Twitter

Future Fan

Award winning study of what it means to be a fan and how social media is reshaping the experience...

Connecting Brands & Fans

Fandom is a fascinating subject and one with the utmost relevance to brands, as they aim to connect with passionate audiences who exhibit shared values.

This major project for Twitter focused on music fans, exploring how fan communities are changing and what the future fan may look like.

Method Design

+ Interviews with academics and industry experts

+ Social media analysis to identify fan dynamics,

+ Up-close ethnographic and interview work around different music case studies from both the fan and industry perspectives (festivals, nostalgia bands, brand-led initiatives, new talent etc)

+ Roundtable session with strategists and creatives

+ Online survey to size and segment fan behaviours

New Principles

The work provided a powerful narrative, exploring three historical phases of fandom, shifts in the relationship between fan and ‘fan object’ and the increasing sophistication of fan eco-systems.

Additionally, we identified measurable pillars of fandom and new principles, driven via social media like Twitter, such as ‘amplified experiences’ and ‘digital intimacy’. Punchy ideas to drive traction included drawing parallels between the retweet and the time-honoured ritual of getting an artist’s autograph.

ESOMAR Award-Winning

Outputs from the work included a broadcast quality 12 minute documentary, celebrating the energy of fandom and revealing exactly what makes fan communities tick.

In Paris in November 2015, Future Fan won the prestigious Peter Cooper best paper award at ESOMAR’s global conference.

A 12 minute documentary, featuring industry experts, academics and devoted fans
A 12 minute documentary, featuring industry experts, academics and devoted fans

There Was More…

The success of the initial fandom piece led to a project extension to capture fan stories in Brazil, Japan, the UK, China and US; and across the thematic areas of film, news, sport, fitness, food, fashion and tech.

 

From street fashion to baseball to music sub-cultures - seeking fan stories around the world
From street fashion to baseball to music sub-cultures - seeking fan stories around the world

"We love working with Crowd DNA. They deliver high quality, strategic insight that has helped us grow our business. They have a unique ability to tell research stories creatively which means that their outputs are different, attention-grabbing and memorable. It is for these reasons that we have trusted them with some of our most important projects of recent years."
Jake Steadman, international research director, Twitter

  • 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.