Company Description

Certus Insights is an independent public affairs, communications and market research firm based in the Washington, D.C. area. The firm designs and conducts survey research, focus groups and media analytics for organizations that need to understand how audiences think and to act on what they learn. Its clients are largely communicators, strategists and public affairs professionals within corporations, associations, agencies and advocacy organizations, and its work concentrates on the audiences and questions that define public affairs, communications and corporate reputation: elite and stakeholder groups, contested issues and the messages that move them.

Quantitative research and analytical depth
Quantitative research is the backbone of the firm's work. Certus Insights designs rigorous custom surveys—built for each specific audience and question rather than drawn from templates—with the sample design, questionnaire construction and analytical discipline that stand up to scrutiny. The analysis goes well beyond toplines to the segments, drivers and subgroup differences that explain why an audience thinks and acts as it does. Paired with qualitative focus groups and in-depth interviews that surface motivation and language, this produces evidence that is both statistically sound and strategically decisive—findings clients can act on with confidence.

Reaching hard-to-reach and elite audiences
Much of the firm's work involves audiences that general-population panels cannot reach reliably. Certus Insights recruits these respondents through a flexible network of research panels, custom recruiting and targeted online advertising, with screening built around the specific criteria that define each audience. Groups the firm regularly reaches include:

• Policy and government decision-makers across defense, health, technology and other issue areas, including the D.C. Beltway, state capitals and metropolitan leadership
• Business decision-makers, from the C-suite to senior managers and purchasing authorities
• Health and medical professionals and health care decision-makers
• Opinion leaders, including social-media opinion elites and household decision-makers

Stakeholder, member and employee research
Beyond public opinion and elite audiences, the firm conducts audience, stakeholder, member and employee research for organizations seeking to understand perceptions, priorities and barriers to action. This includes association membership studies, employee and internal-reputation research and stakeholder engagement work that informs how an organization communicates with the groups it depends on.

Research for communications and public affairs
Certus Insights builds research around the decisions that communicators and strategists face. Message development and testing—through surveys and focus groups—identifies the words, arguments and evidence that hold up under pressure, framing an organization's strengths, addressing its vulnerabilities and preparing for likely attacks. Public-opinion and audience studies map where opinion stands on the issues a client works on and which arguments move it.

For reputation work, the firm measures brand and organizational reputation across four tiers and up to 22 individual attributes, producing an overall score and sub-scores for each factor. The result shows where a reputation is strong, where it is exposed and how it shifts over time, and it can be tracked across markets and audiences.

Media analytics and social listening
Media analytics extends this view beyond survey data to how issues, organizations and messages actually travel. The firm analyzes news and social media conversation to measure share of voice, surface emerging narratives, track sentiment and identify the voices shaping a debate—turning the open flow of public conversation into structured evidence that complements polling and qualitative work.

Full project support and senior attention
The firm manages research from end to end: project scoping and audience definition; questionnaire and discussion-guide design; programming, fielding and recruitment; and analysis and reporting. Senior leadership, including President Andrew Rugg and Chief Analyst Ron Faucheux, remains directly involved in project design, analysis and client consultation rather than handing the work off.

Certus Insights works with organizations of every size, from major brands and institutions to smaller advocacy and communications efforts. Clients have included AAMCO, Abbott Laboratories, the Alzheimer's Association, the American Psychiatric Association, Forbes Tate Partners, the International Finance Corporation, ManTech, Publicis Groupe, Qorvis Communications and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Certus Insights was established in 2019 and is a member of the Insights Association.