Overview



An emotional brand platform and proposition. These inevitably drive the most successful brands—and are themselves driven by deep understanding of customer lives.

Many years of brand development experience has repeatedly shown us that while a solid physical product is a category price of entry, consumers buy based largely on emotion. Our approach is thus directed towards unearthing unique and powerful consumer insights that are profoundly helpful in the crystallization of an emotional platform and proposition.

While our approach is relatively organic, its defining characteristic is this: We strive to understand the customers' lives. Only then do we explore how your brand might best "fit in." This contrasts with conventional approaches that start with the company, product, or even with specific positioning concepts; i.e., with "what we have to sell," and try to force a consumer fit.

The Customer
We meet with consumers on their turf, face to face. We thus hold workshops in living rooms, gyms, at the beach, and more. To the greatest extent possible we try to recruit respondents who know one another; i.e., friends. This makes them especially comfortable and serves as a check on the exaggeration that often occurs in focus groups.

Importantly, respondents do nearly all the talking, in response to very open-ended questions that probe "lives," then "category," and finally "brand." As they respond, we hear in their language their motivations, desires, fears, successes, and frustrations.

We begin our workshops by asking consumers about their lives and lifestyle. We gain valuable information on daily routine and habit, overall concerns and motivations, specific frustrations and pressures, and sources of satisfaction in everyday life.

The Competitive Space
We continue by sensitively probing your category. We gain information on how the category fits into daily life, satisfaction with the category as a whole, awareness of specific brands and products, what separates one brand from another, which brands are "on the rise," "right for the way I live my life," and "best for specific situations," conscious and subconscious criteria in the selection of brands, what trade-offs are made in brand selection, and more.

Your Brand
From there we segue to your brand. We probe top-of-mind perceptions and the importance of each. We also probe perceptions regarding specific product characteristics; i.e., taste, quality, purity, value. We explore which situations your brand is more or less appropriate for; where you "play strong" and where you're more challenged. We listen for exactly why respondents purchase your brand and exactly how it makes their lives easier-better-more fulfilled. We probe for what would have to change in order for respondents to select your brand more often, and in more situations. And we listen especially carefully for which adjectives consistently come up first whenever your brand is discussed.

The result of it all: Unfiltered learning on exactly how your brand best fits into target lives, and on exactly the right emotional connection to make in order to drive brand sales.

Our workshops almost always unearth an important "surprise" insight that was impossible to anticipate going in—and that profoundly impacts brand direction.

Our insights anchor our subsequent development of your brand's emotional platform and proposition; i.e., your "spirit of the athlete"/ "Just do it"/ "your victory"/ "Is it in you?" The platform and proposition are gradually woven into all brand marketing communication, including package graphics and copy, collateral, website, promotions, point of sale, trade show display, and advertising.