COPENHAGEN — Kristian Hoareau Foged, a former principal insights and analytics consultant at Archetype, has set up his own agency to partner with PR agencies on data analytics, insights, planning, and measurement and evaluation.

Simply Thought’s proposition is to make a range of in-depth communications, business and media research, data and analytics capabilities available to agencies and their clients on a flexible, project basis.

The firm is already working with agencies including Blurred, Diffusion and Archetype. The agency has started life as a network of consultants, with Foged planning to start hiring staffers over the next six months.

Foged has recently been working as an independent consultant and is a member of BME PR Pros’ Blueprint Advisory Board. He joined Text100 – which became Archetype in 2018 when it was merged with sister Next15 firm Bite – in 2014 and was part of the team that founded the agency’s insights and analytics practice.

He told PRovoke Media: “We’ve seen the rise of data, planning and measurement in PR practice, and the need for strategic insights in proving creative and forming strategies. The impetus has always been there, but what’s special about launching in this moment is that we see it’s difficult for many agencies to invest, especially as a lot of clients for whom this is necessary or relevant won’t now be retained, and you need a certain scale to buy in tools and the right people to deliver.”

And Foged added: “There’s so much potential for what PR can do. We were always talking about PR eating advertising’s lunch and it never happened – even the PR awards at Cannes ended up going to ad agencies. Data isn’t a silver bullet but we can uplevel what we do as an industry by bringing in more insights, data, planning, measurement and strategy, not to just get coverage but business results. My ambition is to be part of the move we’re seeing to push PR forward to where it should be in a business.”

Simply Thought is investing in the latest AI-based social and news media analytics tools, such as NetBase Quid, to support agencies and their clients, as well as offering classic research methodologies.

Foged has also developed a framework, ‘ABCs of Marketing Intelligence’, to analyse audiences, brands, competitors and category and provide intelligence that can be built into communications strategies.