Best concept testing platforms and agenciesA guide to finding the best match for your needs
Testing is one part of getting a concept right. Before choosing how to test, establish what still needs developing. This guide names no firms; antedote is a strategic research and innovation consultancy.
- Match the partner to the work
From a test of finished concepts to development and testing together.
- A prompt for your AI assistant
Fill it in here, then ask for a longlist with sources.
- Questions to ask
What separates improving a concept from measuring it.
A score is where the decision starts.
A well-designed test can show whether people understand a concept, find it relevant and see it as different, and estimate demand or how it fits a range.
What a test can’t do is supply a better idea than the ones it is given. That comes from development: finding the need worth meeting, and writing the concept in the words of the people who’d buy it.
A good test feeds that work: what people misunderstand, what matters to them and where an idea falls short. The evidence goes back into the concept, to optimize it, change the offer or stop, and revised ideas may need testing again.
Match the partner to the work.
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Your team develops concepts and can read the evidence.
Establish whether the test’s design, audience and support fit this particular decision.
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You need a custom assessment of developed concepts.
Establish which diagnostics, benchmarks or models fit, and what each can’t tell you.
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You need opportunities, concepts and evidence developed together.
Establish who develops and revises the concepts, how the evidence changes them, and where responsibilities end.
Ask your AI assistant where your ideas are.
Say how far your ideas have come, and what you need next.
Ask for sources and for what the assistant doesn’t know. Use a summary with nothing confidential in it, or an AI tool your company has approved for it.
Treat the answer as the start of your own investigation, then meet the people who would do the work.
We’re a [category] brand with [several early ideas / one idea we believe in] for [the decision]. We need a partner to [develop and improve concepts before testing them / screen many ideas quickly / assess a final concept and size its potential] in [markets].
Using current web sources, suggest firms that have published work like this, and link each source. For each, say why it may fit, what it has shown and what we would still need to check, with one question to ask the people who would do the work. Don’t guess who would be assigned, and don’t invent fees, references or results. If you can’t search the web, help me define selection criteria instead.
What you type stays on this page.
Questions that separate improving from measuring.
Look for cases that explain what changed: what was improved, taken forward, held back or stopped, and why.
- How will the concepts improve between rounds?
What changes, on what evidence, and who rewrites them.
- What will the test tell us beyond an overall score?
The diagnostics, and how they point to what to fix.
- How will you test ideas that have to work together?
A design that reads the range as well as each idea alone.
- Tell us about a concept you helped a client improve, hold back or stop.
What changed, and why.
Concepts improved, then tested.
For the cleaning brand, two propositions aimed at the same job were tested alone and as a pair: who would buy each, how far those buyers overlapped, and whether a new product would add buyers or move them from the brand’s existing range.
- Developing and testing new products for a cleaning brand A prioritized concept pipeline with closer work on selected concepts, then a quantitative range test with volume modeling. What happened next Both propositions later reached shelves.
- Developing new products for a free-from food brand A growth map, a documented idea bank and concept screening. What happened next Commissioned a second innovation pipeline, for another part of its range.
Check the team, and ask for a reference.
Ask who will write and revise the concepts, who will read the evidence, and whether they stay through the recommendation.
Then ask a past client, with their permission, what changed because of the evidence and, where something launched, what they learned afterwards.
For a range, the harder question is whether a new product would grow the business or just the range.
If you don’t yet have concepts worth testing, our guide to choosing an innovation consultancy starts a step earlier.
If you want concepts developed, improved and tested in one program, that is our concept development, with concept testing to measure and learn from the ideas you take forward.