An Open Invitation to Judge Your Consumers

Photo-by-Clark-Street-Mercantile-on-Unsplash

How Analysing Consumer Clothing Can Enhance Your Research and Ultimately Your Strategy

He was sitting across from me and at first glance he was a bit of a wreck. His hair was long and untidy, his beard some might describe as scraggly, the laces on his desert boots were undone and the boots themselves were dirty; in fact on closer inspection, one had a hole. His shirt definitely hadn’t been ironed that morning and nor had his chinos (one leg rolled up to a different height than the other.) Let’s call him Tom.

First impressions of Tom were not strong. 

I knew what the clients would be thinking and my stomach sank. I’d personally vetted every participant in the focus group and this guy was meant to fit the attitudinal profile of ‘likes the finer things in life’, ‘upwardly mobile’ and ‘urbanite.’ It was hard to believe based on that first impression that he liked the finer things in life. At least, he didn’t explicitly project that about himself. 

But then, I looked closer. He had a top of the range laptop, a brand new smart watch and the latest iPad Pro. The very-subtly-branded backpack hosting his gadgets may have looked like any old canvas backpack but was actually very expensive. 

Why the contradiction?

Technically Tom had been correctly recruited and met the ‘recruitment criteria’, but he didn’t fit the image the client had of their target consumer. Their image was more suited and booted. 

With something as seemingly shallow and simple as the shoes he was wearing, the entire focus group was thrown into question. 

What were we, as the research team, to do? We had successfully worked with the client to reshape the definition of their target consumer to account for the nuances of attitudes and lifestyles over demographics-only. But it turns out even attitude and lifestyle has nuances.

And the client was right to be concerned. While Tom was very much a consumer of the wider category, he wasn’t the right target for their specific brand. And never would be. His values and the brand values didn’t align. Unless the brand did a complete rebrand, it was unlikely it would appeal to him. This was obvious from the second he walked into the focus group, and everything he said thereafter supported this. 

What did we learn from Tom?

Tom is a ‘creative’ and, like most of us, his clothing is as much a part of his identity as the expensive gadgets. His clothing is an external cue to how he views himself, with which tribe he identifies and what he wants other people to take away about him. To take this further, his clothes and shoes are an indication of what he’s looking for from ‘his’ brands and, even, his values. 

There’s ample research into how clothing affects performance, but maybe as consumer researchers, we should be making more observations, and even judgements, from that first encounter. It may help us understand the participants’ personal context, which may in turn influence our understanding of their responses.

Instead of asking them to explain their personal context and the type of people they are in a room full of strangers, it could be argued that there are enough clues in their attire to contextualise the research and use the focus group to work even harder.

So, here’s a crazy idea: let’s judge our participants as they walk through the focus group doors. Or better yet, judge more holistically by asking them to send pictures of their outfits daily for a week before the research. 

Would this lead to ‘rejecting’ more participants in advance of the groups? Possibly, although that depends on the objective and the client, but it would certainly enhance our understanding of the target audience, while providing a deeper context to reactions and responses to research. 

The Tom Effect

In the end Tom provided us with an extremely valuable and unexpected insight into the category, the competition and the client’s positioning, exactly by being who the client didn’t want to target. With this knowledge, the client fine-tuned their targeting and were able to create communications that spoke directly to the target they felt was right for their brand. 

As a result, we now include a Consumer Clothing Observation on all projects, whether that’s delivered by the participant in an Outfit Pre-task or through brand and category immersions.