Dad, Make Me Dinner

The Challenge

How did our mobile ethnography solution enable a consumer packaged goods manufacturer and their ad agency to learn how men cook for their families differently from women?

The Solution

A CPG company had completed a demographic study and observed a significant increase in the number of men now preparing dinner for their families. To capitalize on this trend, the marketing department, along with its ad agency, decided to create a campaign that would target a certain line of their products to men. The ad agency hired Civicom Marketing Research Services to assist with mobile ethnography interviews nationwide. The Civicom recruiting unit, CiviSelect, worked with its recruiting partner, Schlesinger Group, to obtain the target respondents. Candidates for the study had to be men who frequently prepared dinner for their children without the involvement of a female partner.

The respondents were sent a box of the client’s processed food products to use in meal preparation. Using Civicom Front Row, the respondents were videotaped while preparing a meal using the products provided. In several cases the agency observed the process and sometimes asked questions. In other cases, Civicom Marketing Research Services facilitated the mobile ethnography without the presence of the agency, and provided the video files later.

The content of the interviews provided insights into the personalities of the men while cooking dinner, including what was valuable and important to the agency building a ‘persona’ for developing an advertising campaign. Attention was paid to not only how the food was prepared, but also to the fathers’ interaction with their children, and even what clothing they wore while cooking. All of these findings were used by the agency to create a character that an actor would play in TV ads.

Using mobile ethnography saved vast amounts of money, labor, and travel time while providing a window into the mood and ambiance generated during the food preparation process. Civicom Front Row was the perfect vehicle for collecting this information.