How top ad strategy pros are using Suzy to bring the human element into consumer research
How top ad strategy pros are using Suzy to bring the human element into consumer research
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As consumer habits and cultural conversations shift rapidly, strategists must respond just as fast to gather research that helps creative teams read the room.
Since March, millions of Americans have experienced major life disruption, from cross-country moves and career changes to daily routines that are unrecognizable from those of a year ago. With the cultural zeitgeist changing as rapidly as the newsfeed, the industry’s top strategists are moving just as fast to illuminate an ever-evolving consumer outlook and build campaigns that meet the needs of the moment.
“One of the things we’ve always championed, but even more so now, is making sure we really understand where our consumer is coming from today,” said Rachel Berg, senior vice president and strategy director at global advertising agency DDB, during a recent Suzy webinar panel, How Leading Strategists at DDB & Oberland Bring the Consumer into Every Decision.
“We think about people as humans, not consumers, and truly embrace that to understand the emotions people are feeling,” Berg said.
Matthew Bock, strategy director at ad agency Oberland, said social issues of racial and economic inequality have become even more important for his team in recent months, and that comes through in how they think about strategy.
Bock cited a recent brand campaign for an educational institution that centered on the idea of creating space for people, a focus Bock and his team arrived at after considering both the current cooped-up nature of day-to-day life and the rise of recent social movements around equality and opportunity.
“That was obviously a nod to this feeling people have of being confined and claustrophobic, not really letting creative juices flow. But also that organization’s commitment to creating spaces for groups of people that had been underrepresented in their fields,” Bock said.
Bock has also deployed Suzy’s real-time market research platform to learn about problems that consumers are facing. Some of those findings have had major impacts on entire campaigns, he said.
“For a women’s med tech company, we uncovered that there’s a 7% gap in the number of women versus men nationally who say their doctor fully addresses their health needs,” said Bock. “So, the brand was shaped around equalizing that imbalance, and in a really confident way.”
To gather such insights in a socially-distanced world, both strategists have deployed creative tactics, such as conducting Zoom focus groups, or turning to friend networks to stay on top of trends, in addition to research platforms like Suzy.
Berg said that she’s interviewing friends and family who are the target consumers her clients are trying to reach, and asking them to record videos to bring their state of mind to life for DDB’s creative team.
“It gives me a tangible sense, from the mouth of the consumer,” Berg said. “It’s one thing to read something on a piece of paper, but to actually see someone speaking and feel the emotion and read the body language has been a critical added piece.”
While it’s one thing to gather these insights, delivering them to the creative team intact and in their most useful form is its own task.
Bock recommends taking time after completing research to boil it down to its most relevant data points, rather than handing over an overly long and complicated set of findings.
“Once you’ve done the research, really sit with it, let it stew for a few days, then come back to the team with something that’s really digestible,” Bock said.
Bock also likes to bring creatives into his process early on, asking them to help shape research questions that will deliver the insight they need.
All of this work is aimed at keeping the consumer front-and-center at every stage of the process, to build campaigns that respond to an uncertain time with a human touch.
“We as strategists should continue to be proactive with our empathy,” said Berg. “Given everything that’s going on in the world, we should be making sure we are treating these things not as an assignment, but as a way to make consumers’ lives better.”