Media
enable businesses and organisations with the digital foundations for growth in an ever-evolving digital world.
Insights
delivers market research & insights to make your life easier, your decisions better and your impact felt.
Marketing & Communications
creating new futures for brands, business and culture.
Digital
enable businesses and organisations with the digital foundations for growth in an ever-evolving digital world.
Training
offers corporate affairs, issues and crisis communications that helps organisations to build, maintain, protect and strengthen their reputation.
Experience
connects people and brands with experiences and emotions.
A full-service consumer insights agency, we prioritise your needs, designing tailored, creative solutions that drive results.
Our agile team of smart, driven professionals responds swiftly to changes and challenges, ensuring high-quality outcomes.
Our Services
We help our clients to discover truths about their target audiences, and then to uncover ways of applying those insights in the context of what they need to achieve next.
Consumer Insights
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We uncover essential truths about your target audiences, applying insights to help you achieve your objectives. Our comprehensive approach spans traditional qualitative and quantitative research, all customised to meet your specific needs. We leverage innovative technology and AI while recognising their strengths and limitations.
Insights Communities
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With over a decade of expertise, we create and manage dynamic online communities that facilitate deep connections between you and your customers. Our bespoke communities enable fast, cost-effective research tailored to your unique requirements.
Social & Government
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Bastion Insights excels in delivering evidence-based strategies for government entities. Our robust understanding of the Australian political landscape allows us to provide tailored solutions for complex governance and social challenges, fostering impactful collaborations that drive positive change.
Cross-Cultural Insights
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Our expertise in cultural research connects you with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities across Australia and beyond. We understand the nuances of cultural dynamics, helping you bridge gaps and effectively engage diverse audiences.
Steven has 20+ years' experience as an insights professional and loves asking simple questions like 'why?'. Equally loves to ask 'why not'. Which makes for an interesting household with three children under 8! Steven is a natural leader of teams and brings the best out of each individual working towards a common goal for clients. Cutting through the guff to get to the best outcome for the team and clients and having fun along the way. Steven has all the needed formal education, on the job experience and credentials to help businesses and teams succeed in their ambition. He has a level of energy that is unmatched and is naturally set to be positive and he is often described as bringing the Woo Hoo to every interaction.
Joanne loves talking to people to understand why they 'do what they do'…. Unpacking what drives them to the buy certain products, brands and services over others. She is also intent on delivering insights that add to, and challenge, clients' thinking, and that they can easily translate into action.
Jo has a background in both quantitative and qualitative research but is more fascinated by human needs, motivations and behaviour. She leads the qualitative practice, and draws on thinking from biology, anthropology, psychology and economics / decision science to design research, and frame the insights story. In the past 25+ years Joanne has conducted research in multiple countries, across multiple markets and categories, using any number of qualitative techniques. Her experience involves consumer and B2B in-depth interviews, group discussions, extended ideation / creative workshop and online communities. Joanne does not love cooking but does love to travel, enjoys watching sport (including American college football) and reading Japanese crime fiction.
James Wunsch Group Client Director, Government & Social
James brings a powerful mix of creativity, pragmatism and political nous - ensuring clients receive evidence-driven and informed strategic counsel. Partnering with client on complex policy, service or program challenges, James is passionate about leveraging insights to improve government decision making and ultimately the lives of his fellow Australians. First are foremost, James appreciates that research approaches hold no inherent value – the most eloquently crafted survey hold little value if it is not collecting the data needed to address a client’s challenge or problem. To this end, he works hard at the front end of all projects to develop a sound appreciation of the context and the key decisions the research outcomes will inform. This detailed understanding then ensures all research approaches are aligned with these core requirements, meaning clients get the data and insights they need. MBA and QPR qualified, James brings both the technical skills and significant social & government experiences to generate tangible and actionable value. A career in research has equipped James with a wide range of knowledge across many diverse, eclectic and sometimes downright bizzarro fields – meaning he’s great company at a BBQ and also a fearsome competitor at pub trivia!
Tab loves getting into peoples’ heads. She is your go to for creative and carefully considered solutions to all your research problems. She is also passionate about designing deliverables that are engaging and make it quick and easy for you to know ‘where to from here’. Tab is a ‘specialist generalist’, who leads the quantitative team and loves all things numbers, while also being an experienced and enthusiastic qualitative practitioner. Together with an obsession with design and data visualisation, she has spent 25+ years delving deep into human behaviour, uncovering patterns and the ‘big picture’ in data (qualitative & quantitative), and making sure the way insights are communicated gets clients’ excited.
Tab has a solid understanding and experience across a wide range of industries, techniques and methodologies. This includes everything from online communities (from their earliest days in Australia as part of Latitude Insights), to moderating focus groups, car clinics and large quantitative tracking and segmentation studies. Tab also loves a beer and a chat and goes to the gym all the time (in her head…)
Nic’s passion for digging into data is unmatched. She is an expert at taking a data set and quickly seeing the story. Critically, she can also communicate that story clearly and concisely to her clients: taking you from a sea of numbers to clear direction as to ‘where to’ from here. Particularly when it comes to branding and comms! Nic is an enthusiastic, dynamic, highly organised and hard-working researcher with over 20 years’ experience in the market research industry. She is passionate about techniques and ways of understanding human behaviour to unlock strategy and growth. She prides herself on being committed to constantly lifting the bar and finding the most effective and efficient way to achieve great results leading to real and meaningful change for her clients.
Over her career, Nic has gained a great deal of experience in a wide range of commercial industries, social and government sectors. Nicole’s expertise lies in quantitative methodologies and in particular in brand and comms evaluation work where her understanding of complex data and the use of nuanced data analysis techniques allows her to effectively evaluate long term trends. Nicole also plays a major role in the operations of the business. She has a pivotal and critical focus within the team to ensure that all projects are well resourced and are delivered on time and with full integrity. This role also means that Nicole carries the honour of being our QA Officer and ensures that all studies meet ISO requirements so that we can maintain our ISO20252 accreditation.
Her ‘other’ job is as a mum, which also means uber driver, chef and cleaner who's always tired and runs on coffee. And anyone who knows me knows Christmas is my happy place
Ann-Louise brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her social and government clients. Her extensive experience brings a deep understanding of the sector and the ability to navigate its complexities. Ann-Louise is passionate about working closely with her clients to achieve actionable insights from high-quality research, with robust outcomes that can stand up to critical scrutiny. Ann-Louise has over 25 years of experience dedicated to government and social research and provides a full range of market and social research skills. She is a highly skilled, respectful and empathetic qualitative researcher who has developed a vast toolbox of techniques to enable respondents to express themselves. Ann-Louise is also an experienced quantitative researcher who is just as comfortable analysing a large data set to find the story for her clients. Ann-Louise has worked across a diverse project portfolio including telecommunications, health, education, primary industries, transport and customer service – across both state and federal government agencies.
Ann-Louise is passionate about conducting research that has a genuine impact on people's lives. She loves seeing the insights from her research making a difference, whether that be ensuring puppies are purchased from a responsible breeder or improving the health outcomes for our most vulnerable community members. Outside of work Ann-Louise is often seen enjoying a dinner out paired with her beloved chardy and is also often heard from a mile away with her signature laugh.
Meticulous, precise, organised – Sandra is all about getting projects completed to the highest of standards. She has a particular eye for detail making sure that projects run smoothly and that they ultimately deliver actionable outcomes for clients. Sandra is a driven and dedicated dual researcher with 9+ years’ of mixed methodological experience to her name – while she likes speaking to people to understand the ‘why’, she equally loves looking at stats and figures. Sandra has worked across a multitude of different clients in terms of sector, size and target audiences including work with both commercial and government clients, although her true passion lies in the social and not for profit space and being able to make a meaningful difference for clients and ultimately the Australian community.
Sandra is the key account lead for a large community – working on a variety of projects from concept testing, campaign evaluations, usage and attitudes, sentiment studies, customer satisfaction, user experience, etc. – to answer questions for clients in a timely and actionable manner. Sandra is a beach bum by summer (you’ll find her on her paddleboard) and a snow bunny by winter (wishes she was cool enough to board but is a skier).
Luke's unique mindset seamlessly connects the broader societal context, human behavior, perceptions, and beliefs, all converging to offer a clear and pragmatic path for optimising your return on investment in insights. Luke is an accomplished generalist practitioner with seven years of valuable experience in the field. His career has primarily revolved around working closely with clients, allowing him to appreciate the vital role of research in making successful business decisions. Over the years, Luke has worked with a diverse range of private and public clients in various sectors.Luke's expertise extends across multiple methodological approaches, encompassing qualitative and quantitative research, online communities, and User Experience research. He excels in bringing clarity to intricate social and business problems, functioning as a catalyst for key stakeholders to devise and confidently implement strategies that optimise their decisions.
When he's not busy with his professional pursuits, you can often find him enthusiastically bingeing on history documentaries or engrossed in the pages of history books and journals on international relations. His love for these subjects not only deepens his expertise but also makes him a captivating storyteller and a font of interesting facts at social gatherings.
Forever curious and always learning, Tara's approach to market research is all about connecting the dots, deciphering the stories hidden within the data that drive human behaviour. With 5 years of experience, Tara is a driven and dedicated 'specialist generalist’. While she loves getting into the nitty gritty of the numbers and stats, she's equally passionate about chatting to people to understand the 'why’. Tara has demonstrated this expertise across a range of quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as long term online panels and communities. Constantly pushing herself to learn and grow, she recently completed a qualification in UX/UI design to expand her expertise in User Experience - a field she's deeply passionate about.
Tara's clientele portfolio is diverse, from corporate clients to government agencies, demonstrating her adaptability and expertise across industries. However, it is working on social and not-for-profit projects that she finds truly rewarding, knowing that her efforts directly contribute to a meaningful impact within the Australian community.Tara is the team's go-to person for restaurant and bar recommendations. When she's not working, you can find her exploring new local gems, checking out art exhibitions, or escaping the city for a hike, taking full advantage of all that regional Victoria has to offer!
Larissa’s passion lies in everything data-related- from crunching numbers and analysis to making your insights stories come alive in visually engaging ways. Larissa has almost four years of experience in market and social research. She’s been involved end-to-end on a wide-range of various quantitative and qualitative research projects, spanning from large-scale government ones to more niche commercial ones. She's a sharp and analytical researcher and loves digging out meaningful insights for her clients. Her academic background in psychology and marketing from Monash University has fueled her inquisitiveness about the 'whys' behind human behaviour – what drives people to think, feel, and act the way they do. Outside of her research work, she's a serious foodie, and always on the hunt for the next delicious meal.
Annabel is an accomplished researcher dedicated to understanding and empowering multicultural communities. With a strong passion for knowledge and a remarkable aptitude for language and culture, she possesses a distinctive skill set that sets her apart in her field. Throughout her career, Annabel has been involved in groundbreaking and innovative research initiatives, providing invaluable insights into the challenges and barriers faced by multicultural communities in Australia.
Her expertise spans social, government, and commercial sectors, where she collaborates with esteemed clients to promote positive change and inclusivity. By connecting with grassroots multicultural community members, Annabel raises awareness about the importance of research and facilitates their engagement, bridging the gap between research and real-life impact. Outside of work, you'll catch Annabel testing out new recipes in the kitchen or spending quality time with friends and family (often with a cocktail in hand!).
Del loves to uncover the ‘why’ in human behaviour, particularly consumers. As a curious, hands-on and dualist researcher, she is passionate about creating evidence-based and actionable insights for clients by looking beyond the obvious and digging deep! Del’s digital marketing and sales background, in combination with her experience working client side, sparked an appetite to understand what makes consumers tick and a love for market research. She is driven to transform user experience, design and sales by challenging conventional ways of thinking to develop custom strategies and insights for clients.
With extensive experience across both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, Del has worked across a variety of industries including retail, FMCG, tourism, financial institutions, sport, health, transport, insurance and education. Del holds a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management) and a Bachelor of Marketing from Monash University in Melbourne and is a full member of The Research Society. When Del is not working, you can find her painting, visiting art galleries or cooking up Italian dishes and serving anything with limoncello. She is also is a black belt in martial arts and an adrenaline junkie (think skydiving in NZ and swimming with sharks).
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