What exactly is the new normal?
PART 2: Rethinking Research
The new normal is constant change and uncertainty. Which, by definition,
is not ‘normal’ but for now, we have to accept it is the reality — until of course it suddenly isn’t. Four weeks ago, the new normal for socialising was quizzing and silly games with friends on Zoom, then it became drinking in the park, and now it’s set to become a ticketed two hour time slot in the pub. So, what else is in flux?
Almost every part of our lives has been turned upside down. We’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions — experiencing extreme ups and downs. Since lockdown started, wellbeing psychologist Dr Andy Cope has been tracking our collective emotional trajectory with biometric data from Simba’s sleep and mood tracking app. We’ve moved from digesting everything, to fleeting highs, to the honeymoon being over, and reality hitting. And we’re now in stage 5, which Cope describes as ‘The Emotional Plateau’, where we’ve accepted the idea of our new normal.
There’s a real fear for the future and the impact on job security. A quarter of UK adults are furloughed, and an estimated 600,000 have been made redundant. These statistics are staggering. Younger people are the most affected, around a quarter of 18 to 24 year olds have been furloughed — and a further 9% have lost their jobs altogether — the highest figure out of all age groups (Source: Resolution Foundation). This inevitably puts stress on individuals and families as the uncertainty bites.
It’s impacting our spending habits. On the one hand, UK households have been spending less generally; according to the Retail Gazette this equates to a fall in expenditure of £215 billion per year. And saving more; this month The Bank of England announced that £5bn in credit card debt was paid off in April - more than double the previous month, and far more than the typical £300m paid back monthly by consumers.
In parallel however, the ‘isolation’ economy is booming, we’ve seen a spending shift towards groceries, alcohol, entertainment and hobbies & crafts, equating to £12.9 billion annually.
It’s also shaping changing behaviour in the bedrock of the economy — the property market. A recent survey by Savills reveals that four out of ten buyers are considering a move out to the countryside, and searches by Londoners for properties in commuter towns is up 9% year on year.
But how can we find meaning from all of this?
In ethnographic research, context is everything. The pandemic has detonated a context complexity explosion. We’re in periods of lockdown, interspersed with relative periods of freedom; we’re working at home, sharing our space constantly with others and arguably, our every action has a higher purpose — to slow the spread of the virus. So, even tried and trusted ethnography has been thrown a curve ball by all this.
So it’s vital to not look at the surface, but to truly get closer to customers to find a path to meaningful insight.
SPOTLIGHT: How our favourite brewery connected with their customers in just 3 weeks.
Fuelled by a buy-out from a larger brewery and the desire to grow their business, family-owned brewery Fourpure, called in Fluxx to bring their vision and passion for beer to life. The brothers behind the business realised it was time to look at Fourpure’s branding, product range, understand the changes in the craft beer market, and have a clear idea of what today’s buyers really want.
We decided up front that what we’d like to embark on was a lean branding and research exercise — compressing the time frame and tackling the problem intensively to make maximum progress. So, we set ourselves a three week time- box to help Fourpure’s team feel comfortable they understood their customer, and were going in the right direction for their new brand.
With such a short timeframe we needed to get in-front of Fourpure customers and craft beer drinkers as quickly as possible.
So we headed to offices, student unions, and hit the streets to chat to
as many people as possible to find out what makes them tick, why they like craft beer and why they buy it. We got a tonne of interesting information and from this we created 5 personas. These character sketches gave the Fourpure team a clear idea of who they are making beer for.
Next we moved to run a “Minimum Viable Branding” exercise. We took
all insights from our research and created new can designs, motifs and names and put them in front of real customers. We invited 50 existing and potential customers to the brewery tap (Fourpure’s own pub), and set up five experiment stations around the bar where consumers interacted with various aspects of the brand. They played association games, compared brand desirability and reacted to branding themes, colour and packaging concepts. It was a great way to use the bar as a well thought out design and branding lab to test, question and create with real customers in an authentic environment. Fourpure have now created ten iterations of the can design and have changed the way they approach designing anything new — they test ideas by putting their work in front of real customers and making decisions based on real evidence.
Next> It’s time to rethink customer research. And here’s how
Paul Dawson is a Partner at Fluxx. Special thanks to Gemma Stafford and Gemma Slater for their contribution to this series.
Fluxx is the UK’s leading independent Innovation Company. For the last 9 years, we’ve been supporting clients to accelerate growth and sustain change; helping big companies be purposeful, build internal innovation capability and develop new products and services at pace. Got an idea you want to get off the ground? Get in touch Paul@Fluxx.uk.com. For more thoughts worth sharing, sign up to What the Fluxx or follow us on LinkedIn.
