The long version.
The short version is on Why Us. Open any question for the detail.
What does working with you get me?
Untapped cognitive value.
Reality is experienced inside people's heads. That is why, as Rory Sutherland argues, a psychological fix is often far cheaper than an engineering one, and why so much value goes uncounted. We use social science, behavioral economics and design to find that value and put it to work.
The Merge Gap. A $40,000 measurement sitting on top of $1.2B–$8.3B a year in recoverable loss. Nobody has measured it. AXL-WP-02 ->
An artifact people can't stop talking about.
We use the data and the findings to make a cultural artifact sensational enough to move the needle. The medium follows the audience: a documentary, a TikTok, a game, a graphic novel, whatever will actually land with the people who need to see it.
Disinfo, Live. Immersive theater teaching disinformation recognition through live gameplay.
Funding, then policy.
We find new ways to fund the work and grow it, so brands can get involved without compromising the mission or watering it down. Then we seed the whole package into the legislative and political systems, so it leads to durable change.
Michelin funded a new vehicle for the Grand Central Food Program, confirmed by the program in 2026. The story: A Room Built in the Hallway -> How the money is kept away from the finding: the firewall ->
Where has this already worked?
The trust-repair cascade is an emergent property.
“I don't think the trust-repair cascade is something I invented. It's an emergent property of the world, and I don't think anyone else has tracked it yet.”
— IMRAN HAFIZ, PRINCIPAL, AUX LABS
Study the patterns of history and trust is built, spent, lost and replenished in the same ways. People who follow the whole cycle, from listening through to lasting policy, tend to go from no resources and no attention to a problem solved for good. We built Aux Labs around that pattern. Three places it has already happened:
Nobody was paying attention to AIDS research. ACT UP borrowed techniques from art and advertising, like the SILENCE=DEATH poster, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt put the dead on the National Mall. Attention became empathy, then funding, then federal policy.
"Does it spark joy?" could well have been a research paper nobody read. It made it onto a Netflix show, and that's the reason everyday people know what it means now.
YKK brought the whole line in house, down to the machines that make its zippers, so its people coordinate instead of competing against each other for margin. It is on the zipper in your jacket. We think the same move is now possible for the work of communication.
How are you different from an agency?
There are a lot of companies out there trying to sell you serviced labor. An Instagram carousel and a content calendar, because they have designers they need to put to work, whether or not that is the problem you actually need solved.
What we provide is cognitive firepower: great thinking that can be translated into any medium, and that plugs into the relationships and partners you already have.
Why now?
Polish stopped meaning anything.
AI can write the report, the campaign, the grant proposal and the policy memo in an afternoon. When everyone can look finished, looking finished stops telling anyone what's true or what works.
Messaging doesn't land.
Seventeen percent of Americans trust the federal government. Twenty-eight percent trust the press. The chart is on our homepage. A better message sent into that silence still goes unheard. Changing what people do takes a better mechanism.
You don't need three firms.
Research, creative and policy used to take three firms and three budgets. With AI, a small senior team can run all three as one project. That's the YKK move, applied to communication, and it's what we built Aux Labs to do.
Where do I fit?
Each of these groups has something the others need. We put them in the same room.
You have a problem that ads haven't fixed. We find the behavior underneath it, build the fix, make the work that carries it, and give you a number you can take to your board. How we work with companies ->
You know the problem better than anyone, and you can't afford three firms. We bring the research, the creative and the policy path as one engagement, and help you find the money for it.
You want to know your money moved something. Every project states its predictions up front and publishes the result, and a published firewall keeps funders away from the findings.
Your best idea is sitting in a journal. We give it a real-world test and turn it into something people outside your field talk about. The research ->
You want your work to change something. We bring the research that gives it a target and the funding that lets you make it properly.
You need data you can check and sources who disclose. Our data is open, the firewall is written down, and conflicts are disclosed before you ask.
Bring us the problem.
[ BOOK_A_MEETING ]Or write to imran@auxlabs.co