Fishing for global insight

Understanding your customers and brand perceptions in multiple countries is not a one size fits all project. Differences in cultures, infrastructure, communication channels and sheer geography mean that one methodology will often not work across different countries, as articulated well in this Marketing Week article by Steve Hemsley.

The difficulties and expense that these studies can represent is considerable and can cause conflict between offices.

So why not enlist the local team as the local experts they already are - and empower them to collect and collate the research for you? Working from central questions and a rigorous framework, just expressed differently in different regions (in consultation with a research expert), doing the hands-on research can only help local teams get closer to customers, more engaged in the results and implications.

Creative research methodologies involving imagery, stories and clear, repeatable metrics could create a wealth of layered multi-national customer insight, at lower cost and deeper engagement, for both your team and your customers. Who knows, maybe your sales manager, accountant or CEO might enjoy the venture into something different!

Your team will now know how to fish, and will be able to repeat to catch more tasty insights in the future.

You? Do you think this is possible, flawed or will work for your organisation?

Image credit

An ice rink for Christmas

Sometimes the most powerful form marketing is to capture the feeling of your brand and make it tangible for potential customers.

And that is exactly what Tiffany & Co. have done with their sponsorship of Somerset House Ice Skating in London, UK.

The experience is magical, laced with excitement and romance in the most elegant of ways.

Totally Tiffany & Co.

You? How can you capture the emotion of your brand and make it tangible for customers, what is the purest expression of that - could it be a picnic in the park, a monster truck show or a high-flying stunt?

Prolonging the love

Following on from my post about celebrating the depression I was inspired by reading a trend-spotting, or rather trend-capturing article on Care and Repair by Jane Fulton-Suri of IDEO.

It demonstrates examples of a return to traditional notions of quality, care of items and repair, rather than ongoing consumption. Great examples include lastyearsmodel.com and Model Shoe Renew in Berkeley, California.

From a customer perspective, how could you help them get satisfaction in this new way of thinking?

- Could you offer a service to re-model and re-style people's favourite garments, giving budding fashion designers an outlet and experience and customers a chance to participate in the design process?

- Why not offer car maintenance workshops, like home depot DIY classes - but for care maintenance. Everything from tuning to the sperfect polish. Could you make it a social occassion, have a girls only session or simply create a small chance for people to have fun while helping them care for their cars? Imagine how much more into their car (and potentially your brand) they will feel once they are more comfortable under the hood?
- Could you start an organisation that provided a warm, cosy and fun place for people to learn old-fashioned 'Home Economics'? Imagine a lively space that engages older people sharing their old-time skills and younger people coming in with their shared energy and walking away with their newly made scarves, darned clothers or steaming loaves of bread.

From a brand perspective, would your brand be the one that they would re-sole year after year?

Image credit: Sewingsewingmachines.net