Dorel Activation Studio case

Editor's Notes

• #2 Hello, next I want to present our newest innovation: the insight activation studio. This is not a new way to collect data with consumers, it’s a new tool to help you create impact with consumer insights in your company. It’s a platform to unite and engage employees around consumer insights to stimulate collaboration. Now how does this work, How to get it implemented in an organization are questions that I want to tackle using a casestudy of Dorel Juvenile (a manufacturer of pushchairs and carseats) Let me start with the question: why did we develop this solution in the first place?
• #3 The reason behind the Studio is well articulated by Stan Stanunathan, Senior VP of CMI Unilever during the fireside chat at Esomar Congress a few weeks ago. He said, that we as insight professionals, we need to provide provocation and inspiration. Because this is what drives transformation and actions, to ultimately generate growth. The insight is the hidden underlining driver. So, it’s not the endproduct, it’s merely the beginning for driving growth. It’s not only Stan who thinks this, it’s our whole industry
• #4 So, like any researcher would do, we did research to find out how the rest of the industry thought about this Did a quantitative study, surveying 185 other insight professionals like Stan. Here we found that only 1 in 2 research projects leads to change & 45% of insight professionals and marketers believe research succeeds in changing the attitudes and decision of marketers. and a qualitative study doing 20 in-depth interviews. The in-depth interviews resulted in 11 unmet needs related to the future of consumer insights. 10 of those frictions relate to creating a positive business impact with consumer stories, and only 1 is about finding better insights So, mORE THAN EVER, IMPACT IS THE NAME OF THE GAME FOR INSIGHT PROFESSIONALS And insight is the hidden, underlying driver.
• #5 A company who confirms this need for Action is Dorel Juvenile. Knows this company? It’s a manufacturer of juvenile products, including car seats, strollers, and home safety products. You might know them from brands like Maxi cosi & Quinny. And they are also in transformation. They are on a mission to move from a product-oriented, technology driven company towards a more CONSUMER AND service-oriented company Our key contact, is the Global CMI manager, and she wanted to find a way to connect their people to consumers through consumer stories & insights from all their growth markets and install this consumer oriented thinking.
• #6 That’s how we came up with the idea of turning insights & observations into memes for the organization Normally I always ask if anyone knows what a meme is. It’s defined as an idea, style or behavior that spreads from person to person within a culture or organization In order to achieve something to become a meme, there first needs to be a widespread understanding of the topic we’re talking about. Then, what happens, is that people can start to recognize it, augment it, even change their behavior. And finally, they share it again, this way it gets diffused within the organization. To give an example, at Dorel, one of the memes is around the problem of cracking the carseat code. They have a strong position in the baby car seat market for newborns, but as soon as the kids grow older, they are losing market share and people buy car seats elsewhere. It’s a big discussion on how safety decisions, the design of the carseat or how the flexibility of moving the carseat from 1 car to another has an influence on this problem. Now everyone started to find ways how we can crack this carseatcode. We’ll come back to this one, later on in the presentation
• #7 What is it? Platform where we can unite and engage employees with insights, observations and ideas. Here we can engage employees from different departments with consumer insights and allowing them to interact with research data in a playful way If you want to compare it with another platform, you might do so with pinterest, which is also all about inspiration.
• #8 How it works - It consists of several ‘Inspiration Walls’: These are projects or insight platforms that uncover a consumer friction, emotion or unmet need = the overarching meme we wish to create. At dorel, one example Wall was about the carseatcode. Each wall is populated with tiles or findings from consumer studies, trend research or market data, all believed to contribute to the meme. It can be either an insight, an observation or an idea. And the CMI team of Dorel decides what the most meaningful and memorable insights and observations were include on a specific wall. Then, dorel employees are prompted to add their own ‘Inspiration Tiles’ on these walls through observations and ideas by posting their own photos, videos and stories. They interact and shape the Inspiration Tiles of their colleagues through comments, likes and sharing. When you are mentioned in a comment, you’ll get a notification and email about it, like Twitter or Facebook. By interacting, executives engage in “meme building”: they understand, augment and diffuse observations!
• #9 So this is the platform, but how actually to use it? We all know that software doesn’t solve the problem, people do! So, we craften an approach, a program to implement the studio 3 steps: strategize, install first routines & increase reach
• #10 Next to the purpose, think about your business plans. These will be the starting point of the content on the Studio At dorel, launched 5 walls in the first 2 months. Carseatcode = concrete project from product marketing, with deadline to collect inspiration Dorelretail = observations from Dorel products in store, like Shanghai for example; how are their products shown in store. This enables them to finally have an ongoing dialogue with the frontline employees Wowmoments = inspiration how they can offer future services Mobility2020 = crowdsourcing ideas for the future strollers based on trends from trendreports Randomsparks = bottom-up observations and ideas interesting for Dorel So you see, it’s a mix of urgent projects, longer team ones, with/without deadline, relevant for all or select group of people in organization.
• #11 After the launch of a wall, users start building on such a wall. Here you see me scrolling through the carseat wall, showing all the different tiles that were posted. When you click on a tile, read the full story and post your comment. Below each tile, you can find related tiles from that same wall. How did we get here? We started with 4 insight tiles from research and an observation challenge, to ask for observations to illustrate these insights. For example, one insight was about how older kids become proud of having their own carseat. As a response, one users recognized this ‘proud’ emotion, sharing an observation of how she gave her kids their own, customized carseat with pink details (for her daughter) and blue details (for her son). This also helped stop the ongoing battle between the kids who could sit behind mommy while driving. After collecting observations, we launched an idea challenge, to ask for ideas to crack the carseat code. By starting with observations we immerse the group of people active on this wall first, before we engage in ideation. This way, we follow the standford design thinking approach. In total we collected 9 observations, 8 ideas, 88 likes and 51 comments in 2 months time (or 66 days, it needed on average to form a habit)
• #12 After installing the first routines, we need to measure the outcome, learn & develop best practices, and build new walls to increase reach in the organization. What were the results of the Dorel Studio after phase 2?
• #13 Targeted about 200 people from different teams across multiple locations. Knowing that in total 1300 people work for dorel, we opted to start small, build our success case and grow from there. 66 users, 65% became a repeat user. Of them, 56% was liking tiles, 35% posting their own ones and 28% commented on others. On average, they visited the studio almost 2x per week, checking out 7-8 pages, spending about 9 minutes per session. So that’s more than 15 minutes per week, which corresponds with their idle time at work. How is this new routine formed over time? Let’s take a closer look.
• #14 Let’s start with their hearts! We measured their consumer feeling and understanding before and after those 2 months. What we saw was a drop in consumer feeling! Specifically, on the statement “I know very well what products are on the market for the category I work for” This is actually not their weird, why? It’s the effect of positive disruption, we are confronted with all of the things don’t know yet. That’s exactly what happened with the carseatcode. People started sharing all kinds of solutions and ideas what could explain the drop the market share carseats for group 2/3. Now preparing a bunch of new walls about mobility routines with kids in new markets like Japan. We plan to do another measurement after this new wave!
• #15 Dorel even visualized this in an infographic, what was the outcome of the carseatcode wall 4 dimensions, or blind spots, that they need to concentrate on in future projects Knowledge about safety, alternative purchasing options like leasing, flexbile usage for car seats & making car seats more personal.
• #16 Secondly, what about the minds and actions? Looking at the tiles posted over time, we saw that we first got more observations and after more ideas. When we score them on uniqueness and relevance, see that tiles posted later on, are more unique. Compare this to a classical brainstorm workshop of a day, also get great ideas, but you miss the longitudinal effect, Miss the 2nd part of the M. People need time to understand the insight tiles, before they can install the outside-in thinking. Quote from user illustrates this: Studio made me think deeper about things, now I’m always looking if there’s something interesting to post on the studio.
• #17 After these 2 months…what’s next for the Dorel studio? Tool for global CMI team further embed in organization, they already included it in their budgets for this year and the next. Now crafting new walls for new business objectives for growth markets like Japan and China. Believe we can add most value in these objectives, where many employees have very limited knowledge on consumer routines and behavior.
• #18 Thanks so much for your attention, hope you liked it! Love to hear your thoughts, comments or questions. Tnx!