Understanding people's truths and what they mean for brands…

Founded in 2022, we’re a freshly minted market research and cultural insights agency based in Australia. We distinguish ourselves in the marketplace through a passion for the social sciences, the depth and rigour of our insights generation process, and a senior team of researchers. From tactical to strategic briefs, we’ve got you covered.

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Our Values

Ground Truth has four core values which inform how we run research projects and operate as a business.

Building respectful, fair and sustainable relationships with employees, clients, and suppliers. This means paying people fairly and on time, being good to work with and reasonable if things get tricky.
Our insights stand up in the real world. We listen to and organise our data carefully. We’re sensitive to the heuristics and biases that might be driving a wedge between claimed and actual behaviour.
Setting new standards by thinking laterally and approaching each brief with a fresh perspective. This means building relationships with professionals outside the market research industry and consulting a wide range of cultural and research sources to inspire our project work.
Steady business growth with the occasional pause for reflection to explore new ideas and improve our practice. We don’t want to burn ourselves out! Wherever we can, we limit our impact on the environment.

Our Approach

We believe market research is a practice. By constantly honing our craft and surveying the cultural and economic moment we are living through, we deliver insights that stand up in the real world.

Open conversations

Good-quality research takes place when the client and research partner can talk openly about every facet of a project. There’s no such thing as a stupid question or saving face: we’re on the journey together.
Real-world data collection

Sometimes running methodologies like focus groups and depth interviews won’t tell you the whole story. At Ground Truth, we lace up our walking boots and visit the places where life happens.
Passionately dispassionate

It’s easy to get carried away by stories or emotionally charged conversations with customers. But in Graham Greene’s words, holding a “splinter of ice” can help differentiate between lazy insights and the truth.
The whole person

When we talk to your customers we think about the whole person before us: their influences, past experiences and beliefs.

Meet the team

Real people to help you make real decisions. Our team is rich in research and life experience.

Helen Osborne | Qualitative Research Director & Founder

I’m a qualitative researcher with about fourteen years’ experience. I’m fluent in all traditional and digital methodologies and have a special interest in ethnography.
I graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA Commerce (Economics) before moving to London to cut my teeth as a fledgling researcher. There I worked on international projects for brands like Sony, Playstation and Vodafone in markets as diverse as Germany, Mexico, USA, India and China.
I returned to Melbourne in 2015 to found Ra Insight which evolved into Ground Truth in 2022.
Caryn Holzman | Qualitative Researcher

I started my research career in 2005 and since then have developed extensive experience working on qualitative research projects for brands like AGL, Toyota, Qantas, Mars and Revlon.
My experience extends across focus group moderation, depth interviews, car-clinic facilitation, shop-alongs, online communities, ideation workshops and ethnographic studies.
I hold a BA (Honours) Leisure Management from the University of Technology, Sydney. I’m also a mum of three and enjoy reading when I get a rare quiet moment.
Duncan Rusby | Founding Director Sagacity Research

I am a quantitative research specialist with more than 20 years experience working both agency- and client-side, in the UK and Australia.
After graduating with an MA in Applied Social & Market Research, I have worked primarily in the services sector, including financial services, telcos and utilities.
Since founding Sagacity in 2017, my ethos has always been to stick to what you are good at. This is why I have regularly joined forces with Ground Truth for those projects which require qualitative as well as quantitative research.
Philip Booth | Qualitative Researcher

With over 20 years’ experience and many thousands of groups moderated in that time, you could call me a veteran researcher – oodles of experience and not yet a relic.
Educated to a Doctoral level in neuroscience, I have degrees from King’s College London, The Institute of Psychiatry, and the University of Oxford.
I have worked in both research agencies and advertising agencies across both research and creative planning functions. Throughout, I have learned a lighthearted and fun approach (topic permitting of course!) in my dealings with client, agency and consumer which seems to work best.