What to

expect?

Figure 1.

A brave new visual world

“Something is happening. We are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the

world is being accomplished not through words but by reading images.” - Paul Martin Lester, Syntactic

theory of visual communication

Images increasingly dominate our world. Visual

communication has always been the most impactful

human type of communication from the cavemen’s

drawings in ancient times until today’s LED billboards,

multi-media online games or 3D television spots.

Research indicates that people remember 30% of what

they read, but about 80% of what they do and see

(Lester, 1994). Images have the ability to connect

people across countries, cultures and beyond

languages. They possess the ability to express certain

ideas better than any spoken language can. Just think of

the power of iconography used in airports and

other public buildings or the visual traffic signs

recognized across the globe.

In the digitized world, people almost automatically use pictures to start

conversations and express themselves. There are several illustrations of

this within new emerging social media channels. Instagram, an online photo

sharing and social networking service, just recently hit 100 million active

monthly users (Techcrunch, 2013). Twitter, a primarily text-based media

format, just launched its video-sharing platform Vine. However, the fastest

growing visual social network at the moment is Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social image bookmarking system where users can post

(‘pin’), search, like, comment and repost (‘repin’) visual content into

collections (‘boards’) that can be viewed from their profile. Pinterest offers an

easy way to find and collect design and broad lifestyle ideas. It is comparable

with an online scrapbook.

Although the site was only launched in 2010, it quickly became one of

the most popular social media sites ever. Early 2012, the platform was

announced as the fastest site in history to break through the ‘10 million

unique visitors’ mark (Techcrunch, 2012). At this moment, it is the third

largest network in the US, right behind Facebook and Twitter (Mashable,

2013).

1

2

3

To start with, it is one of the first truly visual platforms allowing brands to present their

products to consumers. It can be viewed as a personal online catalogue where consumers

pin their wish lists of products they would like to possess. The visual nature of the platform also

makes for a great platform for branding: through visuals, mood boards and look books the

brand personality can easily be expressed, e.g. by pinning both their own products and mood

pictures as well as other visuals which express the identity of the brand.

Second, Pinterest is unique because so far it has mainly attracted women (Van Belleghem &

Thijs, 2012).

And last but not least, Pinterest is one of the platforms with the highest conversion rates.

Recent statistics show that it drives more referral traffic to retailers and company websites than

any other social media platform (Smith, 2013). This fact alone cements the argument that the

immediacy of visuals is important for marketing and branding.

Next to the fast expansion of the platform, Pinterest also has some

other distinctive characteristics that have drawn the attention of marketers:

As a fashion company, DIESEL can use Pinterest as a brand-

building exercise where they can tell the brand story, showcase

DIESEL’s many facets, display individual collections and campaigns

and where anyone can learn what the brand stands for. DIESEL

launched its Pinterest page in the early days of the platform. Over

the last year, they maintained their boards merely as a mirror of their

Facebook content. The strategy was to showcase their collection

as a lifestyle brand.

Because of all the previously mentioned characteristics of the platform, Pinterest has also

drawn the attention of the digital marketing department at DIESEL

DIESEL recognizes the need for social currency among today's increasingly digitalized

generation Y and is focusing its efforts on Pinterest as the ideal location to inspire and connect

with females within their desired target demographic. DIESEL is known for tapping into subcultures

with self-aware marketing, which is also the case on Pinterest. The platform allows DIESEL to

build a unique look and feel by making it easy for them to bring the personality and

DNA of the brand in an accessible magazine-like online display.

Early 2013, the growing popularity of the platform brought Pinterest into strategic focus in its own right.

Additionally, considering DIESEL’s strategic decision to augment its focus on communicating with

women and the fact that Pinterest is more used by women, DIESEL wanted to focus its efforts on

Pinterest to use it as a valuable communication channel to connect with this female target group

online. In order to optimize the platform for brand activation, instead of a repository of Facebook content,

there was a strong need for insights on the best digital strategy for the DIESEL Pinterest page.

Figure 2 - The DIESEL Pinterest page

1 How can we help marketers to deal with new and visual communication

platforms such as Pinterest? To create a strategy specific to Pinterest, we had to

understand both the current value of the DIESEL Pinterest page as well as the mechanisms

that would help DIESEL increase the activation value of their page.

2 In sharp contrast with the rapid evolution and proliferation of visual material,

in market research, we still mainly rely on the power of words and numbers.

Through the case study, we wanted to describe how market researchers can make an

effective use of the power of images throughout the entire research process.

In a final section, we will evaluate our success by looking

at the Return Of Images (or ROI), both for DIESEL and

for the researchers.

In the remaining part of this paper, we will describe our journey with DIESEL through this

brave new visual world. More specifically we will address two challenges

Challenge 1: How to assess and increase the

value of a Pinterest page

In the old world, marketers had control. Today we see

that consumers have moved into the driver’s seat, more so

than ever before. Gradually, we saw marketing moving towards

working together with consumers, collaborating with

them and achieving goals through them. The days are

gone where we send out messages and want people to go to

the store and buy our products or brands.

Today we need to engage consumers to

participate in our brand activation.

We are adapting strategies from

‘marketing to consumers’ to

‘marketing through

consumers’.

In sharp contrast with this changing world, many marketers are still using

advertising and digital communication in a predominant

unidirectional way. Even in assessing the success of their brand

activations, they tend to focus on large scale reach KPIs such as the number

of likes, followers or fans of a page. Generating reach might be easy and

often is a question of buying media space, but ultimately it only stays a

reflection of low-value consumer brand commitment. In addition, brands

often simply copy offline brand activation into the digital world. This

type of repeated content mostly lacks stimulation of consumers to activate

through their brand affection. The real value of digital media lies in

creating true engagement and brand intimacy with consumers -

which preferably grows organically. This is the difference between a product

that reaches you and a product that grabs you!

Changing the hearts and minds:

Although we often refer to a follower of a social media brand page as a ‘fan’, arguably a fan is

really somebody who loves and buys the brand. Real ‘fans’ are consumers who strongly

identify with a brand and who state a clear preference for this brand over others. For

DIESEL we had to find out how many of their Pinterest page follower really identified and

preferred the brand over competitor brands. In addition, fans have a considerable knowledge of

the brand, the products and the company. In DIESEL’s case, for example, this means that they

not only know the main brand DIESEL, but that they can articulate the differences between the

sub-labels such as DIESEL Black Gold, 55DSL and DIESEL kids, or they are well aware of the

new collections launched by the DIESEL brand.

1

In order to assess the ‘real’ value of the current Pinterest DIESEL page and to understand the

drivers for engagement, we applied the activation model (Van Belleghem, 2010). This model is

extremely valuable because it reveals higher levels of consumer brand-commitment. The activation model

claims that value can be assessed on two main dimensions:

2 Changing the actions:

Academic research has shown that brand identification also reinforces purchase behavior

(Lam et al. 2012). So we should know to what extent the DIESEL content on Pinterest

drives online and offline store visits and buying behavior. Additionally, we should look

beyond conversion. If one really understands COBRAs (Consumers Online and Offline Brand-

Related Activities), brand activation efforts will lead to advocacy: you can influence what your

followers do for your brand and what impact their actions have on others. They will spread

your message by connecting with their networks.

Successful brand activation can only be achieved if you get insights on current

consumers’ online and offline brand-related actions (COBRAs) (Muntinga et al., 2011 and

Van Belleghem, 2010). For example in the case of DIESEL’s Pinterest efforts, COBRAs range from

passively browsing the DIESEL Pinterest page, pinning DIESEL content on their own board, or

even commenting or creating new DIESEL-related pins.

It is important to realize that we do not limit ourselves

to understanding only Pinterest-related actions. We

want to understand the COBRAs of the current

Pinterest user in all its facets, online and offline. We

are also interested in learning more on the actions

they undertook offline (e.g. word-of-mouth).

To build successful brand activations or, in the case of DIESEL, a valuable Pinterest page

The activation model states that you should get insights in two aspects:

Identification

Previous research on explaining brand success (Van den Bergh, 2012) states that brand

identification is a crucial condition for building engagement. Brands can only be

successful if there is a large overlap between the brand and consumer identity. We need

to understand what makes people tick - not only in the digital space but also in the real world. Who

are the people who are currently engaging with DIESEL content? What is their lifestyle? How do

they differ from consumers who do not engage with the brand? Why did consumers interact with the

DIESEL content or with brand-related content in general? These can be extrinsic motivators (such

as being paid or winning something), but they can also be intrinsic triggers (access to exclusive

information, content and entertainment).

1

Content

In addition, we need to understand how can we translate self-identification into the online

world. Which types of DIESEL content and DIESEL-related content is the DIESEL target group

using, spreading or creating? How should the content be executed? What style of content is

contagious? Which format and execution works best for the true DIESEL fans in order to touch

their hearts and minds and trigger their actions?

2

Challenge 2: Unlocking the power of images in

research

The core of the DIESEL project was to optimize one of the leading visual based social media.

In addition, the DIESEL case is also a showcase of how market research can make a better use

of powerful images.

Working with images also leads to new challenges for market research. Especially when it

comes to analyzing visual content, there is a lack of clear guidelines - what exactly is the

data? Moreover, truth is in the eye of the beholder. The same picture will be interpreted differently

depending on who is doing the analysis. The challenge for analysis becomes even greater when

looking at the social web where we see an explosion of visual content. We are left with the

question of how we can best tackle these vast numbers of images.

Visuals can increase the quality of the research. We all know that participating in research

is often considered as too boring. As a result, participants engage minimally and with the

intention of ‘getting through it’ as fast as possible, straight lining, speeding or simply dropping

out. It is evident that visuals and video play a big role in improving the participant experience.

Visuals draw more attention to surveys and reduce the cognitive effort it takes for participants to

take part in the research (Mahon Haft & Dillman, 2010).

Analyzing visual content

Increase the quality of research

Visual reporting styles enhance client comprehension, recognition and belief in research

results, memorization of conclusions and recommendations and client-side after-project

activation. To practice what we are preaching, we wanted to try a non-conformist way of disclosing

the research results to the DIESEL team as well as DIESEL’s agency. We therefore presented it in an

art exhibition format, using modern museum techniques such as quiz interactions, visual displays,

etc.

In response to the trend where people are using pictures and videos to express their ideas, feelings and

messages on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, we should give research participants the option

to ‘answer’ with a visual if this allows them to better express their opinion. By offering them an

alternative channel of voicing their ideas, we might get access to new types of information.

Visuals can help uncover new insights

Visual reporting styles

We applied a hybrid methodology where all opportunities were

embedded that images offer us. We started of by investigating some data

on the current usage of the Pinterest pages. We collaborated with a social

media monitoring tool, Octopin, specialized in collecting behavioral

data on Pinterest. One nice feature of Octopin is that it does not only give

insights in the number of followers, pins and comments of a page, but it can

also automatically detect similarities between pictures by using automated

pattern detection which is a first way to deal with the challenge of analyzing

visuals. Octopin allows you to quantify the pictures efficiently. This

way, we could easily identify current top content on the Pinterest

page.

We also used existing Pinterest content as

a base for netnography. Netnography is a

type of ethnography where the user-generated

content coming from individuals on social

media is analyzed with the goal of finding new

insights (Kozinetz, 1998; Verhaeghe at al.,

2009). Just like the activation model states,

we had to find out which online content

the DIESEL target group was engaged

in. Therefore, the goal of the netnography was

to identify online personae for Pinterest. For

each persona, we created a mood board

comprising typical content that this persona would find engaging. To do so, we collected a random

sample of boards from over 500 Pinterest users. Next, we created an online segmentation based only

on the visual information. Instead of applying automated analysis, we decided to apply the guidelines for

visual analysis put forward by Sara Pink (2001).

1 Similarities and absence:

Grouping pictures based on similarities or absence of certain themes. We started to

group the different Pinterest users according to similarities between their pictures.

This was done based both on shared common interests and on aesthetic themes. For

example, we noticed that certain boards shared color palettes. It is important to mention that

some boards were also clustered because they lacked the presence of certain themes. For

example, fashion is one of the biggest categories on Pinterest; however, for some of the

segments, this content was completely absent.

Intimacy:

The focus and perspective of the images reveal something about the emotional

distance and importance of the different elements in the picture. On Pinterest, we

identified two typologies: on the one hand we had ‘portraits’ where the camera focuses on

one or several subjects set off in focus from the background. Usually these subject take up

to more than 50% of the picture plane. Portraits typically suggest intimacy and

aspiration with an object. They can be utilized to identify passion points and

may signal brand preference. On the other hand, we had images that we classified as

‘scenes’. Scenes focus the camera of a ‘mise en scène’ to describe the relationship

between objects or moods in a given view. They typically suggest certain mood or values

(such as sociability, wealth, tranquility, nature). The combination of portraits and scenes in

a user’s post helped establish what their primary subjects of interest are.

2

Abstraction:

Different categories should be grouped in higher-level conceptual constructs; in

our analysis, we tried to apply several theoretical frameworks to the data. We

applied for example the identification model (Van den Bergh & Behrer, 2013) to the pins

by looking specifically at uploaded user-generated content. The rationale behind this was

that we hoped to get a glance of the offline lifestyle through the user-created

online content. The identification model specifies that some people like to express their

identity by showing their skills whereas other people will express themselves more

through their physical appearance and looks. We clearly found these theoretical

constructs back in the data. Some segments had a lot of pins referring to crafts, cooking,

DIY and household tips whereas other segments clearly pinned more fashion-, manicure-

and fitness-related content.

3

The second group comprised active Pinterest

users who did not follow DIESEL. The third

group comprised people who were online but

not active on Pinterest. The two latter groups

were important because they represent potential

new followers of the DIESEL Pinterest page; as

such, their reaction to the current content is a

reasonable measure of how successful we were

with the existing Diesel Pinterest page. We

recruited people through both the Survey

Sampling International research panel and a

special research pin that was placed on the

DIESEL Pinterest page, which was intended to

attract a sufficient sample of current DIESEL

Pinterest followers. In total, we engaged 1,222

people: 205 followers of the DIESEL

Pinterest page, 608 Pinterest users and 407

people of the target groups with an online

presence.

One of the main challenges of using social media

(visual or textual) as the base for insight

generation is the lack of profile information. To

get a better understanding of what makes

the DIESEL target group tick, we also

conducted a digital survey to get a full

understanding of the COBRAs. We

connected with three distinct groups within

DIESEL’s target (25-34 year-old non-rejectors of

DIESEL) in the UK and the US. The first group

comprised the current followers of the

Pinterest DIESEL page. DIESEL had 5,657

followers at the start of the project and assessing

this group could give us an idea of the current

value of the Pinterest page. Moreover, we wanted

to find out to what extent they could help DIESEL

in further promoting the DIESEL content through

their own networks.

People were presented with a mood board of content

for each persona and were asked to indicate which

mood board they found most engaging. By doing this

exercise we identified content which was

appealing for the current followers, the

Pinterest users and also the online target group.

As mentioned before, visuals can help increase

participant experience. Since we were talking to the

DIESEL target group, we understood more than ever

that we had to make sure that this consumer touch

point was also in line with other communication

DIESEL was doing.

According to the activation model, we measured

brand identification, brand preference and

brand knowledge (hearts and minds), current

buying behavior of the Diesel brand,

intention to visit the (online) store

(conversion), online and offline word-of-

mouth and recommendation behavior

(advocacy). In addition, we assessed the lifestyle

and profile of the different groups in our study to

really identify what makes them tick. The survey

also helped us link the digital personae we had

found in the netnography to the DIESEL target

group.

Throughout the setup of the survey we collaborated with the digital agency of DIESEL

‘Superheroes’ to create the look and feel of the survey (see figure 3). By using the power of pictures

in this case, we also hoped to make the surveying process more pleasant for the participants.

Figure 3 - Visually appealing survey for activation mapping

Visuals can be a great way to get higher quality answers on topics that are

hard to express in words. To further understand the mechanisms and trends behind

why a certain person finds a certain mood board attractive, we gave participants the

opportunity to create a new DIESEL Pinterest board themselves in the

survey. Instead of asking them through an open question what content they find

engaging for the DIESEL Pinterest page, we involved them in an interactive, visual

game. Participants were asked to create a Pinterest board they thought would be

appealing for another participant in the study. Once they were done, their work

was sent to another participant in the study for evaluation. This way of working

revealed not only information on suitable content for the boards but also

helped us to reveal the reason behind the engagement.

The Return On Images

Images are the new currency. The Diesel project allowed us to test the real

power of visuals. But how successful did we cope with our challenges?

Knowledge leverage

With our approach, we wanted to detect new insights to build the DIESEL Pinterest

strategy. One of the characteristics of a good insight is that it has an element of freshness. We had

to get to DIESEL with new information, information they did not know yet. We managed

to discover new insights in the following areas:

First of all, we were able to estimate the value of the current DIESEL Pinterest pages and

the potential to attract and engage new people. We discovered that although the current group of

followers was limited to 5,657 people, which is a relatively small reach, the value of this group was

excellent: 57% of the group have a very strong identification with the brand; 53% considered DIESEL

as their favorite clothing brand and the average knowledge of DIESEL, including its sub-brands, was

very high. When looking at their buying behavior, almost half of them indicated buying DIESEL

frequently and [respectively 58% and 67%] were planning for sure to visit the online and offline stores

in the next two months. It was clear that the followers of the page were true-type Diesel fans.

However, despite this brand identification, the current followers were no advocates. To start with, the

current followers of the DIESEL page did not engage sufficiently with the content. There

were only a few pins, repins and comments regarding DIESEL’s original content.

Estimate to value of the current DIESEL Pinterest pages

Estimate the value of the current DIESEL Pinterest pages

In addition, we were able to detect how we could improve consumers’ engagement

with the DIESEL Pinterest page by investigating self-identification within the target

group. We applied the CRUSH identification model which states that consumers express

their identity according to four dimensions (see both axes in figure 4). (Van den Bergh, Behrer,

2013)

Figure 4 - Digital strategy for the DIESEL Pinterest Page

When looking at the group of Pinterest users among

the target that were not following the DIESEL brand

(indicated in figure 4 by the ‘P’ logo), we found that a

substantial subset of them did not connect with

this ‘change’ motivation. It was clear that attracting

them would be a hard fit with the current brand

positioning. However, among this same group, there

was also a substantial number who were oriented

toward ‘change in life’, but were much more we-

oriented. Finally, we also looked at the target

group with online presence (indicated in figure 4

by the WWW) who appeared to be definitely situated

on the skills axis but were less extravert and less

stimulation junkies.

We detected that the majority of the DIESEL target

(across the three subgroups - indicated in Fig 6 by

DIESEL label - size of the label indicates group

size) scored very high on the dimension ‘change’ (y

axis). They appeared to be people who do not like

status-quo in life and are mainly looking to

maximize fun and excitement in life. This

motivation was also present among the current

group of Pinterest DIESEL followers, but in addition

this group also scored high on the dimension ‘me’

(right side of the x axis): they wanted to impress

people, buy trendy products and luxury

brands, show their style and were generally a

very good personification of DIESEL’s

current slogan ‘for successful living’.

Considering the value of the current Pinterest DIESEL page followers, we wanted to

provide content that would keep this group of people happy, as that could also

encourage them to engage more with the current DIESEL content.

Our analysis helped us to shape a strategic focus for the Pinterest page:

1

2 In order to broaden the scope of the page, DIESEL also wanted to attract more

Pinterest users situated on the we-side of the scheme. Although both groups

are quite far apart, they have in common that they score high on the ‘change‘

dimension. As such, DIESEL wanted to explore this axis with its content.

3 Finally, they decided to also add some boards that focused more on the skill

axis. This way, they could again reach out to the Pinterest target group on the we-

side but also additionally stimulate some people in the online target group.

Determine the right type of content

We were able to determine the right type of content by linking our digital personas to the

lifestyle segments that we based our strategy on (see figure 5).

Figure 5 – Matching digital persona’s with strategic focus

The designer persona collects and disseminates

visual content they find commendable and

artistically inspiring. Good design is seen as cool

and elevates users above mainstream popular culture

which is ‘banal’, not ‘sophisticated’ or not ‘intellectual’.

The hipster persona stands for the alternative

counterculture consumer, inspired more by group art,

design and independent music interests than by the

mainstream consumptive society. They value creation

and not simply consumption, or creative reuse of

products. Finally, a substantial part of the online

target of DIESEL that was not active on

Pinterest and also situated on the skill axis were

motivated by the ‘geek’ persona. Geeks use

Pinterest to advertise outside affiliations, they are logo-

centric, love computer games and cars and stress that

they are part of an insider group.

Our netnography revealed that there are at least

8 distinct online personae on Pinterest. The

current followers of the page, situated at the

change & me side of the model, were most

engaged by the ‘high street’ persona. This persona

mainly emphasized product consumption and

aspiration as defined by consumer fashion

magazine and celebrity styles in their boards. In

addition, there was a substantial group of ‘model

mainstream’, who are appearance-motivated

consumers aspiring an exclusive educated, affluent

young urban lifestyle, among the current fan base.

In order to keep the current fan base on board, it

was clear that the new DIESEL content had to

be in line with both personae. In order to attract

more people situated on the we-side, DIESEL

could get inspiration from the designers and

hipsters boards.

We also derived guidelines on how (style, format and tone of voice) the pins should

be executed. For example: the top content of the current DIESEL page made it very clear that

their current audience on Pinterest was very responsive toward quotes. Hence, as a general

guideline, it was advisable to add several quotes to the different Pinterest boards to

maintain current interest.

Our recommendations were not limited to suitable themes

The successful leverage of knowledge was also

confirmed in a small quiz and survey upfront, where

both the DIESEL team and DIESEL’s digital agency

had to predict the study’s results. The quiz

revealed that our research clearly filled a

knowledge gap for the team: the scores

indicated that the team had few insights

upfront on the value of the current Pinterest

page regarding its effectiveness and

relationship to their existing content strategy.

During the quiz, we also gave the team a creative

exercise during which they were asked to compose

a board that would be engaging for their current

Pinterest followers. When analyzing their selected

images, we found that the digital strategy team

mainly selected images from the Hipsters and

Model Mainstream personae, while neglecting

to include any images belonging to the most

dominant online persona, the High Street.

In addition, the fact that the DIESEL team consistently

selected images from two personae demonstrated the

validity of our digital personae. The results of the quiz

where confirmed by a small satisfaction survey among

the digital communication team: on a 5-point scale, the

entire digital marketing team indicated completely

agreeing that this study resulted in new insights. In

addition, we obtained high scores on all items

referring to clarity, ease of interpretation,

simplicity, uniqueness and trustworthiness of the

results (see Table 1).

Table 1 – Results satisfaction research

Internal leverage

Today, we see the rise of infographics together

with a growing attention for new ways of data

visualization. As we believe that images can be a

good way to communicate effectively, we decided to

make optimal use of them when presenting the insights

to the digital communication team at DIESEL. Instead of

just presenting the results in a standard presentation,

we set up a research art exhibition, allowing the

team to interact with the different results as

image boards and discover the results in an

image-based less mediated format. It is a well-

known fact that art can be a very strong vehicle to

channel emotions and trigger reactions.

The mix of methodologies led to a wide

range of new insights. With all of this rich

data, the remaining challenge was to

communicate our results in a way that the

DIESEL digital communication team would

know how to act upon the results. Visuals

help to take down communication

barriers between brands and

consumers. They can help to better convey

research results to our clients. We often

make reports that are too lengthy to be

processed by the average consumer,

whereas we have the ability to explain our

message through visuals in a (couple of)

powerful images.

The first section was dedicated to presenting the online personae: for each

persona, we created a mood board representing the type of content

this persona finds engaging. To go beyond pure observation of these mood

boards, we provided the team with several probing cards containing questions

that went back to the principle of visual analysis outlined by Pink (2011). The

visitors of the exhibition were challenged to look for similarities

between different elements of the mood boards (similarities), to come

up with evidence for an assumption they had about a certain persona

(absence, abstraction, etc.). In addition they could also play the same game

the participants had played in the survey: they were confronted with a collage

made by one of the participants in the study and had to estimate if this content

was engaging for a given persona.

Our art exhibition was divided in three sections:

1

Fig 6 – scan this QR code to get an impression

of the art exhibition

2 In the second section of the exhibition, we featured the competitive online

space. A first ‘piece of art’ contained top content from DIESEL’s competitors.

Again, we stimulated the crowd to reflect upon the content by using

probing cards. This time, the visitors were asked to put themselves into

the shoes of their online target and estimate the reaction of this

consumer based on the competitive online content. The consumer

perspective was reflected in three Mondrian-like infographics showing the

connectivity of the target group in the online space.

3 The final section was created to stimulate thinking on the current content of

the DIESEL page. It contained a wall with top content and an

infographic with the conclusion of the exit forum, describing the

actions consumers would take if they were driving DIESEL’s

strategy. In addition, the team could play a game during which they were

asked to rank a selection of the existing pins on consumer appeal. Once

finished, they could turn around the visuals to detect the research results and

then reflect about their mistakes.

Once all the team members had visited the exhibition, we brought the group back

together to connect the digital strategy with the insights gained from the

exhibition. For each of the spearheads within our new strategy, we used our

inspiration and newly acquired knowledge to determine the content of new boards on

DIESEL’s Pinterest page.

the results were inspirational, recognizable, concrete and

illustrative for the consumer’s daily life and made the

team feel closer to the consumer (see Table 2). It also

increased internal leverage through conversational powers as

the art exhibition participants of the DIESEL and Superheroes

team indicated that they were going to talk about this study and

share the insights with colleagues. People indicated they were

going to use the results of this study in their daily job while

making plans for the future and endorsing more consumer-

oriented decisions. Overall, they valued the study as more

valuable on average than other consumer research

studies they had participated in in the past.

Again, we also assessed to what extent the

research led to an internal impact within the

team. First, the qualitative feedback after the workshop

illustrated the value of our visual approach. The art

exhibition enabled a very tangible way to teach the team

how to execute the new digital strategy. They felt that

we had really brought the consumer alive beyond just

reading a profile of a target group. They felt very

involved during the workshop and as a result they had

the feeling they had a better understanding of the

conclusions of the research and were more capable of

remembering and incorporating them. Our findings were

again confirmed by the evaluation survey:

Table 2 – Results satisfaction survey

The ultimate value of the study of course lays it

the final usage of the results. Only a couple of

weeks after the workshop, DIESEL started to

use the insights and new approach to

reshape their Pinterest page. As mentioned

before, the majority of the current Pinterest

followers appeared to be attracted by a mix of the

‘model mainstream’ and ‘High street’ personae,

both profiles who really value fashion content.

However, our analysis had demonstrated that Figure 7 - Beached out: moving from catwalk models to achievable fashion

especially the model mainstreams were looking for more achievable fashion closer to their own lifestyle.

The current looks displayed on the boards where often too hard to put into practice for this DIESEL fan base. They

could not relate to it in their personal lives. There was also a call to feature the fashion industry more naturally, e.g. by

featuring more behind-the-scene images or natural poses. Therefore, DIESEL decided to feature its swimwear

collection in a natural environment in the ‘Beached out’ board (figure 7).

Our goal was to keep DIESEL’s current Pinterest

followers engaged on the one hand, while broadening

the scope on the other hand. To do so, we learned that

a large part of the DIESEL target is constantly looking

for stimulation. We discovered that we could express

this need for ‘change’ through images that depict a

challenge for people to get the most out of life. For

example, we found that the most popular content often

showed people partying or having fun with

friends. Many pictures were referring to social

drinking. DIESEL used this insight to create a new

board called ‘Sunday rocks’ where style tips were

shown for summer festivals such as Coachella. In

addition, they created a board called ‘Before You’re

Boring’ containing a “bucket list” of things one

should definitely do in life (see figure 8).

Figure 8: ’Before You’re Boring’: a board unifying ‘we’ versus ‘me’ segments

We also went deeper into the most appropriate content

for people who express themselves mainly along the ‘skills

axis’ of the identification model (Van den Bergh & Behrer,

2013). The results showed that there were three

interesting distinct personae ho could bring inspiration

here: designers, hipsters and geeks. Designers and

hipsters really seem to be sensitive to both the content of

the images and the overall color palettes (e.g. coherent

boards featuring trending colors such as bright yellow,

mono-chrome or sepia) and style (e.g. boards

communicating a focus on details/close-ups of objects).

Geeks on the other hand value technologies such as

DIESEL watches and even the link to DIESEL’s

cooperation with Ducati motorbikes. We brought this type

of content to life in a board called ‘For Him Indoors’,

which demonstrated a mix of design elements and

technology in a neutral or mono-chromatic color palette

(figure 11).

Figure 9: For him indoors

External leverage

In a final step we also assessed the external

leverage of this DIESEL study. Did we succeed in

increasing the value of their DIESEL Pinterest

page? To assess this question, we asked the initial

participants who took part in the activation mapping

to follow the DIESEL Pinterest page (even if initially

this was not the case) and asked their opinion on

our new research-informed strategic content.

We also monitored the behavior on the revived page

through Octopin. Of the 296 people who took part in

our final evaluation, 73% indicated finding the new

content to be an improvement. The ‘Sunday rocks’

board, where DIESEL depicted fashion more

naturally, was appealing (top 2) to 67% of the

sample. Especially among the Model Mainstreams,

one of the groups who expressed a desire for more

achievable images of fashion, we saw a positive

evaluation of this board.

‘Before You’re Boring’, created to appeal to

everybody residing within the ‘change’ dimension,

was rated as appealing by Designers (77% top 2)

and Hipsters (70% top 2) as well as by High Street

(85% top 2) and Geeks (82% top 2), four

segments which reside on different edges of our

framework. This result demonstrates that

content reflecting ‘stimulation’ and ‘change’

really unifies the DIESEL consumers. ‘For

Him Indoors’ appealed to both the Designers

(77%) and Geeks (71%). ‘Beached out’ got the

best rating overall (82% top 2 overall) but was

characterized by a very high top 1 score for

Hipsters along the we-side of the scheme, as was

intended (52% top 1).

In comparison with the start of our study and the

measurement after one month of the new strategy, the

number of followers increased by 25% (from 5,657

to 7,062). 28% of the DIESEL Pinterest page at the

last assessment contained new content showing

that DIESEL clearly incorporated the results of

the study. This new content helped DIESEL to increase

the number of likes and re-pins, 41% and 44%

respectively, in only one month’s time. Although at the

moment of writing this paper, the new strategy has only

been implemented for a couple of weeks and therefore, it

is hard to predict the future success of the page, we

have already seen the first results on the quality of the

page.

Overall, 55% claim that the new content

stimulates them to talk (online) about DIESEL;

59% say that the new content stimulates them to

recommend the brand; 71% find they now have

better knowledge of the Diesel collection and

65% state they identify more with the brand

thanks to the new content. It seems that our

strategy should also result in sales: 67% and 69%

respectively claim they will visit the offline or online

stores in the near future, whereas 59% say that the

new content will lead them to buying DIESEL in the

future.

Conclusion

This is where the real power of images is hidden:

pictures appeal to all people, independent of

background, profession or role because they are

interpretable. While the DIESEL team was open to the

vulnerability of this interpretation, they have reaped the

benefits of courageously engaging with the COBRAs.

Images will increasingly take a dominant role in

our profession. They truly are worth ‘thousands of

words’. We have reached the age of the image. It’s now

up to the research industry and to marketers in general

to adapt their offerings to the consumer trend that has

already been illustrated by the successes of Instagram

and Pinterest.

Our study demonstrated a clear return of

images in digital marketing. Pictures have

never been so powerful! It comes as no surprise

that brands are looking for new ways to best use

these new visual platforms for brand activation

and communication. In market research, we still

mainly rely on the power of words and numbers;

even when we use visuals, we do so with

supplemental and static visual media, which are

rapidly becoming outmoded. Although all types of

data have their value, this case clearly shows that

we should increase the usage of images in

the future both in (digital) marketing

strategies and in the research industry. We

have shown in this paper that visual channels and

communication methods improve connections

between marketers/researchers and consumers

as well as between research agencies and their

clients.

Acknowledgements

This paper is the result of the efforts of from a larger team. The authors would therefore like to thank

the following contributors: Filip De Boeck and Sam Omans for their work on creating the digital

personae for Pinterest. Joost Van Eyck and Isabel Vandenbergh for their assistance in collecting

the Pinterest pictures. Veerle Van Hoecke, Georgiana Murg, Kevin Gabbard, Constantin

Ivanov, Sabinus Neculae, Alexandra Filipas, Alina Stanci and Diana Balotescu for the

implementation and analysis of the Activation mapping. Survey Sampling International for their

partnership on the data collection. Wouter Nuytten from Octopin (www.octopin.com) for partnering

up with us in the social media monitoring of Pinterest with his fantastic tool. We are also very grateful

to Grace Cowlard of the digital agency hellosuperheroes (www.hellosuperheroes.com) for her

openness and enthusiasm to cooperate with the execution of the Pinterest strategy and the copy and

look and feel of the survey. Finally, we are extremely thankful to the entire digital marketing team

at DIESEL for their collaboration in the art exhibition, satisfaction survey and quiz. Thank you!

References

Lester, P.M. (1994). Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication, California State University at

Fullerton.

Kozinets, R.V. (1998). On Netnography: Initial Reflections on Consumer Research

Investigations of Cyberculture, in Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 25, ed., Joseph

Alba and Wesley Hutchinson, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 366-371

Lam, S.K., Ahearne, M., Y. & Schillewaert, N. (2010). Resistance to brand switching when a

radically new brand is introduced: A social identity theory perspective. Journal of Marketing,

74 (6), 128-146.

Mahon-Haft T.A. & Dillman D.A. (2010), Does visual appeal matter? Effects of Web aesthetics

on survey quality. Survey research methods, VOL 4, No 1, 43-59

Muntinga D., Moorman, M., Smit E.G. (2011). Introducing Cobra’s: Exploring motivations for

brand related social media usage. International journal of advertising. VOL 30, No 1, 13-46.

Pink, S. (2001). Doing Visual Ethnography. Images, Media and Representation in Research.

Sage Publications: London.

Smith, J. (2013). Social networking for marketers: how Pinterest Crushes Facebook.

Infographic on Bloomreach.com. Retrieved on June 10th, 2013.

Van den Bergh, J. & Behrer, M. (2013). How cool brands stay hot: Branding to Generation Y.

Second edition. Kogan Page.

Van Belleghem, S. (2010). The conversation manager. Uitgeverij Lanoo.

Van Belleghem, S. (2012). Social media around the world study. By InSites Consulting on

Slideshare. Retrieved on June 11th, 2013.

Verhaeghe, A. and Willems, A. (2012). Exploring the unexplored in the mobile research space.

Proceedings for Esomar 3D conference 2012 Amsterdam.

Verhaeghe, A, Schillewaert, N., Van den Berge. (2009). Getting answers without asking

questions. Proceedings for esomar online conference 2009 Chicago.

February 7, 2012. "Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any

Standalone Site Ever -comScore". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 15, 2012.

February 26, 2013. “Instagram Hits 100 Million Monthly Users 28 Months After Launch”.

TechCrunch. Retrieved June 10th, 2013.

April 6, 2012. “Pinterest is now the third largest social network in the US.” Mashable.

Retrieved June 10th 2013.

Annelies Verhaeghe Head of Research Innovation

InSites Consulting

Stefano Tabogo Global Head of Digital Marketing

Diesel

Joeri Van den Bergh Managing Patner & Co-founder

InSites Consulting

Alice Merlo Global Digital Marketing Junior Manager

Diesel

Thank you!

@InSites

marketing@insites-consulting.com

www.facebook.com/insitesconsulting

www.slideshare.net/InSitesConsulting

http://www.insites-consulting.com/