David Croston
David Croston is the Founder and Head of Research at Newlens Research. David’s background is in branding and research. For 13 years, he owned and operated The Branding House, one of Australia’s leading brand consultancies. The firm had an impressive national and international client list which included: 3M, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, Lend Lease, Goodman Fielder, GlaxoSmithKline, Jack Daniels, Kimberly-Clark, Seven Network, Ticketek, Cement Australia, and SC Johnson.
David sold The Branding House to WPP, the global advertising and communications services group.
After eighteen months of extensive research, David’s book Employee Engagement: The People-first Approach to Building a Business was published to critical acclaim.
The book featured illuminating engagement case studies from companies such as ANZ Bank, Stockland, KPMG, Unilever, CSC, AMP, Vodafone, St George Bank, and King & Wood Mallesons.
The Australian Financial Review’s BOSS magazine tagged the book as one of the year’s top three strategy and management books and identified David as the year’s best-selling Australian business author.
From interviewing CEOs and Human Resource Directors for his book, David identified a gap in the employee research market for qualitative feedback. Organisations were well served by survey-focused consultancies such as Gallup, Willis Towers Watson, and AonHewitt, but were lacking options when it came to establishing the narrative behind the numbers.
During this period, David successfully used traditional face-to-face methods — interviews, focus groups, and workshops — and applied advanced projective techniques that enabled employees to express their unfiltered views and opinions.
The onset of Covid-19 rendered this traditional approach unworkable. However, David identified that leading consumer-focused market research agencies had successfully deployed innovative listening tools that allowed them to conduct qualitative research with consumers online.
David scoured the market looking for the best-in-market solutions that would also maintain employees’ anonymity, a foundational necessity for gaining open and honest feedback.
David is now a leader in using device-agnostic research technology that enables him to conduct research with anyone, anywhere, anytime. In turn, Newlens Research can undertake listening studies at a fraction of the cost of traditional in-person research methods and with greater speed and efficiency.
The focus is now on deploying these new tools as dedicated listening solutions for senior leaders. This innovative and more agile approach enables our clients to quickly pick up on early signs of danger, head off potential crises, and recognise glimmers of opportunity.