The firm was chosen ahead of Millward Brown, Hall & Partners and Research International to win the Heinz contract, which will see it take responsibility for brand and advertising tracking for all of the company’s packaged food brands. It will also handle brand and advertising tracking for The Scottish Power.

Conquest will use its online, avatar-based research tool, Metaphorix, for both contracts. The product measures how consumers connect with brands, such as whether they feel ‘warmth’ or ‘intimacy', through a range of online scenarios. These include, for example, letting respondents choose how close they would sit next to a brand on a sofa by moving their avatar.

The firm says the method “plugs directly” into a respondent’s mind to gauge their unconcious reactions by “tapping into everyday emotional metaphors”.

David Penn, one of Conquest’s co-founders, said: “Until now research has worked on the assumption that brand decisions are concious, explicable and rational. Clients now understand that in reality our behaviour and and our response to brands is highly emotional. As consumers, we say one thing and do another.”