The Assignment:

Help the sales team of a major food manufacturer demonstrate to their largest retail partner how well they knew the retailer’s customers.

What we did:

We set up a dozen of the retailer’s customers and a dozen members of the sales team on a video diary platform and asked them to record their meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking routines over the course of 5 days. We also asked them to photograph their pantries, refrigerators and kitchens, and to reflect on how they think about food and shopping in the context of their daily lives.

Then we compared what the two groups showed us.

What they got:

We created a video they could present at the quarterly sales meeting with the retailer, showcasing what we’d learned about how different the retailer’s shoppers behavior was from its executives and the sales team – and how aligned their values and preferences were.

We also developed a detailed report of the findings with embedded clips from the participant’s video diaries.

And we created a clickable internal website that allowed internal stakeholders to explore the themes of the research, read slides, and watch video to get up to speed on the findings.

The results:

The presentation was a huge hit with the retail partner – and served as additional fodder for developing customer personas and selecting products to stock.