Typically marketers' relationships with their customers are mediated through market research supplemented by brief personal conversations with customers perhaps during store visits. All too often these all too brief conversations can provide valuable anecdotal support but there is always the fear that these insights have no validity because they are not drawn from an objective research framework.

Today consumers are educated in the ways of marketing, are conscious of their stake in the brand and often have penetrating questions of their own to ask of clients. Marketers are often surprised how intensely customers can get involved with brands. While it is true that across a mass audience brands struggle to break through it is often the case that there are within the mass audience customers who are deeply involved with the brand who with facilitation can be extremely articulate in describing their relationship with it.

Unlike market research, which is essentially a one way information gathering exercise, Brand Safari is designed to draw out the assumptions of client marketers (hopefully to their benefit) as much as to uncover the thinking and behaviour of consumers and to put the two perspectives side by side. For example the way the client brand maps the market and how customers view the client brand maps is just as much part of the data stream as a conventional mapping.

Brand Safari draws on projective techniques used in mediation and negotiation as well as conventional qualitative researchand techniques. While there are sections of open discussion, both marketers and customers will be given exercises where they work separately and present their findings back. There are two facilitators one to run each syndicate. The number of customers needs broadly to match the number of marketers. The meeting will take place in neutral territory: typically a hotel. Where appropriate, provision can be made for home visits or a mass accompanied shop to review in-store facings at the time of the session.

From experience preparation is key. Both customers and marketers need to be interviewed before the Safari and to be given preliminary exercises. Every attempt is made to create a level playing field where marketers and customers can meet on equal terms. The group moves between exercises in pairs on in syndicates to plenary sessions where progress can be reviewed. Marketers work alongside customers and the groups often work separately and are given the opportunity to critique the work of the others. The goal is to ensure that the fullest range of perspectives is gathered. For example in the women's fashion Safari the client team included a marketer, an area manager and a store manager.

A typical Brand safari might include the following components:

• Introductory exercise where clients and customers work in pairs to establish good working relationships for the remainder of the session
• Brand mapping exercises where client and customer syndicates work separately then critique each others' work
• Current experience exercises where current service levels and purchase and usage experience are drawn out using the different perspectives within the whole group. For Dot com clients there could be an opportunity for customers or marketers to explore the site with the other participants viewing passively.
• Exploring development where future plans are explored in terms of how the organisation is likely to implement based on past experience

A final comment: the outputs of a brand Safari are like a workshop in flipchart format. The result is a collaboration and ought not to be treated as a piece of objective research that can be objectively reported. Brand Safari is designed to access subjectivity from a variety of viewpoints and to create a structured environment where marketing issues can be treated far more holistically. Clients have leaped up from the table and strode back into their offices with clear action points following a Brand Safari. It is a much faster way of making decisions. And agencies have benefitted from hosting such events because they too are able to witness at first hand how the client's opinion is formed through the interaction. Brand Safaris are an excellent way to bring agencies and clients together!