Ideally appoints Kirsty Harding as research strategy director

Ideally has named Kirsty Harding as its first research strategy director, as the SaaS market research platform scales up and adds more than 15 new roles across product, engineering and marketing.

Harding joins from Lion, where she led innovation and ventures, focused on building new growth platforms beyond the core business and driving future-facing product and brand innovation. Her background spans consumer insights, marketing, innovation and ventures, with experience across FMCG and alcohol.

The new role is designed to help enterprise customers modernise research programs and embed research earlier in innovation and creative workflows, as brands push insight “upstream” to guide decisions earlier and more frequently.

“Ideally is reinventing how research shows up in innovation and creativity,” Harding said. “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 CEO and co-founder James Donald said the appointment supports the company’s push to make research more accessible across organisations, while shifting how teams use insight internally.

“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.”

Ideally said the appointment comes as demand increases from brands looking for faster, more accessible consumer insight to support innovation and creative decision-making, with Harding to work closely with enterprise customers on best practice and capability uplift.