overview
Our client approached us with the goal of creating a cohesive campaign in the Media and Entertainment sector, specifically in the family space. Over several months, they envisioned an iterative approach to creating and optimizing their campaign. Compared to previous years, our client wanted to incorporate immersive qualitative touchpoints throughout the process and to unearth insights in a focused, agile, and ongoing way – but needed to be flexible for timing, as well as have their solution be cost effective.
The C+R team suggested the creation and recruitment of a 9-month online community. This community included over 200 parents of children and tweens. The aim was for everyone – parents and their children/tweens – to participate in continuous research to enhance our client’s outreach strategies.
THE PROBLEM
Can an Online Parent Community Adapt and Expand to Meet Evolving Research Needs?
Throughout the duration of the 9-month community, we worked closely with our clients and were quickly and easily able to engage the parents in the community for qualitative deep dives along the way. We embarked on this community to tackle the following research objectives:
- Understand reactions and emotions across elements of a campaign
- Explore brand fit and impact on brand perceptions across campaign tactics
- Unearth opportunity areas as we progressed toward the final version of the campaign
- Evaluate findings across key groups of interest, including varying age ranges, mindsets, and multicultural members
The client team fell into stride with the community offerings and processes. They appreciated the flexible yet immersive research that was completed. Near the end of the 9-month contract, the client team wanted to continue the established community, given the investment to develop and build it. However, they were interested in expanding the community knowing that their learning objectives for the next 12 months would be changing.
OUR APPROACH
Agile Adaptation: Pivoting an Online Parent Community to Meet Changing Needs
To help our clients answer their initial needs, we set up a community of more than 250 parents of kids 2-11 years of age. We successfully completed qualitative projects each month related to an upcoming campaign including a mix of synchronous and asynchronous approaches. At the end of the first contract, we communicated closely with our clients to help pivot the community slightly to include their growing focuses for the coming 12 months.
In year two, we adjusted our set-up and research materials to add more than 150 parents to the community, including broadening the kids’ ages to include more tweens and teens, giving our client a more complete family picture. Within this same year, we also recruited to broaden approaches; specifically, to conduct quantitative research, as well as more “live” (synchronous) methodologies. And with this, we were able to tackle our clients’ exploratory research needs, in addition to the more tactical initiatives we initially set out to cover with the community.
We have continued to pivot during the community and are now in year three. We stayed close to our client’s business issues and needs, which allowed us to quickly react and adjust the community setup to handle all their research needs in a timely fashion.
The result
Evolving an Online Parent Community from US Only to Global Insights
C+R created an adaptable, engaging community to address the client’s needs.
- Year one: started with 250 US parents;
- Year two: included 400 parents with broader family ages.
- Year three: we host 800 members in a community that spans three markets on three separate continents.
We leverage methodologies and best practices across these members to conduct effective, thorough research across the client’s strategic needs – both tactical and exploratory. These include full, detailed research projects with multiple phases, as well as listening and mining the community for parent-to-parent trends and interests that can help the client stay ahead of the curve.
As a result of this research program, the client team bolstered their access to agile insights. Through open, ongoing work with the client team, we could anticipate their upcoming needs and adjust the existing community to stretch, covering additional targets and ongoing needs.
proven experience
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