Tomato Baby is Angie Meltsner
and Angie Meltsner is Tomato Baby: an independent cultural insights and trends research studio based out of Boston, MA.
I’ve spent the past 15 years helping brands be more culturally relevant and better connect with the people they care about through strategic and thoughtful research studies (as Tomato Baby since 2022).
I’ve worked with and at top agencies, consultancies, and in-house brand and product teams to unearth and explore consumer attitudes, desires, and behaviors and, just as importantly, the shifting cultural forces by which we’re all influenced.
I like to ask: can we address the challenges of our time using the same perspectives that got us here?
How I source information and data (diverge) and spot patterns (converge) is what sets my research practice uniquely apart. I’m both very online (with an insane media diet) and very out, near and far, in the real world (always looking, listening, noticing) – the on the ground fieldwork piece is absolutely key to keeping my research practice and insight development sharp, nuanced, and relevant.
I also bring a semiotic lens to all the work that I do: that is, looking at the signs and symbols in visuals and language to unpack their deeper meanings, how they’re being communicated, and what they signify in culture — that which consumers can’t tell us themselves.
(for more on brand semiotics, see this Michael Keaton monologue in The Founder)
