Customer Research > Case Study
Customer Research – Qualitative
In 2008 British Gas, a longstanding key client of FDS International and other companies in the Munro Global group, came to us with declining sales figures in their HomeCare insurance/repair product, of approximately 40% below target. This pattern was closely matched to falling response rates across direct media.
In conjunction with OgilvyOne, their direct agency, British Gas needed to reverse the trend; they needed to understand why the response rates were declining and to test their hypotheses around: economic uncertainty, increased competitor activity and adverse effect of the British Gas brand given recent price increases; they also needed to gain a better understanding of consumers attitudes to HomeCare and their views on the new and old creative messages.
From OgilvyOne’s perspective, the significant decline in responses to HomeCare acquisition communications, with sales only 65-70% of target was likely due to:
• the tried and tested channels underperforming
• messages appearing tired, over complicated
The questions and hypotheses set out above were tested by qualitative focus groups.
Study timings were tight, rapid actionable results were needed (brief to de-brief in 3 weeks) and only certain aspects could be changed by British Gas – the advertising creative and product price was changeable – no external factors. Given this, the qualitative research looked to explore the messages in depth.
The research looked initially at how the external factors may be affecting the response rates. How the public views of the economy and of the boiler-care insurance category in general were having an effect. The view was that boiler care was not in the same category as car, home and life insurance, falling instead into the ‘nice to have’ category, with health and dental. The most successful creative tested later on in the groups had the added advantage of propelling the offer further towards the ‘must have’ benchmarks of home and car insurance.
The worries about product price were unfounded; respondents appreciated honest and open costs and there were not severe worries about the economy. Indeed the view that the clearer all inclusive costs would be the best for British gas to advertise was particularly strong when combining with creative that demonstrated the product benefits and value-for-money. The view was that the more straight forward, clear and easy to understand the better.
These views have been taken right through the campaign strategy by OgilvyOne/British Gas; the basis for the creative campaign is to ‘Bring HomeCare back to basics’. Post-research, all creative is now benchmarked against the standards defined by the FDS study, to keep in line with the 'back-to-basics' ethos.
Additional door drop tests showed that the ‘Invoice’ message creative (using the FDS research learning and FDS guided new creative approach to the fullest) performed better than both the control message (no research learnings applied) and the adapted control message (some research learnings applied to message presentation, not to content).
Once the new direct creative was launched, British Gas and OgilvyOne saw a 56% increase in response rates which is our best ever response through this channel. |
