Insight > Strategy > Action
Our consultants have extensive industry experience, versed in the commercial realities of driving profitable growth for brands, reflected in how they gather insights and apply them, seeking the methods which go above and beyond your current understanding of consumers, shoppers and kids.
Research is just our means to that end, not the end in itself.
Our Expertise
100% of our projects involve helping brands to win the hearts and minds of families, which means understanding the interplay between kids – consumers upstream – and their parents – shoppers downstream, from their first encounters with your brand, to the ways in which they co-form brand affinity and recall.
Actionable Insights
Kid Consumers
Family Shoppers
FAMILIES
Parents are ‘downstream’ of the touchpoints which kids are engaged in, and have their own criteria on which to make choices, to balance the family budget and guide them purposefully along the path to purchase.
Create > Launch > Grow
Consumer fluency helps you to understand what your consumers know, feel and think about your brand
> what makes them pick click buy…
> empowering you to confidently take your brand into new directions,
de-risking your strategy whilst fuelling even greater innovation…
> opening up opportunities in new markets, categories, formats or retail channels, with the right marketing activity to unlock growth.
Brand Development Research
Consumer Fluent researchers examine and expose the mindset of consumers, shoppers and kids, ‘live and in the moment’ when choices are being made, digging deep to reveal the subconscious motivations which drive choice, harvesting the language used to express wants and needs, and facilitating their co-creatvity.
BRAND POSITIONING STRATEGY
Brand research is 5 times more accurate and effective when done in context with the retail, competitive environment, so we’ve developed a unique approach to brand research – Stock the Shop – which simulates real-life situations and prompts the most intuitive response to the brand proposition on key influential parameters.
PRODUCT DESIGN & INNOVATION
Our recipe for success? A blend of co-creativity and quantitative screening. We conduct qualitative co-creative sessions and product tests, play sessions, food taste tests and ethnographic studies in homes and studios. We run AB Monadic tests to evaluate the size of market for innovation and work with production teams to bring ideas to market .
BRAND EXTENSION & RANGE HIERARCHY
Experience tells us that brands transition in to new categories more successfully by building stepping stones from their origins to their destination. The same can be said for range extensions. What’s key is understanding the DNA of the brand which will enable it to exist in a new category guise and even in a different part of a store.
DIGITAL UX, ADVERTISING & CONTENT
We love researching entertainment and digital interactivity – be it advertising, live action video or animation, a game, an app, a website or e-tail. Time for the ‘science bit’. There are so many clever ways in which to measure the impact of design features and taxonomy on usability, that tap in to real time behaviours and emtional response.
Retail Category Research
‘Live and in the moment’ fluency means interviewing, observing, tracing and analysing at points along the shopper journey, focussing on browsing, sourcing, show-rooming and the final purchase, the retail channels chosen, the categories visited.
OMNI-CHANNEL PATHS TO PURCHASE
Each retail channel poses its own unique challenges, whether your goods are fast moving consumables, durables, or somewhere in between. The trend toward convenience and online have the potential to transform categories for the better and worst, so we tackle all formats and channels when examining shopper trends.
SHOPPER SEGMENTATION
NEW MARKETS, NEW CATEGORIES
The definition and structure of a category is not fixed. Our needs and wants are not fixed or universally identical either. Lifestyles and local cultural influences evolve; brand and product developments re-shape our perception of what we need by what we desire. Understanding local customs and context is essential to break in to a new market and succeed.
REAL-2-DIGITAL-SHELF NAVIGATION & UX
As shoppers, when we scan the fixture of a store, we are presented with multiple options within our line of sight. When we search a category on line, the choices available are fed to us in smaller segments, with only partial view of the category . User experiences must be optimised to suit a mission search setting and a general ideas browse.
Quantitative & Qualitative Research
We take full advantage of innovations in technology for quantitative research – from Face Reader software to visualisations of concepts in a retail context, together with high quality scripting and analysis software.
Online Surveys
Segmentation Usage & Attitude Trend Trackers Market Studies Moderated Communities
Concept screening
Design, Advertising,
Product Concepts
Stock the Shop Drills
Heat Mapping
Screen Tracking
Remote Screen Recording Face Reader Eye Tracking Cookies Analysis
At Point of Purchase
Accompanied shops in store & online Mission Tests Eye Tracking Exit Interviews
In Studio & Groups
Co-creative Sessions
Concept & Product Tests
Play Sessions
Behaviour & Attitude
Screen Tests & Recording Face Reader
In Home – In Life
Ethography Semiotics Market Visits Consumer & Community Intercepts
Latest News
Constantly on the look out for emerging trends and innovations, we offer up our observations based on our consumer and shopper fluency. Read on…
Meet me at the Fair!
I will be at London Toy Fair between January 21st and 23rd. I’m at Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg January 29th and 30th. I’ll be speaking at the NEC Spring Fair on[…]
Read more
Millennials are in charge of the next generation of kids.
By the time Millennials start a family, most will have never had an Argos catalogue in their own home.
Read more
Polish that pitch!
The first internet encounter for toys is with parents. Unless we test brands and products with parents, how can anyone know …
Read moreOur Happy Clients
FMCG, Toys, Food Service, Entertainment and Broadcasting
Impact in digital
We work closely with digital designers and their clients, to test nascent ideas, first-pass prototypes and their iterations, and continue to test and track behaviours and impact on the finished digital platforms, be they apps, video games, retail or educational websites, landing pages, brand impact within the taxonomy of another party’s e-tail site (e.g. Amazon). Key to our apporoach is measuring ease, speed of navigation, rates of success in reaching the consumer goal, appeal of content, style and language
Impact in physical
So much packaging and brand design is created without reference to the environment it sits in, not just the category, but compettior adjacencies, position on fixture or the noise disruption which obscures the brand message. Our job is to test ideas in as close-to-real context as possible, simulated or real. That also includes simulating the decision making process, on auto pilot, at speed, with noise interference but also, crucially, with the trade offs that shoppers make, whether rational or emotional.
Fluent in Shopper
connect – engage – inspire
90% of our decisions are made with the sub-conscious. It’s an auto-pilot process, saving cognitive effort to fulfil complex tasks.
Learn moreFluent in Kids
connect – engage – inspire
Kids don’t see the world in the same way we do, with the benefit of experience, so it’s out job to see the world through theirs.
Learn moreCASE STUDY
Animated Response
Our client – a global entertainment company – sought a clearer understanding of the key elements which are most engaging for kids based on their cartoon series, to define the direction for its future series -DNA, plot, characters.
APPROACH
120 kids interivewed and observed in home, 350 parents interviewed via online survey, 300 kids were recorded online, expressions were analysed using Face Reader software
MARKETS
USA and UK, kids aged 2-5 years old, 870 kids saw at least one episode, either in person or online.
OUTCOMES
Recommendations implemented to optimise the dialogue, plot, humour, characterisation, themes and pace of the series.
ON REFLECTION
Face Reader is a brilliant tool to deliver accurate reading of emotional response, by the micro-second but is a complement not a replacement for in person research
CASE STUDY
Skin Care- Skin Clarity
The brand is trusted by professionals and consumers alike in skincare for its scientific integrity, healing qualities for problem skin and purety. No longer the category leader, its placement in category and on shelf, and range selection has been heavily influenced by more vocal, powerful competitors.
APPROACH
In store accompanied shops with eye tracking, online shopper study, U&A, segmentation, co-creative workshops on brand and message
MARKETS
UK – national scale; partnered with 2 key retailers in Health and Beauty sector
OUTCOMES
Brand re-asserted itself as the go-to source of category leadership, investing in new packaging and POS design to improve its own impact to match improved share of, and placement in, retail space
ON REFLECTION
Eye Tracking was an excellent way to reveal and illustrate the brand’s invisibility at retail, whilst co-creative sessions highlighted the means to re-connect the brand to needs and wants of consumer