Ideally appoints Kirsty Harding as research strategy director

Ideally has appointed Kirsty Harding as its first research strategy director as the SaaS market research platform scales adoption and enters its next growth phase.

The announcement:

Ideally, the SaaS market research platform built to support innovation and creative decision-making, has appointed Kirsty Harding as its first research strategy director as it scales product adoption and enters its next phase of growth. Harding joins at a time when organisations are rethinking how insight is used internally. Increasingly, brands are moving research upstream, embedding it earlier in creative and innovation processes and using it more often to guide decisions in real time.

Her role will focus on ensuring research scales on the Ideally platform in a way that expands creative potential, strengthens decision-making and delivers better commercial outcomes. She will work closely with enterprise customers to modernise research programs, embed best practice and shift internal behaviours toward always-on learning.

Harding brings more than two decades of experience across consumer insights, marketing, innovation and ventures, with a deep background in FMCG and alcohol. Most recently, she led innovation and ventures at Lion, where she was responsible for building new growth platforms beyond the core business and driving future-facing product and brand innovation.

Across her career, Harding has worked at the intersection of insight, brand, creativity and commercial growth, transforming established brands for future relevance while also scaling challenger propositions. Her experience spans consumer strategy, portfolio development, innovation frameworks and capability building.

“Ideally is reinventing how research shows up in innovation and creativity,” said Harding. “I’m excited to join a product-led business that uses technology to put consumer insight at the start of idea development, so teams can test, iterate and build confidence early, rather than relying on research too late in the process.”

Ideally chief executive officer and co-founder James Donald said the appointment reflects Ideally’s ambition to modernise research and make insight more accessible across organisations.

“Too often, research has been treated as a gate at the end of the process,” Donald said. “Kirsty’s role is about helping our customers move beyond that. As adoption of Ideally grows, we need research to scale in a way that unlocks creative ambition, not constrains it. She understands how to drive that change inside complex organisations.”

The appointment coincides with recruitment across product, engineering and marketing, reflecting increased demand from brands using Ideally’s platform to access faster, more accessible consumer insight to support innovation and creative decision-making.

Harding’s appointment follows a period of strong momentum for Ideally, with growing adoption across large enterprise and Fortune 500 brands.

Source: Ideally