Our work

We've worked on a fascinating range of issues and challenges to date. Here are some of our favorites:

 

Co-creating breakthrough insights and products
with Danone and Activia

Danone's Activia yoghurts have enjoyed double digit growth since its launch in the UK, over ten years ago. It wanted to maintain this fast rate of growth going forward, even as the market matured, through increasing penetration. Promise Communities worked with Danone's Activia brand to build the Activia Advisory Board, an online co-creation community of 400 women, to create new products and drive marketing campaigns.

 

2009's biggest hit, "The Activia Single Pot" was co-created by this community from ideation to development in just 5 months... 3 months quicker than traditional methods would allow. This product received 80% distribution in the first month of launch (Asda alone sold 3 million pots).

 

While the community generated 47% more insights than those produced using traditional off-line methods (e.g. focus groups), it also delivered an 82% increase in insight effectiveness as the insights were found to be much richer and effective than those generated using traditional methods (Source: Activia's IPSOS study). Insights from the community underpinned successful communications, like the "Tummy Loving Care" ad campaign and generated a +9% uplift in base sales (Source: Activia Media Study).

 

The success of the community has spurred Danone to create an ongoing consumer advisory board that is now driving consumer closeness amongst all its dairy brands.

 

read the full Danone case study

 

Site personalisation for LateRooms.com

LateRooms.com wanted to optimise their online portal to generate revenue through increased conversion and customer retention. We created the LateRooms.com community, with over 400 travel aficionados, to provide solid customer insight and evidence to allow LateRooms.com to make strategic decisions and inform brand development and innovation.

 

These 400 travel aficionados logged in daily and participated in ideation sessions, brainstorms and online workshops to help improve the brand the site. The community helped LateRooms.com: identify and sign-off over 50 site improvements (to be put into their development pipeline in the first 3 months alone); optimise a selection of key site areas such as the search page and hotels booking page; develop, evaluate and test a new look & feel and run NPD workstreams to identify effective ways of making LateRooms.com mobile.

 

"We have been able to co-create ideas with customers and non-customers alike helping us to find new ways of displaying information on the site to increase conversion on all our customer touch points." Jessica Reading, Head of Marketing, LateRooms.com

 

Consumer insight driven innovations and growth
for Virgin Media

Virgin Media offers a quadruple play across TV, ultrafast broadband, home phone and mobile services. They wanted to best understand how to leverage this unique offering to drive growth amongst customers and prospects. We launched the Virgin Media Think Tank, a bespoke community of 350 customers and prospects, to help Virgin Media deepen their customer understanding, innovate new products and refine and test winning innovations.

 

The Think Tank has also acted as a rapid time insight engine allowing Virgin Media to ask quick turnaround questions and share the insights across the organisation (e.g. understanding how to market existing services and assess the impact of competitor communications). Virgin Media have used the Think Tank to infuse the voice of the consumer in their growth strategy and raise the profile of their Commercial Strategy department.

 

"The Think Tank has proven to be an innovative and effective way of getting in-depth insight into consumers, helping us derive more effective strategies to help drive the business forward. It is one of the most appropriate platforms to engage with segments of our customer base and helps us to quickly understand their views and incorporate them into our decision-making process every day." Rick Jenner, Head of Insight (Home Phone and Mobile), Virgin Media.

 

Our work with Virgin Media in Marketing Week (August 2010)

 

Co-creating a new higher purpose at Kraft Foods

Kraft, the second largest food and beverage company in the world, decided that it was time to renew its mission for the 21st century. Promise Communities developed ‘Big Talk Online’: a private online collaboration community that enables the simultaneous participation of thousands of employees over an extended period to debate, develop and decide ideas. Promise launched a bespoke internal marketing campaign, inviting Kraft's top management to the community, across all countries and brands. In the ensuing three months over 4000 employees from over 50 countries collaborated on designing, debating and filtering the future mission, vision and values of the company. In doing so they co-created a new corporate mission, vision and values, which signed off by the board in under three months. What's more they de-risked change, by providing a mission which emerged from within the organization.

 

read the full Kraft case study

 

A new business for The Co-operative Group

The Co-operative had a goal of launching a completely new business venture. While clear parameters in terms of profitability and brand fit were set for this new business, The Co-operative didn't know what this new business should be. We collaborated with 500 consumers, together with a smaller group of academics, psychologists and trend spotters to design the new business. We explored unmet needs and gaps in the market. We co-created over 200 new business ideas and rigorously filtered them down to a winning three. The community then worked on developing the propositions, branding and revenue streams of these three ideas. In less than five months we went from a blank canvas to a business plan approved by the board!

 

read the full Co-operative Group case study

 

A revolutionary healthcare system for Dubai

The Dubai Government is creating a new healthcare system. Promise Communities has been brought in to setup an online advisory board to act as a supplier of stakeholder insight to the design and implementation of the system. 3,000 engaged medics, patients, employers and insurers populate the community. This group is complimented by a small group of experts: from global healthcare government advisors through to Harvard professors. This community has now helped solve a raft of issues, from communication and strategy challenges through to technical decisions. By plugging the voice of the stakeholder to the centre of the decision making process, this will be the world's first co-created healthcare system.

 

read the full DHA case study

 

Other recent uses

• Co-creating a innovative savings tool for a financial services provider
• Help to develop a social web-enabled learning platform for a leading UK university
• Providing a consumer advisory board to a leading luxury hotel chain
• Co-creating new products, services and behaviours with staff: from HR and marketing through to sales and manufacturing

 

Top of page