Youth-focused market research firm The Sound has opened a Toronto office headed by former Youthography director Barbara Brooks.
According to Ian Pierpoint, founder and CEO, The Sound had been mulling a Toronto expansion for more than a year, but the closure of Brooks’ former employer created “an obvious gap” in the client-dense market and put the eastern expansion into full gear.
The 15-person independent agency hired Brooks in June following Youthography’s closure due to loss of revenues from its advertising business.
A 14-year industry veteran, Brooks has taken a vice-president’s title at The Sound and, according to Pierpoint, is tasked with developing client relationships.
“I asked a lot of people about who should head the [Toronto] office, and Barbara’s name came up five times… She has a great reputation so we tracked her down,” Pierpoint said.
The Sound already has several relationships with Toronto-based clients such as Nike, but will be pursuing new clients while serving global ones such as Samsung and Pepsi.
Pierpoint expects the Toronto shop will reach five staff within the next 12 months.
Brooks said she was drawn to the firm’s “fresh” approach to qualitative research. She was particularly impressed by the company’s Sound TV service, which allows young people to post videos of themselves talking about areas of The Sound’s research, adding context to its statistics. The videos are made available to clients via subscription.
“We have a filmmaker on staff… We make documentaries from the clips and write reports that analyze the different topics they’re making videos for,” Brooks said.
Founded in 2007, The Sound is based in Vancouver with offices in New York and London. While the next 12 months will be dedicated to growing the Toronto operation, Pierpoint said he also plans to expand his company’s European operations to Berlin.
