Converse

Creative consumers & the retail space

A visual and collaborative approach to getting under the skin of creatively minded EU consumers

Converse x Foot Locker

Converse and Foot Locker have a strong and longstanding relationship, with both enjoying the success of exclusive customer offerings connected to their partnership. When two big brands come together, however, each with their own set of values and appeal, the audience becomes unique in its own right.

Recognising that one size does not fit all, Converse came to us to develop a series of targeted shopper typologies. Primarily the purpose was to inform strategic business decisions of Converse at Foot Locker, but there was also a need to create new energy and excitement for the brand, both internally and externally. 

Creative Customers

Our approach centred on the defining characteristic of the Converse customer: creativity. Thus we sought creatively minded shoppers in six EU markets, starting with remote methods to get to the heart of ‘system one’ thinking, before digging deeper into the details with consumer workshops.

Image diaries uncovered a sense of people’s style, inspiration and brand preferences, and then citizen journalism took us on a raw and brilliantly personal journey through their lives.

Pinterest tasks to explore style and brand preferences
Pinterest tasks to explore style and brand preferences

Visual Analysis Framework

From thousands of images and videos, we applied our visual analysis framework, identifying the patterns that ultimately underpinned the results. We arrived at five core ‘Converse x Foot Locker’ customer profiles that the brand teams could firmly relate to; also a more deep-set demarcation between those who adhere to slow and fast fashion trends – a vital learning for Converse in pinpointing when to leverage factors such as their alt rock heritage versus when to go big on social media celebrities. 

Takeover Workshops

We got to take over the HQ of Converse’s creative agency for the day, adorning it with stimulus material, providing a crystal clear understanding of the Converse consumer profile at Foot Locker, and making sure the results would feed directly into product development, comms strategies and optimisation of the in-store experience.

  • Narrated Galleries

    We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words

  • Crowd Communities

    We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform

  • Pinterest

    We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.

  • Citizen Journalism

    Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.

  • Network Audits

    If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.