Based in Leeds, the business has secured clients across sport, betting and gaming, retail and wellness, with early projects including a Premier League football club.

Pearce (pictured) spent around five years at Boots before joining THG in 2021, where he worked across brands including Myprotein and Lookfantastic.

Red Onion’s core proposition combines continuous consumer research, market mapping, audience segmentation, brand measurement, pricing analysis and in-channel incrementality testing, using established global research panels.

The agency’s approach to brand measurement examines salience, uniqueness, and meaning individually, and includes analytical tools to assess pricing power and future growth potential, as well as an analyst working with clients to interpret findings.

Pearce said: “I’ve worked in and with countless businesses with substantial research budgets and sophisticated data teams where answering basic questions about who we should target next was still surprisingly difficult.

“That experience was behind Red Onion. We wanted to bring together the research, analysis and commercial thinking needed to answer those questions, without businesses having to commission several separate projects or piece together findings from different teams.

“Research should tell you more than whether awareness has increased or consideration has fallen. It should help you understand why something has changed, which customers represent the greatest opportunity and what you should do about it.”

The company has set its sights on expanding its research activity into other categories including FMCG, sports nutrition and retail.