How to Craft a Firm and Relevant European brand in China?
Identify the Ideal Design Customer for Brand Portfolio Development
Photo by Agustin Fernandez on Unsplash
The Challenge:
Conceptualise an Ideal Design Customer for the brand to gain an overview of the marketing communication tonality that is relevant to China.
With two purposes
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Help define the value proposition of the hero product, strategies to deepen market penetration and it should give a 'halo' effect to the rest of the portfolio brands in China.
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Help R&D team research on designs to innovate a hero product to fit Asian male consumers’ needs and expectations in China.
The Impact:
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Differentiated the premium product value proposition from the rest of client's portfolio brands.
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Research findings influenced the product design and recommended changes in material, product shape and functionality.
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Created a new persona of brand IDC (the ideal customer the brand would market to or relate to)
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Set the overarching communication tone for the brand in China for the next 5 years.
The Background and Problem Raised:
From marketing pov:
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Brand image and communication messages made by European agencies could not reach Chinese consumers' hearts. The perception of male grooming also carries different meanings among Asian male users.
From product design pov:
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Asian users naturally have less facial hair. Consequently, facial grooming takes up less attention in their daily routine and shopping behaviours. Hence, the product features require specific design updates to fit Asian male grooming needs and lifestyle.
The Outcome:
Launched a new marketing campaign, new communication scheme, new products and new promotion packages on e-commerce websites.
The commercials are still live until this day!
The Background and Problem Raised:
From the marketing POV:
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European agencies ' brand image and communication messages could not reach Chinese consumers' hearts. The perception of male grooming also carries different meanings among Asian male users.
From the product design POV:
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Asian users naturally have less facial hair. Consequently, facial grooming takes up less attention in their daily routine and shopping behaviours. Hence, the product features require specific design updates to fit Asian male grooming needs.
What Did We Do to Conceptualise the Ideal Design Customer?
Secondary Research
Desktop research on major Chinese social media platforms to gain
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Consumer reviews of the client’s brand and products
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Consumer reviews of competitor brands and the benchmark products
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Use the experience of the premium shaver
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Consumer profiles categorise basic demographic metrics of what "the ideal customer" would look like
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what type of person would buy a premium electric shaver from this brand?
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What social platforms do these people use to share their user experiences?
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Influence journey including understanding his upbringing, life aspirations, hobbies, income level, ways of handling personal finance, shopping senses/tastes, etc.
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Then we form hypotheses based on the desktop research and articulate the qualities of people we want to incorporate in our qualitative study.
Primary Research
We then conducted anthropology research based on the hypothesis we harvested from the secondary research.
* IDC: an IDC is not merely a summary of leading consumers or TAs but an ideal customer created and conceptualised based on qualitative research to drive the overarching values the brand is communicating to its customers.
Research Rollout
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Recruitment – looking for current users of both client and competitors' brands.
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Build a robust PQ and screener to filter and identify the true IDC
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Follow strict guidelines of cultural recruitment not rely on recruitment agencies to find random customers but a highly selective process of finding hyper-niche candidates
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Discussion guide – we carefully designed the discussion guide to incorporate sessions for people to share their life events and showcase their personalities, hobbies and even pet peeves.
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Our work through this process is to construct WHO they are by understanding their ups and downs in life, upbringings and beliefs to gain their life narratives.
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In-home interviews - we go into our interviewees' homes to walk the walk and talk the talk to search for the functional reasons people pick this particular premium shaver and trying to understand what is premium to them
We collect
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Background Stories
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ideologies, belief systems, symbolic meanings with their belongings
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Things shape their shopping preferences and the meanings they are looking for in their goods
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living situations
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social-economic status
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life experience
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New Product Testing
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Morning grooming routines and habits.
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The likes and dislikes they have with their current shaver, and the features they hope the next-gen product could have or improve.
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New features testing: how do new features fit into the overall image of the shaver.
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New e-commerce communication
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Online materials and product packaging testing
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Marketing activities - brand’s spokesperson,
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Do these consumers identify with the spokesperson ？
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Which favourable qualities do they want to associate with themselves?
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How can this brand and product embrace these qualities?
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IDC Formation & Insight Generation
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Conceptualise the IDC - Deep dive beyond category behaviour U&A and dig deeper into unstated domains.
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Perception towards technology and innovation
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Perception towards performance
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Perception towards premium
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Perception towards current life–stage meaning and relation with expectations of next life-stage
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Perception towards aesthetics, male beauty, masculinity and identity
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Establish Connections with product functions and brand claims
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Connect the values and life narratives we gained through interviews with the importance of product can convey through functions, designs and marketing communications of the critical claims that the IDCs would identify themselves with.
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We then look for where the premium male grooming brand sits in its category and with other brand portfolios.
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The tool also helps locate where this premium product sits with others under the same category.
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We used coordinates with a horizontal axis to represent the expectations that the ideologies and values of the product can represent. The vertical axis represents the category behaviour and the functional requirements.
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Then, we would know to market the premium brand to these people with the resonated claims.
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And the expected functions to help them achieve/maintain that male image.
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Reflection：
The client, at first, could not fully comprehend why we couldn't use their existing customer database for research. And do what they have in mind to interview internet influencers and KOLs. Only at that point I realise it is also our job to guide client to understand the nuances of different crowds. The category meaning
Managing clients' expectations is as equally important as the research work. Even 'educate' them on setting the sharp and succinct business aim for producing quality research works. We let the clients join our work in progress. Only then did they recognise the difference between IDC and Leading consumers and the necessity to spend all those extra efforts looking for the IDCs for anthropological research.