ARCAM

Helping stakeholders to develop a more diverse understanding of consumers than they previously held.

ROLE: Lead User Researcher

CLIENT: HARMAN International - ARCAM

TIMEFRAME: November 2022 - February 2023

TEAM: 6 Design, 2 Marketing, 8 Product

THE NEED

The ARCAM team wanted to create a marketing campaign for a new product line being launched in the Fall of 2023. I began by conducting stakeholder interviews to understand the goals and vision of the team and in this process, recognized a critical need for user research. Stakeholders consistently described who they believed their customer to be - older, mostly white, male, affluent - in the next breath, stakeholders would then say but that can’t be right… Stakeholders recognized that the industry was changing but their view of their customers had remained stagnant for years.

In order to develop a marketing campaign that spoke to their full customer base and didn’t alienate folks, the ARCAM team needed to understand who their customers were and what they cared about - especially customers who represented a younger and more diverse base than that older male they had previously mentioned.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

10 Stakeholder Interviews across product, engineering, design, marketing

Consumer Research with participants who represent current consumers and potential consumers across the 2 biggest markets of the UK and US. This work including 50 diary studies and 10 interviews

Competitive Analysis of marketing and communication materials

IMPACT + OUTCOMES

  • Defined 3 key consumer archetypes that represent both current and potential consumers including what will resonate most with each group

  • Outlined the desired product journey - from brand discovery through product purchase, set up, and maintenance for each archetype

  • Identified opportunity areas based on how competitors approach each consumer archetype

  • Informed the strategy for product launch campaigns to connect with the consumer archetype groups.

This research encouraged the product team to re-think their approach to the entire product launch. They chose to do things right instead of rushing the process and recognized that they needed to speak more intentionally to consumers through their creative marketing campaigns. They pushed back the product launch to ensure they had enough time to generate these campaigns.

CONSUMER ARCHETYPES

Download the full consumer archetype graphic here.