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Brand Gumshoe is a
tool for gathering anecdotal and behavioural customer data and delivering
it ready for analysis or presentation in digital format within a couple
of days. It is ideal for pitch situations where an agency needs to gain
a detailed understanding of how a product is used and perceived and needs
to demonstrate that understanding to a client they are trying to get to
know. Or for getting consumer feedback whem what is needed is detailed
insight into customer behaviour perhaps after a campaign has finished. Typically
the gather of customer insights during a pitch is a chaotic and unpredictable
process. Store visits, vox pops, promotional material are gathered
at breakneck speed. Usually the night before the pitch when everything
else
is ready - someone is working into the small hours to try to gather
this "research" material into a form that can be presented
to the client to show how deep the agency has got into their business
if only
to recover the cost and trouble of acquiring it in the first place!
Brand Gumshoe starts with the end product in view: 1 CD
ROM holding up to 3.5 hours of interviews captured on digital audio and
a 20-30 stills and several minutes of digital video. All of this is stored
on a mini web site on the CDROM so can be viewed and the files played
back on a conventional web browser on any Mac or PC. The contents can
easily be edited on a PC or Mac for incorporation in the final presentation.
Nothing is collected is different from what an agency would gather at
present. What is different is the speed and the convenience of the format.
There will be some compression to fit the files onto the CDROM but the originals
will be kept in case more detail is required. This means that if necessary
interviews can be provided at CD quality, and video supplied at near broadcast
quality. In practice this is usually much more bulky than most computers
will happily tolerate hence the compression.
Gumshoe is not intended
to be a conventional research product. The interview format and the
in home and in store format allow a particular focus on how people use
a product and talk about it as distinct from the more conventional group
discussion. The material gathered is intended to be general so does
not require extensive briefing and preparation or debriefing afterwards.
These can be added on but for additional cost. The emphasis is on speed
and richness of content rather than analysis. Everything that is gathered
can be dropped into
Powerpoint for use
in the final presentation.
A typical Brand
Gumshoe might involve the following components:
Typically 1 week is
required for recruitment, fieldwork is designed to take place in 1 working
day. In the translation phase the interviews would be compressed to mono
MP3 format. Digital photos and video would be transferred to a computer.
Photos would be at a resolution comparable to 6x4 prints and video footage
would be in mpg2 format. The whole would be burned on a prepared website
with a page for each interview. This would be burned to CDROM. The digital
format will be familiar to video production and IT staff. However I am
willing to provide training for planners to be able to edit and incorporate
stills, video and audio material into Powerpoint. Specific provision of
quotations or customer clips would be additional to the basic costing.
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