The Insights Partner Built Around You

Senior thinking. Personal investment. A genuine partner for the long term. No junior teams, no account managers, no distance between us and the work.

Meet Carlos

The Problem

The traditional agency model is costing you more than money.

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Overhead Before Insight

You fund account management, junior teams, and profit margins before any real thinking begins.

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Briefings That Don't Survive

Your context gets diluted across handoffs. The person who gets it isn't the one doing the work.

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No Memory. No Momentum.

Agencies don't carry knowledge of your brand between projects. You pay to restart the learning curve every time.

Meet the Founder

Carlos Hernandez

Founder, Lemon — Dare to Imagine

I started Lemon because I kept seeing the same problem: smart brands, doing expensive research, and still not really understanding their customers.

For more than 20 years I've worked inside organisations and I've learned that the best insight isn't the most sophisticated. It's the insight that sticks. That gets into the room. That changes how a team thinks on a Tuesday morning, not just at the annual strategy offsite.

At Lemon, you work directly with me. Senior thinking. Personal investment. A genuine partner for the long term.

Credentials

Why Lemon?

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20+ Years of Experience

Agency and client-side at Nielsen, Kantar, Reckitt Benckiser, and Abbott Labs.

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Truly Global

Lived in the UK and Singapore for 25 years. Research conducted across 5 continents, with deep experience in Europe and Asia.

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Full-Spectrum

Quant and qual, applied to the question that actually needs answering.

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AI-Native

Actively using AI tools, agents, and AI moderators. Not a talking point — a working practice.

What We Do

Three ways to make your brand impossible to ignore.

A personal consultancy built for brands that refuse to settle for ordinary. We combine 25+ years of senior consumer insight experience with cutting-edge AI capability — so you get the depth of a strategic partner and the speed of a modern research operation.

01 AI-Driven Insights

Customised Intelligence Agents

Purpose-built. Trained on your world.

Not generic tools — bespoke AI agents designed around your brand's category, consumers, and accumulated knowledge. Each agent is built for a specific research workflow, so your team moves faster without losing the depth that matters.

Living Insights Library

A queryable intelligence layer built on your existing research archive. Ask your last five years of consumer work a question — and get an answer in seconds.

Research Plan Agent

From business question to full research brief. Methodology, screener, topic guide — drafted and ready for review in minutes.

Synthesis Agent

Ingests transcripts, surveys, and qual/quant data and returns structured themes, key quotes, and insight narratives — ready to build reports and presentations.

Competitive Intelligence Agent

Monitors your competitive landscape continuously — tracking signals, summarising shifts, and surfacing what matters before the briefing room does.

Briefing Agent

Converts a stakeholder question into a structured research brief or supplier RFP — including objectives, methodology rationale, and timelines.

Bespoke Agent

Your workflow, your rules. We design and build agents around the specific insight problems that are unique to your brand and category.

02 Market Research

Human-led, Strategically Driven

Senior thinking. No agency overhead.

Every project is handled personally — with 25+ years of cross-category, cross-geography experience and a methodology built around the insight that transforms brands, not just reports that sit on shelves.

Brand Health & Strategy

Tracking, positioning, and equity research that goes beyond metrics. Uncovering the human truth behind how your brand lives in the market and where it has permission to grow.

Concept & Comms Testing

Qual evaluation of ideas, messaging, and creative — with a focus on distinctiveness, emotional resonance, and real-world behaviour, not just stated preference.

Qualitative Research

In-depth interviews, focus groups, and immersive methods scoped to your question — not retrofitted to a standard template.

03 Capability & Insights Activation

Build, Embed, Activate

The best insight achieves nothing if it stays in a deck.

We help your team build internal research capability and ensure insights land through formats that create understanding, not just acknowledgement — turning findings into belief, and belief into decision.

Internal Capability Building

Training and coaching for insight and marketing teams — covering research fundamentals, AI tool fluency, brief-writing, and how to commission and interrogate research effectively.

Insights Activation

Workshops, immersions, and stakeholder sessions designed to turn insight into belief and belief into decision. We make findings impossible to ignore.

Interactive Reports & Deliverables

Beyond PowerPoint. Interactive web-based reports, video summaries, and living documents that keep insights accessible long after the debrief.

RAG-Powered Deliverables

Research reports your team can actually talk to — AI-enabled documents that answer follow-up questions, surface related findings, and integrate into your Living Insights Library.

Engagement Models

How We Work Together

Three ways to engage — all combining senior strategic thinking with AI-powered research capability. No overhead. No rotating teams. Pick what fits your challenge.

Project-Based Consulting

You have a specific question that needs a real answer. I work with you from the first brief to the final debrief — handling as much or as little as you need.

AI agents can be deployed within a project to accelerate synthesis, competitive scanning, or report delivery — without compromising the rigour of senior-led thinking.

Good for: focused research, brand audits, concept testing, innovation sprints.

Monthly Retainer

Ongoing support, on your terms. A set number of days per month — use them when you need them.

No fixed projects. No waiting for scope to be agreed. A senior partner available when insight is needed — whether that's a full research sprint, a bespoke AI agent build, or a single sharp conversation.

Minimum 3-month commitment. Flexible across months.

Fractional Insights Director

Not a consultant. An Insights Director. 1–3 days per week, 6–12 months. A fixed, senior presence — not a rotating cast of project teams.

I own the research agenda, your agency relationships, and your team's growing capability — including building the internal AI and insights infrastructure that makes your function self-sufficient.

Senior leadership embedded inside your business, without the cost of a full-time hire.

Bespoke AI Agent Build

You're not buying days. You're buying a tool — purpose-built for your brand's research workflows, trained on your category, and ready to deploy the moment it's handed over.

This is software with insights expertise built in. A scoping session defines the agent's brief; a fixed build fee covers design, training, and delivery. After that, an optional maintenance arrangement keeps it sharp as your needs evolve.

One-time Scoping & build fee

Optional Ongoing maintenance

Track Record

Case Studies

FMCG · New Product Launch

Large FMCG Multinational

Developed a launch strategy for a new coffee product among a younger audience, identifying key cultural barriers and drivers under a classical brand umbrella.

EuropeFMCGNew Product Launch

Beverage · Innovation

International Wine Brand

Developed a new label strategy to drive choice from young consumers in the USA. The finding: modern design grabs attention, but tradition builds trust.

USABeverageInnovation

Healthcare · Diagnostics

Healthcare Multinational

Brought TB, HIV and Respiratory patients across Africa and Asia closer to marketing teams at Abbott, helping develop faster and more precise diagnostic products.

AfricaAsiaHealthcare

FMCG · Asia Pacific

International Pasta Brand

Helped launch a new range of chilled meals in South Korea in partnership with a retailer, along with multiple studies on understanding Japanese consumers.

South KoreaJapanFMCG

Digital · UX Research

Online Entertainment Company

Improved the user experience of a major app through qualitative UX interviews, delivering a live view of how users interact and feel in the moment.

UKDigitalUX Research

Consumer Health · Comms

Consumer Health Company

Helped shift the perception of early pregnancy testing from purely clinical to a highly emotional moment of empowerment, enabling better positioning and communication.

GlobalConsumer HealthComms

Let's Talk

Let's find the right model for you.

Whether you're ready to start or just want to explore the possibilities, I'd love to understand your research challenges and show you what's possible.

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chernandezjr@lemon-insights.com

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www.lemon-insights.com

Unlike Traditional Agencies

No overheads passed to you. No junior teams on your account. One expert, fully committed to your business outcomes.

Unlike Generic Freelancers

Not a one-project supplier. Lemon brings strategic depth, and the ability to embed into your organisation as a true partner.

Unlike Internal Hires

No recruitment risk, no notice periods. Senior expertise from day one, with the flexibility to scale to your real business needs.

The AI Advantage

An early adopter of AI tools and agents in research, delivering faster analysis, better moderation at scale, and more impactful insight activation.