Ever visit a Planetarium when you were a kid? The lights went out. The night sky appeared black, but tiny pinpoints of light emerged. The moderator began illuminating images that weren’t immediately visible. The stars began to connect into patterns and the patterns began to weave stories. The vastness of the universe felt suddenly navigable. Wonder and curiosity evolved into newfound understanding.
Wonder, curiosity, patterns and, ultimately, connections -- that’s what drives the philosophy of Planetarium. The firm was founded on a belief in the importance and power of connecting with an audience via planning -- charting an informed, strategic course, prior to setting out on the marketing, branding and communications development journey.
Our aim, through our customized qualitative, quantitative and qual/quant hybrid market research approaches and methodologies, is to help clients make connections with their audience members, illuminating patterns and weaving a story from insights and understanding.
Bringing research insights to the table, we then help clients connect with their colleagues, facilitating workshops and working sessions that help lead the team to see their brand’s full potential and best understand the richest territory for their marketing, branding and communications.
We then can help apply all the research and workshop outputs, providing informed, world-class marketing, brand and communication strategy, consultation and guidance that establish a blueprint for success.
Helping clients make connections and align the stars for their brands. That’s what we do.
Planetarium uses a four-phased approach of Exploration, Navigation, Inspiration and Activation. Our mission is to connect data points, turn them into insights and create a distinct Brand Narrative that translates into complete Brand Engagement. The end-goal is to foster brand and communication ideas that create true belief in an audience, getting them to care enough to think differently and take action.
No two clients have the exact same needs and we pride ourselves on tailoring to those specific needs. Planetarium has a proposed process that utilizes methods we’ve found successful at achieving insight, strategy, communications and team commitment. Once we’ve had a chance to chat with you and understand your needs, timing and budget, we start from there to tailor our approach.
We generate the most appropriate approach and line of questioning to get genuine insight and a fresh perspective out of research. Our belief is that, upfront, ethnographic research is a powerful approach to truly understanding our audience and their wants, needs, hopes and dreams.
Through a customizable program, we aggregate the results of search engines and websites to find specified search terms in online discussions. These discussions are broadcast as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds which can be coded for quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing us to examine the terminology, syntax and sentiment being conveyed online by our audience.
We use this research/workshop approach to help better understand and validate how consumers think about a given category and how to best intersect with them throughout their day.
This recommended approach to group research is to spark conversation between different constituents (such as sales force and customers, physicians and patients, etc.) to understand their dialogue, potential tensions and connection points.
We focus on, quantify and prioritize the mindsets and behaviors of different audiences. Our resident expert Henry Gamse has over 500 of these studies under his belt.
We take all the consumer research and information and bring our audience to life in flesh and blood terms via video, photography or various other multi-media approaches. This creates a galvanizing focal point for an organization, around which all communications are developed and evaluated.
We bring together all core constituents and help them look at the brand from different angles to determine prospective positionings. We then lead teams in elevating the functional positionings into higher-order brand ideas and stories.
Using “mood boards” and other projective approaches, we conduct qualitative research to instigate conversations around the most appropriate and compelling positioning and Brand Narrative for the brand.
We kick start the creative process with clear direction and sure-fire ideation techniques and approaches.
This round of research nurtures, grows and refines the ideas before putting them through the rigor of “testing.”
This evaluative research informs the decision of which specific creative pathway and messaging to utilize for the brand.
We create 360-degree internal and external audience engagement platforms, inclusive of traditional and non-traditional media.
We lead the internal rollout of brands, bringing them to life and helping internal constituents “live” the brand idea and become its ambassadors.
We gauge success and diagnose necessary course corrections along the way.
Market research, brand planning and communication planning are the core of the company. Therefore, we provide clients with the following services.
I’ve spent 20 years working across a wide range of categories on behalf of countless regional, national and global brands. My quest for true consumer insight and drive to create compelling brand and communication strategies have led to a long history of successful marketing initiatives. And it’s now led me to start Planetarium.
From cars (I was behind Mazda’s long-running “Zoom Zoom” campaign and also framed the underpinnings for what became the recent, award-winning Chrysler “Imported From Detroit” campaign) to fast food to CPG to banking to entertainment to healthcare – and everything in between –I’ve dug for insights and developed brand and communication strategy across a wide swath of categories.
One of my fortes is identifying target audiences and bringing them to life in flesh and blood terms. I pride myself on finding positioning articulations that truly differentiate and then translating those positionings into creative briefs that inspire and focus creative teams. Along the way, I’m an adept and high-energy market researcher, facilitator, idea-nurturer, instigator and coach.
Before starting Planetarium, I was at Palio, a leading healthcare communications agency, serving on the company’s operating board and heading up its 20+ member Insight and Brand Strategy Group. It’s the fourth agency at which I helped launch an account/brand planning discipline. I’m a frequent guest lecturer in advertising and market research and have been a member of numerous industry panels.
Clients, partners and collaborators:
Prior to forming Planetarium, we were fortunate to have worked directly for, partnered with, or served as consultants to world class communications agencies and market research firms such as:
Some of the brands we helped before the formation of Planetarium:
For Immediate Release
October 30, 2014
The market research, brand planning and communications consultancy Planetarium has brought Megan O’Rourke Coloccia onboard as Planning Director, according to Bob Mason, the firm’s Founder and Managing Director.
Prior to Planetarium, Megan headed up marketing and PR efforts for nfrastructure, a New York based innovative provider of critical technology infrastructure solutions. Before nfrastructure, Megan led client services and strategy efforts on behalf of New York based McMurry/TMG, the largest independent content marketing agency in the nation. During her career at McMurry/TMG, she managed multiple Fortune 500 clients in the healthcare and financial services industries. In her new role at Planetarium, she will oversee business development, in addition to client services, communications planning and project management for Planetarium’s various clients.
“I’m really excited to have Megan join Planetarium” stated Mason. “I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for over the last 2 1/2 years, looking for someone with her background, skills and management style. Especially as we’re growing our marketing services beyond market research and brand strategy, she’s going to be a tremendous asset to our national, regional and local clients.”
Headquartered in Saratoga Springs, NY, Planetarium has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world across sectors such as automotive, financial services, entertainment, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, home electronics, fast food and retail. The firm works closely with a wide variety of large, mid-size and small marketers, advertising agencies and market research firms.
For Immediate Release
February 3, 2014
For those of you who have participated in our survey, thank you and here are real-time results as we gather them. Check back in regularly as we will be adding our interpretations! If you have not yet contributed your feedback, you can do so anonymously here:
For a more detailed discussion about how Planetarium can help with your specific needs, please contact:
