Our Approach
Our roots are in technical R&D. We’re trained by global companies to identify the smallest tweaks in product designs that really make a difference to consumers.
Handle two millimetres too small? Fragrance hedonics not quite right at a particular moment in the usage journey? No details go uncovered, whether the focus is ergonomics, hedonics, aesthetics…we know the precision R&D teams need to make decisions, and we help you set and refine the guardrails for product development.
As we’ve grown, so too has our scope. We regularly work on strategic brand pieces, or deep dive into unmet category needs. But our ethos remains the same; the rigorous approaches, the inquisitiveness. The search for the ‘why’, ‘so what’ and ‘what next’ are just as applicable to strategic global work as they are to product design.
With any brief, it’s about relentless practicality. What’s in scope, who’s using the outputs, what do they need to know and what will make them sit up and listen? Because an insight is useless unless it drives business change.
About us
We’re a cracking team of quallies with an eclectic range of interests and expertise, including keynote speakers, performers, industry trainers, and workshop facilitators. What brings us together is our curiousness about what underpins behaviour, how to influence it, and our ongoing quest for innovative methods to drive positive change. (It’s not just about the fluffy scarves and oversized glasses, although we do have a few of those between us )
How we do it
You name it, if it’s qual, it’s probably in our toolkit. We offer a range of in-person, online, ethno, synchronous, asynchronous, in the moment, communities…yawn. Everyone can throw out a few buzzwords.
It’s about using the most appropriate techniques to answer the challenge. Sometimes that’s something experimental, sometimes it’s tried and tested, and sometimes it’s just about keeping it really simple to work within a time or investment constraint so you can make a quick decision.
See our case studies for how we work (they’re much more interesting than a list of methods), and how we weave in a Blue Yonder touch of magic.
Our Qualitative Research Expertise
"Blue Yonder combine commitment, intelligence and sensitivity to deliver excellent research and I strongly recommend them."
Client stories
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.
“Blue Yonder work on many of our key projects; they have often designed new or built on current methodologies to enable consumers to articulate early understanding of formulations or packaging research. It’s easy to assume that you have covered everything and be caught out by a simple detail that’s only obvious after the launch.”
“Big thank you to the team as the report is amazing – so clear and well thought out. It has landed very well here with great feedback from the stakeholders! Also, the use of the graphs really helps the technical team to understand all the qual insights in a structured way, which they are usually more comfortable with.”
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