By Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer

I was getting ready for a team conversation about something we call ‘muraling’ when I looked the word up, kind of as a grounding exercise. Muraling is a technique we use at Alter Agents, and I was curious about what Google had to say about it. I expected to see the standard definition, rooted in art and large-scale painting.

Instead, right below that more familiar definition, there was another one. A specialized marketing and research definition that described muraling as a “strategic approach involving immersion in culture, media and trends to uncover insight.” And it traced that definition back to Alter Agents. (I won’t lie, it was flattering and exciting to see our name tied to this concept.)

My team brings a range of approaches, tools and methodologies to every engagement, selecting what best serves the question at hand and the outcomes our clients need. Muraling is one of these, although it isn’t a formalized ‘method’ so much as a language we adopted internally to describe a specific kind of thinking and synthesis.

What is muraling anyway?

Muraling is a strategic discovery technique used at Alter Agents to help make sense of complex, noisy environments before committing to a specific research path. It is designed to ensure that cultural, media and market context are reflected early, not layered in after the fact.

The process is intentionally immersive and iterative. Teams draw from a range of inputs, including secondary and tertiary research, cultural and media signals, academic work, online conversation and trend analysis. These inputs are synthesized and translated into patterns that clarify what is shaping the category and why.

Rather than producing a final answer, muraling provides a credible “lay of the land.” It supports hypothesis generation, sharpens focus and informs what should come next, whether that is primary research, strategic prioritization or alignment across stakeholders.

What distinguishes muraling from simple desk research is the emphasis on synthesis and judgment. The goal is not to collect everything, but to distill what matters so teams can move forward with confidence.

Why muraling took shape

Muraling took shape for us because of what we kept seeing in client work. Organizations were not struggling to generate ideas or gather information. The challenge was deciding where to focus when the inputs were incomplete, contradictory or still emerging. The questions they brought to us were important and often urgent, but sometimes they required more context.

Traditional research excels once a question has been clearly articulated. It is less effective when teams are still working out what they should be asking in the first place. Muraling became our way of pausing long enough to absorb the landscape, connect disparate signals and determine what actually deserves attention before narrowing too quickly.

Making sense of different kinds of complexity

That need shows up in different ways. Sometimes teams are overwhelmed by volume: syndicated reports, academic studies, cultural commentary, social discourse, market signals and internal data that refuse to align neatly. Other times the challenge is the opposite: sparse or ambiguous signals that require informed judgment rather than tidy conclusions.

In both scenarios, the risk is the same. Moving forward without a shared understanding of what is shaping the category.

Muraling addresses that risk by emphasizing immersion and synthesis. Inputs are gathered broadly, but they are not treated equally. Sources are evaluated continuously for credibility, relevance and usefulness. Signals are tagged, grouped and pressure-tested against one another. Early hypotheses help frame exploration, but they are meant to evolve as patterns emerge.

This work is intentionally iterative. Frameworks, rubrics and visualizations often emerge along the way, but they are not the goal. They are tools used to clarify thinking, align stakeholders and support better decision-making. The value of muraling lies in making sense of it all.

Where AI fits, and where it does not

AI has become a meaningful support in this phase of work. It allows teams to scan broader landscapes more efficiently, bring in more data sources, surface relevant material and accelerate early exploration. It can help organize information and support hypothesis generation.

What it cannot do is replace judgment. Deciding which signals matter, which trends are durable and which insights are actionable remains a human responsibility. Technology can widen the lens, but it cannot decide where to focus.

What muraling makes possible

Recent projects illustrate why muraling has become such a critical part of how we work.

In one case, a global charity organization was evolving its approach to brand building by introducing a life-stage strategy across markets with varying levels of maturity. The organization had strong internal research from prior initiatives and access to robust public data, but those inputs were not consistently connected or designed to be globally adaptable.

Through muraling, we brought together existing internal research, publicly available data and broader cultural context to formalize a life-stage framework that aligned organizational priorities, donor motivations and core causes. Causes were evaluated using agreed-upon criteria to guide prioritization, and the resulting framework provided a shared foundation that support offices could adapt and activate locally, regardless of their stage of development.

In another case, muraling supported a global CPG brand in the early stages of exploring category opportunity for a specific product. Rather than focusing on markets alone, the work centered on identifying the conditions and influencing factors most strongly associated with likelihood of use. By layering secondary data, behavioral science principles and proxy scoring, we created a rubric that helped the team assess where adoption was more or less likely and why.

In both cases, muraling was not the final answer. It was the step that made everything else clearer.

Why the definition matters

Seeing the term defined publicly (and above the fold!) stayed with me. It suggested that a phase of work many practitioners experience but rarely name is becoming more visible. There is growing recognition that insight does not begin with a survey. It begins earlier, or at least it should, in the work of orientation, synthesis and judgment.

Muraling was never meant to be proprietary or precious. It was meant to be useful. If the idea has traveled far enough to show up as a definition, that likely says more about the moment organizations are navigating than about us. Faster change, noisier environments and higher stakes demand better ways to make sense of complexity before committing to action.

If muraling helps give language to that phase of work, even imperfectly, then it is doing exactly what it was always meant to do.

Want to find out how we can help you get the most of your research projects? Reach out today.