McCann Worldgroup has embarked on the world’s biggest qualitative market research study. On October 10, approximately 20,000 McCann employees hit the streets in more than 100 countries, to interview everyday people about their lives, attitudes and shopping behaviour.
Every department and level of the network has been enlisted to participate in the study, Truth About Street, from associates to senior management, including creative, business leadership, strategy, production and administrative teams. The questions and conversations are designed to gather additional information and insights about local cultures, brand attitudes, traditional shopping, e-commerce and emerging consumer sentiment.
Ben Lilley (centre: chairman & CEO McCann Australia) & Pat Baron (right: CCO McCann Australia) hit the streets of Melbourne.
Luca Lindner, McCann Worldgroup president, explained, “This is the first time that we have galvanised our entire employee base to help us develop in-depth insights about local culture and its connection today to brand attitudes and shopping behavior. In doing so, our employees will hear first-hand the cultural shifts that are affecting our clients and have a deeper understanding of how to apply these learnings to help grow our client’s brands and businesses.”
Suzanne Powers, McCann Worldgroup global chief strategy officer, noted, “This builds on our initial Truth About Global Brands research, which uncovered shifting human and cultural dynamics, requiring new approaches to marketing that we’ve called ‘Deep Globality.’ By empowering our whole network, we will both be gaining rich truths and inducting everyone personally behind these new global and local perspectives that are influencing how our clients need to go to market.”
Mark Lund, McCann Worldgroup UK, chief executive officer, added, “Understanding how to engage with the consumer today has never been more challenging, as we grapple with the complexities of both our own nation and the world beyond. Specifically, in the UK, Brexit revealed a marked divide across the country today which makes it essential for us to go beyond the news headlines to look at the deeper story and uncover the key tenets that will shape the relationships between brands and consumers in 2018. Over 1500 employees across 9 UK agencies will be out on the streets. It’s tremendously exciting to engage our workforce to such a degree.”
The findings will be incorporated in the next wave of the company’s Truth About Global Brands study, which has been running since 2014 by McCann Worldgroup’s global intelligence unit, McCann Truth Central. The study is an in-depth exploration of the changing dynamics affecting global brand marketing and has so far entailed quantitative work with 30,000 people in 29 countries, supplemented by rich ethnographic research with consumers as well as with marketing, cultural and entertainment experts.
The Truth About Street methodology was first pioneered by McCann Latin America in a 2012 study focused on the consumption of street-vendor food, followed by a study of shopping behaviours in 2013. Following this, Latin America has hit the streets each year with a new topic to continue building on the truths it has found, involving about 2,000 McCann employees in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
