Commercial
Consumers, categories, brands, culture, communications and emerging needs.
Social Truth
Before you ask people what they think, listen to what they say when nobody is asking.
People are constantly telling each other what matters to them.
In conversations, arguments, jokes, complaints, recommendations, stories and silences.
This is where Bakamo looks.
We read natural conversation to uncover the meanings, tensions and assumptions shaping how people see the world — and turn them into insight that helps organisations make better decisions.
We call this Social Truth.
Research has become very good at measuring the wrong things.
We have perfected the questionnaire, the focus group, the tracker, the segment and the dashboard.
But people don't experience their lives in questionnaires, segments or dashboards.
They live in culture. In conversation. In contradiction.
And when you ask people what they think, you inevitably shape what they tell you.
The brief defines the question.
The question defines the instrument.
The instrument defines what can be found.
So we start somewhere else.
We listen to what people say to each other when nobody is asking.
What is Social Truth?
Social Truth lives between people.
It is the shared meaning, tension, assumption or belief that emerges through conversation — often without anyone explicitly stating it.
It is not opinion. Opinion lives inside a person. It is not sentiment. Sentiment is a score applied after the fact.
It can be
- The tension nobody put in the discussion guide.
- The assumption everyone in a category has quietly accepted.
- The thing people have stopped arguing about.
- The language consumers use when they don't know they're being researched.
- The reason a perfectly good proposition doesn't travel.
Social Truth is not what people say when you ask them.
It is what their conversations reveal when you listen.
Reality first. Measurement second.
Most research starts with a question.
We start with reality.
We explore the conversations that already exist, discover what is actually meaningful, and only then decide what is worth measuring.
Listen. Map. Measure.
The conversation moves first.
Research usually arrives later.
We read differently.
Millions of conversations contain an enormous amount of information. But information isn't insight.
Our Reading Machine helps us navigate this complexity — finding patterns, connections and emerging meanings across conversations at a scale no human team could manage alone.
But technology doesn't tell us what matters. Our analysts do. They bring context, judgement, cultural understanding and curiosity to what the Reading Machine surfaces — because finding a pattern is not the same as understanding it.
The Reading Machine gives us scale. Humans give it meaning.
Meet The Reading Machine →We go where the conversation is.
Reality doesn't stop at borders.
People talk differently in different places, cultures and languages. But everywhere, they are negotiating identity, belonging, status, security, trust, change and meaning.
We've spent ten years learning how to read those conversations.
45
countries
65
languages
550+
projects
Our Atlas shows where we've listened — across markets, cultures, categories and some of the most contested issues facing organisations today. Click a dot.
But the point isn't how much data we've collected.
It's how much reality we've learned to recognise.
AdidasNiveaPhilipsUnileverNestléL'OréalTelenorPanasonicReckittDe BeersTabascoTescoLily's KitchenArgos Pet InsuranceTevaMerckBoehringer IngelheimTD BankBudapest BankAllianzProvidentWizz AirNorautoDreher (Asahi)Western UnionTier MobilityBorealisEuropacableEve Online (CCP Games)KingHeartSaatchi & SaatchiGruner + JahrRügenwalder MühleShaw FloorsMacy'sBARE Zero ProofKantar2CVGallup InternationalORB InternationalOpen Society FoundationsFriedrich Ebert StiftungOfcomMcCain Institute / Arizona State UniversityPew Research CenterParliament of VictoriaPolitical CapitalBIRN — Balkan Investigative Reporting NetworkGreenpeaceEnergiaklubre:publicaErste FoundationAdidasNiveaPhilipsUnileverNestléL'OréalTelenorPanasonicReckittDe BeersTabascoTescoLily's KitchenArgos Pet InsuranceTevaMerckBoehringer IngelheimTD BankBudapest BankAllianzProvidentWizz AirNorautoDreher (Asahi)Western UnionTier MobilityBorealisEuropacableEve Online (CCP Games)KingHeartSaatchi & SaatchiGruner + JahrRügenwalder MühleShaw FloorsMacy'sBARE Zero ProofKantar2CVGallup InternationalORB InternationalOpen Society FoundationsFriedrich Ebert StiftungOfcomMcCain Institute / Arizona State UniversityPew Research CenterParliament of VictoriaPolitical CapitalBIRN — Balkan Investigative Reporting NetworkGreenpeaceEnergiaklubre:publicaErste Foundation
We don't believe people fit neatly into boxes.
People are contradictory. Contextual. Social.
They don't live inside the segments, personas and categories researchers build for them. So we start by listening to the world they actually inhabit.
Then we work out what the boxes should have been.
What we uncover changes what happens next.
Our work has helped organisations understand markets, challenge assumptions, identify emerging needs and make decisions with a clearer view of the people affected by them. We work across three broad areas:
Health & Pharma
Patients, healthcare professionals, health equity, public discourse and the social forces shaping health.
Government & Not-for-Profit
Citizens, public opinion, policy, advocacy, social movements and contested issues.
Different questions. Different audiences.
The same starting point: reality.
Sometimes the most valuable insight is the one you didn't ask for.
A brief is a useful starting point. It isn't necessarily the right question.
We challenge assumptions when the evidence demands it.
We expose tensions that don't fit the hypothesis.
We bring back things that are inconvenient, uncomfortable or simply unexpected.
Because our job isn't to make the research look good.
Our job is to make reality impossible to ignore.
Build on reality.
You don't always need another study.
Sometimes you need to know whether you're asking the right question in the first place.
Bring us the decision you're trying to make.
We'll help you understand what you need to know first.