Insights to help organizations become more human-centric.

We understand consumers as whole people with identity tensions, aspirations, and self-stories – the forces that shape brand meaning and enduring loyalty. Through psychological interviews, ethnography, empathic listening training, and quantitative measurement of identity tension and brand connection, we help you build the deep understanding that creates iconic brands.

If you’re ready to get closer to the people you serve, let’s talk.

Why Corporate Insights Teams Choose RealityCheck.

We reveal what others don’t see.

For 25 years, we’ve studied how people use brands to tell themselves stories about who they are and who they want to be. No one has done more work on identity, tension, and brand connection. We measure whether your brand strengthens people’s sense of self or undermines it.

Learn about our innovative services

We bring you closer.

Our psychologists conduct deep interviews. Our ethnographers observe real life. We train your teams to listen like we do. You don’t just get findings. You get closer to the people who matter most to your business.

Insights, Training & Activation

Ethnography, psychological interviews, identity measurement, and team training to help you build human-centric brands that earn enduring loyalty.

Ethnography

Step into your customers’ homes and lives

Core Tension™ Analysis

Uncover the identity gaps that drive brand choice

Team Empathy Training

Learn to listen like psychologists do

Narrametric™ Analysis

Discover how narrative identity and tension shape your category and brand

Insights Journalism®

Get the story in clear, concise reporting that drives action

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What Our Clients Say About Us

“I’ve been working with RealityCheck for 15 years. They never settle for the obvious answer. They always look to go deeper, to truly understand how your brand fits within the larger picture of people’s lives. But it’s not just their approaches. They are a pleasure to work with and act as true partners on every project..”

Shaun Belongie

Chief Executive Officer

New Belgium Brewing and Bell’s Brewery Formerly Nestle, Kraft, Accenture

“RealityCheck has been a key strategic partner for Purina for almost 20 years. We have benefited from their thought leadership across many areas of our business. They go above-and-beyond to understand how insights will impact business decisions and ensure the research approach is customized to help us achieve our objectives. When we partner with RealityCheck, we are confident that they will push beyond the surface to identify impactful, actionable insights.”

Susanne Klausner,

Director of Strategy & Insights

Nestle Purina Petcare

“The RealityCheck team has helped us become more human-centric as a company. This is evident in their research approach and findings, but they are also one of the few companies who can act as a true thought partner and help drive change in an organization, person-by-person. As we aim to get all of our associates much closer to the people we serve, their guidance and coaching has unlocked the hidden empath in many of us.”

Sarah Maloy

VP, Global Insights Strategy

PepsiCo

“RealityCheck’s approach of understanding life stage moments has truly shifted the way our brand teams think about their consumers. Focusing on a specific milestone has brought enormous learnings to NWPB, allowing us to go deeper with our consumers than we ever have been able to in the past. The insights that we have discovered will lay the strategic foundation for years to come with some of our brands.”

Christine Turk

Nestlé Waters & Premium Beverages (NWPB)

Nestlé Waters

Our View

Narrative Power: Brands, Identity, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Narrative Identity

When I was in college at the University of Kentucky, I drank a lot of cheap beer. Like many undergrads, I didn’t think much about what I was drinking—only that it was cold and affordable. But one summer, that changed. I was twenty years old, working as a news intern at the Knoxville News-Sentinel—my first […]

Narrametric™ Analysis: A Strategic Reset for Brands at a Crossroads

Narrative Identity, Storytelling

For more than two decades, brand insights teams have turned to RealityCheck when they need fresh answers—when standard methods fail to provide fresh insights, the deeper drivers of consumer behavior remain elusive, or when teams are simply looking for new inspiration. These are the moments when brands start to feel disconnected. When consumers drift, the […]

Market Research Methods: 3 Simple Ways You Can Sharpen Your Empathy Skills

Emotional Listening

Empathy has become a bit of a buzzword in marketing and market research in recent years. Many big corporate marketers – wanting to take the trend toward “consumer-centricity” to the next level – started talking about “empathy” several years ago. At the same time, the desire for empathy has been voiced in American culture as […]

Market Research Reports: Why Writing Skills Matter in an AI World

Qualitative Research

The ability of AI platforms to synthesize and summarize data into written market research reports is remarkable. When ChatGPT came onto the scene about a year and a half ago, the internet was buzzing with examples of professionals in many areas using the platform to transform notes and rough drafts into finished written documents. In […]

The Costs of Bad Market Research Reporting (and what to do about it)

Consumer Research

I logged onto the Teams meeting early. My client, Amanda, was already there and admitted me. As soon as I saw her face, I knew something was wrong. “What’s up,” I said. After a heavy sigh, she said, “I just opened a report from one of my research suppliers and it’s a bit of a […]

Deep Qualitative Surveys vs Online Bulletin Boards: A New Way to Think About Digital Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research

We recently recommended to a client that she consider an online qualitative study design for an upcoming project, to which she said, “I’m not a big fan of online boards.” We hear this sometimes when we talk about digital qualitative research. It seems many in the consumer insights world still refer to all forms of […]