Kantar and SCW Form Theater-based Co-creation JV

In New York, Kantar has formed a joint venture with the corporate division of comedy theatre company The Second City, to help marketers and consumers co-create new products and originate new marcoms ideas.

Second City Works (SCW) uses improvisation, comedy and audience-driven techniques hosted in a theater setting and presented via events, workshops and video, to help clients foster a more collaborative business culture. The firm began working with Kantar Millward Brown's qualitative practice Firefly three years ago, to launch 'Consumer Theatre', billed as a 'new form' of research that uses empathy, humor, and improvisation to uncover deeper insights for idea creation and development'.

Now renamed 'Brandstage', the JV will work with marketing organizations to explore customer experience opportunities, help consumers get engaged quickly and reveal 'human truths' to test hypotheses, explore creative, and drive brand innovation. Brandstage sessions involve around twenty consumer respondents seated in the audience, with the client team also sitting in theater to observe consumer reactions. From the stage, the Brandstage team prompts conversation, which drives improvised scenarios created by the Second City cast; then moderated discussion explores the improvisation. Afterwards, a half-day client session is used to uncover and refine any ideas and insight which emerged from the initial consumer event.

Tim Wragg, CEO of Kantar, Insights, North America, says that many clients have already used Brandstage to explore brand growth initiatives, and the offer is now being expanded to help clients and WPP partners get the most out the collaboration. Steve Johnston, President of The Second City, adds: 'For the last 60 years, Second City has used its improvisation-based creative techniques to gauge the response of an audience and to measure the totality of an idea. The same methods we use to take the cultural temperature of a captive audience at Second City can be used to determine the effectiveness of a particular campaign, brand message or content territory'.

Web sites: www.kantar.com , www.secondcity.com and www.brandstagesc.com .