case studies

We are working with a tech brand to understand some of their user segments in more depth. Across the US, our online community showed an amazing affinity with ice-climbing.  Who knew? A group of IT professionals that have often moved states to follow a job opportunity and seem to find it not only an antidote to the fast-paced stressful day job but a way to get to grips with their new home.  A qual sample maybe, but startlingly high occurrence of what I had always assumed might be slight niche given the cold and the pain!  Further investigation reveals that ice-climbing is growing rapidly and clearly DevOps engineers are at the front of that curve – perhaps a new take on the meaning of agile.

A team of individuals passionate for Wales to have its own lottery, having secured S4C’s interest in a broadcast deal, came to us to explore whether the people of Wales would value their own lottery, and if so how should it look?

Over two waves of research and a workshop we brought the needs of the Welsh community to life and helped develop the proposition that is now Loteri Cymru which was launched in April 2017.

We came to two key outcomes. Counter-intuitively for a lottery, people did not want to win millions on their own Welsh lottery. They felt far more comfortable knowing that their money was being channelled back into projects that would help Welsh people. In terms of prize money they were more motivated by winning smaller sums of money than becoming overnight millionaires. Small sums of money are enablers, rather than making a life changing difference to lifestyles. If you win £25,000 you would still live in the same house, have the same neighbours, but be able to buy a new car, help your child with university fees, or other cherished needs.

In the same vein, the good causes supported by a Welsh lottery should not be grandiose schemes, but allow smaller improvements to be made within local communities. Schemes such as giving tangible education opportunities in deprived areas or keeping a village hall open were most positively received.

The Loteri Cymru was born and a dedicated charity, Hanford Cymru was created to distribute money raised for good causes with the explicit goal of enriching community life throughout the nation.

Helping The Key scope out its mission and develop a strategy to scale up.

Young people in often need a help to step up and gain the type of confidence around dealing with the public and ‘authority’ figures that will help them achieve the success they are capable of.  Some face challenges with disability, others have to navigate social deprivation. Vivid was asked to help The Key understand the needs of the young people they work with. We were delighted to be able to go further than this and explore how the framework could work harder to help young people but also how changes could make measuring young people’s personal growth and success more effectively – helping The Key to attract funding and achieve its ambition for a national roll-out.  Delighted to have been able to stretch exploration into transformational strategy development.

MBAs are critical to getting ahead in business. Perhaps not in the UK. The question posed by our client was a) why not and b) what can they do about it?

What we discovered surprised us – there is such a big perceptual and knowledge gap between UK employers and the business schools that we got them together in a workshop to push the research project further and develop a road map for tackling the problems we identified, which is now being further developed.

We interviewed HR directors and recruiters in FTSE 100 companies, in tech start-ups and in the Civil Service. We quickly identified that an MBA qualification is rarely explicitly asked for – even when hiring for FTSE 100 management teams. That’s not to say that these organisations don’t want highly qualified leadership candidates, they do. They don’t recognise the MBA degree as a shorthand for these skills. Many of the recruiters we spoke to did not know what a modern MBA delivered and so don’t prioritise (or compensate!) a Masters in business.

So we are in a Catch 22: an MBA is not necessarily a must-have so people are less likely to invest in getting one. Will Brexit change the way we think about this? Good question.

We are well used to working with major companies who have to fulfill a pipeline of innovations to a 2, 3 or 5 year plan.

Dove came to us to help them co-create a new product that was compatible with their suite of global skincare products.

We organised and facilitated an intensive co-creation workshop involving technical experts, journalists, beauty writers, qualitative research and engaged consumers. Our consumers were part of the developmental journey. Teams developed ideas that were felt to have traction in the marketplace, and these ideas were pitched to consumers who chose the ideas that most resonated with them. Over the course of the day these ideas were honed and sharpened with active consumer involvement. We ended up with eight ideas that could change the course of desirable underarms!

Yet, customer is a hard word, and does not do justice to families making the decision to hand over the care of a loved one to a care home provider. We are talking here about emotional, upset, tired and worried people, wanting to do their very best for their parent, spouse or family member.

We have worked with Care UK for several years. From the early days of trying to understand the self-pay market, to building care homes of the future that meet their needs, and communicating their offer to these very fraught people.

We helped them to understand the reality of the journey that people go through. To understand that those with time on their side might be looking from the prism of their own needs (lovely manicured lawns and gracious drawing rooms), whilst those where it has all got too much might be more focussed on easy car parking, laundry that does not go astray and the warmth of a carer’s touch.

This learning has influenced the customer satisfaction study they now run, the new builds they design, their website and individual communications…and the way in which the individual home managers interact with people on this journey.

Looking good and taking care of yourself in Korea is just as much about showing respect to others as having respect for yourself. More

Beyond research we helped EDF Energy introduce their new segmentation across their various marketing functions.We designed and managed 3 days of speed-dating where 90+ marketing and customer experience staff had the chance to meet each of their 7 customer segments. We trained the team on how to ask questions of their ‘date’, giving them tools to open the conversation and helping them download and develop learning to take back to the ‘day job’. Hugely enjoyable and extremely productive, the team gained insights into how the minds of their customers tick and identified ways of working smarter in their department.