Choosing which hair care products and messages to develop

The question

Before choosing which styling products and messages to develop, and for which men, the brand’s team wanted to understand how men really style their hair.

It also wanted to see how that changes over a lifetime, and to find ways to reach men who don’t yet use its products.

Our approach

We went where the routine happens. In a digital ethnography, men showed us their products, their routines and the history of their hair in photos, video and discussion.

Experts from hairdressing, styling and journalism added a professional view of men’s hair.

We designed and ran the program with the client’s insight, brand and R&D team, from the ethnography through to the concepts. Opportunity areas built from the evidence became springboards, first for online co-creation and then for ideation together, across the short, medium and long term.

What the team came away with

The team had a timeline of a man’s hair from childhood onward, videos of real styling routines, and full concepts with rendered visuals, ready for quantitative testing.

Each near-term concept set out its technology, sensory cues, pack, instructions, communications and open questions. Each future concept set out what had to happen to get it running, and which team should take it on.