WATCHMAN: Brand Development
Research-driven creative to launch a cutting-edge therapy direct to consumers.
Objective
Boston Scientific wanted to identify the best methods and drivers to reach atrial fibrillation patients in order to drive patient interest in the Watchman device.
Fusion Hill sought to understand:
- The patient journey
- Drivers and barriers in selecting a device over standard drug options
- How patients learn about and consume media related to atrial fibrillation
Methodology
In Boston, Minneapolis, and Houston, we conducted 14 ethnographies and 2 focus groups with patients. We also spoke with 10 doctors and 3 nurses via nationwide calls. All participants completed pre-work and journaling.
Next, we conducted a half-day co-creation session with patients and the client to identify key visuals and messages to leverage in creative. Based on the results, our team created mood boards to explore and leverage the various themes. We then created three distinct patient campaign concepts and tested them in focus groups.
Outcome
The strategy and creative campaign launched the Boston Scientific the Watchman therapy directly to consumers.
Ethnography & Product Development
GUIDING THE CREATION OF DIGITAL WALLETS
Objective
As mobile payments become a day-to-day necessity for consumers, financial companies are seeking to differentiate their mobile payment solutions. Our client sought insight into the impactful features and benefits of a variety of digital wallets in order to identify key opportunities and benefits for its digital wallet offerings. In addition, we sought to learn more about how consumers make purchases both online and in store as well as how they feel about having their personal bank account details stored on their smartphones.
Methodology
We shadowed users of a variety of digital wallets in their homes and during shop-alongs across the country, observing them as they made purchases. With the addition of focus groups and consumer workshops, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of consumers and their mobile wallet experience.
Outcome
We uncovered motivations and barriers impacting participants’ willingness to sign up for and use digital wallets as well as features and functions that consumers would find appealing in future digital wallets. Our client used these insights to guide marketing strategies, inform product development and create impactful features for its new digital payment offering.
Ethnography & Product Concepts
Global ethnographic research to drive anti-aging product innovation.
Objective
Avon hired Fusion Hill to uncover unmet consumer needs and to develop innovative product concepts for its anti-aging skin care product line.
Methodology
We conducted a total of 52 in-home ethnographies in the United States, Brazil and Russia which included observation of women’s skincare routines – product purchase, storage and use.
All participants completed extensive pre-work. Each in-home ethnography involved the following components:
- Journaling
- One-page emotes
- In-depth two-hour discussion
- Collages
- Flip camera documentation
- Occasion observation
- Bathroom tour
- Product tour
- Artifact and context analysis
Outcome
Based on these ethnographies, we identified 18 key opportunity areas for future product development and conducted extensive co-creation sessions with consumers to inspire 30 new product concepts. We then led two extensive ideation sessions with our clients to further build on all potential concepts and inspirations.
Ethnography and Co-Creation
Exploring Ways to Expand and Enhance User Experience.
Objective
Venmo, a leading consumer FinTech brand, sought to deeply understand its users and their needs as a way of driving direction and inspiration for new expanded digital features to further monetize its business model.
Methodology
Fusion Hill conducted 20 in-home ethnographic interviews with users in Los Angeles and Atlanta and held two co-creation sessions in Chicago. Prior to their sessions, participants completed an extensive journal to reflect on their financial lives and brainstorm new product or service ideas against their financial pain points and unmet needs. During the sessions, we probed deeper into each user’s lifestyle, values, financial philosophy, goals and challenges. We explored opportunity areas for feature expansion and drivers for deeper engagement.
Outcome
Insights from this research are helping refine Venmo’s target user and drive the development of new app features and future product offerings. Over 20 new opportunity areas were presented along with a number of fully designed feature prototypes, all of which are now informing the development road map.
Ethnography & Product Development
GETTING TO THE HEART OF MEALTIME
Objective
As food trends shift from convenience to sustainability to health, we’ve been on the edge of the transformation. Along with our clients, we sought to understand where the trends were headed next. What are the hopes, dreams, passions, pain points, lifestyle, favorite brands and media behaviors of consumers? What drives food choices, and how do we uncover what people are thinking about food?
Methodology
We’ve attended tours, chats and classes for millennial bakers. We’ve conducted ethnographic interviews in Southern homes. We’ve moderated online networks about breakfast. And our team has planned guided trend trips in markets across the U.S. exploring desserts and the indulgence category.
From granola to yogurt to snacks and soda, we’ve immersed ourselves in more than 50 categories of food, condiments and beverages. And through all this we’ve been able to explore consumers’ values and how they affect food preferences, keeping in mind personal choices, familial needs and culture.
Outcome
Insights have been used to guide product development, determine messaging and establish preferred modes of engagement that foster brand growth and loyalty.
Lyrica: Ethnographic research & cocreation
Insights to drive positioning, marketing & advertising.
Objective
The U.S. Lyrica team sought to conduct research with Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy (DPN) patients and physicians who treat DPN and Fibromyalgia (FM) to gain insights about their experience, decision-making process, and profile to drive future key messages and campaigns.
Methodology
Working in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Dallas, we conducted 30 in-home ethnographies with patients with moderate to severe DPN and 30 in-office ethnographies with physicians who treat FM and DPN. Additionally, we conducted 30 nationwide phone interviews with physicians and five with nurses who treat FM and DPN.
After this first round, we conducted three co-creation sessions: one with six DPN specialists, one with six DPN physicians, and one with eight DPN patients. Together, we ideated messaging and tools/resources to address the opportunity areas that were identified in the initial research.
Outcome
The research uncovered several disconnects that exist between patients and treating physicians, causing fewer physicians to prescribe medication and fewer patients to take it. The Pfizer team used the findings to develop tools and resources to bridge these gaps and revamp their DPN and FM Lyrica campaigns in an effort to increase Lyrica prescriptions.
Loyalty Program Research
BUILDING LOYALTY IN THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY
Objective
To develop loyalty programs for skin care products, brands must first understand the emotional drivers of loyalty and consumers’ motivations and needs related to loyalty programs. Why does one choose a certain program over another? What is out there that works well for consumers? How do programs make people feel? And what visual components make a program seem desirable?
Methodology
Holding one-on-one interviews and focus groups in Taipei, Taiwan, we asked consumers to describe their favorite existing loyalty programs, create the ideal loyalty program, complete several emote exercises and provide feedback on verbal and visual stimuli. Participants also focused on describing their journey with their current cosmetic brand.
Outcome
Diving deep into consumers’ emotions regarding loyalty, we gained insight into the current emotional drivers of loyalty as well as those that have the most potential to drive loyalty in the future. Estée Lauder used this research to develop loyalty program offerings for La Mer that generate greater emotional connections with consumers, garner brand allegiance, and inform current marketing and messaging tactics.
Brand Initiative
FAMILY. BUSINESS. LIFE.
OBJECTIVE
Anchor Bank has a great story to tell: It has helped generations build both their businesses’ and families’ financial security. Yet in a world of big banks with big budgets, Anchor Bank needed to clearly define and strengthen its brand story before embarking on further marketing efforts. It sought to understand what the ideal relationship and experience looked like for clients and prospects, as well as what the decision-making process in choosing a financial partner looked like.
METHODOLOGY
We began by conducting ethnographic interviews with Anchor Bank employees, current clients, referring partners and prospects to explore internal and external perceptions of Anchor and its current brand.
Leveraging the research insights, Fusion Hill identified and validated ideal brand positioning, marketplace differentiators and key messages. We then designed a new, comprehensive brand system including voice, image system and guidelines.
OUTCOME
The new brand positioned Anchor Bank as a strong strategic partner that understands its client’s family, business and life. This integration showed the value of personal banking in connection with a client’s or prospect’s business banking and reinforced Anchor Bank’s ability to grow its account holders’ financial future. Our team created marketing tools and documented marketing guidelines to streamline and standardize all future internal and external communications.
Advisor Engagement
NO TWO ALIKE
Objective
In the retirement-planning landscape, Generation Xers and Millennials are beginning to save for their golden years as Boomers settle into retirement. To make investing easy for these younger generations, many financial companies are offering target-date funds. But what if your retirement timeline isn’t the same as your peers? Or you’d prefer to be more aggressive than most? To create a truly tailored approach for individuals, Federated Investors – in partnership with retirement specialist Ann Schleck & Co – created a program that educates advisors on how to pitch and build custom target-date funds for their clients. Fusion Hill was engaged to build the program brand and the suite of creative materials.
Methodology
Our team developed several campaign concepts — all with the goal of communicating this complex product and its benefits in a simple and effective manner. While the more readily available target-date funds appeal to groups of participants who have similar retirement goals, this new approach allows for customization at the individual level. The chosen theme, “No Two Alike,” conveys that differentiator clearly. We applied it to a program-in-a-box with both advisor and plan sponsor-facing materials.
Outcome
These value-add materials have had immediate and tremendous success with advisors and were granted the 2016 Signature Award from the Plan Sponsor Council of America.
Certifications
