Bunnyfoot Spins Off Eye-Tracking Unit

Rob Stevens, co-founder of UK-based behavioural research consultancy Bunnyfoot, has moved the firm's established eye-tracking expertise into a new, separate consultancy, which will test consumers' behavioural response to offline media including TV, print and outdoor, as well as packaging.

Named Think Eyetracking, the new agency is based in Reading, and is led by former Bunnyfoot MD Lizzie Maughan, whose professional background ranges from psychology to commercial photography across Australia, the USA, and the UK. After moving to Oxford in 2004, Maughan joined Bunnyfoot where she has since pioneered several eye-tracking techniques.

The new firm employs nine specialists who use eye-tracking to determine how consumers relate to visual stimuli such as print media, TV ads, product placement, in-game advertising, shop layouts and web sites. Using the firm's own Super Visual- software, the team also employs methodologies and working practices which Stevens says make the cost and timing of eyetracking comparable with focus groups.

He commented: 'In an age when most companies are expanding to accommodate the digital era, we are bucking the trend and doing the reverse, by taking our eye-tracking experience in the digital world and translating it into the offline world.'

Web sites: www.bunnyfoot.com and www.thinkeyetracking.com .