Dove

Fashionably Digital Lives

Investigating the online repertoires of style conscious women

Working in the US, Mexico, UK, Germany, South Korea and Australia, we were briefed to gain insight into how digital features in the lives of style conscious twenty and thirty-something women today. At the core of the method was a carefully planned set of video blogging exercises, with participants sharing their digital routines – think price checking, buying groceries, getting beauty tips, catching up with style journals, patterns of recommendation and purchasing must-have looks online.

We coupled the in-the-moment work with consumer workshops, mapping the digital journeys in an interactive fashion, and client immersion sessions to share evidence and stimulate debate.

Key to the work was finding out which brands are getting it right online and why; also what makes a brand shareable with friends. Our findings highlighted how multiple devices were used to navigate the various digital sources, with simplicity, ease of use and performance all highlighted as criteria for assessing various sources. One thing is clear – these women move seamlessly between diverse digital sources in their often hectic lifestyles.

  • 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.