WHY – Key benefits

Collaborating with consumers via a Research hub comes with multiple advantages.

• Agility & efficiency: this hub provides brands with an agile approach to keep an ongoing finger on the pulse of consumers – through small ad hoc projects as well as large ongoing research programs. As a Research hub is ‘always on’, new activities can go live in no time, in a cost-efficient way.
• Consumer-centric thinking: the ongoing consumer connection via the Research hub allows brands to collaborate much more with consumers on a variety of topics they originally would not run by them. In the end, this will lead to more consumer-centric thinking across the organization.
• Agency as business partner: through this type of structural collaboration, not only consumers but the research agency’s consultants also get closer to the business. Over time, the agency can almost become an extension of the CMI team, being fully aware of the broader business objectives and strategic goals. This helps to be proactive in planning future research as well as to frame findings in a broader perspective and act as a true business partner.
• Meta-learnings: spending quite some time together with a brand’s target audience allows to connect the dots across segments, product categories or even regions, and to build further on previous learnings. This helps to easily come to conclusions in an overall strategic framework, derive meta-learnings and take this further.

HOW – Best practices

When using the Research hub, certain watch-outs need to be considered. We recommend starting small, but thinking big and scaling rapidly. This means taking the time to build the community, in terms of both size and engagement – for example, starting in one market or with one product category. In a next phase, the community can grow, and its planning can follow the business cycle.

Despite the agility provided by the Research hub, this type of community requires thorough planning – think for example about an overall content and engagement plan. Regular refreshment waves are also needed to always have a fresh pool of interested and interesting participants.

Finally, observing discussions in an online community setting with a large group of participants is very different from following a focus group that typically consists of 8 to 12 people. The risk exists that stakeholders get overwhelmed and cannot easily spot the relevant observations. Developing a stakeholder activation plan – which combines a broad spectrum of creative deliverables and activation tools – is therefore key when running this type of community.

Did you miss the articles on what the other community types can mean for your brand? Catch up on the Flash, the Deepdive and the Program communities!