The challenge:

A client recently approached First The Trousers with a simple question: “which part of my brand story is most likely to prompt trial at point of sale?” The brand is new in the market and has extremely low levels of awareness. Its main business imperative: to stand out and get noticed in a crowded space and to generate trial in a category where people typically already have their set-in-place favorites and habitual purchases.

The solution:

Since the brand is fairly new with low level of awareness and since the objective was to generate trial at point of sale our recommended approach was simple: to intercept people in-store right after they had purchased the brand and ask them about their impressions, motivations and identify the impulses that triggered them to buy. Simple, face-to-face, and traditional. We also suggested intercepting a number of people who hadn’t bought the brand in order to understand if there were red flags and specific barriers to purchase the client needed to address.

The results:

This approach lead to the clear identification of the purchase triggers (which included both design and messaging elements). It also provided the reassurance that we didn’t have any major red flags in the way the brand was presenting itself at point of sale and that the reasons people didn’t buy were out of our control (not category shoppers, etc.).

This approach also allowed us to define and provide a clear messaging hierarchy and “organize” the brand story in a coherent way, a structure that will now inform all point of sale and merchandizing material as well as some of the above the line communication.

Last but not least, and since consumers live in a multi-channel world, understanding who, why, how and when people buy this category enabled us to inform the social medial strategy both in terms of content (what to say) and timing (when to post).

This project is a good reminder that even in this digital age, a simple, traditional approach is sometimes the best suited to provide clarity, uncover insights and inform brand and marketing decisions. It takes more time and requires more “leg work”, but it can be worth it.

So- put your phone down, step away from your desk and your desire to google the issue and just go and talk to people. You’d be surprised by own much you can learn.