Philips

Up Close On Grooming

Getting past 'vanilla insights' and into personal spaces in Europe, the US and South America

‘Vanilla insights’ – they’re not a good thing. But the client felt this was what they’d been getting when trying to delve into the grooming rituals of young guys in various markets. Our key objective, then: to shed truly revealing light on shaving routines/styles and the areas of the body (all the areas!) considered for trimming.

We had a week to turn this one around, conducting a video blogging study (covering Brazil, the US, France and Germany) in which our participants filmed their shaving routines across seven days; from prepping for the working week through to detailed beard and body topiary before dates, social events and the weekend. Participants adding further detail via Tumblr blogs

The results highlighted some distinct typologies, in the form of those looking to maintain a largely set look and those who are forever customising. We noted a change in the values imbued within shaving rituals, a greater quest for perfection and, perhaps less remarkably, the over-riding sentiment that the future will remain rather beardy…

We can’t get into the nitty gritty of the findings, but here’s a video showing a flavour of the work.

  • 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.