In our industry, to most complicates client is us. When we design our own campaigns, whether for MAISON D’IDÉE Prague or MAISON DIGITAL, promos, advertisements, we suffer the most. We can’t decide how we want things to be very often and sometimes we say we should hire competitors to work it out for us. However, that’s one of the reason why I understand all clients more, and especially small, medium or family businesses, where these decisions are made on a daily basis.
One of the first things we need to solve with our projects is clear communication of brand, benefits, services, product association, emotions, etc. You are able to find so many blogs and posts about this problem. But at the end, i tis always solved intuitively or by a discussion between the client, agency and a few employees. The problem with these discussions is that they fail to give a more comprehensive view of the matter or fail to capture certain pettiness of the market. Here, any discussion of brand direction should be preceded by market research. Only after that is it clear how to build a brand, how to create a packaging design and where to sell it.
Ask everyone, trust no one
We can easily demonstrate that on the example of one restaurant, which had very small number of visitors, despite the fact that the quality of food and prices were a clear „no-brainer“. It was enough to act like a tourist for one day and ask people if they know the place.. that one friend of mine recommended it to me and if they have any information about how is the food. You will learn absurd information from dozens of people interviewed, few of them are repeated. In this case, these were interesting answers:
- It’s overpriced
- You need to make a reservation, otherwise they won’t let you in
- I have no idea where the restaurant is
The last question has very simple answer- increasing brand awareness in your own city. Local people, taxi drivers, business owners but mostly your target group need to know you. In this case the target group is everyone who wants to sometimes eat something better for reasonable price. To our wonder, the billboard worked pretty well, but since we don’t like to contribute to visual smog, we preferred a digital campaign and newsletter data collection.
But what about the first and second answer? Educate. This restaurant also makes a lunch menu for great price, but it only has not informed anyone about it yet. „People don’t know“ is probably the most common excuse. What does it mean? It means that you need to inform them. Sometimes the most effective way is to communicate it „in plain English“. These tasks can be done easily via social networks, facebook, instagram ( and instastories), remarketing in the right places.
But we don’t want to discourage you, we also received many positive responses. We found out that everyone who had already visited the restaurant was excited and sent us in the right direction, and it was balm for the soul.
„Consumers look more sophisticated than they really are.“
I tis important to know who to ask
All surveys have differences and variations. Therefore, it is necessary to think about what questions we will ask and especially what we need to know. I tis also appropriate for the question to give the room for expression but not to indicate the direction in which its answers should go.
When you ask people if they like to pay extra for quality, almost everyone says yes. After that you might feel that everyone buys only quality, but when you check their shopping baskets in the chains, you see „fair quality, fair price“ good in there. A better-targeted question would be: „What do you shop most often?“ and to find out why and what do they like the most.
The same goes for design. Don’t ask people to compare if they like first or second thing. Ask them why do they buy your or competitors products? You can draw a conclusion from that. Here it is appropriate to consult the design with designer why to use some colours in that segment. But also here it is necessary to filter the feedback a bit.
Consumers pretend to be more sophisticated than they really are. Let’s be honest, only few people admit to buying something because of the price. (Here i tis good to ask about the importance of individual factors such as design, price, quality, key advantage, etc. We will talk about it another time.)
Find out how you and the competition impress
In a sense, you go on a date and try to find out what the other party likes the most, how does he/she perceives you (probably that’s why my dating looks a bit like an interrogation). You need to do it with emotion and carefully, so you get relevant information. We all like sporty body, but sometimes we can win with humor (it is double true when it comes to graphic design). Sometimes, however, you connect with someone because of common resistance. The same goes for design. You still need to find out what your client doesn’t like or why they don’t buy anything from competitors.
If you prepare brief for a creative assignment, web design, packaging design or the change of identity, we will be happy to help you from the beginning.
Contact us and you get the first consultation for free.
