Horngren’s Financial & Managerial Accounting, 7th edition by Miller-Nobles so...
Dorel's Quinny brand taps into universal insights of urban parents
1.
2. In 2011, Dorel discovered that their flagship brands Quinny and Maxi-Cosi were
cannibalizing one another to some extent. Dorel wanted to reposition the Quinny
brand into a brand for parents with a city lifestyle, as an answer to the
urbanization trend. This target group was completely new to the Dorel organization,
What to
expect?
creating a huge consumer knowledge gap. To speed up the success of the
repositioning, Dorel wanted to connect the Quinny team with the new target
group: the Urban Parent.
To fill the knowledge gap, a 3-week global ‘Market Research Online Community’ (or
‘Consumer Consulting Board’) was launched where a dialogue took place between
the Quinny team and 120+ Urban Parents from 7 big cities around the world.
The immersion experience confronted the organization with the daily struggles of their
core target group and the creative solutions they come up with themself. This resulted
in 6 “Universal Insights” which are insights that evoke the same ‘Aha, it’s me’ feeling
among people from different cultures around the globe. These insights are the
fundamentals of today’s new product innovations such as the “Longboard Stroller” and
branding campaigns.
This paper gives insights into the power of a global and mobile community and
how it has inspired Quinny to discover universal insights and translate them into
actions for future branding and innovations.
4. For the first time in history, more than half the
Quinny, part of the Dorel group, asked themselves
world’s population lives in urban areas. By
these questions. They believe that this
2030 this number will increase to almost 5 billion,
urbanization trend offers many possibilities. As
with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia
parents with a global mindset consider the city as a
(www.unfpa.org). The urbanization trend should
place full of opportunities, Quinny believes that it will
trigger business questions such as ‘What will
also bring forth new growth directions for their brand.
urbanization mean for serving tomorrows
consumers?’ and ‘What new opportunities will
there be for offerings to make customers’ lives
better?’
Urbanization is a trend we can’t beat - so
surely it’s time to join
J. Kirby (Harvard Business Review, 2009)
5. The potential scale and global appeal that is
The switch to this new target group will enable
brought forth by the urbanization movement is
Quinny to benefit from scalability advantages
probably leveraged most by today’s global brands.
Quinny is determined to become a global
brand, by developing mobility solutions for
and grow their brand strength. Quinny’s “The City
Is Ours” brand platform has the right potential to
become such a global brand and connect with the
parents around the world that choose to live
Urban Parent, but the question remained how to
in the city.
translate that slogan into relevant and differentiating
product innovations on a global level as well as a
brand activation strategy on a local level. In order to
answer this question, we first needed to identify
the similarities on a global level and discover the
‘universal insights’. These insights evoke the same
‘Aha, it’s me’ feeling among parents from different
cultures around the globe. After that, Quinny needs
to build further at their branded universe to
become locally relevant in branded activations
and communications.
6. To identify the universal insights, Quinny first needed to get under the skin of their global target group: the
Urban Parents. ‘Urban Parents’ is a universal concept, unifying all parents from different cities all over
the world, from New York and Berlin to Seoul and Tokyo. They all embrace the city with all its positive
and negative aspects. They are used to the city life and cannot imagine living outside the city.
However, when they become parents, they need to rediscover the city all over again.
Quinny wanted to better
understand their
challenges during their
‘rediscovery’ and link them
to Quinny’s product
experience and brand
image. In short, the research
project’s aim was to discover
the universal insights and
translate them into actions for
future branding and
innovations.
7. In order to engage Urban Parents with research, we needed to search for a flexible solution that fits
the busy schedules of the parents. Next to that, we needed to offer a great learning benefit because
parents are on an ongoing search for parenting information during that period of their lives. Furthermore,
to identify the universal insights the solution needed to cross the boundaries of space and time to
connect with parents from cities from all over the world. Our research covered the 7 most
important markets for Quinny: New York, Sao Paolo, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul.
An online research community was chosen as the backbone of this research projects.
This method 1) connects participants from all over the
world on an online closed platform, 2) empowers
participants to share tips and tricks on parenting, creating an
inspiring learning environment, 3) enables participation in a
flexible and asynchronous way matching the parents’ busy
schedules. While this solution brought us key benefits, we also
were facing 3 major challenges:
1/ Linguistic challenge
2/ Contextual challenge
3/ Engagement challenge
Next we will discuss each challenge.
Figure 1. The Urban Parents Community
9. The ‘Urban Parents Community’ is a global
community. The goal of the community was to
identify universal insights for Urban
Parents, not so much the cultural
differences. Therefore we combined all cultures
on one platform and the community had to run in
English while the fear existed we would lose out in
terms of the fine nuances in languages. However,
given the fact that this target group is part of
the Global Generation, they are perfectly
capable of expressing themselves in English.
In order to be completely sure they actually were
capable, we recruited parents who passed a
TOEFL test, felt comfortable in using
English and were open to learn from other
cultures. In the end, 127 parents were active on
the community, generating over 2,900 posts in 3
weeks’ time.
11. A second challenge we were facing through this
‘Dual screen’ refers to the parallel usage of
project, was to get a sufficient number of insights
desktop and mobile connection. The ‘dual
in their daily lives and routines, almost like an
screen’ community solution enabled members to
ethnographic study. Therefore, we enabled the parents
also perform ‘offline’ tasks, such as sharing the
to share as much contextual and personal information
about their environment as possible through a dual
screen mobile community application.
parent’s hotspots of the city, spotting new trends
and share opportunities for the brand, in the heat
of the moment. This application resulted in
433 photos, generated by 60% of the
participants, 22% of which actually used the
mobile app. The 2,900 posts, 433 of which were
photos, show that this solution has given us the
richness of an ethnographic study and the depth
of several consecutive focus groups. An in-depth
analysis of the usage of the mobile application,
summarized in table 1, results in 3 key
conclusions:
12. 1
Mobile application increases community engagement
Previous research already proved that
mobile enables participants to better
stay in touch with the community
(Verhaeghe and Willems, 2012). Confirming
Mobile/dual
users
N=28
that mobile increases their platform activity,
our study also adds that it boosts their
participation. Community analytics show that
mobile users login 2.3 times more and
view 1.4 more pages compared to nonmobile members. They make 65% more
contributions, meaning that they are more
engaged with the community. In order to
keep their attention, community managers
need to stimulate mobile recurrent visits and
offer new challenges on a daily basis.
Average # posts
Average # visits
Average # page views
Average # words per post
Total # photos
Total # tagged photos
Desktop-only
users
N=99
33
44
327
47
179*
555
20
19
232
87
254
516
*The photos of mobile/dual users were submitted through mobile only
Table 1. Mobile and platform analytics
13. 2
Mobile application generates more visual feedback
While mobile/dual users contribute 1.65 more posts, they only use half the number of
words compared to desktop-only users (47 vs. 87 words). One might expect that the reason
for the short wording is because of a speedy contribution and a smaller screen. We observe that
the words are replaced by a different, more visual contribution such as a photo or video
(6.2 photos mobile-dual users vs. 2.6 photos desktop-only users). These results imply that
mobile communities need to include a lot more yet shorter challenges that require multi-media
feedback.
14. 3
Mobile application results in more contextual and
personal data
The mobile contributions have had a
Tag categories
Total # tags
study. While mobile generated
only 41% of the total number of
photos, the relevancy of those
visuals is much higher. Of all
photos tagged by the researcher,
Brands
Products & solutions
Mobility
Challenges
Needs
Love for the city
52
27
127
178
375
312
% Tagged photos
submitted through
desktop
N=179 photos*
major impact on the richness of this
% Tagged photos
submitted
through mobile
N=254 photos
56%
63%
60%
47%
57%
44%
44%
37%
40%
53%
43%
56%
52% of the tags were allocated to
*The photos of mobile/dual users were submitted through mobile only
photos generated by mobile.
Table 2. Tagging framework
With respectively 60% and 63%, tag categories ,‘mobility solutions’ (e.g. walking, public transport, car, train)
and ‘favorite products’ (e.g. flexible solutions, several solutions, growing with the child) were mostly
generated by mobile (see Table 2). This shows that the mobile component is of crucial importance to
fully understand the user group and uncover unique and fresh insights.
16. The long-term commitment
that the members need to
have provides the third
challenge. There is more to
building engagement than mere
tools like the mobile app. In
order to keep the parents
engaged for 3 weeks, we
needed to create the perfect
mix of the right intrinsic
and extrinsic motivations,
following the framework of
Deutskens (2006), illustrated in
Figure 2.
Figure 2. Urban Parents community’s cocktail of engagement
17. 1
Unlock new parenting fun facts
Members want to talk about topics that interest them and are relevant to them, like parenting
advice and how to deal with transportation struggles in the city. In order to motivate the members to keep
on sharing their opinions, we rewarded them with new content about their favorite topics . By
responding to the challenges posted by the moderator, participants unlocked new fun facts. For example,
results of a new urban life study and a video with “the making of” of a new Quinny stroller. This way,
members are encouraged to keep on participating and consider it a true learning experience.
18. 2
Shape the future of the Quinny brand
Participants want to feel like they had an
impact on the brand. While we started off
with an unbranded community, we created a
‘secret room’ that was still locked where we
would announce the sponsoring company. In
the third week, the brand was revealed and the
members were introduced to the Quinny team.
The people from Quinny shared a
personal message and gave feedback on
the learnings so far. This way, the parents
knew their stories and ideas were used to
shape the future of this brand.
“Head down to you, Quinny! You helped many people
in these big cities to enjoy urban life and ease their
lives with all the suggestions given in the forum! I
have always admired companies who care of their
clients and always backed the idea that the real
people out there can give the most brilliant idea. I will
definitely miss this place!” By Etito, London
19. 3
Reward with parental incentives
While extrinsic rewards with a monetary value are not
the main reason to stay engaged with the community,
our research-on-research has shown that this type of
incentive still needs to be added to our ‘cocktail’.
Previous experiments has taught us that most
members prefer to receive these kinds of topicor brand-related rewards (56%) such as a
goodie-bag over a generic voucher (44%) (De Wulf
and De Ruyck, 2013). So, besides a money voucher,
the Urban Parents also received a book with 500
tips on what parents should do with their kids
before they grow up.
20. 4
Give recognition to the ‘top 30 Urban Parents’
The gratification from successful performance of
the participants’ role motivates members to
participate. Therefore, we invited the 30 most
active members across the 7 cities to become
“Quinny Casters” and test the new Quinny
stroller: Yezz. They received recognition for it on
the community, but also outside of the community,
making them feel proud of their special role.
“Oh my GOD..!!!!!! Thanks, Quinny... Now I can
show off the buggy to my other moms out there
and make them jealous because this buggy is not
available in Malaysia and I OWNE it...Yeay...
Thanks again, Quinny!”
By Asyikin, Kuala Lumpur
22. By keeping the parents engaged long-term
Secondly, a strong insight is equal to a sort of ‘Aha’
with the community, we obtained rich and
experience: a combination of surprise and something
contextual data. After studying the behavior and
familiar. It entails a view on something which was
needs of this target group, we realized that these
implicit all that time. Thirdly, the insight should have an
parents share a lot of similar deeper motivations.
‘emotional valence’. It can be a friction or
Instead of focusing on the country differences, we
problem that consumers want to solve. But it could
identified key ‘universal insights’ that connect
also be a desire for something. Consumers should be
the Urban Parents of the 7 cities, which lies the
excited about having a potential solution. These three
fundament for building a global brand. A universal
insight evokes the same ‘Aha, it’s me’ feeling among
components make up the magic formula for an insight.
The better the insight, the higher the business
people from different cultures around the globe. The
potential. It can unlock marketing innovation on
first basic aspect of a strong consumer insight is
different levels: brand innovation, product innovation,
‘relevance’. A strong insight automatically calls for
service innovation, communication and consumer
familiarity (‘It’s me’), sometimes to the extent that
activation (Verhaeghe et al., 2013).
you may even learn things about yourself that you
were not aware of before.
23. In total, 6 universal insights were identified that connect Urban Parents around the world, four of which are
described below.
1
2
3
4
“My love for my city is so big that I’m
ready to take up every challenge accompanied
with this lifestyle”
“Besides experiencing the dynamics of city life, I want my children
and not forget about the authentic things in life such as nature”
to go ‘back to basic’
don’t want my children to grow up thinking there
are no people who care about them”
“The city can be quite impersonal and I
“Although we live in such a big and sometimes anonymous city, I
safe and at home in our own neighborhood”
really want my children to feel
24. 1
“My love for my city is so big that I’m
ready to take up every challenge accompanied
with this lifestyle”
Urban parents embrace the city and all its positive and
negative aspects. Although the city offers many
challenges for parents in terms of their mobility and
relaxation, the Urban Parent can’t imagine living outside the
city. They have a global mindset and are convinced that the
city offers great opportunities for raising their
children. So, they choose to stay in the city and constantly
look for new ways to find peace and quiet for a balanced
lifestyle. This is a very positive attitude towards life, making
Urban Parents very resourceful in overcoming the challenges
of the city.
25. 2
“Besides experiencing the dynamics of city life, I want my children
and not forget about the authentic things in life such as nature”
to go ‘back to basic’
This is about the popularity of digital entertainment and the realization
that children raised in the city lack the experience of nature around
them. Urban Parents want to create the perfect place to raise their children and
therefore take their children outside as much as possible.
When they become parents, they
start looking at the city from a
whole new perspective and
discover the city’s small and
unique places of nature that are
free of charge, provide fresh air
and offer valuable playtime for their
children. Most popular places in the
city are parks and playgrounds.
26. 3
don’t want my children to grow up thinking there
are no people who care about them”
“The city can be quite impersonal and I
Even though many Urban Parents don’t have
family or relatives close-by, they still value them
enormously. The city is rather impersonal, which
emphasizes the need to make sure that their
children grow up knowing that there are a lot
of people caring about them. Therefore,
parents try to involve their extended family as
much as possible. Communicating digitally through
face-time or Skype plays an important role, as well
as making trips to parents and grandparents.
They often live outside the city but are also aware
of city life and want to support their children in their
busy city lives and stay close to their
grandchildren.
27. 4
“Although we live in such a big and sometimes anonymous city, I
safe and at home in our own neighborhood”
When urban citizens become parents,
they feel the need for a community,
for belonging in the big anonymous
city. They start small villages in the city
they live in, with the people they feel
connected with, consisting of the places
they visit and routes they walk. Their
radius to travel within the city is seriously
limited and parents prefer to visit
local facilities, like supermarkets,
cafes, libraries and other shops. This is
where they feel safe and at home.
really want my children to feel
29. Identifying the 6 universal insights alone was not sufficient. The next step was
to inspire the rest of the organization with the Urban Parents and
translate those insights into actions. Based on previous research, we know
that in order to create a mind shift in the organization, we need to use a staged
approach to play upon the hearts, minds and actions of the internal
stakeholders (De Ruyck et al, 2011).
30. Engage with the world of the Urban
Parent
This phase is all about getting to know the
Urban Parent and discovering the insights in a
longitudinal, engaging and fun way. While the
project team was already closely involved in
Next to that, we invited different teams to play the
Urban Parents Game to test their current
knowledge of this target group. As a result, every 1
out of 3 employees played the game, with an
average score of 66%. This result points out that
the community from day 1, we needed to
there were quite some knowledge gaps. Through
immerse the other stakeholders as well. In
instant feedback, they were confronted with
order to catch the attention of sales and
their own knowledge gaps, creating a positive
marketing teams, a video about the
disruption. This makes them feel a little bit
community and the results was shown at
uncomfortable about their current view on the
various internal events. This video was an
subject and curious about the final outcome of the
important first step in bringing the consumer
much closer to the employees of Dorel.
project. Afterwards, we presented the insights of
the study in offline sessions to close the
knowledge gaps.
31. Inspire with eye-openers and insights
In the next phase, we inspired internal stakeholders with the
gained insights through engaging presentations. Several
sessions were hosted to present the insights to different teams
(e.g. core project team, international sales team).
32. Activate them by translating insights into
actions
The presentations were followed by interactive
workshops to make sure the research outcome
was used effectively. In the activate stage of the
workshop we worked with the results and turned
insights into ideas and concepts for innovation and
brand actions purposes. In order to activate the different
teams, Quinny developed a persona called “Lilly”
who reflects the target group. This persona helped
them to understand both her own dreams and those of
her family, as well as the expectations towards the
brand. It now acts as a ‘relevance check’ when one
needs to make a consumer-relevant decision (‘What
would Lilly say?’).
33. As a consequence of the staged approach, the Quinny team fully embraced the results and is now
totally aware of the daily challenges of the Urban Parent. As illustrated by the following quotes, the
way this collaboration was designed was an important success factor for redefining the brand:
“The Quinny Community brought us to a next level
in thinking about Market Intelligence. We were
able to have live interaction with a big group of
people in 7 cities around the globe at the same time.
The insights it brought us were much richer than
what we normally got from qualitative groups.
People were experiencing their mobility with their
child and gave immediate feedback on the spot
through their mobile phone. It was a very valuable
experience which led to permanent online
communities for our brands. (Patricia Slootjes,
“The approach was totally new to me. It is
a great way to interact with and learn
from consumers around the world in a
quick and efficient way.” (Mark Schrooten,
Innovation Director Dorel Europe)
Marketing Director Dorel Europe)
"Thanks to this research we were able to connect the dots and see
that parents around the world have an equal mindset on the higher
emotional drivers. This is a big insight and used for further
development of everything that the brand stands for, from
marketing, communications to product and services." (Jeroen de Bos,
Senior Product Manager Quinny)
35. After the immersion experience and the
translation of the 6 universal insights
into action, Quinny has made significant
decisions influencing today’s product
innovations and branding campaigns. Next,
we will explain how these insights have
inspired Quinny to take actions for future
branding, communications and product
development.
Figure 3. Illustration of Quinny’s brand repositioning
36. Branding & Communication: From Looks to
Skills
The management objective was to reposition the
This shift is illustrated by the example in this
brand towards the city lifestyle and create relevant
figure. Previous communication (Figure left) was
solutions for the Urban Parent. The brand’s
much more about the looks, showing an
positioning shifted towards a more social
independent woman emphasizing her
context, taking into account the modern and
appearance, rather than her role as a parent.
extended family. The focus should be on the child
and the parent(s), not the mother alone.
The new communication message (Figure 4)
takes the context of the parent into
Furthermore, the brand’s focus shifted from
account much more by showing different
fashion, emphasizing how the mother looks, to
family members, such as the husband; it
more creativity and skills that parents need to live in
also focuses on the skills and resourcefulness
the city.
required to live in the city rather than just looks
37. The new message is about parents who love to live in the city with their children and overcome
daily obstacles together while using smart solutions. Next to this new communication campaign, the
insights are also used to fuel their social media campaigns. The community discussions revealed
interesting conversation starters, giving Quinny new social currency to start the conversation with their
customers.
Figure 4. Quinny’s previous communication message (right) and Quinny’s new communication message (left)
38. Product innovation: surfing in the city
Next to the innovations on branding and communication, Quinny already has taken some first steps
to innovate their products as well. A first example is related to the basic product features. One of
the things we found out is that parents that live in the city often use their stroller for
grocery shopping. Quinny’s shopping baskets where always rather small. Therefore, a project is
now initiated to redesign the solutions so they are much more suitable for grocery
shopping with a child.
Next to the product features, new product developments were also made in the fuzzy front end. An
important development that was triggered by the insight of city villages & limited mobility is the
innovation experiment of the “Longboard Stroller”.
Figure 5. The Longboard Stroller – An experiment in Urban Mobility
39. The product development team learned that
Urban Parents feel limited in the distance
they can cover in the city compared to their
life before kids. This insight made the design
team realize the daily struggle of the Urban
Parent and decided to rework a previously
designed stroller concept: a combination of
stroller and a skateboard. This experiment is
an alternative solution how parents can move
around in the city while making it easier to travel
longer distances in a nice, environmentally
friendly way. Quinny teamed up with Studio Peter
van Riet, developed a prototype and launched it
in the media. As a result, the concept received a
lot of coverage in the media; the Facebook page
went viral and resulted in 6,500 friends in just
a few months, without any advertising.
The new product also featured in various newspapers
and TV shows. The innovation project won the
OVAM Eco Award PRO 2012 as well. This
example shows how the voice of the consumer can
inspire the product development team and make
product innovation more relevant.
41. This case study shows how to connect with a global generation like
the Urban Parents. The results of the community research fueled the
branding and innovation funnel on a global level. The next step is to
continue building on Quinny’s branded universe around the
identified clusters of insights, to enable localizations on the brand,
product and activation level. From a methodology point of view, this
study proves the importance of a mobile component in studies
designed to discover participant’s environment (such as transport
and mobility). The power of a mobile community lies in fact that users
participate in the heat of the moment, leading to a deeper
understanding and new insights. The design of a mobile community
therefore needs to take into account the high intensity
participation and visual nature of feedback to fully leverage its
potential.
42. Special words of thanks to
Thierry Meerschaert, Renee
van Dalen and Sofie
Bruggeman for their brilliant
account and research work
involved with the research project
and the workshops as well as to
the brand teams and agencies
involved.
43. Anouk Willems
Marieke Koningen
Tom De Ruyck
Research Innovation Manager
InSites Consulting
Market Intelligence Manager
Dorel
Head of Consumer Consulting Boards
InSites Consulting
