From a brand innovator’s POV, one of the most positive and surprising changes over the past two years has been the broad adoption of agile research technologies, enabling a seamless connection between brand teams and consumers. The impact on innovation solutions and marketing creative has been truly amazing.
Agile research enables feedback to new ideas to be collected in real-time, with speed and newfound efficiency. The adoption of agile technologies has helped propel richer, more original brand development via access to analytics and statistical research techniques. Brand teams can now test, iterate, and adapt new concepts quickly and in sync with data collected, leading to much more creatively honed solutions.
In this article, we outline some of the exciting new agile research tools with supporting technologies that the FK team is successfully developing in the pursuit of better brand strategy and innovation solutions.
Online Collaboration Platforms
We’ll start with the more obvious: Zoom and MS Teams are simple examples of agile research technologies, with most qualitative research now being conducted successfully on these video platforms. This immediately translates to greater reach geographically and more meaningful, real-time connection with consumers engaging in conversation from their homes, their worlds. Rich, creative stimulus shared on live, interactive screens facilitates a deeper discussion with more effective collaboration. Qualitative research conducted over video platforms allows us to focus on building compelling solutions presented in a credible context as well as understanding the critical ‘whys’. We’ve crossed the ‘uncanny-valley’ when it comes to creative concept and new product digital stimulus.
Analytical Methodologies
Beyond video qualitative, there are four distinct areas that we believe investment in agile research has shown incredible growth driving potential:
- Adaptive Choice Modeling – Conjoint / MaxDiff
- Rapid Concept Testing
- Message Testing
- Ascribed Market Segmentation
This base of established research techniques provides early and frequent temperature checks. It also explicitly brings lower funnel objectives (e.g. conversion) into the process of brand development. Clients no longer have to wait until the end of the innovation process to get a read on how well their ideas perform with their target consumer groups. Utilizing agile research, businesses can make faster, smarter and more cost-effective decisions throughout the innovation pipeline, mitigating risk and side-stepping hurdles much earlier in the process.
Bringing Agile Research In-House at Fletcher Knight
Leaning into agile technology, we provide more adaptive, responsive, and cost-effective solutions for our partners. We now have instant access to quality respondents, and we are integrating survey design and execution with data collection and analytics. The key to success though is our in-house team of leading research design specialists and stats analytics / modeling specialists who work seamlessly with the multi-lingual brand development and innovation creative teams across FK and clients – this is the secret sauce in the successful execution of agile research. Our in-house team is well-versed in the established research methods described above and will also build from those to invent novel techniques to continue to push client brands forward.
No matter your innovation needs along the way, Fletcher Knight matches your objectives with the best research methodologies. We then align these best practices with agile research capabilities to deliver the insights you need to make strategic business decisions – faster and more cost-effectively and translate this into action at scale.
For a deeper explanation of our capabilities and to see how Fletcher Knight can make your innovation process more efficient, cost-effective and successful, please contact FK LiveLabs or send a message directly to info@fklivelabs.com.
FK LiveLabs is a division of Fletcher Knight, Inc.
