Setting the scene
Mustard delivered insight that informed the development of Knauf’s marketing campaign to successfully launch an alternative glass mineral wool product for insulating internal partitions, roofs at rafter level and framed walls. This project was shortlisted for a ‘Best Use of Insight’ award by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the North.
The context
Following the impact of the Government’s new ‘Green Deal’ initiative on the loft insulation market, Knauf Insulation was looking at alternative applications and markets for its glass mineral wool insulation product. They saw an opportunity to introduce glass mineral wool products as a viable alternative to rock mineral wool products for insulating internal partitions, roofs at rafter level and framed walls. They needed to understand how they could best position these products to installers and stockists to maximise sales.
What we did
Key audiences for this research were Installers (general builders, plasterers, dry liners, property developers, insulation specialists, joiners, loft convertors) and stockists (builders merchants, specialist insulation suppliers).
We conducted qualitative research initially, completing f2f interviews on-site, which allowed us to adopt an ethnographic approach to gather insight. We were able to capture evidence on video and camera during the interviews and use the outputs to ‘bring the research to life’, providing the client with video footage and photos to highlight the issues that installers and stockists were facing in storing and installing competitor insulation products. Following on from this, we completed c.300 telephone interviews with installers and stockists to quantify behaviour and views. The design of this phase was informed by the qualitative research findings.
The results
As the research highlighted that the biggest issue was with the handling of insulation, this is what Knauf used as a key message in all their marketing materials, and developed a tagline around this – ‘Fitter Friendly’. After launching, Knauf saw continual growth in sales of the new product. Due to the success of the research, Knauf introduced a detailed insight stage to future product development programmes, and this was also encouraged across the Group.
The response
“Very professional team. They took on a project on a topic they didn’t know too much about, but they learned very quickly and to a competent level.”
Knauf
