Ads tested, smart and simple

The Challenge

There is a lot of nonsense surrounding ad testing. It’s all black boxes, quick and dirty, automated, hijacked by databases, too much fluff, too much science.

No category is the same. Few objectives are the same. If they were, life would be pretty dull. So why standardise testing?

Why choose between depth and price. Why not just do something smart that finds out what you need to know, no more, no less?

What we did

A fantastic meat free protein brand needed to know if its bold new angle on food would resonate.

We blended facial coding, quant metrics and video feedback together: data for the facts, facial coding for the emotion, video so the client could look normal people in the eye and hear them.

We kept it lean, smart and focussed, and delivered within a week for £7k per video. The client pushed on.

Not just finding your place in the category – leading it!

The Challenge

Our client had a great product with a distinctive taste and high appeal – but it wasn’t selling. The category leaders were too strong to challenge, so we needed to work out whether to reposition – or to pull from market.

What we did

Holistic qualitative and ethnographic brand mapping: observing and understanding how products were seen and used in relation to each other – defining subcategories, learning the ‘rules’ for each of them, identifying the leaders – and finding the gaps.

What happened next

We changed the game; instead of unsuccessfully competing in a saturated sector, we could be the champion in another. The concept was rewritten, the artwork was updated, the ads were recrafted – and the product began to fly.

At shelf impact

Nailing a product’s performance is one thing, actually getting it in home is another. How well would a category challenging pack stand out, appeal…and hold its own against its competitor set?

The solution

200 consumers through Shopper:lab™ reacting to the pack where it matters for the first time – at shelf. Observation, qual and quant combined to dive deep into the shopper experience – and gain at shelf advantage.

The impact

Optimised graphics, sizing, price points – and absolute confidence in product performance post launch.

Sexual wellbeing. Everybody needs it, but how do you sell it?

The Challenge

Needs vary hugely across people within one country, let alone the 7 major markets our client needed to master. How to bring a global positioning to life in each market? Which messages to dial up? How to retail? How to disrupt a category caught between practicality and social acceptability?

What we did

We went back to basics. Explored needs. Understood the practical realities. The emotions. The fears. We went into store. We used tech to let people share their true selves and needs without embarrassment. Then we brought it all together in video nuggets. Easy to view and share around a global stakeholder network. And so the strategy moves forwards. It’s about making the complex simple.

The smell of ‘Shine’ – dishwasher tablet fragrance testing

The Challenge

Our client wished to benchmark new fragrance submissions suitable for dishwasher products, submitted from a range of fragrance houses, against 2 current benchmarks.
The ultimate objective was to understand which two fragrances delivered the best results and appealed to consumers’ perceptions of what evokes the smell of ‘shine’.

What we did

We needed 10 dishwasher machines all in situ, all identical, all at the same site. This required us to think outside the box and look at the options we had available. We settled with utilising ‘serviced apartments’; standardised rooms each with a standardised dishwasher to mimic a real life environment. We hired out 10 separate rooms over the course of a week, one for each fragrance, and asked consumers to attend in small groups and assess the fragrance in a rotated order, answering questions about each.

Balancing the practical and the emotional

The Challenge

In hospitality, the balance of function and emotion, matters above all. Price, convenience, comfort on the one hand; tailored experiences, emotional warmth and delight on the other. We worked with a global group to unpick the balance of these areas, at the global and local level.

What we did

Where to focus for comms and experience? It was local that mattered. The global brand could unite and add value to each location brand, but it was the practical, on the ground aspects that were driving value share. So our client refocussed that. This is what we do. We uncover what matters and prioritise it for you. We cut to the chase, and focus on the actions for growth.

Mapping the whole experience

The challenge

You’re a market leader – globally. Everybody wants to take you on – steal market share…and you see rate of sale start to fall – slowly but significantly. ‘Good Enough’ no longer cuts it, and you can’t rely on a hard won reputation to carry you, as challenger brands have reset category boundaries and changed the parameters of excellence. You need to deliver absolute superiority. So we brought in XM: experience mapping on steroids and exploratory qual at its finest; 360°, end to end, holistic understanding of product perception at a technical and attribute level, from in store to final disposal.

What we did

We identified the touchpoints – what mattered most, when and where; telling our client where to focus time, effort and budget. We benchmarked vs competitors: where are the gaps? We understood precisely what superiority looked like in the moments that really mattered…and we brought it all to life with powerful video edits. This changed the game. We got buy in at VP level, and a new way of working for the Global R&D team. Most importantly, we got product superiority.

The emotions of Malodour

The challenge

Our client, a leading fragrance house had a new technology – truly revolutionary, but they also had a challenge: you can measure positives, you can measure negatives…but how do you measure the absence? How do you prove it? Crucially, how do you get buy in from global FMCG giants? They needed to do great science and bring it to life.

What we did

First off, fragrance is emotional. Massively. We needed to capture this and tease every moment of pain and pleasure from product users. In home visits, filmed to TVC standard struck gold: we found the meeting point of functionality and practicality and tracked it through product usage. We used Clickscape, in the moment tech, to prove product superiority. One click positive, two clicks, negative. Liking + frequency + absence of negative = revolutionary new fragrance tech – and accompanied by cinematic consumer testimonial videos it means absolute stakeholder buy in. Job done.

Creating Superiority

The challenge

There comes a point when excellence is expected in deos. The bar is set so high it’s hard to meaningfully move it any further upwards. Scientific measures and sensory panels register a difference, but differences only matter if they are consumer perceivable. Where traditional qual and quant won’t pull it out, what do you do? How do you convince buyers to stock your product? How do you justify a price increase? You put it to the extreme. We needed sweat. Lots of it. Beautiful, engaging, storytelling, compelling sweat…to create a deo story which would speak to Buyers and Consumers globally.

What we did

We found multicultural pro dancers. We put the product to the test. REALLY to the test. Hours and hours of high octane rehearsals in heated studios: we filmed real life. In real time. To TVC standard. The difference was real. It changed the deo game. It changed the R&D game: it gave the team a voice which powered through brand teams and straight to TV. It got us stocked. It got us sold. It got the bar moved even higher.

Chilled food testing

The Challenge

A market leading chilled food were expanding into ambient. The product was best in class but not cheap. How do we price it right to drive sales time after time? We knew the product was premium, but could we price it that way?

What we did

We asked the traditional measures in not-so-traditional ways. The first look at the product was at shelf. What’s too cheap, too expensive and just about right? … But we went beyond this; we got people to take it home – eat it in the real world and tell us again: what would they pay?