Using Snapchat as a Mobile Ethnography Tool

The Context
In 2016, Bose was starting to sponsor more live experiences (sports, music festivals, tech conferences) to connect with new audiences and increase our brand presence. Being new to the world of brand sponsorship, the company had not yet developed a perspective on how to show up at live events in an impactful way.

I proposed and designed a research project to codify what sets apart successful brand activations from unsuccessful ones, to help our Marketing and Branding teams develop guidelines, goals and metrics around brand sponsorships.

The Outcome
The research conducted serves as a blueprint for how to approach live event sponsorships, from the type of events to sponsor, to how to show up and how to measure “impact”.
Since this research was conducted, Bose has been a sponsor for Coachella, SXSW and Bonnaroo, which are all well aligned with the Bose brand as events at the intersection of tech and audio.

The Deliverables
A report detailing general and Bose-specific best practices for live event sponsorship

The Team
Researcher (me)

Notable Contributions
Agile mobile ethnography (to cut down on research costs on a limited budget)
Focus group facilitation
Co-creation exercise design

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01
research design

There are strong associations between the Bose brand and music. So this research focused on brand activations at music
festivals. Based on the timing of this study, we chose to use the Austin City Limits music festival as our reference point, and recruited 12 participants who had already bought tickets to participate in this study.

Key Questions

01
Why are more people attending music festivals than ever before?

02
How do festival attendees feel about brands sponsoring music festivals?

03
What kind of brand experiences resonate with consumers?

The Approach

Secondary Research
We gathered existing research on the grown and transformation of music festivals, and trends in the brand sponsorship of music festivals.

Social Media Analysis
We followed social media conversations about #aclfest on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit before, during and after the festival to identify key themes around the music festival experience and brand sponsorships.

Mobile Ethnography
We asked the 12 ACL attendees who were participating in our study to document their festival experience on Snapchat so we could see the festival through their eyes.

Focus Groups
We split the 12 attendees into 2 groups of 6 and asked them to participate in focus groups to debrief on their festival experiences, share their perceptions of brand sponsors and co-create ideas for a Bose sponsored booth at a music festival.

02
snapchat ethnography

We gave our participants “assignments” on Snapchat, which included

Showing us their festival “survival pack”

Capturing “typical festival moments”

Sharing the ups and downs of their festival experience

Capturing the brand activations they saw, and rating them with a simple thumbs up/thumbs down emoji.

What We Saw

The Benefits of Snapchat as a Mobile Research Tool

• Allowed us to experience the music festival through the participants’ eyes

• We weren’t taking them out of their normal behavior for the sake of our research. We recruited participants who were already using Snapchat, and would likely have been documenting their festival experience on the app anyway.

• It’s free

03
focus group

We supplemented our “fly on the wall” Snapchat observation with focus groups after the music festival, which allowed us to debrief with participants, and dive deeper into the content they shared via Snapchat, including which brand sponsorships they noticed, and which brand sponsorships left positive associations.
We also asked our participants to design their own Bose branded sponsorship using posterboard, markers, props and stickers of Bose products.

04
key insights and recommendations

To break through the noise and have a positive impact on consumer perceptions, a branded experience needs to be visible, contextually relevant, interactive/immersive and fulfill a clear need. As one respondent articulated, “a mediocre brand experience might as well not exist”.

When designing a Bose branded experience, consider whether those criteria are being addressed.

Bose is well known, but the people we talked to didn’t feel a sense of connection with the brand.

Bose should focus its sponsorship efforts on conveying attainability and forging a sense of connection with customers, rather than generating awareness.

Music festivals are a contextually relevant place for Bose to showcase new headphones and portable speakers, as well as it’s professional audio systems. Festivals present an opportunity for Bose to get in front of an influential audience with disposable income, that is also passionate about music and audio.

Make Bose products central to music festival sponsorships. Attendees should be able to try on/out the products, whether bluetooth speakers, headphone or Bose Frames.

05
the outcome

Since this research was conducted, Bose has been a sponsor for Coachella, SXSW and Bonnaroo, which are all well aligned with the Bose brand as events at the intersection of tech and audio. We have used these sponsorship opportunities to launch and spread awareness of new products and ideas like Bose Frames and Bose Audio Augmented Reality.