Two Years

Two years ago, Echelon Insights created a new category of consulting agency, bringing the worlds of opinion and market research, data analysis, and digital intelligence under one roof.

We started off with just Patrick and Kristen working out of coffee shops and borrowed conference rooms, working to tell the story of the kind of firm we had decided to launch. At the heart of our vision was the idea that anyone who claims to provide clients with insights had better use every possible tool at their disposal: polling, modeling and analytics, social media listening, focus groups, media monitoring, and more.

Over the last two years, we’ve made that vision a reality.

We’ve…

Become the Leader in Understanding Millennials.

Now surpassing the Baby Boomer generation in size, millennials are a demographic that everyone from brands to nonprofits to public affairs campaigns want to understand. Echelon has and continues to be the premier firm for studying this group, including our new report for the College Republicans at http://millennial.gop/ and last year’s release of The Selfie Vote by Echelon co-founder Kristen Soltis Anderson (available here).

Listened To What The World Is Talking About.

Early on, Echelon focused on understanding what we can learn from people by doing more than just asking their opinion. How can we listen and let them tell us what they care about? Our Optimized Listening dashboard continues to provide insights that focus on defined audiences and tell us what topics are trending and how debates are playing out on social media. During 2015 we analyzed over 450 million tweets for insights about the top news stories of the year.

Learned How News Travels In Today’s Media Environment.

We’ve long preached that the media environment is changing rapidly and it is critical for brands and campaigns to keep up. To that end, we’ve partnered with media outlets like BuzzFeed and content platforms like Pandora to study how people get their news these days.

We also understand that even a long-established medium like television is changing, and our Insights on Air dashboard continues to help clients understand the TV ad buying environment.

Made Election Polling Great Again.

The story that announced Echelon’s launch came during a moment when people were questioning the accuracy and value of polling. We believed and continue to believe that polling can be done accurately by using the power of voter data, good samples, and thoughtful modeling of what an electorate might look like. Ahead of the South Carolina primary, we tested out some of our theories and wound up predicting that contest’s results accurately with our proprietary approach.

Two years in, with a growing team and an exciting slate of projects on our plate, we are proud of what we’ve done and are even more excited about what’s next.