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How the Deepdive community caters for deep human understanding

How the Deepdive community caters for deep human understanding

Different brands come with different research needs, requiring the set-up of a different type of online insight community. In this blogpost, we explore the Deepdive community, developed to provide an answer to the following research need:

“I need to better understand a specific topic and/or a specific target audience by gaining insights into people’s frictions, needs and aspirations”

The Deepdive community thus supports brands in gaining a foundational human understanding of a specific consumer cohort, theme or topic. As such, this community is characterized by rich discussions, fueled by strong member engagement.

WHY – Key benefits

By providing brands with a window into consumers’ everyday life, the Deepdive community comes with multiple advantages:

  • Up and personal, in the moment
    Collaborating with consumers in their natural setting allows to gain feedback on actual real-life moments instead of staged experiences. Additionally, people find it easier to be more open via their computer, so brands can quickly get to an emotional level and elicit more personal responses.
  • Rich consumer-generated input
    Engaging with consumers over a longer period of time makes it possible to involve them in more intense, ethnographic activities such as diary tasks or missions, resulting in rich consumer-generated input including pictures and movies.
  • Uncovering latent needs
    As consumers are not that good at reporting their own behavior, ethnographic activities help brands to detect latent feelings and behaviors that would possibly remain undiscovered via more traditional methods.

WHEN – Some illustrations

The Deepdive community is typically used for research projects that focus on a ‘deep human understanding’ and ‘consumer immersion’.

Sports brand Nike, for example, wanted to re-engage with its Gen Z consumers in Hong Kong, and needed to gain an in-depth understanding of what defines this generation: their beliefs, their values and their attitudes. Via a Deepdive community, we immersed Nike’s stakeholders in the everyday life of 30 young fashionistas and sneakerheads. The youngsters shared photos and videos of their outfit of the day, showed their shoes and clothes collection, and talked about their favorite Instagram influencers. But they also opened up about who they are and who they want to be. This immersion helped Nike to spark a fresh conversation about sneakers, reigniting the local sneaker culture in Hong Kong.

Another great example is what we did for Mithra Pharmaceuticals. We explored the theme of female health with more than 800 women, aged 16 to 68, across 4 markets (Belgium, Brazil, France and Germany); in the community, we addressed topics such as their daily health routines and healthy aging, but also more sensitive issues such as sexuality, contraception, vaginal health, the impact of female cancers, and menopause. In fact, such taboo subjects are easier to tackle via a community than via traditional techniques (i.e., in-depth interview or focus group), as the latter are more sensitive to a social desirability bias. In the final stage, the community participants were invited to review several Mithra propositions to further fine-tune them, in order to better address women’s needs.

HOW – Best practices

To truly get an in-depth understanding of consumers, it’s vital to use a diversity of ‘think’, ‘feel’ and ‘do’ activities, as we discussed in our bookzine ‘The power is in the mix: Think, Feel, Do, Make’.

One ‘do’ activity that is highly relevant in this Deepdive-community context is a mission, where participants perform a specific task in their own context (e.g., cooking at home with a specific product, or a shopping mission), and then report back to their peers in the community. Missions bridge the online and offline worlds, allowing to get a holistic human understanding of people, instead of solely zooming in on their role as consumers. Then, when reporting back on a Deepdive community’s findings, it’s key to use creative formats (e.g., a consumer persona’s proper pictures, videos, or infographics) to truly bring the consumer to life and illustrate the richness of the gathered insights.

Curious what the other insight community types can mean for your brand? Catch up on the Flash community, and stay tuned for the Program community and the Research hub in the coming weeks!

We’d love to showcase what the Insight Communities can do for your brand. So get in touch to request your showcase!

Online Insight Communities

Online Insight Communities

Research communities, online discussions boards, bulletin boards, insight ecosystems… what’s in a name. In this bookzine, we bring clarity by defining four different community types, each linked to a concrete research need, illustrated with best practices. 

Request your download

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