One of the areas we chat to potential clients about a lot is cost.
And typically, when we price a job, the chances are it’s going to cost more than a survey, or getting a few people into the office to run a Focus Group on the cheap.
But cost isn’t the same as value.
Here are some areas we have recently discussed with potential clients.
A conversation focused on cost
The reality is, if a client comes to us and their first topic of conversation is cost, and they need ‘cheap’ research (quickly), we listen to understand their need and give them some thoughts on how they can achieve what they want with someone else.
Because experience tells us it’s pointless trying to push on a closed door. They have a need for speed and limited budgets, and they may need some advice, or a contact.
We work with some brilliant collaborators - some who are ethnographic experts, and some multi-disciplinary experts who go beyond the practice. So often clients will come to us with a need, and a desire to conduct some ethnography as part of the answer. And after chatting to us we’ll put them in touch with someone else who can help answer their need better than we could for the budget and timescale they have available.
And that’s because, when it comes to methodologies, there can be a mentality of…
“If I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
We deal in ethnography and in-depth at-home interviews. Getting into people’s homes, into their cupboards, having deep conversations with them and then observing their behaviours. And then creating a rich tapestry of their lives, their beliefs, their behaviours. Their realities.
This methodology isn’t the quickest or cheapest compared to other research methodologies.
And - shock horror - it’s also not the right answer to every brief we get given. It would be silly for us to try and sell our approach into every brief that gets shared with us.
Sure it might bring in a project, some income, but it’d be a short-term gain as it’d become clear during the process that we wouldn’t be able to deliver the value we should be delivering to our clients. That’s not fair on them.
So, if the client’s question is interesting and we want to work on it, we’ll still be honest at that stage and say that as much as the question is interesting, the methodology we focus on maybe isn’t the best way to answer it.
We’re finding that is meaning we are focusing on the right questions, with the right clients, and building longer relationships ongoing. They’re appreciating our honesty. Because unlike bigger research houses, we’re unencumbered by a bunch of random shareholders, and we set our commercial targets ourselves.
And as we’ve mentioned ad nauseam, IKIGAI isn’t focused purely on finance, it’s a balance of a few things.
We deliver high quality, high value Reality
We focus on value, not cost. We focus on what clients get back in return for their investment.
And there are two broad ways we do that.
Firstly, we deliver true reality, not claimed reality.
At its best, the kind of work we do gives you true glimpses into people’s lives. It gives you an opportunity to hear from people, and observe people in their homes.
And the contradictions between what they say and what we see are where some of the interesting bits happen.
Say hello to Amanda:
We met Amanda last year, and as part of our conversation with her we discussed Sustainability.
Here’s Amanda talking about one aspect of sustainability - single-use plastic:
There she’s claiming she’s changing her behaviours based on trying to minimise her use of plastics.
If Amanda was sat in a Focus Group saying that, or filling out a survey, she’s giving a claim of her life that would be recorded as the reality. (Of course a good moderator (and there are some great moderators out there) would lean into this a little more to try and go beyond the claim).
Yet when we walked around, this is what we observed:
A fridge full of single-use plastics.
So what’s the reality? Well it’s something we’re seeing a lot of on our travels - it’s the reality that some people are echoing what they’re hearing in the news, in popular culture about sustainability, but then pretty much carrying on as normal.
That may be unfair of some people - who are making an effort to make positive sustainable differences in their lives - but regardless, there's a gap between the claim and the reality.
And put simply - if a client had paid for a Focus Group or a survey - that gap may not have been revealed.
Which then delivers a false economy when we circle back to cost. Because whilst the project may have been cheaper, it may not be delivering the true reality, and at worst, delivering claims that are not the reality.
(And it’s worth saying here that no methodology is perfect, or exempt from inaccuracies or bias.)
Secondly, when we deliver value, we deliver reality and multiple opportunities for our clients.
Because of the way our brains are programmed, because of our backgrounds we tend to deliver two things in our debriefs - especially to brands.
We deliver a Reality First, Brand Second overview of what’s going on in the lives of our participants.
And we also deliver a bunch of opportunities, provocations, ‘What If’s - that open up more possibilities for our clients. They may not be statistically robust or definitive, but they are areas for further investigation for the brand. Areas we feel may lead to more growth for them.
As some examples, (but maintaining confidentiality) recently in client debriefs we have shared the below opportunities:
2x UX opportunities that would give customers a more relevant and personal experience
1x promotional idea that would act as a ‘trial’ for new customers
1x old product revitalisation - where the brand was disposing of old inventory, and we suggested a way they could revitalise it, and use it to target a particular demographic to generate advertising revenue and longer-term loyalty from an audience base they haven’t really captured yet
1x packaging investigation - linked to sustainability and also perceptions of brand and premiumness based on tangibility
1x marketing platform opportunity - something a brand could launch to ‘drive culture’ over multiple years
1x data-led experiential idea - drawing from their owned data to deliver an emotional experience to their customers
1x new product line - that acts as a brand building pillar to their product portfolio
1x augmented segmentation study - the client already has an in-depth audience segmentation, but we spotted an opportunity to add a layer of reality to that robust segment
Now like we say, none of the above are statistically robust strategies the clients should definitely invest their budgets into, but there are numerous opportunities above that can be assessed or tested in order to ascertain their potential.
We think that is delivering the kind of value our clients need.