Eyes and ears around the world
By Kate DowlerOur global network of Creative Cultural Guides ensures we always have eyes and ears on the ground to deliver global inspiration and insight work - even in times of crisis.
Global insight and inspiration is as important now as it’s ever been. The world is changing rapidly, and with it, consumer behaviour, attitudes and values. Now, more than ever, there is a need to find flexible and agile ways of delivering targeted and edgy consumer insight.
As an example, this brief just in……
“What I really want, is to speak to a small number of interesting people - trendsetters from around the world. What’s more, to speak to them all at the same time. It’s for an innovation workshop next week - we want to run an inspiration exercise to start the session. Can you help me?!”
The challenge
We’re lucky to work with great clients who believe in the power of user-centred innovation - both to inspire creativity and to explore the potential of early ideas. However, running global, insight programmes can be time-consuming and expensive. Recruitment can also be challenging as we’re typically looking for quality rather than quantity - a small number of interesting people who can inspire our thinking - not an easy recruit. Add to that the fact the client may be looking to speak to people in, say, 5 different countries around the world. And then there’s often time pressure - a short lead time, or a requirement to co-ordinate the sessions to happen at a particular time (time zone mayhem!).
This type of brief needs an agile and adaptable approach - particularly because a) we’re a small team and b) because every challenge we get is so different!
Introducing…..CCGs
Since starting INDUSTRY of Us in early 2019, we’ve been experimenting with new ways of getting rapid, global insight. One of the biggest changes we’ve made to the way we work is developing a network of global “creative cultural guides” or CCGs, that we can activate whenever we want to get rapid contextual, cultural or creative insight into a particular market.
Our CCGs are local designers or design researchers with an interest in the types of creative challenge we work on. They help us with everything from signal gathering, stimulus hunting, local market immersion, recruiting consumers and experts to providing on the ground support when we run contextual research and innovation workshops in-market.
How they help
We’ve found our CCGs invaluable for rapidly gathering global inspiration and insight, and giving us a longitudinal perspective into a geographic market. Rather than needing to get all our insight in, say a 1 or 2 week in-market visit, we can have multiple touchpoints and opportunities in-market, allowing us to iterate more rapidly.
In addition, CCGs simultaneously deliver on a number of different roles:
Creative - they understand innovation and design and provide their own unique, creative perspective on a challenge
Cultural - they are local. They speak the local language, understand the culture and help us bridge the gap between the consumer and the project team
Guides - they are brilliant at helping us run and execute bigger in-market studies. They know where to go, who to speak to and how to get around.
What it means
Now, more than ever, there is a need to be flexible and agile and to be able to deliver global insight and innovation whilst avoiding lots of global travel. Our CCG network means that we can provide deep global cultural and contextual insight in an agile and cost-effective way.
Most recently, we “visited” Dubai, Shanghai, Madrid, Tokyo, Seoul and San Francisco through the eyes of our CCGs over the space of a week. It was an inspirational and welcome experience, particularly in these difficult times when global travel is so restricted.
We’d love to use our CCG network to help you deliver on global insight and innovation challenges, so do get in touch to find out more Kate@industryofus.com