What to

expect?

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,

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.

The Urban Parent, a universal concept

Urbanization is a trend we can’t beat - so

surely it’s time to join J. Kirby (Harvard Business Review, 2009)

For the first time in history, more than half the

world’s population lives in urban areas. By

2030 this number will increase to almost 5 billion,

with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia

(www.unfpa.org). The urbanization trend should

trigger business questions such as ‘What will

urbanization mean for serving tomorrows

consumers?’ and ‘What new opportunities will

there be for offerings to make customers’ lives

better?’

Quinny, part of the Dorel group, asked themselves

these questions. They believe that this

urbanization trend offers many possibilities. As

parents with a global mindset consider the city as a

place full of opportunities, Quinny believes that it will

also bring forth new growth directions for their brand.

The potential scale and global appeal that is

brought forth by the urbanization movement is

probably leveraged most by today’s global brands.

Quinny is determined to become a global

brand, by developing mobility solutions for

parents around the world that choose to live

in the city.

The switch to this new target group will enable

Quinny to benefit from scalability advantages

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

Urban Parent, but the question remained how to

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.

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.

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.

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.

Next we will discuss each challenge.

1/ Linguistic challenge

2/ Contextual challenge

3/ Engagement challengeFigure 1. The Urban Parents Community

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:

Bringing 7 cultures together

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.

Getting under the skin of mobile parents

‘Dual screen’ refers to the parallel usage of

desktop and mobile connection. The ‘dual

screen’ community solution enabled members to

also perform ‘offline’ tasks, such as sharing the

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:

A second challenge we were facing through this

project, was to get a sufficient number of insights

in their daily lives and routines, almost like an

ethnographic study. Therefore, we enabled the parents

to share as much contextual and personal information

about their environment as possible through a dual

screen mobile community application.

Previous research already proved that

mobile enables participants to better

stay in touch with the community

(Verhaeghe and Willems, 2012). Confirming

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 non-

mobile 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.

1 Mobile application increases community engagement

Table 1. Mobile and platform analytics

Mobile/dual

usersN=28

Desktop-only

usersN=99

Average # posts 33 20

Average # visits 44 19

Average # page views 327 232

Average # words per post 47 87

Total # photos 179* 254

Total # tagged photos 555 516

*The photos of mobile/dual users were submitted through mobile only

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.

2 Mobile application generates more visual feedback

The mobile contributions have had a

major impact on the richness of this

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,

52% of the tags were allocated to

photos generated by mobile.

3 Mobile application results in more contextual and

personal data

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.

Table 2. Tagging framework

Tag categories Total # tags % Tagged photos

submitted

through mobile

N=179 photos*

% Tagged photos

submitted through

desktop

N=254 photos

Brands 52 56% 44%

Products & solutions 27 63% 37%

Mobility 127 60% 40%

Challenges 178 47% 53%

Needs 375 57% 43%

Love for the city 312 44% 56%

*The photos of mobile/dual users were submitted through mobile only

Shaking the cocktail of the parents’ engagement

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

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.

1 Unlock new parenting fun facts

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

2 Shape the future of the Quinny brand

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 topic-

or 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.

3 Reward with parental incentives

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

4 Give recognition to the ‘top 30 Urban Parents’

The universal insights

By keeping the parents engaged long-term

with the community, we obtained rich and

contextual data. After studying the behavior and

needs of this target group, we realized that these

parents share a lot of similar deeper motivations.

Instead of focusing on the country differences, we

identified key ‘universal insights’ that connect

the Urban Parents of the 7 cities, which lies the

fundament for building a global brand. A universal

insight evokes the same ‘Aha, it’s me’ feeling among

people from different cultures around the globe. The

first basic aspect of a strong consumer insight is

‘relevance’. A strong insight automatically calls for

familiarity (‘It’s me’), sometimes to the extent that

you may even learn things about yourself that you

were not aware of before.

Secondly, a strong insight is equal to a sort of ‘Aha’

experience: a combination of surprise and something

familiar. It entails a view on something which was

implicit all that time. Thirdly, the insight should have an

‘emotional valence’. It can be a friction or

problem that consumers want to solve. But it could

also be a desire for something. Consumers should be

excited about having a potential solution. These three

components make up the magic formula for an insight.

The better the insight, the higher the business

potential. It can unlock marketing innovation on

different levels: brand innovation, product innovation,

service innovation, communication and consumer

activation (Verhaeghe et al., 2013).

In total, 6 universal insights were identified that connect Urban Parents around the world, four of which are

described below.

“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 to go ‘back to basic’

and not forget about the authentic things in life such as nature”

“The city can be quite impersonal and I don’t want my children to grow up thinking there

are no people who care about them”

“Although we live in such a big and sometimes anonymous city, I really want my children to feel

safe and at home in our own neighborhood”

1

2

3

4

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.

“My love for my city is so big that I’m ready to take up every challenge accompanied

with this lifestyle”1

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.

“Besides experiencing the dynamics of city life, I want my children to go ‘back to basic’

and not forget about the authentic things in life such as nature”2

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.

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.

“The city can be quite impersonal and I don’t want my children to grow up thinking there

are no people who care about them”3

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.

“Although we live in such a big and sometimes anonymous city, I really want my children to feel

safe and at home in our own neighborhood” 4

Connecting internal stakeholders to the Urban Parents

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).

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

the community from day 1, we needed to

immerse the other stakeholders as well. In

order to catch the attention of sales and

marketing teams, a video about the

community and the results was shown at

various internal events. This video was an

important first step in bringing the consumer

much closer to the employees of Dorel.

Engage with the world of the Urban

Parent

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

there were quite some knowledge gaps. Through

instant feedback, they were confronted with

their own knowledge gaps, creating a positive

disruption. This makes them feel a little bit

uncomfortable about their current view on the

subject and curious about the final outcome of the

project. Afterwards, we presented the insights of

the study in offline sessions to close the

knowledge gaps.

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).

Inspire with eye-openers and insights

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?’).

Activate them by translating insights into

actions

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,

Marketing Director Dorel Europe)

“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)

"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)

The source of inspiration for future innovation

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

The management objective was to reposition the

brand towards the city lifestyle and create relevant

solutions for the Urban Parent. The brand’s

positioning shifted towards a more social

context, taking into account the modern and

extended family. The focus should be on the child

and the parent(s), not the mother alone.

Furthermore, the brand’s focus shifted from

fashion, emphasizing how the mother looks, to

more creativity and skills that parents need to live in

the city.

Branding & Communication: From Looks to

Skills

This shift is illustrated by the example in this

figure. Previous communication (Figure left) was

much more about the looks, showing an

independent woman emphasizing her

appearance, rather than her role as a parent.

The new communication message (Figure 4)

takes the context of the parent into

account much more by showing different

family members, such as the husband; it

also focuses on the skills and resourcefulness

required to live in the city rather than just looks

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)

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”.

Product innovation: surfing in the city

Figure 5. The Longboard Stroller – An experiment in Urban Mobility

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.

From global discoveries to local impact

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.

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.

Tom De Ruyck

Head of Consumer Consulting Boards

InSites Consulting

Anouk Willems

Research Innovation Manager

InSites Consulting

Marieke Koningen

Market Intelligence Manager

Dorel

www.insites-consulting.com

Thank you!

@InSites

marketing@insites-consulting.com

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