All of our work begins in the Real World.
Great communications begin with
great consumer understanding. We make sure our planners spend time
out of the office and in the real world - the consumer's world -
experiencing the consumer's path to purchase. We call this Real
World Insight.
Real World Insight comprises a series
of research initiatives designed to take us beyond what consumers
say to what they really do. Because sometimes, what people say they
will do and what they actually do are two different things.
For example, Real World Street is - as
the name suggests - a real street in the real world, whose
residents have invited MediaCom into their lives. This means that
the planning teams of MediaCom clients have the chance to spend
time with real people in their own homes to learn about their true
attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.
This leads to deep and accurate
qualitative insight. By creating a trusted environment, we get
access to their entire lives, which includes interviewing them in
their homes, accompanying them on shopping trips, recording their
purchase history, analyzing the contents of their kitchen
cupboards, gauging their response to new products, and tracking
their communication channel exposure.
We can also customize Real World
Street for individual advertisers. For example, for an alcoholic
beverage advertiser, we developed Real World Bar, which gave us the
opportunity to speak to bartenders and bar patrons - the best
source of drinker insights - in the most relevant environment for
the client - actual bars across the country.
Additionally, we can scale this
customization to a larger panel and analyze media consumption
habits and channel influences, which is what we did in our Real
World Driver research for our client, VW, together with Millward
Brown.
Another one of our initiatives for
gaining a deeper level of consumer understanding is Method Insight.
It's based on Method Acting, and just as Method Actors spend time
as their characters to really get under their skin, we send our
planners into the real world to live the lives of the consumers
we're trying to reach. Only when the planners have "walked a mile
in their shoes" do they start developing a plan.