Keeping the brand on the leading edge of the cultural wave is crucial to anticipating and outmanoeuvring competitive threats.
We use cultural and semiotic analysis to reconnect the brand and its communications with today’s emergent cultural agenda and to inject a surge of energy into the brand.
This tool can be used to revitalise and re-express a generic benefit as a brand matures.
This technique helps our clients to:
(i) Discover new perspectives to solve an immediate consumer connection issue
(ii) Understand why brand growth has stagnated
(iii) Reinvigorate a brand or its communication of a core category benefit which has become dated
(iv) Improve the effectiveness and cut-through of brand communication
“The Space Doctors team’s ability to deliver breakthrough semiotics analysis coupled with thought leadership truly impressed me. With the help of the SD team, our brand was able to identify compelling benefit domains that resulted in multiple winning concepts that will propel the business to new heights. The work also inspired the team to assess new equity spaces for the brand to increase its relevancy, expand its benefit territory, and drive trial with new users. I was not only impressed by the results Space Doctors helped our team achieve, but the manner in which the team approached the work. The Space Doctors team was incredibly collaborative, strategic and open to custom designing the work to meet the brand’s needs. Thank you, Space Doctors!”
Lindsay Hess, Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble BRAND RECHARGE – Method
“[Space Doctors] really help create disruption” / “new territories and discourses to connect with consumers better” / “more engaging and contemporary communication”
Catherine Bourdouxhe, P&G Western Europe BRAND RECHARGE - Method
Case Study - Procter & Gamble; Freshness in North America
"Overall the semiotic study completely redefined our understanding of freshness. it have us vivid direction on the optimal language and imagery to leverage in communications, enabling us to move towards a compelling emotional platform for the brand".
Marci Hadley, NA Fabric Care CMK, Procter & Gamble
Discover a new understanding of Freshness communications in the United States, tapping into the new consumer priority: Not just “Is it clean?”, but “Is it Fresh?”
Needs
1. To deliver a rich source of new ideas around freshness and new directions for fabric care.
2. To provide new strategic directions to inspire marketing and brand thinking, potential product innovation routes and new ways to communicate the idea of freshness.
3. To offer insight into what P&G and competitive brands deliver today, and new executional ideas moving forward.
Impact
The lead concept achieved a well above average recall scores, later becoming a core element in new advertising and packaging briefs for communication of the brand restage. Subsequently the findings were applied across a number of other initiatives within the North American Fabric Care portfolio, directed at identifying new scent variants and premium opportunities for the Fabric Enhancement brands
Conclusions
The P&G project team and Space Doctors worked collaboratively to apply the learning and inspiration to a re-stage of the base Downy brand, which turned it into a powerful brand and consumer-relevant idea.
Case Study - Tesco; Price and Promotion
“Space Doctors made a vital contribution to our understanding of the future of retail and the role of price and promotions within it.”
Diane Denham, Senior Marketing Manager - Strategic Insight, Tesco Marketing
Working with Tesco UK to understand the developing nature of retail and new commercial opportunities arising for retail brands across the globe.
Analysis of in-store retail environments (from niche/boutique to mass), expert thinking on retail evolutions, representation of the store in popular culture (TV, editorial, news). Themes such as Social Glue, Sense of Place, Transformative Experience and Shopping as Giving were identified and implications drawn out.
Identified new ways of organising retail space as well as anticipating and mapping the future language of price and promotion.
Case Study - Procter & Gamble; Protection for Feminine Care
To provide improved understanding of the cultural and semiotic significance of the idea of feminine protection and the way these themes are evolving in the US, comparing and contrasting with competitive analysis in Japan and France.
Needs
- How to make ‘feminine care’ more feminine (as part of the P&G’s Beauty business).
- How to identify the sorts of protection which women see as supportive or aspirational
In the first instance, two immediate points of leverage for this study were envisaged :
- Total FemCare Ideation (global)
- Project Ivory concept and communication (NA and subsequently global)
Impact
Space Doctors provided a global analysis of the culture and language of feminine protection, providing insight into new ways of communicating in the FemCare sector. The study plotted the relevant cultural trajectories, mapped the current category language, and made recommendations for its evolution. The collated factors from North America, France, and Japan are being used to inform the creation of global, scaleable packaging and copy briefs.
Conclusion
Space Doctors provided key findings in how consumers respond to Feminine Protection, particularly in the areas of environmental responsibility, and now attitudes towards FemCare are shifting towards freedom, a confident consumer, natural processes and personal safety.
Case Study - Unicef; Evolving Culture of Donation
“Thinking semiotics makes you reinterpret the world around you in a different way. Doing semiotics with Space Doctors has been an exciting experience, both intellectually stimulating and highly enjoyable.”
Omar Mahmoud, Chief of Market Knowledge, Unicef
Semiotic analysis to understand the emerging codes of donation and volunteering in today’s media and culture. Opportunities to leverage these codes to optimize the impact of Unicef’s communication concerned with appeals, greetings and gifting.
Giving is now a self-defining and potentially personally transforming experience. The focus shifts from injustice and redistribution to a perception of the magnitude and urgency of these issues.
Charity communication is responding through a more rational, peer to peer tonality, a move away from portraying children as victims, towards placing emphasis on human spirit, dignity and rights as equals.