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Dedicated to helping businesses understand and engage with an ever evolving world

The Forward Thought Story

I have specialised in Research, Strategy, Innovation & Insight for 20 years and have a career spanning the media industry. For over 10 years I’ve worked in large corporations.

 

Most recently at Hachette UK (home of JK Rowling) as Group Insight & Innovation Development Director where I created an Insight department and have embedded the use of data and research across a business of multiple brands and imprints. I also set up and ran the CRM team and worked on wider strategy projects & new product development with a particular focus on digital.

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Prior to that I was at EMI Music as Global VP of Insight working across all their record labels integrating Insight and data across 27 countries. I have also worked in research agencies and was a founder of media research company Media Lab Research sold in 2004 to FDS Ltd.

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My teams have won awards, innovated and facilitated true use of data & Insight within businesses that are traditionally led by gut instinct and creativity.

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Forward Thought has been set up to enable all businesses to access expert level advice across Insight, trends and innovation programmes that often remain behind big company walls.

Est. 2019 and led by Louisa Livingston

Services

Consultancy and Strategy

With years of experience, we offer one to one consultancy for leadership and department strategy. Whether you’re a business that would like to set up a Consumer Insight department, require advice on structure, agencies and projects or would like specific programmes developed internally we can help. This could be operational or strategic.

Trends and Innovation

Providing trend watching and future scoping to support businesses to drive relevant innovation for their consumers. Experience of ideation, creation, prototyping and delivery of award winning products.

Mentoring and Support

Proved mentor and executive support to deliver inspiration, motivation and deliver results for individuals and business alike.

Insight and Research

Taking on qualitative and quantitative projects for clients with strategic business challenges to address. This could involve primary or secondary data sources both internal and external such as company data, consumer feedback, traditional focus groups, online surveys, social media analysis, web search, discovery optimisation, segmentation and modelling among many methodologies.

Visual Analytics

Proud to be a partner of Dragonfly.ai, a new and incredibly innovative visual analytics tool revolutionising the way we optimise creative content and development for consumers attention based on cognitive science. Perfect for anyone creating content for consumers on any platform or medium.

Data Science

Working with your Business Intelligence Units to strategically position data, incorporating a strong belief in democratising data to deliver results across the business. Creating visions for data use and road mapping data delivery and access across the business.

  • Louisa is utterly brilliant. She is smart, innovative, creative, go-getting and efficient. Honestly - I know that's a long list of dazzling skills - but she really does deliver and in a way that carries people along with her. Oh yes - Did I say that she is also the funniest person I've ever worked with? Damn I miss her.

    Damian Horner Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Real Vision

  • I worked closely with Louisa during her time at Hachette. She is a dynamic and creative colleague - lighting a fire under projects she is involved with and inspiring the people who work for and with her. She is an enormous asset to the projects she works on, getting straight to the heart of issues and working through them at a ferocious speed, adding value as she goes. She is also huge fun to be around.

    Clare Harington - Trustee New Writing North

  • I worked closely with Louisa for nearly 6 years. She established and then ran a new Insight function for us from scratch - developing plans, strategy and communication around this major project. She is a high-achieving senior leader and was really excellent to work with - full of great ideas and also able to implement them brilliantly also.

    Richard Kitson - Group Chief Executive - Hachette

  • I have worked with Louisa for more than 10 years, both at EMI Music and Hachette Livre. I can only recommend her great professionalism, power of persuasion and capability of bringing to life new projects based on data and insights. She’s developed a strong data analysis and insight culture in both companies. It has always been a pleasure to work with her, I’m glad we’ve been able to join our forces on ambitious international projects. Hope we can work together in a near future!

    Guillaume Pech-Gourg - Group Chief CRM & Digital Marketing Officer at Hachette

  • “Invaluable support to develop the strategy for our Insight and Analytics Functions”

    Caitlin Innes, Digital and Customer Director, Harrods

12000
Consumers Interviewed
750
Key Players Trained
456
Stakeholder Presentations
986
Business Processes Transformed