Why Foundational Research Should Guide Your Media Strategy (And How AI Is Making It Easier)

At Campfire, we believe investing in media is ultimately investing in people. That means knowing who you're trying to reach and how to speak their language before you spend a single dollar on paid media.

That’s why we sat down with Anastassia Laskey, founder of Ground Control Research, for a recent episode of Fireside, our podcast series on media strategy. Anastassia is reimagining how audience research is done, making it faster, more accessible, and deeply human even as AI enters the chat.

If you’ve ever launched a campaign and wondered, Are we even talking to the right people?, this conversation is for you.

Research Doesn’t Have to Be Out of Reach

Historically, deep audience research was a luxury reserved for enterprise brands. It was slow, expensive, and labor-intensive. According to Anastassia, “The cost to talk to people—and then make sense of that data—was incredibly high. We’ve literally been doing it the same manual way for 50 years.”

That’s changing. With tools like large language models, researchers can now analyze hours of interviews and survey data in a fraction of the time. At Ground Control, that means going from a 12-week timeline to two.

But faster doesn’t mean shallower. What sets Anastassia apart is how she uses AI to augment, not replace, the human process. “AI doesn’t know what to ask your audience. But it can help you analyze what they’ve told you,” she shared. It’s not about asking ChatGPT for a survey. It’s about applying the right methodology and letting AI accelerate the workflow.

Audience Insights That Drive Real Growth

Research isn’t just for product development or rebrands, though it’s valuable there too. The most common entry point? Right before a brand invests in paid media for the first time.

“We help answer: Is your target audience actually who you think it is? And once we know that, what do they care about? How should you be showing up for them?” Anastassia explained.

The deliverable is more than a persona. It’s a playbook grounded in data that outlines:

• Who your best-fit customers really are

• What drives their decision-making

• How they view your brand vs your competitors

• What to say to them and how to say it

This foundational work helps brands avoid costly guesswork and unlock more effective strategies, creative, and media spend.

Purpose-Led Brands Still Need Precision

If your brand leads with values, you might worry that trying to grow will dilute your message or alienate loyal customers. Anastassia gets it. “We don’t need to change who we are—but we do need to speak the language of the audience we’re trying to grow with,” she said.

Many early-stage or purpose-led brands develop a tone that resonates with a niche audience—but as they scale, they need to translate that message for a broader audience without compromising their identity.

It’s not about abandoning your purpose—it’s about expressing it in a way others can connect with.

From Intuition to Intention

Chris from our team put it best: “If you’re just throwing money at media without foundational research, that’s not a strategy—it’s a gamble.”

Foundational insights don’t just improve media ROI, they help creative teams develop sharper messaging and help strategists unlock new pathways for growth. With tools like Ground Control’s Telemetry research platform, brands can now access this kind of depth without burning months (or budgets).

Where the Future Is Headed

As AI becomes more integrated into marketing workflows, Anastassia sees a new frontier opening. One where we use automation to do more testing, learning, and iterating. “The future is micro-cycles: do research, test a campaign, optimize, repeat,” she said.

But she’s clear: AI is only as good as the humans behind it. Her optimism comes from the fact that tools like AI can help democratize access to insight and give more people the ability to make data-informed decisions, fast.

“If we all can use the tools available, whether that’s AI or creative tools or community building, to have more agency and impact, that’s something to be hopeful about.”

Want to Dig Deeper?

If you're curious about how this kind of foundational research can support your media strategy, reach out to us. Anastassia is one of our vetted partners, and we love working with brands to connect their values to their audiences with intention and care.

• Read the Transcript

  David Gogel: 0:12

  Welcome to Fireside, a responsibly different podcast where we spark candid conversations about media investments and the strategies shaping the way we connect.

  Chris Marine: 0:33

  Welcome back to Fireside. I'm Chris Marine and I'm joined by my colleague at Campfire Consulting, David Gogel. Before we get into today's episode, I'm going to ask for a quick favor Give this responsibly different channel a follow. It helps these stories and conversations reach more people, and when we educate folks about the true value of our media ecosystem, real change becomes possible for our culture, both locally and globally. Now today, we're sitting down with Anastasia Lasky from Ground Control Research, who's doing some seriously smart work, helping brands go way deeper than just demographics or surface level personas. If you've ever been about to launch a campaign and found yourself wondering are we even talking to the right people, this is the conversation for you. We're unpacking why foundational research often gets skipped, how AI is speeding things up without losing the human element, and what it really takes to understand your audience in a meaningful, actionable way before you drop a penny into paid media. So let's jump into our conversation with Anastasia Lasky from Ground Control Research.

  David Gogel: 1:41

  Okay, this is going to be a good one. We are excited to chat. This is going to be a wide ranging conversation. But we're so excited to hear about the work that you're doing because in our world media strategy, research plays a really critical role. But you know better than most that for a lot of clients it's been out of reach for a long time. So you know, we're hoping to really unpack during this conversation the work that you've been doing, how clients can leverage your platform to do research kind of in more efficient and cost-effective ways, and we're hoping to talk about the role that media strategy and research play together. So with that, can you give us a little bit of background on what you're building and kind of your background and how you got into?

  Anastassia Laskey: 2:26

  it. Yeah, thank you, david, and thank you Chris for having me here. I'm Anastasia Lasky. I'm the founder and president of Ground Control Research and what we do all day is we help brands to really understand who is your customer, what makes them tick, what's going to make them buy and what should your strategy be based on that information. And we're really focused on helping companies apply insight to their strategy. And what that does is it creates a much more, let's just say, a more cost-effective media approach, if we were to put it in sort of your context and it really just creates a lot of flow ease and increased revenue and increased margin, oftentimes too, for our clients.

  Anastassia Laskey: 3:08

  So I think you know, with that, with that context being said, david, I'll pick up on something you just said which is, historically, this kind of work, the work that I do, has been out of reach for a lot of brands, and maybe it's good to talk just high level about why. And then we can dig into sort of where things going, or at least where is ground control going and what am I doing with clients. So you know, historically, the main drivers of costs for clients to do actual like comprehensive, foundational research into who should my target market be. Once I figure that out, what matters to them Like? What do I do? How would that shape my strategy? How could I talk to them better? All of that good stuff.

  Anastassia Laskey: 3:46

  That has historically been a really, really cost-intensive process because the cost to talk to people has been high and the cost to take what a market researcher or market research firm learns from those people that they talk to has been really, really high.

  Anastassia Laskey: 4:05

  It's been a very manual process for literally like the last 50 years.

  Anastassia Laskey: 4:09

  You know it's gotten a little bit better with the aid of like computing and stuff like that, but there has not been a tool until now that could help you look at, let's say, 10 conversations that a person had for an hour with each person and go through that and uncover patterns and recognize what the trends are and format that into something that a business person could use to drive strategy, for example.

  Anastassia Laskey: 4:31

  Now we have this cool thing called AI, which is kind of a buzzword, as we know, but where I'm going and where I see really great market research going whether that's DIY research that clients do themselves or with their in-house teams, whether it's work that agencies do, or whether they partner with someone like my firm. It's really about how do we use AI to aid those human workflows and make sure, of course, we don't want hallucinations, we don't want false data, we don't want incorrect things. But we can really use AI and some of the powers of large language models to cut through the cost burden and therefore give clients access to something they never had access to before.

  David Gogel: 5:08

  Yeah, no, that makes that really makes sense and tracks with the conversations we're having with clients. I think the other piece that's important to talk about is not only the cost, but also the time right. Often, when we're when we're thinking about planning, we don't have the time for this drawn out process, and so can you talk to us a little bit about how you've been able to cut down on the timeline for this research as well?

  Anastassia Laskey: 5:30

  Yeah, absolutely. You know I come from the startup world so I kind of have an atypical background in that. You know, I started in like we'll call it a big market research firm and then I went right into like being on the team of a really scrappy startup and the number one point of feedback I got back then 10, 15 years ago was we can't take six weeks to do this. Like we have a board meeting next week, we have a partner conversation tomorrow, like how can we make this faster? And so when I started Ground Control, it was all about like with again the tools we had at the time, like how could we make this as fast as possible?

  Anastassia Laskey: 6:09

  Frankly, the type of foundational insights, work that we're talking about, you know most clients, if they didn't work with ground control, it would have taken them 12 weeks, 18 weeks, two quarters, to kind of get that done. With our like super speed process, even though it's a manual process, it was like four weeks, four to six weeks. Right Now with using AI to aid the workflows, again, we're taking that human element out. In certain places we're still having a lot of human supervision, but we're being really thoughtful about that in our process so we can cut that down to about two weeks, so sometimes less actually. So it just depends. Does is? It allows clients to come into a strategy process and they're not actually having to add timeline to that process to incorporate or account for the research. It's just part of that strategy development process, which would take a few weeks anyway. Right, because you've got to go through rounds of iteration and learning and sharing and all that.

  David Gogel: 6:59

  Yeah, can you talk to us about some of the entry points here? I mean we, so we're, we're as you. Of course, you're aware and people listening are aware we're a media strategy agency, right, but I think your work probably has a number of entry points. Can you talk to us a little bit about what those typically look like and kind of what the deliverables are?

  Anastassia Laskey: 7:15

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, media strategy or I would say, actually like to make it more broadly, a little more broad is like when, when organizations are trying a new type of media for the first time, like they're about to invest in paid media for the first time, that's like a really common use case, because what worked in digital or what worked in sort of the organic methods they were doing to get to the scale that they're at, we don't actually have any data that tells us that they've been talking to the right customer or that, like, who they want to target in media is the right target. Like we have no idea truly. Like in a factual sense, we might have ideas about it but we don't actually know. So that's like a really common one.

  Anastassia Laskey: 7:52

  Another common time when I work with clients on this type of work is when they're repositioning or rebranding or they kind of know internally they have some sort of internal data that like sort of like what got us here isn't going to get us to that next stage of growth.

  Anastassia Laskey: 8:09

  So it's really about we're at a plateau or we're feeling like we need some exponential growth or a bigger growth jump, and they're looking at everything they're saying and doing. We come in and help them start with basically a playbook and we say, hey, like this is who you should be looking at, who you should be talking to, what you should be saying in a general way, and let them build their strategy and their big growth jump on that, and then again I'm just kind of giving you umbrella kind of things Like the other common one is whether it's a pre-launch company or whether it's an organization that is an established organization but they're launching something new or they're trying to like, like if they're a consumer brand they're trying to sell into, like a retailer or something like that. Anywhere where a brand needs to really tell a story to an outside party that shows that they know what they're talking about, about their own brand, that's when we really step in to help them get that foundation.

  Chris Marine: 8:58

  I love that idea too, that helping people kind of get to that next phase of growth, because a lot of the times we'll talk with folks, obviously we're helping them think about how to amplify their story. But we talked a lot about purpose.

  Chris Marine: 9:10

  And like in a world full of sameness today, like how actually getting down to your core purpose is really important. So I'd imagine through this research you have some really interesting stories of like how you actually got past people thinking about those traditional four P's of marketing and really going deeper as a brand.

  Anastassia Laskey: 9:27

  Yeah for sure. And like, when we work with companies, like it is all about, like, I view my work as, like a translator, I'm here to help take what is the mission, the purpose, the values, the vision that the organization has and translate that into, like here's how you talk about this with this audience, right, like let's get specific and precise about who is that audience, and then how do we speak their language? It's not that we need to change for them, we don't need to become a different company, but we need to speak in their language. I mean, I can give you an example from my personal life this morning. One of my friends is a doctor. He speaks a totally different type of language and communication than I do. I'm a marketer and a market researcher.

  Anastassia Laskey: 10:05

  Sparing you a long story, I essentially said I think you're a detractor, which to me is a marketing term. I might say you're a promoter, you're a detractor, you're neutral, right, like that's common for me to say. He thought this morning that I was insulting him. He's like, did you mean to? Like were you offended? And then you like made this jab at me and I was like, oh no, I'm so sorry.

  Anastassia Laskey: 10:26

  Like I just was speaking a different language than you were speaking English, but we're speaking a different language, right, and I think one of the big challenges that companies have as they scale and this is what I've seen over and over is that the language that they originally used to get that first kind of product market fit, or that first cohort of customers, was really resonant to a very, very small and specific target market. And that's great. We love those loyal people. We don't want to alienate them, but to get that like next big jump of growth, it's a different target or it's an expanded target, and they have a different set of things that matter to them emotionally and in language. So we can help them basically figure out what should you be talking about with that bigger audience?

  Chris Marine: 11:09

  Yeah, you just answered one of my questions. I was going to ask something along those lines which is like what are some of the misconceptions about audience segmentation? Yeah, you kind of just answered there. Yeah, for sure.

  Anastassia Laskey: 11:21

  Yeah, for sure, yeah, and I would say, chris, like you know, one of the kind of things I've seen a lot, especially in those scaling brands, is, like this fear, which I totally get, and it's a loyalty to like I don't want to alienate my current customers, right, and I don't want to not be true to who. I am Right and I'm 100% with you. We shouldn't do either of those things, but we can't just have that be the pervasive thinking. We have to also have some, I would say, more, more expanded thinking, more growth minded thinking of OK, if we're going to say that, that's our sure we're not going to do those things.

  Anastassia Laskey: 11:54

  What else are we going to do, though? Like, how are we going to identify a market that is aligned to us and who we are, and identify the language, and identify that segment or those segments, and put together a plan to actually expand? It's not enough to just say I want to expand, I want to invest in media, but I don't want to do all these other things. Right? That's not a plan, that's like constraint, right?

  Chris Marine: 12:16

  And that's gambling. That's what we show people all the time it's like, if you don't have anything outside of, like, I just want to throw money at a thing. We're like, then you're going to throw money at a thing Like investing in media is investing in people.

  Anastassia Laskey: 12:26

  Exactly.

  Chris Marine: 12:27

  We talk a lot about it. It's like investing in people means time. That means different fronts where you need to put energy towards communicating. Yeah, for sure. So that's really important. Call out you made yeah.

  Anastassia Laskey: 12:38

  And I think like just to build on that real quick. And then, yeah, and I think like just to build on that real quick. And then, david, I think you have something to say. But, like you know, one of the biggest barriers that I hear from clients about wanting to do research is they're like a fraction, like a so tiny of an amount in making sure that who you're broadcasting that to and what you're saying is right, like it's actually going to produce a result.

  Anastassia Laskey: 13:14

  I was like, do you just not like to have like a high, like ROAS? Like what is the thinking? There's no thinking there, right? But again, I think the disconnect I'm not trying to insult clients, clients I think the disconnect is the way clients think about budget. Like they just like they think about things in a very like you know, sometimes it's a little bit like blinders on way of like, oh, the media budget is for media, it's not for like, making sure the media is in the right direction and then with the right content. You know, but that's kind of like what I would like to change. Or I continue to see clients who succeed, they change their point of view on that right, and that's why we love partnering with you.

  David Gogel: 13:49

  Yeah, you just touched on something really important right, which is that there's tons of operational leverage in the system now because of AI and because of technology, and something that we're talking to clients a lot about is how do we take some of that operational leverage and apply it to test and learn and iterate and optimize faster so that way we can do more interesting and dynamic things? So do you have a sense of where you think the market is going? Do you think that people are going to do more of these micro cycles, where, where they're like doing research, playing, optimizing, scaling or do you think people are going to do larger research projects? Where do you see all this going?

  Anastassia Laskey: 14:30

  Yeah, for sure. So I think I'll say where I think the market is right now with market like, with market research specifically. I think people generally are using AI as a tool, but they don't have any sort of a methodology or like a plan behind it, right, it's kind of like I use AI like my Google search, or I say I use this tool called deep research, but I don't actually have a deep methodology that I'm using to make sure that what it comes back with is correct, right. So I think that's where we are now. It's kind of that like early stage confusion, chaos like, and then some people are getting bad results and some people are getting better results, right, and it's not really standard.

  Anastassia Laskey: 15:08

  What I think you know people leading the industry like myself who have embraced AI can do is we can say, hey, like this is this is actually like the five things you really do have to know about your market, and you have to make sure they're facts and not fiction, and you have to make sure they're specific and precise, not general you know AI kind of generality nonsense, right. And I think that over time or I hope that over time research and insight can kind of move into this like place where I'm trying to go of AI as a tool to speed up a workflow and the use of a methodology that already exists and is grounded in science and art and creativity and all of the things that had to happen, you know, to produce consultative result for clients, which is what you know I'm here to do.

  Chris Marine: 15:53

  I think that's so important using the AI for process to your point to be able to speed up and make that a really clean process, but not losing the human-centered approach to what actually drives people in our culture forward.

  Anastassia Laskey: 16:07

  Yeah, for example, like you know again, I'm just trying to make it a little tangible for any listeners here Like you know, when we use AI in our telemetry service, which is sort of our foundational insights service for consumer brands, there's a survey template that exists. I wrote that survey. I wrote that survey using 15 years of experience like driving, like exponential growth with, you know, high performing companies. Right, I know what needs to be in it. Ai doesn't know what needs to be in it. I could ask AI can you write me a survey to help me understand my customers? And it will give me something.

  Anastassia Laskey: 16:42

  But that's not where I need to be using AI. What I use AI for is we get inputs from our clients and our partners. That is like this is the category that we're in, this is this, this is that all these inputs, and we use AI to help us generate updates to parts of the survey template, right, to make it custom, and that's how we could do a custom survey super fast. Does that make sense? So that's where I think you know people who want to make sure that what they're creating is correct and useful will do you know?

  David Gogel: 17:11

  Yeah, I think that's so important to really focus on, because I think when people, if people were just listening to the start of this conversation, they would think, okay, you're using AI to create the framework and that's not the case, right, you're using AI to analyze faster.

  David Gogel: 17:28

  You're you're using, like you know, deep research methodologies that have been developed over kind of you know what I mean more than a decade of experience, to create a framework and then you're using, you know, a research methodology to create insights, but using AI to process that information faster at scale, so that way it's more accessible for brands. And again, as you know, we use tools like Global Web Index, right, to like understand audience, kind of audience behaviors around media consumption or brand discovery, right, but that is that's very, very helpful for us directionally to know where to go, but it isn't a substitute for a deep understanding of kind of human, human ideas around a specific thing, which is the work that you're doing. And so, just to kind of bridge these two worlds for folks, can you talk a little bit about how, like, how are you often seeing people use your research in practice? I mean, we touched on it at a high level, but can you double click in and really give an example of like how this comes to life for clients.

  Anastassia Laskey: 18:25

  Yeah, Like. Do you mean? Like using sort of the results of the services on their?

  David Gogel: 18:29

  business. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's important to paint a really clear picture there, for sure, yeah.

  Anastassia Laskey: 18:33

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's important to paint a really clear picture there, for sure, yeah, so, like for consumer brands, you know, the number one thing that that comes, that people come away with at our clients is is my target market? That I think I should have? Is it correct? Like statistically not like I woo wooed my way into like a brainstorming session, which those are great, right, but like statistically, we thought it was going to be parents of a certain type and actually we found that it is this other type of parent, right, or whatever. Again, I'm just making something up.

  Anastassia Laskey: 19:02

  That is like the number one grounding fact, because all of your marketing, all of it, all of your strategy, frankly, as a company, has to be built around knowing who in the world you are talking to, like who is your best customer. So that's kind of the foundational data point insight that we can give. And then what we do a little bit differently is we don't just say, oh, it's this. We don't just say, oh, it's a sentence of who, this is right. We create sort of a playbook that says and for that group of people, here's all of the purchase drivers and the category that you operate in, here's what they actually think about your brand. Here's how you can differentiate versus your competitors among that group of people. Here is a persona that we created for you based on everything we learned about this group of people and your category and everything that's happening, sort of in their worlds, right.

  Anastassia Laskey: 19:51

  So we're making it come to life and we're making it very actionable and tangible, with the goal of not just saying, well, here you go, toss it over the fence, this is your target market, but here's how you as a company, your specific brand, your specific product, how you can actually capture that market or more of that market, depending on whether you're currently marketing to them or not. And that, I would say, is like sort of the very practical, like tactical output is. It is like a playbook. It's like go do these things, because this is what's going to drive your next you know, I don't know million, couple million, 10 million, 20 million, a hundred million dollars of growth, whatever you want, right. And we kind of we also get those sort of inputs from our clients to like where are they trying to get to? And we use that to contextualize the work that we do.

  Chris Marine: 20:35

  Yeah, One last question for you. This has been amazing and we're going to have to have you come back for a part two, part three, part four.

  Anastassia Laskey: 20:44

  Yeah, regular guests Happy to help.

  Chris Marine: 20:47

  With the quickly evolving landscape of the world and we could like to use David's terminology, double click into that many different ways, but, like I, like to leave people with hope. What's giving you hope and waking you up? Inspired every day.

  Anastassia Laskey: 21:03

  Yeah, I think that I am really inspired. I'm inspired by AI because, like for me as an individual, like this has been like a huge unlock for me, because I think it gives, it's given me, a lot of agency as a person. If I don't know something, I don't have to Google, search and wonder did I search the right terms. I literally can just be like I don't understand this thing Right and I can get education Right, and I think, like AI is bringing a democratization of information, but also it's teaching people how to apply that information, which is so core, to like what I want to do and how I see the world as developing more positively.

  Anastassia Laskey: 21:39

  So I'm not going to say there are no downsides or risks to AI. I think we need controls. I'm not trying to be like an optimist with no constraint here, but I think that if we all can use whatever tool whether it's AI, whether it's a creative tool, whether it's something that we're passionate about to sort of have more agency and control over what impact we're trying to make, like, I think that's a great thing. So that's my optimism for you, chris.

  Chris Marine: 22:06

  I love that Well, thanks for joining us around the fire. Again, you're going to have to come back. Yeah, definitely need a part two.

  David Gogel: 22:11

  Thank you guys. Again, you're going to have to come back.

  Chris Marine: 22:12

  Definitely need a part two Thank you guys.

  Chris Marine: 22:17

  Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Fireside. Big thanks to Anastasia for joining us and making the case that research doesn't have to be slow or out of reach and when done right, it can unlock smarter strategy, more efficient media and way better creative. If you want to learn more about ground control research or insights engine telemetry, or explore more of Ana's work, check out the show notes. We've got everything linked up. You can also reach out to us here at Campfire. Ana is one of our vetted partners and we're always happy to talk about how this kind of research can be integrated into your media approach so you can reach your audience with intention and care. And if you liked this episode, don't forget to follow, share with a friend, a colleague, or drop us a line. We'd love to know what's keeping you curious. Until next time, keep tending to the fire of positive change.Description text goes here