case-studies-reshaping-customer-journey

How micro moments are reshaping the travel customer journey

There’s a lot of planning that goes into traveling. And people increasingly turn to devices for help. Here, Think with Google (powered by mindswarms) reveals the consumer trends shaping these travel micro-moments, how they affect the travel customer journey, and why they matter for travel brands. Check out the study here.

case-studies-mobile-surveys

Mobile Video Surveys Reframe Global Qual

Rob Klingensmith, Chief Strategic Officer of Marcel Worldwide, worked with mindswarms to collect consumer insights in 5 different countries for Luxottica, makers of the world’s iconic Ray-Ban and Perso brands. He discovered mobile video surveys are redefining global qual, opening doors for companies to efficiently and affordably test foreign markets.

In The Past

Up until relatively recently, global qualitative research was out of reach for a lot of companies and occasions. Yet, many companies are looking to expand globally and have very little understanding of how their products or services may fare in foreign markets. Historically, executing a global qualitative research study in multiple countries could run companies anywhere from US $300,000 to US $600,000, making it cost-prohibitive for a lot of businesses. In addition, global qualitative research could often take at least three months, and even six months or more, to complete. The result is that global qualitative research was not even a realistic option for many companies and/or research occasions.

A New Frontier

Mobile video surveys allow a broader range of companies access to global qualitative research, quickly getting feedback from consumers around the world, in their native language, in situ. In addition, mobile video surveys’ flexibility enables global research to be applied to a wide variety of occasions from early stage need-finding in R&D through prototype testing, packaging testing, and all the way into marketing and advertising

Methodology

  • On assignment with Luxottica in Italy – makers of some of the world’s most iconic eyewear brands like Ray-Ban and Persol – Marcel Worldwide needed to gather insight on attitudes towards the different brands, globally. Based in France, Marcel Worldwide’s Chief Strategic Officer – Rob Klingensmith – had a specific list of countries he needed to gather consumer insight from. He was also faced with a very tight timeline in order to inform Marcel’s upcoming campaign.
  • Rob’s team worked closely with mindswarms to identify the right type of consumer in five countries around the world. Each respondent was asked to respond in their native language to seven survey questions via mobile video. Those responses, translated by a dedicated project manager, were fed back to Marcel Worldwide where the study helped shape the creative brief and key messaging platform.
Luckily I knew about mindswarms from my days in San Francisco when they were a start-up. There would have been no other way to get global qual insights in time to inform our work, with the budget we had.

~ Rob Klingensmith, Chief Strategic Officer

The insights that Marcel Worldwide gathered not only created the foundation for their work across multiple brands, but also helped the client feel more confident in the messaging. Thanks to mobile video, the clients could literally see for themselves that the messaging was addressing real consumer insight versus speculation gathered anecdotally through organic internal channels. Marcel Worldwide reaped the benefits of this innovative method, and they see it as a paradigm shift that opens up so many possibilities for the future.

I’ve been in this business over 15 years. Mobile video surveys have dramatically changed the way we think about global qual; it’s not just for special occasions anymore. And global qual is not just the province of only the elite brands and companies with deep pockets.

~ Rob Klingensmith, Chief Strategic Officer

case-studies-consumer-decision-journey

How mobile has redefined the consumer decision journey

The consumer journey, from I-need-some-ideas through I-want-to-buy-it, is increasingly guided by the smartphone. This means retailers need to show up in a useful way online in order to help guide that decision. How can you do this most effectively? You can check out the Think with Google study (powered by mindswarms) here.

case-studies-professor-lautman

Dr. Lautman - Professor at Wharton’s MBA program - on Mobile Video Surveys

Wharton MBA adjunct professor Dr. Martin Lautman appreciates the benefits of big data. But when it comes to diving deeper in order to understand consumer emotion and how people really feel about something, he sees mindswarms mobile video surveys offering the most credibility. You can watch our interview with him. here.

When Dr. Lautman, MBA adjuntc professor at Wharton, asks his students to come up with business concepts, he knows an important part of the process is customer feedback. But before discovering video ethnography, this was a challenge. How would his students gain access to real-world customers within an academic setting, and how would they get responses in time?

mindswarms mobile video ethnography has changed all of this. Dr. Lautman reached out to mindswarms, and asked them to help his students develop mobile video surveys. This alone was educational, with students learning the importance of asking the right questions in the right way, and also best practices for gleaning insights from the videos. Plus, the students were easily able to get responses within the semester.

The feedback students got from real-world consumers was formative: Beyond the respondents’ words, the students were able to see facial reactions and subtle nonverbal cues, providing valuable insight into consumer emotions and motivations. Wharton believes this guided his students forward, putting together the needs they’d identified with what consumers say. “This is where the great insights come from,” he said.

Perhaps the best result of all: Several student projects went on to get real-world VC funding. It doesn’t get more successful than that. Hear Dr. Lautman’s insights here.

case-studies-online-interactions

How Online Interactions Impact Time-to-Make-a- Plan Moments

Online interactions are increasingly shaping how people make a plan for their next trip. New clickstream data from Luth Research’s opt-in panel and mindswarms video surveys provide a snapshot of what a real traveller’s time-to- make-a-plan moments actually looked like. Check out the Think with Google study here.

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Ad Testing: 72andSunny and the “truth” campaign

Following up to their successful truth campaign, American Legacy Foundation and 2014 Ad Age Agency of the Year, 72&Sunny, needed to test their creative to see what resonated with today’s teens. mindswarms put the new ad concepts in front of the teens, and had them record their responses via smartphones. The results? Positive vibes win out over negativity.

72andSunny, a Los Angeles-based ad agency working with the anti-smoking campaign, truth, used mindswarms to get reactions on three new concepts for teen-targeted anti-smoking ads. truth’s ads of the early 2000s drove a generation of potential smokers to rebel against Big Tobacco. A new generation of teens, however, required a new approach. 72andSunny wanted to field a test of their new campaign before launch.

Mobile Video Surveys

mindswarms mobile video surveys give ad-campaign testers access to high-quality video responses across a wide geographical area without the hassle of traveling. More importantly, they allow direct and intimate entry into the varied world of individual opinion, free from the group-think that’s characteristic of some traditional research methods. Participants respond from the comfort of their own home, while researchers can view responses in between office meetings. With these benefits in mind, 72andSunny partnered with mindswarms to create a survey that would net them the insight they needed to confidently go forward with a bold, new campaign.

Methodology

In their survey, mindswarms and 72andSunny collected video responses from 42 participants across a carefully curated demographic range in three metropolitan cities – Detroit, Birmingham, and Pittsburgh. Respondents were exposed to the ads and asked to discuss the efficacy and resonance of their messages, and react to the ad campaign as a whole. From the comfort of their homes, respondents provided 60-second answers to 14 thoughtful, pointed questions, generating over 550 minutes of consumer video – video showcasing a degree of personal, private reactions unachievable in focus groups. All possible in a week’s time.

Shipped-As-They-Fill

Question responses were reviewable by 72andSunny and mindswarms’ project managers as they filled, meaning that each individual video was accessible after a respondent submitted their responses. Responses filled a shareable matrix for easy viewing, allowing agency planners and clients to watch each respondent’s answers to every question (by row), or to watch each question’s varied answers across respondents (by column). Beyond the stated answers, the nuances in these video responses – of body language and tone of voice — speak volumes, and allow an in-depth analysis beyond that of old-fashioned ad testing.

Nearly tfive hours of unfiltered consumer honesty, and all the richness of its subtlety, were delivered to 72andSunny via a cloud-based study link (each video response including a transcript), giving them the answers they were looking for.

72andSunny’s ads revolved around the concept, „Be the Generation to End Smoking,” and utilized the emphatic tagline, “Finish It.” Included in the campaign was the promotion of shareable content on social media and ads showing how Big Tobacco shamelessly uses celebrity smokers as unpaid advertisers for their product.