy. She joins Crowd as an associate director, excited to combine her love of research with her marketing world experience. On the side, Julia sits on the executive committee of a not-for-profit camp for Armenian Youth, where she serves as an advisor to current staff and assists in general camp communications. She can also be found cooking new recipes, exploring different corners of New York City, and trying to convince people that running is fun.

  • 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.