Overview
CASE STUDIES
Some moments of client heroism and real impact. And lots of truth way of our toolkit and solutions. Tell us which
CASE STUDIES
Brand Strategy
Auto Brand Refresh
Appealing to younger car buyers with a fresh new brand experience.
Brand Strategy
For The Love Of Chocolate
Finding, expressing and activating the most important differentiator and brand driver
Brand Strategy
Maximizing Cross-generational Movie Appeal
Creating branded (IP) communication strategy for an origin story to reach many new audiences and reinvigorate superfans from decades ago.
Auto Brand
Refreshed
Brand Strategy
Appealing to younger car buyers with a fresh new brand experience.
PROBLEM
A decades-old regional auto dealership struggled to attract millennial clients due to an unclear brand identity and dated message.
SOLUTIONS
Powered by our Brand Equity Model, strategic quantitative and non-traditional qualitative research and close collaboration with turnaround C-Suite leaders, we aimed for fundamental CX changes to support a newly updated the brand identity and message.
OUTCOME
Stronger financial performance indicators based on a more clear, human and appealing brand invitation and a dramatically improved car buying experience that authentically supports the new and modern brand message and identity.
For The Love Of Chocolate
Brand Strategy
Finding, expressing and activating the most important differentiator and brand driver.
PROBLEM
A one-time pioneer in the crowded and confusing craft chocolate market, this niche brand was struggling with too many undifferentiated messages and a lack of brand purpose, despite product strengths and a small but loyal fanbase.
SOLUTIONS
Our custom brand-building approach included a hackathon, non-traditional qual, a competitive brand audit, strategic quant and a leadership council to provide the strongest brand architecture. Plus, a blueprint for cultural change given a massive shift in corporate direction facing the organization’s leadership.
OUTCOME
Complete brand overhaul and turnaround that also touched product, sales and overall corporate strategy by elevating the brand above product and paving the way for short-term growth.
Movie With Many Audiences
Brand Strategy
Creating branded (IP) communication strategy for an origin story to reach many new audiences and reinvigorate superfans from decades ago
PROBLEM
A multi-faceted story of a classic rock band’s origin story needed to be told in a multi-million dollar marketing campaign to re-engage the IP to existing fans, but also to introduce the franchise brand to diverse new audiences to maximize the cross-generational potential of the franchise.
SOLUTIONS
A custom research design with advanced analysis measured the reach, appeal and interaction across brand messages and message combinations to optimize the brand franchise’s success across dozen different potential audiences.
OUTCOME
Smashing box office success among variety of important audience segments that launched a cultural revival of the franchise and solidified the brand’s relevance, appeal and long-term relationship with the brand’s story and content among new generations.
Market Segmentation
Activating Customers Based on Unique Dining Occasions
New diner segments help QSR become more customer centric and profitable
Market Segmentation
Activating Best User Personas for Growth
Tech personas powered by advanced analytics and behavioral data
Activating Unique Dining Occasions
Segmentation
New diner segments help QSR become more customer centric and profitable
PROBLEM
A successful regional chain QSR was struggling with having a lot of transactional and tactical data on their customers but not really knowing their customers.
SOLUTIONS
We designed and conducted a powerful custom occasion-based segmentation (with a dose of A&U) that combined attitudinal survey data with massive amounts of behavioral and financial data to identify six segments on each individual and B2B side of their operations.
OUTCOME
With direct C-Suite collaboration, these priority segments were activated and new menu was designed, online/digital CX was revised, CRM and messaging was overhauled, innovation planning was introduced, and overall customer satisfaction and brand perceptions improved.
Best App User Personas
Segmentation
Tech personas powered by advanced analytics and behavioral data
PROBLEM
A highly-popular content management app was interested in identifying, activating and monetizing their most valuable existing users as part of a growth trajectory
SOLUTIONS
A bespoke attitudinal segmentation combined survey data with behavioral analytics. For non-US markets, we designed a creative overlay that would enable the marketing team to carry cross-market marketing decisions on messaging, product features and top and bottom of funnel tactics.
OUTCOME
The tech client adopted a new user strategy, focusing on the most valuable personas and customized development, targeting, acquisitions and conversions.
New Product Development
Making Travel Less Frustrating
Research to help optimize new app development and monetization
New Product Development
Movies On The Go
Research to help consumers transition to digital movie ownership
Making Travel Less Frustrating
New Product Development
Research to help optimize new app development and monetization
PROBLEM
A fast-growing travel comfort products manufacturer is interested in expanding their product strategy beyond a successful workhorse and developing new offerings to meet travelers’ needs worldwide.
SOLUTIONS
To address increasingly dissatisfying flying experiences, we conducted a unique quantitative survey designed to assess traveler reactions to a new technology with several different possible permutations, use cases, user needs and user types.
OUTCOME
Results from this research propelled the client to make informed immediate decisions regarding development and monetization.
Movies On The Go
New Product Development
Research to help consumers transition to digital movie ownership
PROBLEM
A Hollywood studio was interested in providing movie consumers who shop traditional physical retailers with an opportunity to experience digital movie ownership.
SOLUTIONS
We conducted unique in-situ quantitative study in key test markets that allowed shoppers to “run into” and interact with (taking pics, touching packaging, etc.) the in-store collateral naturally and as prompted by our mobile survey.
OUTCOME
Based on the actionable results, the offer was fine-tuned and expanded into additional markets, further enhancing the studio’s physical-to-digital migration strategies.
Foundational Research
Turbocharge For Impact
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
Foundational Research
Actionable E-Commerce Framework
When two plus two is two hundred.
Turbocharge For Impact
Foundational Research
Delivering the insights that create impact, instead of dumping data
PROBLEM
A Hollywood studio had conducted a traditional media and entertainment Attitudes & Usage study with another large market research partner but found the storytelling and usefulness of the findings dissatisfactory.
SOLUTIONS
We turbocharged the existing data by infusing deeper and more strategic insights, more powerful and directly actionable marketing and product recommendations, and more studio-friendly storytelling.
OUTCOME
Remarkably positive reception among country-specific and HQ based leadership to the easy-to-understand, directly useful and impactful insights, resulting in more efficient and effective business decisions going forward.
Actionable E-Commerce Framework
Foundational Research
When two plus two is two hundred to your partners in sales, marketing and retail
PROBLEM
A multinational CPG company had conducted a lot of research on grocery shopping over a couple of years. However, they were struggling with a clear direction on how to move their e-commerce strategy forward.
SOLUTIONS
As part of an overall e-commerce strategy innovation project, we created a shopper-centric e-commerce framework based on the existing research by unearthing fundamental drivers of consumer behaviors and growth in e-grocery.
OUTCOME
Various teams working on e-commerce development converged around a unifying strategy that’s based on the needs of the shopper and retail partners – instead of wasting resources on band-aid solutions.
Insights Lab
Co-Creating With Consumers In The Lab
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
Insights Lab
At Home With Your Customers
Co-learning with consumers in their living rooms
Co-Creating With Consumers In The Lab
Insights Labs
Coming very close to consumers for the most powerful insights
PROBLEM
A global CPG brand was having a hard time getting traction from American consumers for one of its globally popular snack products.
SOLUTIONS
We combined Insights Lab with a product hackathon and with a brand positioning survey to comprehensively address the positioning challenge of this new stack. Our Insights Labs boldly handled our in home taste tests, competitive shopping, mobile ethnography and new idea generation as inputs for hackathon.
OUTCOME
Our Insights Lab provided tremendous ROI and a complete repositioning strategy was adopted based on our work including packaging redesign, SKU changes, messaging improvement and overall target realignment.
At Home With Your Customers
Insights Labs
Co-learning with consumers in their living rooms
PROBLEM
Despite a lot of data, a major NY-based entertainment brand with world-class content was struggling to understand how consumers decide which streaming service is right for them.
SOLUTIONS
With our exclusive, private and multi-methodology Insights Platform, it allowed us and head of programming, marketing, and distribution to “take a look” inside the living room of their customers and observe, co-learn, interact and be inspired by consumers.
OUTCOME
We developed a content decision making tree based on this work that the veteran insights professional thought was “the most actionable insights” on digital and streaming consumption of entertainment content.
Hackathons
Hacking For A New Winning Positioning
Breaking rules for breakthrough solutions
Hackathons
Hacking For Women’s Health & Wellness
New product development hackathon produces dozens of solutions for women’s needs
Hacking For A New Winning Positioning
Hackathons
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
PROBLEM
A global CPG brand was interested in overhauling positioning for a unique snack product based on low velocity in sales.
SOLUTIONS
Our hackathon method brought together the best of strategy think-tanking and power ideation, specifically designed to hack on target, consumer need, positioning/messaging and competitive and retail constraints in a day long session.
OUTCOME
Within the span of one day and with the combined intellectual power of our hacker and client teams, the project produced a comprehensive strategy to solve the positioning problem wholly, including 80+ tactical steps/possibilities. Without the hackathon, this scale and caliber of problem solving and alignment would have taken months.
Hacking For Women’s Health & Wellness
Hackathons
New product development hackathon produces dozens of solutions for women’s needs
PROBLEM
A Silicon Valley based provider of women’s sexual health and wellness products is interested in doubling down on their mission with new products
SOLUTIONS
With our hackathon method, we designed a special three-part hack set that explored women’s unmet needs and desired solutions with the combined expertise of both women and women practitioners of various health and wellness disciplines.
OUTCOME
The client got a new product development framework for their current target and future growth targets with more 80 new product ideas generated (with various levels of potential short and long-term value to the company). Three of these ideas were immediately greenlighted for further development work.
Non-traditional Qualitative
Vitamin Persona Deep Dives
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
Non-traditional Qualitative
Meal Ordering At A Micro Level
Seeing first hand how teams order meals for meetings
Vitamin Persona Deep Dives
Non-traditional Qualitative
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
PROBLEM
A household name in the vitamins, minerals and supplements category was faced with the challenge of activating a dry, two-dimensional persona created by a competitor.
SOLUTIONS
We unpacked a carefully crafted mélange of non-traditional techniques that included an aspirations treasure chest, an in-home cabinet clean up, digital journey and a dine-along.
OUTCOME
The brand developed new and industry-leading creative, messaging and overall marketing for this priority segment based on this work.
Meal Ordering At A Micro Level
Non-traditional Qualitative
Seeing how teams order meals for meetings at first hand
PROBLEM
A QSR had zero visibility on how Teams ordered business meals and the processes/steps involved were a total mystery, resulting in low conversion despite being a main go-to dining option in business parks.
SOLUTIONS
We recruited target customers to order real time while we observed the process real time.
OUTCOME
Insights from this observational research triggered messaging and site/app UX changes that resulted in higher business meal ordering and conversion.
Consumer Journey
Car Buyer’s Journey
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
Consumer Journey
From Hungry To Fully Informed
How restaurant patrons travel through their food and menu choices
Car Buyer’s Journey
Consumer Journey
Step-by-step view into how prospects started and ended their buying process
PROBLEM
This client felt the crushing loss of revenue due to competitive shopping among their prospective car buyers.
SOLUTIONS
Mixing qualitative, quantitative and internal marketing performance data to create a car buying map that included touchpoints, decisions options and leak points where prospects fell off the map.
OUTCOME
Redesigning the entire CX to more directly and effectively support prospects in their journey to the best possible car resulted in increased conversions and competitive performance.
From Hungry To Fully Informed
Consumer Journey
How restaurant patrons travel through their food and menu choices
PROBLEM
A restaurant client had a myopic view of customer behavior just at the POS.
SOLUTIONS
Using transaction history, survey and and non-traditional qualitative data, we created a hungry-to-full step-by-step map showing competition, occasion, menu and spend trade-offs made by patrons.
OUTCOME
This holistic view of the buyer journey inspired overhaul of CRM, messaging, menu, in store and pricing changes ultimately resulting in increased visits and tickets.
Behavioral Data
Untold Truths About Online Shopping
How do shoppers navigate e-commerce decisions for high and low price point beauty products
Behavioral Data
Data Science To The Rescue
Seeing movies in the theater got whole lot more eye opening
Untold Truths About Online Shopping
Behavioral Data
Here are some moments of client heroism and real impact born from truth.
PROBLEM
A client had no idea how consumers shop for beauty products despite having a huge amount of unstructured, un-coded and unprocessed e-commerce data.
SOLUTIONS
We used variety of data querying, processing and visualization tools to mine and extract key insights plus to map it back to survey data from the same consumers to identify behavior patterns for high/low price beauty products.
OUTCOME
Clarity and insights extracted from this work resulted in a white paper published by a client for their industry.
Data Science To The Rescue
Behavioral Data
Seeing movies in the theater got whole lot more eye opening
PROBLEM
A Hollywood studio needed to make media decisions on upcoming franchise titles and had a massive amount of complex survey data collected over months in a tracking instrument across hundreds of titles.
SOLUTIONS
We cleaned, standardized, structured, mined and processed all this data using data science tools for analysis and visualization, extracted unprecedented, easy-to-understand insights about performance of franchises.
OUTCOME
Client made media spend and placement choices based on these insights and story.