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How to Maximize the Impact of Your Mobile Video Ethnography

In this guide, gleaned from 20+ years of experience with world-class brands like Nike, Sonos and Google, Tom Bassett shares his tips for making the most of your mobile video surveys, offering best practices for pattern finding, bucketing results, identifying the overarching story, and sharing results in a captivating way.

At Fabric, we’ve often trumpeted the many applications of mobile video surveys. Whether you’re at an agency, testing creative before a pitch, or you’re on an R&D team conducting need-finding research, mobile video surveys provide you with insight you can hang your hat on. With mobile video surveys the consumer, uninhibited by the influence of contrasting opinions in a focus group or by the watchful eye of a moderator, gladly unload their honest, nuanced opinions in digestible slices of recorded video. But, how exactly do you get those golden nuggets of insight? And after you’ve collected all the responses, how do you organize and digest the data in order to inform your team to make the best possible decisions?

In this guide, we define the best practices when creating a mobile video survey; from ideal question length to how long each response should be, you’ll leave knowing the specifics of how to create a winning survey that nets you the highest quality consumer insight. Then, we highlight the best methods of how to organize all the videos and opinions, extracting the overarching story that informs the best course of action for your company.

Craft the Perfect Survey

You have your research objective, the target demographic/ geographic locations you want to research, and the methodology you’re using (mobile video surveys).

Write a Screener

Keep it simple. Especially engaging consumers over mobile device, you’ll want them to be able to complete the screener without a great deal of scrolling or you run the risk of losing them or skewing their responses. All respondents have a 1 minute profile video, so when we/you are reviewing applicants and aren’t sure which respondent to accept or reject, watching the profile video can help raise confidence levels that the applicant being accepted is the best possible choice.

How Many Questions?

Our platform allows up to 10 questions per respondent. Each answer is limited to 60 seconds. So a 15 person study would yield 150 x one minute video clips and accompanying transcripts. The logic to the one minute answer is that in our experience, if someone doesn’t answer the question in the first minute, they will likely not answer it period. Similarly, by way of comparison, in a Fabric study, each respondent provides up to 10 minutes of content; in a focus group containing 8 people for 90 minute, you will be lucky to get 10 minutes of dedicated content from each participant (based on a moderator who is militant about controlling the conversation….and those moderators are few and far between). Lastly, one minute packets of video move seamlessly across the web, and are quick/easy to review and digest.

Transcripts

Either by using a service like Fabric or going through the videos yourself and taking notes, it is important to keep a written record of what consumers are saying in all of their responses. This will be very helpful when organizing and sharing your research. Having the text opens you up to culling the data with keyword searches, word clouds, and the like.

Review Your Results

Identify the Patterns and Themes

Pinpoint what people are identifying with. What are the recurring problems, what are the issues they are having with the brand or the experience? Keep thinking about these themes in terms of how they relate to your brand. Focus in on five to ten patterns or themes; more than that can prove unwieldy when sharing your results across a company.

Recognize the Original Insights

Within every mobile video survey, there’s always an opinion or takeaway that you didn’t expect or anticipate. Maybe a consumer has outlined a novel way to use your product. Maybe they have a unique insight about a commercial you shared with them. Whatever it is, these insights are valuable and are just as capable of lending credence to your ultimate strategy.

Organize Your Results

Organizing your patterns and themes into two buckets keeps everything neat.

Problems

Presenting problems is a relevant way to share your insights back within an organization. There are occasions when the organization itself is an obstacle, especially if there’s a strong belief that the target or product is already 100% percent understood. After your mobile video survey, when you come back and say, “Here are some real issues and problems,” combining that with videos of your target consumer backing you up, organizations tend to become very engaged.

Opportunities

You’ve locked down your problem set. Now, focus on the opportunities your research yielded. Is there an opportunity for brand extension? Can you refine an existing idea? Develop a new idea? Listen carefully to your consumers. Developing an empathy for their perspective will ofen open your eyes to new avenues you may have not explored yet.

Identify the Story

The third thing you should do, and probably the most important and difficult, is to identify the overarching story of your research. Without the story, your problems and opportunities have no focal point, no frame of reference from which to engender action. Look through everything you’ve collected to this point, and articulate the story in one sentence. Once you’ve nailed down the story, figure out what the chapters are; what are the building blocks that bring that story to life? What insights – what consumer quotes – shape each chapter? Figure out how those chapters lead to the punctuation point of the entire story, and you have arrived at what you’re trying to teach people.

Write a Paper Edit

You could walk into your next meeting with all of this insight and share it verbally, but that would defeat the purpose and beauty of using mobile video surveys. Working off of the transcripts of each respondent, extract quotes and lay them out in a “paper edit.” This refers to the written outline of your story, which serves as a blueprint for creating a final curated video. Make sure the story logic flows before handing it off to your editing team. Be mindful that every quote you’re using tells your research’s story in a compelling and genuine way.

STORY: Millennial’s loyalty is fleeting and transactional; they switch from brand to brand, and they expect more incentives to maintain their loyalty.

Sharing Results

Edit a Video

A two- to three- minute video comprised of the footage of your consumers giving their unfiltered opinions will bring your story to life, and deeply support your proposed strategy. Stakeholders in an organization will relish the opportunity to see their actual consumer in her environment or out on location, explaining how she sees something, how she uses something, what the problems and issues are, what the areas for opportunity are. She might open a package, demonstrate how she uses her laptop, or show what she has in her closet. This footage makes the whole story so much more visceral and real for the people with whom you’re sharing the story. Whether or not you have a team of editors, there are some tricks to creating an engaging video. Avoid long clips within your video. Anything over ten seconds is a long time for a cut. Don’t use thirty-second clips, or you run the risk of your audience falling asleep. Adding production elements like title cards and B-roll (secondary footage that plays over a consumer quote) will only make your story more engaging.

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Pushing Boundaries: 3 Creative Uses of Mobile Video Surveys

We often say that the limits of mobile video ethnography coincide with the limits of your imagination. At Fabric, our clients are continually discovering new options to capture customer truths. Here are three creative uses of mobile video ethnography that prove the limits are truly endless. Check out the video here.

Mobile video ethnography has redefined qualitative research, providing an effective and credible methodology for gleaning rich consumer insights and creating empathy with customers. For more than 20 years, Fabric founder Tom Bassett has worked in this field with clients across many industries, from software to tech to retail. He’s discovered creative ways that mobile video surveys can reach deeper into the minds and hearts of consumers; it’s market research that simply can’t be captured any other way. Here are 3 creative uses of mobile qual that show the limits are endless.

Need Finding

Mobile video qualitative research is enabling entirely new methodologies that were previously unavailable, pushing through previous boundaries of what research design can consider. And it’s working across many different industries. For example, when Skullcandy needed to test new packaging for their famous line of headphones, their aim was understand 1-on-1 how their target audience felt about prototype packaging, because headphones are not a group buying decision or an occasion where consumers seek sales assistance on the retail floor. By embedding photos of the proposed packaging side by side and in a retail environment, Skullcandy was able to recreate the purchasing decision in the minds of their targets, providing real, unbiased feedback on packaging design and messaging.

In addition, when DINE needed to make a snap decision on whether to introduce a B2B food service brand to consumers, they turned to mobile video surveys. The learning DINE was able to glean from the videos — from consumers’ facial expressions to their comments on the taste profile of the product — provided just what they needed to make the changes necessary to launch their new product successfully.

Package Testing

As a packaging feedback mechanism, mobile video surveys can help clients test packaging in several ways: (1) Consumers can react to PDFs of design concepts (2) They can share what works or doesn’t work about current packaging (3) Products can be shipped to consumers, who then share thoughts as they unbox the product. Not only do mobile video surveys easily allow consumers to invite us into their homes, but they also enable your team to accompany the consumer to the store on a shop-a-long, or anywhere else.

Prompting consumers to head to the store, we had them show us the dental hygiene aisle from their P.O.V. while talking us through what packaging stood out most to them, and why. It wasn’t just their words that had an impact, it was their facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. The results? Using this data, the client was able to make effective packaging changes to ensure they were effectively reaching their target audience.

Comms Testing

Mobile video surveys can enable reactions to PDFs, images, videos, and links to web sites. Consumers open file (option to password protect it), view the concepts, and provide reactions by recorded video on their mobile device. You can glean insights as to whether your key message is resonating with your target demographic, or what consumers believe is the overall brand perception. An added benefit of comms testing with mobile video surveys is that consumers are engaged in a one-on-none environment, most closely mirroring how consumers would experience marketing and advertising in actuality — alone. When outside influences are minimized, consumers tend to respond more authentically to your stimulus, and that authenticity is evidenced by their body language, facial expressions and context. Not only does this facilitate the authenticity, it also captures it.

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5 Ways Mobile Video Ethnography Redefines Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is key when it comes to understanding customer truths, and an innovative tool opens new doors into consumer minds: mobile video ethnography. mindswarms founder Tom Bassett details the ways mobile video research re-energizes traditional qual, opening up new methodologies previously unavailable to researchers.

“Basically they would think that maybe I was racist because I’m speaking out about it [police brutality]. It’s scary that there’s a lot of people out there that can’t even go to the store at night without worrying about dying, and there’s people who can get pulled over, and pull a gun out, and maybe because of their skin color or their background they won’t even die…”

Recently, mindswarms founder Tom Bassett moderated a panel of leading research professionals about the unique value of mobile video qualitative research. By the end of the discussion, everyone agreed that qualitative research is far from dead. The tech world may be enamored with big data and its focus on “what” is happening, but there’s no better tool than qualitative research for answering the question of “why.” Everyone has vast amounts of data at their fingertips, but without qual, the picture is incomplete.

TV re-positioned radio and newspaper when it was introduced. Similarly, every time a new type of research is introduced, it repositions all other existing methodologies. Big Data forced the repositioning of qualitative research.
How should it respond? Is there even a role for qualitative research in the future, and if so, how should it be defined? A lot of senior marketers and researchers feel focus groups are dead; but mobile qualitative research changes everything.

~ Tom Bassett – Founder & CEO – mindswarms

Here are 5 ways mobile video ethnography is redefining qual:

1. Pushing Creative Boundaries

Mobile video qualitative research is enabling entirely new methodologies that were previously unavailable, pushing through previous boundaries of what research design can consider. And it’s working across many different industries. For example, when Skullcandy needed to test new packaging for their famous line of headphones, their aim was understand 1-on-1 how their target audience felt about prototype packaging, because headphones are not a group buying decision or an occasion where consumers seek sales assistance on the retail floor. By embedding photos of the proposed packaging side by side and in a retail environment, Skullcandy was able to recreate the purchasing decision in the minds of their targets, providing real, unbiased feedback on packaging design and messaging.

In addition, when DINE needed to make a snap decision on whether to introduce a B2B food service brand to consumers, they turned to mobile video surveys. The learning DINE was able to glean from the videos — from consumers’ facial expressions to their comments on the taste profile of the product — provided just what they needed to make the changes necessary to launch their new product successfully.

2. “Speed” and “Quality Recruit” are no longer at odds

Technology is accelerating the already high-pressure pace qualitative market researchers work at, and great recruitment can be achieved at a faster pace now, making qualitative research more relevant with business decision makers. Focus groups can be time intensive because of recruitment time required (seems like two weeks at a minimum). Conversely, mobile video qualitative research can turn around national recruitment within days – sometimes hours – while maintaining quality recruits. You no longer have to schedule a visit to a consumer’s house; with mobile video, you are virtually in their environment, instantly.

3. Internal Teams Can Hear and See Consumers In Situ

Having to trudge from city to city with a team of people to do market research can be avoided by bringing consumer video to cross-functional teams digitally. This is invaluable, especially when a quick turnaround is necessary. For example, four days away from a pitch with a major national bank, BBDO turned to mobile video surveys to amplify their pitch . The result? They won.

4. The Feedback is Intensely Personal

The speed, quality, and visceral nature of mobile video qualitative research creates a powerful way for researchers to re-insert themselves into management’s decision-making conversations. Conducting qualitative research takes skill: Combing through the videos, extracting quotes, formulating themes, and picking out patterns. Qualitative researchers are familiar with this, and since a typical mobile video survey nets a client over 90 minutes of video to analyze for insights, the result is a compelling story; the perfect way to share a memorable story with your colleagues.

5. Researchers Can Impact Company Decisions

The speed, quality, and visceral nature of mobile video qualitative research creates a powerful way for researchers to re-insert themselves into management’s decision-making conversations. Conducting qualitative research takes skill: Combing through the videos, extracting quotes, formulating themes, and picking out patterns. Qualitative researchers are familiar with this, and since a typical mobile video survey nets a client over 90 minutes of video to analyze for insights, the result is a compelling story; the perfect way to share a memorable story with your colleagues.

Conclusion

A surge in the importance of mobile video qualitative research is occurring because it redefines the role of qualitative research in the overall research process. Faster and more affordable than traditional focus groups, mobile qual doesn’t sacrifice quality recruitment; it makes recruitment even easier, allowing researchers to use it more often. That coupled with the fact mobile qual gives clients access to the consumer at the moment of truth (in the store, at home, at work, on the go), you have a value proposition unlike anything else on the market.

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Why You Need to Use Video in Your Market Research Presentation

We’ve been there: presenting research insights to a room of C-Level executives who are distracted by the latest crisis. Then, you start a video - phones go down, heads lift, and suddenly you’re Sinatra with a microphone. Check out the reasons you need to use video to get your audience’s attention, which can ultimately impact management decisions. You can watch the video here.

Do you want to take your market research presentation to the next level? If yes, you’re in the right place. Tom Bassett, founder of Fabric, has spent more than 20 years crafting and analyzing mobile video surveys with some of the world’s most valuable companies and brands, and he’s got the inside scoop on how to present your market research insights in the most compelling way possible.

The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think: Use video!

Mobile video studies have redefined qual because they’re an engaging and credible way to bring valuable insights back to your organization or client. They offer something agile, scalable, economical, and sticky. As in, they truly engage the end user in terms of learning. This has everything to do with the sensory experience video offers; it’s incredible what you can see visually, beyond the respondent’s’ words when you peek into their closets, pantries, dens, home offices, fridges and more. There are subtle cues in consumers’ body language, facial expressions, and physical environments that convey key information about what’s going on inside their minds. And this is what you need! It’s an authenticity you can’t get anywhere else, and it’s one of the most compelling reasons mobile video surveys have revitalized the qualitative research industry.

Mobile video studies have redefined qual because they’re an engaging and credible way to bring valuable insights back to your organization or client. They offer something agile, scalable, economical, and sticky. As in, they truly engage the end user in terms of learning. This has everything to do with the sensory experience video offers; it’s incredible what you can see visually, beyond the respondent’s’ words when you peek into their closets, pantries, dens, home offices, fridges and more. There are subtle cues in consumers’ body language, facial expressions, and physical environments that convey key information about what’s going on inside their minds. And this is what you need! It’s an authenticity you can’t get anywhere else, and it’s one of the most compelling reasons mobile video surveys have revitalized the qualitative research industry.

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Millennials & Home Cleaning

In a recent study, Fabric set out to understand unique generational considerations in how Millennial women relate to home cleaning, home cleaning brands, and home cleaning product purchasing. What we didn’t anticipate? That we’d open up a Pandora’s Box of emotionally deep insights. You can watch a video clip here.

Research Objective

To understand the emotions, pressures, and motivations related to household cleaning. By gaining a deeper understanding of the the modern young woman’s relationship to cleaning, we can better gauge what types of products and concepts would appeal most. One interesting technique we employed was to have women show us a photo of their Mom in the first response, to dial up the emotional intensity of their responses.

Target Audience

  • National US sample
  • 12 states
  • 14 cities
  • Ages 25 – 40
  • Female
  • Mix of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds

We Learned:

While we anticipated interesting results given the nature of the study and the research design, what we didn’t see coming was that the study became a form of mother/daughter therapy as told through the lens of home cleaning. Millennial women’s cleaning rituals, habits and schedules opened up a Pandora’s box of deep memories, providing a rich and emotionally colorful set of insights.

Here’s a look at how we set the stage for success by tuning the study design and triggers for the unique attributes of mobile video surveys.

The unique nature of mobile video studies

We’ve found that in mobile video surveys, respondents are remarkably open, honest, and candid in their replies. This may be because mobile phones – given how much they are used – serve as virtual extensions of the human hand. The device becomes quite personal and intimate in that respect. Additionally, we often use mobile devices to communicate in confidence with people we trust. So in a sense, the technology, by association, takes on attributes of a confidante: people are comfortable sharing openly with it.

Furthermore, as a market research methodology, mobile video surveys are highly effective for anything to do with the home. Participants often record their responses while at home, where they typically feel comfortable being themselves and where they are surrounded by belongings and items they use every day.

The compounded effect of using a familiar, personal technology in a familiar, personal environment makes the results of mobile video research studies highly insightful.

Applying ethnography best practices to mobile video study design

New technologies and media have opened up new ways to apply ethnography best practices with increasing sophistication and excellent results. The market research industry, driven to stay ahead of consumer preferences and trends, has rightly seen mobile video surveys as a way to overcome some limitations of traditional research approaches.

Take focus groups, for example. The sheer power of close observation, a highly insightful research practice, is largely absent from focus group research. Focus group observers are often situated such that it’s impossible to see the nuances of participants’ facial expressions from 10+ feet away. Depending on the seating arrangement, an observer might see some participants only in profile, making reading expression virtually impossible.

In contrast, a mobile video study is up close and personal, with the mobile device either held at arm’s length or in close proximity; so it offers a level of facial and body language observation that’s quite intimate, yet uncomplicated by interaction with an interviewer or other people.

Show & Tell is another ethnography methodology especially well suited for mobile video studies. Participants responding to Show & Tell prompts tend to be much more animated and articulate answering questions because they are either in the environment they are being questioned about or quite literally holding the object they are talking about.

Why did we survey only women?

While statistics show that men are a significant and growing audience for home cleaning products, we were experimenting with research design and especially curious about infusing a research study with the mother/daughter dynamic.

Mom knows that I take pride in the cleanliness of my home, and its organization, but it’s just never good enough for her.

Leslie Stone

UNORTHODOX STUDY DESIGN = POTENT RESULTS

We’ve worked as ethnographers in marketing, advertising, product design, strategy and consumer insights, and are still fascinated every day by the insights that emerge from the studies we do; from the standpoints of both study design and human thought and behavior. In this case, it was genuinely amazing to see study design, technology and human experience come together in such a powerful way.

Lesson #1: Engage emotion to reach deeper insights

STUDY DESIGN: Mommy and me; setting the stage

We decided to ask participating Millennial women to benchmark themselves against their mothers. “How do you compare to your mother?” From a study design standpoint—or from any standpoint, really—that’s a loaded question with some magical power:

  • It sets a very emotional tone, starting with the first question.
  • It provides a harder edge to the research findings because people are not just talking about themselves, they are talking about how they are different from their mothers.
  • With this in mind, in the first clip of the study we asked participants to show us a picture of their mother (or parents), to help bring the mother/daughter or parent/daughter relationship vividly to mind in the moment. Loading a research study with a design that gets to deeper emotional territory will almost always result in more meaningful insights and set the stage for that emotion to carry through the rest of the study.

Understanding emotion is invaluable for a number of reasons:

  • Despite what people SAY they will do, emotion often overrides logic
  • There are so many options for consumers that understanding the emotional drivers for brand preference can be a powerful asset.
  • While most categories—like home cleaning—have the potential to be mundane, we believe every category has emotion in it that can motivate consumers to buy specific products or brands that resonate with them.
  • The most successful brands and companies typically create powerful emotional connections with consumers.

CONSUMER INSIGHTS: They are their mother’s daughters

Oh mama! Whether study participants remained adherents of their mother’s cleaning practices and philosophies, or whether they were outright rejectors of their mother’s way of doing things, they all had powerful emotional connections to home cleaning.

For many of respondents, their relationship to home cleaning started with early childhood memories of cleaning routines, scents, brands and products, all intertwined with their relationship with Mom.

As you might expect, many of the women adopted a very different set of brands from their mother’s loyalties. Typically, the brands Millennial women related to more had a different mission, vision, or purpose. They weren’t as much brands that had been around for generations, but they were brands with original narratives and associations that aligned more meaningfully with Millennials’ desire for a greater purpose or mission.

I think my mother would probably say, as far as my home cleaning products and home cleaning style goes, I’m doing the best I can with two little ones under the age of four. And I would say she understands the type of products that I buy and why I buy them. Organic products are just not what Mom chooses.

Julie

Lesson #2: Help participants paint a complete picture in full color

STUDY DESIGN: Transition from Culture/Category to Brand questions

We typically sequence questions in a way that helps participants show us if/how their relationship with the broader research topic aligns with the brand landscape. To achieve this, we start with broader topics about the culture and category, then narrow the focus to more specific product areas in order to approach the topic from a cultural level where the richest—and often highest ROI—insights are found.

In this study, we sequenced questions to follow this arc:

  • Their relationship with home cleaning, relative to their mother’s
  • Their relationship with home cleaning brands, relative to their mother’s
  • Their relationship with home cleaning products, relative to their mother’s
  • Their relationship with home cleaning purchasing, relative to their mother’s

CONSUMER INSIGHTS: A kinder, gentler brand landscape

Since Millennials tended on the whole to move away from brands their mothers groomed their daughters on, this can have significant impact on new brands launching, as well as on existing brands either repositioning themselves or extending into new areas.

From a product perspective, Millennial women tended to relate best to what we would refer to as “gentler” cleaning products. They cited products that had a less harsh chemical footprint and were perceived as more environmentally friendly. They also lit up at the idea of convenience. Wet wipes, for instance, were one of the most commonly cited products they lived by because of the ease with which they could be used. (Incidentally, respondents did not seem to associate that extra convenience with an increased environmental cost of the throw-away plastic tubs).

My number one home cleaning product would be my Windex Touch-Ups. I love this product. What makes this different from what my parents used? It’s convenient, the ease of use and the design: it’s kind of high-tech, I think, compared to an all-in vinegar mix that’s maybe something my parents would’ve concocted

Pamela

Lesson #4: Seek to understand the entire journey

STUDY DESIGN: Show & Tell methodology for product context

What’s a day in the life of a product? For product context, we had these women show us where they stored their cleaning supplies in the home, talk about the range of products found there, and discuss how they typically used the assortment of products.

By designing studies to investigate what happens to products pre, during and post use, mobile video surveys can help identify new opportunities for product marketers and designers to innovate around that product, including “product as service,” an escalating trend across categories. This is especially valuable in the re-order world, where increasingly popular subscription models help increase customer loyalty and lifetime customer value.

CONSUMER INSIGHTS: The untold story = new brand & product opportunities

By having participants show us their cleaning supplies, we were able to understand more deeply not only their favorite product(s), but also the brand clusters and assortments they purchased in other categories. It also gave us insight into their unmet needs when we could see, for example, how disorganized some of the supply areas were; many participants were reluctant to even show those areas because they felt embarrassed by the mess.

Would these participants want a product or system that made it easier for them to create and maintain a supply area they wouldn’t hesitate to show us or Mom? Absolutely.

I think my mom and my parents would say that I do keep my house in good clean state, but she would definitely be appalled by the number of different products that I have. She would say, it’s way too much and I should just stick to the old fashioned water and baking soda.

Grace

Lesson #5: Use mobile for an intimate, very human point of view

STUDY DESIGN: Get into their personal space, literally and emotionally

Seeing into people’s natural environments using mobile video surveys is a unique way to truly understand their world from their point of view—not just product or product context, but what else matters to them and the kinds of challenges they face every day.

Additionally, not only does the research methodology address the core research objective, it’s also valuable and easy to share throughout an organization, both upstream (into Product Design & Development, or even R&D) or downstream (into retail presentation and online buying).

So the Swiffer Dust and Shine with Febreze Lavender and Vanilla is my favorite cleaning product. […] It definitely differs from my parents, because they never had these things back in the day growing up, when cleaning, I think things were much more old-school.

Shaun

CONSUMER INSIGHTS: Under the sink can be as emotional as in their closet

Having consumers show you spaces in their homes that very few people ever see—like under kitchen counters and in laundry rooms—opens them up to share unexpected stories and details.It also opens the eyes of the researcher to the reality of these spaces.

Hearing in someone’s voice the pride about how she organized an area or seeing the anxiety on another’s face as she introduces a space in her home that’s chronically disorganized reveals all sorts of explicit and implicit insights.

EFFECTIVE USE OF MOBILE VIDEO STUDIES

Would participants have been so candid in a focus group or even in a filmed one-on-one, ethnographic-style interview? Unlikely. Certainly not without considerably more time invested in building rapport and trust.

In this study, each person’s familiarity with—and trust of—her mobile device led to surprisingly candid sharing. There was no unconscious bias, and no group think.

Specifically, using mobile video surveys in this study helped us:

  • Understand the prevailing attitudes, practices, brand affinities, and purchase habits of Millennial women as it related to home cleaning and home cleaning products;
  • Infuse the study with emotion beyond simply asking women about their habits and preferences;Identify clear attitudinal, behavioral, and emotional differences between Millennial women and their mothers;
  • Surface the broader shifts amongst Millennials and the home cleaning category towards simpler, less harsh, and more convenient products;
  • Identify all sorts of opportunities for new brands to disrupt the category and/or for existing brands to re-tool, re-position, or extend their brands;
  • Explore zones of innovation in which both new and established brands can identify opportunities for new services and experiences on top of the existing product portfolio, such as organizing ecosystems for storage, re-supply purchasing, and line extensions into tangential categories

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to the people who shared their personal stories and insights with us as part of this Fabric study.

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Briefly: A Look into the Creative Brief

What do Frank Gehry, Yves Behar, David Rockwell, Maira Kalman, John C Jay and John Boiler all have in common? They all begin projects with The Brief. In this short film (a Vimeo staff pick), mindswarms founder Tom Bassett asks some of the world’s most exceptional creative minds for their insights into how they think about— and use— the brief to deliver outstanding creative, consistently.

Every project starts with a brief.

But very few projects end up with exceptional results. Why?

As a disruptive brand and design strategy firm that creates briefs across multiple creative disciplines including Advertising, Design, and Innovation, Tom Bassett, CEO of Bassett & Partners (and founder of mindswarms), was curious to understand how some of the world’s most consistently exceptional creative talents thought about – and used – the brief.

Through a series of one-on-one interviews with Frank Gehry (Founder Gehry Partner), Yves Béhar (CEO fuseproject), Maira Kalman (Illustrator), John C Jay (Chief Creative Officer @Uniqlo), David Rockwell (CEO Rockwell Group), and John Boiler (CEO 72andSunny), we asked them to elaborate on how they define – and use – the brief to deliver exceptional creative results.

The end goal of Briefly is to help inform and inspire future generations of collaborators to write better briefs and manage the briefing process differently in order to help lead to exceptional creative results.

So while every project will still start with a brief, the dream is that more projects end up exceptional because of how these creative titans inspire (or re-inspire) the way we all think about briefs.

To Watch Briefly Film

Click Here

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