Conventional research describes what happened. Strategy needs to know why.
SUPRA is a Causal AI boutique advisory founded in 2008 by Dr. Frank Buckler. Built on the premise that high-stakes marketing decisions deserve cause-and-effect evidence, not stated-preference plausibility.
Why we exist
Most marketing strategy is built on data that describes the past — sales reports, awareness scores, conjoint analyses, stated preferences. Useful, but quietly insufficient. Because the strategic question is never "what happened?". It's always "what would happen if we did this?"
That distinction — between correlation and causation, between description and decision — is what separates the work SUPRA does from the rest of the market research industry.
"Companies don't fail from lack of data. They fail because strategies are built on fragile insights."
What we do
We apply Causal AI and the Deep Implicit Research framework to four strategic decisions where conventional methodology systematically fails:
- Brand Development — building brands consumers actually choose, not just remember
- Innovation & Product Research — finding product-market-fit before the €10M launch decision
- Creative Strategy — testing ads that work, not just ads that win awards
- Pricing — measuring true willingness-to-pay through reaction-time-based testing
How we work
SUPRA is structured as a boutique, not an agency. Engagements are scoped around a specific strategic decision — not around hours, deliverables, or methodology theater. We engage when there's a clear decision on the table, evidence that would change it, and an executive ready to act on the answer.
We work with marketing leadership at FMCG, Pet Food, Insurance, Banking, Telco, Tech, and Pharma — categories where the cost of a wrong strategic move is highest, and where outsized return is possible when the underlying decision is right.
Who built this
Dr. Frank Buckler founded SUPRA in 2008 after nine years as a corporate marketing director and global strategy lead, and time as a management consultant at Simon-Kucher. He earned his PhD in Causal AI for Marketing in 1998 — when "AI" was still a textbook topic and most causal inference work happened in econometrics journals. He has won the ESOMAR Award for AI Insights Innovation six times.
Prof. Dr. Axel Lippold joined as Scientific Partner with 20 years of management consulting and a chair in Marketing & Sales — adding peer-reviewed scientific rigor to the practice.
Together, they work with a senior advisor network (Frank Frohmann, Philipp Haesili, Patrick von der Gönna) and an internal insights team across DACH, the UK, and the US.
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