Helping clients make genuine connections with their audiences
Who We Are
Planetarium is a collective of dozens of senior-level professionals around the world with roots in marketing and communications. All have spent time inside some of the world’s leading market research, advertising and branding agencies.
This means we know the power of big insights and big ideas. But, given our background, we know the importance of also being pragmatic and ensuring that research and strategy initiatives are actionable. We can navel-gaze, pontificate and come up with kick-ass thinking with the best of them, but, at the end of the day, we know that clients need to DO something with research findings. We’re big thinkers with our feet on the ground.
What We Believe
If you ever visited a Planetarium as a kid, you recall the lights going down and the night sky appearing black…until tiny pinpoints of light appeared. The moderator began illuminating images that weren’t immediately visible. The stars began forming into patterns, and the patterns began to weave stories. The vastness of universe suddenly felt navigable and wonder and curiosity evolved into a 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 understanding — 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 audiences, 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.
Next, we 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.
We also help clients with ideation and creative development needs.
Ultimately, we help illuminate powerful connections and align the stars for clients’ brands.
Company Leadership
Bob Mason
Founder & Managing Director
Bob Mason, Planetarium’s founder and managing director is, by design, involved in all Planetarium engagements. A “Planner” throughout his career, Bob has made significant insight and strategy contributions to some of the leading branding/advertising campaigns of the last 30+ years.
He’s conducted market research with audiences as disparate as leading-edge cardiologists, hardcore mixed martial arts fans, financial “1 percenters” and doomsday preppers. You pick a topic, and there’s a good chance he’s lead a research discussion or client workshop around it and/or written a survey or strategy brief about it. He seamlessly works between the consumer, b-to-b and healthcare spaces and is driven by an endless curiosity to understand people and markets, and commitment to help clients triumph over business challenges. The consummate marketing, branding and communications professional, he’s held senior research and strategic planning roles, and board positions, at some of the best advertising agencies in the world. Bob has a BSBA, with a dual major in business administration and communication arts, from Aquinas College and an MBA, with a concentration in marketing, from the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at Michigan State University.
Some of his accreditations and special training over the years include:
RIVA Moderator and Facilitation Training
Headmint Brand Planning Training
Red Spyder Brand Planning Training
Second City Lateral Thinking Training
Hyper Island Digital Strategy Training