Better Research, Better Results: ResearchTech Platform Methodify

Methodify is an automated market research platform and is one of only a handful globally that is specifically developed for automating the entire research process.

The platform makes it easier and faster for companies to access crucial consumer insights at every phase of the product development and marketing process in order to make better business decisions. Taking it one step further, Methodify was designed to be customizable, giving companies consumer feedback to any kind of product, marketing or experiential question — even the ones they haven’t thought of yet. 

Methodify was conceived while conducting repeated concept testing with Canada’s biggest bank. The Methodify team tackled the challenge of helping them do more consumer research while yielding high quality feedback faster.  

The bank was faced with issues common to enterprises today—a significant time crunch to turn products and campaigns around, fewer resources to work with and big budget cuts. While they wanted to include more customer insights more often in their process, they also knew traditional concept, advertising and package design testing involved long, complex research studies that can be slow and costly. 

Let’s put some context around this: organizations want more decisions to be supported by data, putting enormous pressure on their understaffed research and data analytics teams. And we know placing the entire burden of an organization on a handful of staff is a recipe for disaster.

This then leads to marketing teams taking shortcuts and using research tools like Facebook polls to get customer feedback. These DIY techniques often include unscientific polls, which undermine proven research methods, disregard demographic criteria and increase the risk of bias and leading questions.

Rather than attempting to circumvent scientific research methodologies, Methodify seeks to help brands focus their efforts on engaging their consumers throughout the product development and marketing process.

Methodify’s Aim:

To address these challenges, Methodify is designed to be a platform that:

1. Allows marketers to test early and often (adopting a test-and-learn approach that delivers fast results—not waiting for a big reveal a month later);
2. Brings the customer into the conversation at every stage of product development and marketing;
3. Puts rigour around research process. 

How Methodify Achieves the Key Aims

To give the ability to test more often, Methodify is built around an agile philosophy. At the core Methodify ensures the quick-turn research results at an effective price point. The company’s methodologies deliver a better ROI for marketers and insights teams, feeding them with ongoing consumer feedback via shorter, 5-10-minute surveys versus traditional 45-minute surveys that take weeks for results.

To put rigour around the research process, they black boxed proven methodologies that have been written by accredited researchers. The way questions are asked, the order they are in; no one can alter that methodology. This ensures benchmarking and algorithms remain consistent. However, a brand can request to open and change a methodology, creating a net new method on the platform. Only the brand is able to access this new method. 

A Methodify Case Study

One of Canada’s best-selling whisky brands, J.P. Wiser’s, which is produced by Corby Spirit and Wine Limited, used Methodify to help design and refine one of the most hyper-personalized campaigns ever launched in the alcohol industry – Hold it High, which gave people the opportunity to toast each other in a massive way.

At the onset of campaign planning, J.P. Wiser’s established a team that included agency partners from different disciplines and—the thread woven through the campaign planning process—their testing and optimization platform, Methodify. 

Ultimately, the brand wanted to inspire Canadians nationwide to put the same time and care into their friendships as they put into their whisky. To do so, their agency team devised the idea to produce the first completely user-generated campaign for J.P. Wiser’s, offering consumers the opportunity to publicly toast their friends on billboards, radio, and social media. Not knowing what kind of toasts they would receive and what channels to best communicate this in, they engaged Methodify to conduct testing and optimization that would ensure the campaign was a success. By using Methodify to bring the consumers’ voice in more often throughout development, the campaign was ultimately designed for consumers, by consumers.

Since results can be delivered within 1-2 days, each agency partner was able to integrate consumer feedback immediately into their plans. Rather than hinder creative development, the research instead acted as an accelerator.

Market Research Testing Included

• Territory Test: Tested various creative territories to determine which direction resonated most with the target market
• Tactical Execution Testing: Examined which tactics within the winning territory were most desired by the target, in both English and French. 

Using an agile platform like Methodify to make decisions throughout the marketing process gave the J.P. Wiser’s marketing team information that they may not have tested with consumers otherwise. For example, they wouldn’t have tested concept territories prior to engaging an agile market research platform, yet this proved to be critical as key decision makers at Corby were split on the initial territories presented. It also helped prioritize the online, offline and experiential tactics used in the campaign based on consumers’ feedback.

The campaign and the brand is saw strong growth trends as a result, but the most meaningful results came from the personal stories and impact the brand has had on people’s relationships. From a proposal on a billboard in Toronto to a live cross-border toast to the American-Canadian friendship, involving 50 people on both sides of the border in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, the home of J.P. Wiser’s distillery.

Methodify Differentiation

There are four areas where Methodify stands apart from competitors:

There is a clear need for an online research platform that provides the same level of robustness as custom data collection while also providing an easy to use interface like many of today’s DIY solutions. 

1. Ability to customize the platform for companies;
2. As one of the early entrants in the automation market, Methodify is setting standards and innovating the future of automated market research;
3. A 20-year pedigree in the industry between Methodify’s holding company, Delvinia, and AskingCanadians, its online data collection panel;
4. The commitment to research and development to continue innovating through parent company, Delvinia.

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