Procter, Nielsen and Snuggies

In Research Mag, Interesting collaboration, brought to our attention by former colleague Pete Blackshaw:

Blanket coverage
Snuggie, the ‘blanket with sleeves’, became a social media phenomenon in the US when its quirky ad went viral. Six million sales later, the Nielsen Company and P&G decided to look at the success of the Snuggie to test ‘listening’ and ‘asking’ based approaches to research. David Wiesenfeld of Nielsen Online and Kristin Bush of P&G report on their findings.

Mining online conversations for consumer insights is a seductive proposition. Every day, millions of consumers talk about all aspects of their lives online. This trove of naturally occurring consumer expression offers the richness of qualitative research, the sample sizes of quantitative studies, and the opportunity to understand consumers on their terms, not ours. By tuning in to relevant conversations, more can be learned about consumer attitudes and needs than through traditional ‘asking’ methods alone ... '.