Horowitz Research: Print Publisher Rebranding

When a traditional print publisher was pressed to modernize their brand to appeal to younger consumers in a digital age, they knew that a long term community could help them better understand their targets and needs. Stephanie Wong Director, Insights and Strategy, Horowitz Research. By partnering with Horowitz and Recollective they were able to gather ongoing feedback through a range of activities to understand not only who these people were, but also to tap into their needs and desires and build content and features that appealed to them. The community was so successful that it led to a full rebranding, a new website and the development of a range of tools that were relevant for younger, digital consumers.

Background

Younger consumers are playing an increasingly important role in the economy at large and require attention across all consumer categories. Because they spend a significant amount of time online and make up only a small portion of print readership, it is forcing traditional print publications to modernize their brands and offerings as they transition into the digital world.

Challenge

Due to the shifting consumer landscape, a publishing company in the United States found themselves facing a significant period of transition. The key challenge that they faced was understanding how to shift their traditional print publication, which focused on consumer reviews, into a digital format while also modernizing their brand to appeal to younger consumers.

Specifically, it was imperative for them to understand:

• How to engage the younger, highly digital consumer base
• The role that their print publication could play in an online world where so much information was already available for free
• The changing shopper journey. What platforms, devices and services were consumers using? How did they research products? What role did professional and consumer reviews play in that journey?

The publisher had a range of research objectives and anticipated having a large amount of on-going, quick turnaround requests. Despite their research needs being varied and ambitious, the publisher did not have enough internal resources to run the project on their own and could not afford to launch a new project every time an ad-hoc request came through.

The Solution

The publishing company partnered with Horowitz Research as they offered the right combination of expertise and additional resources to make the research a success.

Horowitz recommended running a long-term online community built on Recollective to execute all of their varying requests in a timely manner from one central location.

Running the research in a long-term Recollective community proved to be the ideal solution for the publisher - it kept all of their community members and data in one place and gave them the option to engage with consumers whenever the need arose.

This study structure saved time and money compared to conducting a series of custom projects and made it simple to quickly incorporate the client’s ad-hoc requirements.

Using Recollective also eliminated the publisher’s concern about engaging consumers via their online properties. Plus, it facilitated the ability to adjust their research plans and design on-the-fly to build on what had been learned to date.

To ensure that the younger community members stayed engaged throughout the full duration of the study, Horowitz ran a minimum of one activity per month which helped participants feel heard and kept them in the habit of participating in the community.

Each monthly activity addressed an issue that the client was exploring.

Their composition ranged from simple open-ended text and multimedia questions to closed-ended polls and grids. Additional ad-hoc activities (such as usability testing) allowed the client to address other questions as they arose.

Recollective’s image review task proved to be a key component in understanding how consumers interacted with different prototypes, letting them specifically pinpoint the most useful and least useful parts of each design. The results were summarized in real-time using Recollective’s analysis tools, a feature which proved crucial for quick decision making.

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Outcomes

Recollective was crucial in helping the client achieve their varying research objectives.

• Understand their consumer of the future. The research offered the publisher an ongoing relationship with their new, younger target and gave them a solid understanding for who they are, what they like and how to appeal to them.
• Gather feedback to inform their rebrand and shift to the digital world. The publisher used the insights to inform their rebranding, redesign their website and create content relevant and engaging to a younger, digital consumer.
• Develop new, consumer-centric tools. Specifically, they came out with a credit card comparison tool that allowed users to input their monthly spending to find the credit card that best met their needs.
• Maintain flexibility within the research plan and quickly change course when necessary. The flexibility afforded by Recollective to change the research design (including question types and flow) allowed the client to pivot and change direction when needed. The research remained relevant month after month and built on previous findings.
• Save time and money by keeping the entire research initiative within one study space. This eliminated the need to launch multiple studies in order to accommodate the publisher’s range of ad-hoc requests.