You already have a research budget.
This is what it could be buying.
Aux Labs is a research firm. That's the line item, and it's deliberate: you don't need a new category in your budget to hire us, and we'd rather be judged against the research you're already buying than against a category nobody can price.
So judge us against it.
[ THE_REAL_AMBITION ]We start with research because it's bounded and easy to say yes to. Our real ambition is bigger, and we'd rather you knew it now: we're a think-and-do tank. The same team can carry a finding into the creative work, the brand, the press, the policy and the public good, which usually sit in separate rooms with separate budgets. How we price that.
Here is the commitment: the people who gather the evidence are the people who write the finding. Qualitative and quantitative, in whatever mix the question needs. Sometimes that means being in the room where the behavior happens; sometimes it means the whole archive rather than a sample. Then comes the part research usually leaves out: we build the fix. You pay for a recommendation once, then pay again to act on it. A mechanism keeps working after we leave.
Marketing buys attention. We build mechanisms that earn legitimacy.
[ THE_BRIDGE ]Your CSR budget is a Pretend Era™ artifact: money spent performing values nobody inside the building quite believes in. We convert the performance into a mechanism — a structure that serves the company's actual interest and leaves a public good behind. Here's who we've done it for.
Mechanism Checklist
- Nobody has to act against their own interest
- Nobody is worse off
- It still runs after we're gone
Diagnostic
Audit.
You already run a system: a schedule, a route, a policy, a queue. We find what it is costing you that nobody has counted.
Mechanism
Design.
The rule or the default that makes the better behavior the easy one. Not a campaign.
Implementation
Engine.
We build it. Research, product, film, print, software. Whatever the mechanism actually needs. One team, the whole line.
You, if:
- You privately know something your company does is causing harm, and you want to be less evil, but you can't see how without hurting the bottom line.
- You're tired of being sold serviced labor: another Instagram carousel and content calendar, whether or not that's the problem you actually need solved.
- You'd collapse your CSR budget and your brand budget into one thing, if you could see it pay.
- You want the uncomfortable true thing, in the first call.
What we don't do.
We don't buy attention nobody would have given us: work has to earn its own distribution before media spend goes behind it, and then we scale it, hard. We don't do desk-only research. We don't take work where the answer is already decided and the study is procurement cover.
We'll tell you which of those we think you're asking for, in the first call, for free.
Why a mechanism is
harder to leave.
01. Defensible Loyalty
When your brand is the source of a public utility, switching away from you costs the public something.
02. Outcomes Over Messaging
Ten percent of people rate advertising practitioners' honesty as high or very high — that is FIG. 01 on the front page. Messaging is discounted on arrival. A mechanism puts the outcome first and lets the brand be found standing behind it.
Center for Humane Technology · Lincoln Financial · Public Housing Authority of Albany, GA · Georgia Association of Housing and Redevelopment Authorities · Science Gallery Dublin · AdHoc FM / AdHoc Projects · Alterea · Audiofemme · GrooveGrade · Texas Eclipse Festival (PR) · Listen · Viva Creative · MadeInNetwork · UgoRound
Smirnoff · Google · Natural Light · Johnnie Walker · Lululemon · Under Armour · Michelin · Budweiser · Sephora · MGM Grand · Chipotle · Dove Men+Care · Suave · Hoegaarden · Cazadores Tequila · Estrella Jalisco · Popsicle · Indeed · Sydell Group · VICE (VICE on HBO · VICE News · VICELAND · Motherboard · Collectively)
Turn your budget
into a mechanism.
[ BOOK_A_30-MINUTE_CALL ]
THIRTY MINUTES. AN HONEST READ ON YOUR PROBLEM, WHETHER OR NOT WE WORK TOGETHER.