Markets
Market sizing, category dynamics, pricing, distribution, competitive intelligence, entry and expansion strategy.
Demand / Supply / Friction
Market intelligence · Strategy · Communications
What will people accept next?
Rejected
Emerging
MAYA
Accepted
Normal
We advise leadership teams on the distance between what a market accepts today and what it will accept next — and we build the evidence, the position and the campaign required to close it. The sector changes. The question does not.
01 — The thesisThe idea the firm is built on
Every market has a window.
An idea fails when it arrives before the market has language for it, and forfeits its advantage when it arrives after everyone else. The pattern holds for a product, a price, a policy, a technology, an operating model or a public position.
Our work is to locate the interval in which advancement is still acceptable, quantify what sits inside it, and define the strategy required to move a client through it before the interval closes.
Too earlyAdvanced + acceptableExpectedToo late
03 — MethodologyHow we work it
Observe. Interpret. Position. Move.
A four-stage operating model that converts incomplete market information into a decision, and a decision into action. The model does not change by sector; only the evidence base it runs on does. Each stage produces a deliverable a board can act on.
Observe
Establish the market as it is, not as the category deck describes it. Primary research, field intelligence and existing data, reconciled.
Interpret
Separate signal from noise. Identify what is changing, why it is changing, for whom, and what it is worth.
Position
Determine where the organisation, product or idea can credibly move, and the sequence in which it should move there.
Move
Convert that position into product, message, campaign, channel and behaviour — then measure whether the market moved with it. The first audience is usually the organisation itself.
Engagement formats
Diagnostic — 4 to 6 weeks
Project engagement
Retained programme
Board advisory
05 — ToolboxThe grid is yours
The instruments,
as working paper.
The frameworks are the cheap part. We publish nine of them because a blank grid has never been what makes this difficult — and because the argument you have while filling one in is the work.
Open the toolbox ↗- 01Maya Index Assessor
- 02Acceptance Window
- 03Four-Stage Model
- 04Signal Ledger
- 05Evidence Register
- 06Language Audit
- 07Permission Map
- 08Behaviour Ledger
- 09Move Brief
06 — InsightsWhat we keep finding
Things moving before they look obvious.
Field notes on how acceptance actually forms. Each was noticed in one market and has since turned up in five more.
07 — Selected engagementsWhat it looks like in practice
Find the behaviour before naming the category.
Map the behaviour that already exists, establish the language the market uses for the need, then position the proposition inside what the audience already understands rather than asking it to learn something new. Category creation is expensive; category adjacency is not.
Field researchAudience mappingPositioning
Move a familiar name without breaking recognition.
Measure the existing acceptance boundary, isolate the equity cues worth preserving, and phase change at a rate the audience can absorb — whether that audience is a customer base, a workforce, a regulator or a public.
PerceptionSemioticsCreative strategy
08 — ActivationWhat happens once the decision is made
A position nobody sees
is not a position.
The analysis ends in something a market can actually encounter: a campaign, a channel, a message, a product cue. A decision only becomes real when people act differently — and the first people are usually your own.
Positioning
Campaigns
Creative strategy
Identity
Media
Experiences
09 — The firmWho holds this
Maya Overton studies the distance between what people believe today and what they will adopt tomorrow.
Two ideas sit inside the name. Maya — the furthest a thing can be pushed while still being accepted. Overton — the range of positions a public currently treats as reasonable.
Between them sits the only question the firm is interested in: how far can an organisation move, and how quickly, before the market stops following it? That question belongs to no single industry, which is why we have never organised the practice around one.
Sectors served
The question does not change with the sector.
Only the evidence does.
- Consumer
- Retail & commerce
- Financial services
- Technology
- Health
- Energy & industry
- Mobility
- Education
- Media & culture
- Public sector
- Non-profit
- B2B & enterprise
- Intelligence
10 — ContactWhere to start
What are you trying
to make acceptable?
Tell us the proposition and the audience. Prior experience in your sector is not a prerequisite — the method travels, and the evidence is built for the engagement.
hello@mayaoverton.com ↗
Market intelligence
Strategy
Communications