Ethnographic Solutions

Optimal architecture for brand messaging should creatively engage the most common and compelling criteria by which consumers make choices within the product category.  
 
We believe that message architecture research should not only strive to identify which brand messages resonate most with consumers, but also to determine specifically why certain messages succeed and others fail to inspire consumers. When we provide this deeper qualitative context to how messages perform in market research, it enables the brand team to develop new messages, as well as refine existing messages, in ways that more directly engage the prevailing criteria of consumer choice.  
 
Most message architecture projects involve two research phases. The first research involves developing a broad array of message elements that fit into various message categories (“buckets”) that correspond with the consumers’ criteria of choice in the product category. Each message category plays in a functional role in telling the consumer the overarching story about that brand. This often includes attention-grabbing opening statements/messages and message elements that summarize and close the brand story. It also includes various message categories that represent different ways of discussing specific types of brand benefits or that effectively address consumers’ concerns when shopping the product category.  
 
The objective of the first research phase is start with a larger pool of messages within each message each category and distill it to a smaller set of the top-performing messages within the respective categories, which are then integrated into the second research phase. The focus of the second research phase involves having respondents construct stories about the brand that are most likely to motivate them to use or purchase the brand. This involves identifying the frequency with which respondents select certain messages and the sequence in which they arrange these messages when composing their optimal brand story.  
 
A story is inherently a qualitative construct—information creatively arranged in ways that create interpretive meaning to people. As such, a purely quantitative analysis of message element frequency and sequence can often be misguided. A sophisticated research analyst is critical in the message architecture research process because he or she must synthesize the logical links that exist, in the minds of the respondents, between and across individual message elements. From this qualitative understanding, the analyst can make more meaningful recommendations about the optimal composition of the brand story.  
 
Importantly, message architecture research projects needs to remain consistent with and build on the strategic development of the brand positioning that precedes it. Thus, early in the message architecture research process, respondents should be exposed to the brand positioning statement and guided to evaluate messages to ensure agreement with the underlying brand positioning.  
 
Many of the message architecture projects our researchers manage have a global orientation, involving research in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. A strategic challenge in these situations involves reconciling the need to develop message architecture that accounts for country-specific cultural variation with the need to maintain a core brand message architecture that has global relevance. Commonly following the baseline research in the U.S, our researchers travel to each country to guide and work alongside our international research partners, as well as to assimilate the research findings firsthand. We also attempt to minimize the number of researchers involved in each global project to allow a centralized perspective that enables a more informed synthesis of global findings and subsequent strategic recommendations to the brand team.