Sectors

INNOVATIVE has worked for a wide variety of companies, governments, non-profits and associations. Our service offerings span a wide range of topics, from investor relations, fundraising feasibility studies, and policy to an array of communications studies including strategy development, issue management, message testing, ad and direct mail tracking and testing.

• Education

  INNOVATIVE’s staff have worked with educators, school boards, universities and colleges, and Ministries of Education for well over a decade.
  
  Our team has conducted a variety of research, from assessing satisfaction with the state education both municipally and provincially, to advising governments and school boards on labour disputes, as well as assessing public reaction to school closures and understanding career choices and support processes for students. We have also conducted a number of province-wide tracking surveys of graduating students, as well as many youth focus groups to evaluate curriculum and government programs aimed at students.
  
  INNOVATIVE also has a wealth of experience assessing university and college brands and reputation and the impact they have at attracting and retaining students, top academics, donors and funding.

• Energy

  INNOVATIVE is a recognized leader in North America’s energy sector. Over the last decade, we have provided strategic advice and research to some of the North America’s largest power producers, transmitters, distributors and utilities, upstream and downstream oil and gas companies including pipelines and storage facilities, as well as various energy associations, governments and regulatory bodies.
  
  We’ve asked various audiences questions about a broad range of issues including consumer confidence, attitudes towards pricing, and energy supply mix, as well as views on conservation programs, demand management and NIMBY. Not only have we quantified opinions, we have tested a wide variety of communications and program initiatives through focus groups, online testing and pre- and post-tests research in control and test markets.

• Financial Services

  INNOVATIVE has worked with banks, credit unions, brokerage firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, credit card companies and investor relations professionals at publicly traded companies as well as financial services associations and various regulatory bodies across Canada, including the Canadian Securities Administrators.
  
  Our senior consultants are experienced at providing the financial services sector with advice on branding and reputation management, product and market development, customer attitudes, satisfaction and segmentation, customer acquisition strategies, investor behaviour, market and investor perceptions of publicly traded companies as well as investor relations and communications strategy.
  
  Using our multilingual call centre, INNOVATIVE has also conducted a number of ethnic research studies with Canada’s Chinese and Punjabi communities for banks and regulators in the financial services sector.

• Industry & Professional Associations

  INNOVATIVE’s senior consultants work closely with a wide variety of industry and professional associations who want to use research to build credibility and further their agendas. This includes using research to become an authoritative source of information, win earned media that gets strategic messages across to stakeholders, as well as develop a broader base of awareness and knowledge of the public’s perception of key issues, and determine what messages and campaign tactics will best work to shape outcomes.
  
  By providing associations with reliable, actionable research, INNOVATIVE provides support in areas such as government relations and advocacy, communications campaign development and message testing, consumer behaviour research, membership satisfaction and mandate development, as well as image and reputation management.

• Philanthropic

  INNOVATIVE has worked for a wide range of charities and not-for-profit organizations across both Canada and the United States including hospitals, universities, national health advocacy and research organizations, arts and cultural institutions, environmental organizations and the social services.
  
  As a leading fundraising research and management consultancy to charities and the not-for-profit sector, we have provided hundreds of organizations with key decision-making information in such areas as financial performance benchmarking, geo-demographic targeting, donor segmentation and profiling, campaign feasibility, communications testing, membership satisfaction and mandate development, as well as image and reputation management.

• Health Care

  INNOVATIVE’s health care clients have included the federal government and a variety of provincial governments, many different professional organizations, health care clinics, hospitals and other health care institutions as well as health charities and hospital foundations.
  
  Topics have included public consultations, health satisfaction, mapping the patient experience, social marketing research for health promotion and illness prevention, corporate reputation and branding, communications planning, ad testing, supply management, donor studies, community studies and research on a variety of public policy topics including health reform, health care sustainability and private/public partnerships. 

• Agriculture

  In agriculture, INNOVATIVE has worked primarily for producer organizations and marketing boards.
  
  Topics have focused on producer attitudes on key policy issues, their satisfaction with producer organizations and marketing boards, attitudes towards new initiatives in producer organizations and marketing boards and the farming experience. 

• Pharmaceutical

  INNOVATIVE has worked for most of the players involved in the prescription drug industry including provincial health ministries, manufacturers and distributors, drug stores and pharmacists.
  
  Topics have included listings, cost and payment issues, patent protection, communications planning, testing advertisements, public policy research and assessing economic benefits.

• Transportation

  INNOVATIVE’s transportation work has focused on highways, bridges and toll roads. Clients have included provincial agencies and toll concession companies across North America.
  
  INNOVATIVE has covered a wide variety of topics including testing public consultation materials, annual usage and attitude studies, communications planning, testing advertisements, price elasticity studies and price optimization for toll roads, brand and market segmentation studies, NIMBY, and public attitudes related to Public Private Partnerships (P3s) and foreign ownership.

• Environment and Natural Resources

  INNOVATIVE has polled on natural resource and environmental issues from a wide variety of client perspectives, including minerals manufacturing, conservation groups, community forest organizations, industry associations, pulp and forest companies and provincial governments.
  
  Topics have included corporate reputation, communications planning and evaluation, advertising testing, education material evaluations, and assessing green procurement within supply chains. Public policy topics have included understanding of attitudes towards sustainable development, assessing industry barriers towards investment in clean technology, interactions with First Nations, forest practices, economic impact assessment, environmental standards, as well as conservation and recycling attitudes and behaviors.

• Labour Relations

  INNOVATIVE has looked at labour relations from labour, management and media perspectives.
  
  We have tracked major public strikes for the media, advised unions on raid strategies, conducted communications planning surveys to inform union public affairs campaigns and conducted communications planning, testing and advertising tracking for management. 

• Media & Entertainment

  INNOVATIVE has conducted a number of polls on public affairs topics for many of Canada’s national news organizations including the Hill Times, Canwest News Services, the National Post, the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s magazine. INNOVATIVE has also conducted a number of studies sponsored by private organizations for release to or in partnership with media organizations.
  
  Entertainment topics have included market segmentation, program testing, price studies and audience intercept studies. Media polling has covered a wide array of topics from Canadian values, election campaigns, breaking issues and current affairs.