In this video, INK’s creative and research teams break down how they designed original, owned research to help Canopy stand out in a competitive market. Learn how pairing data-driven storytelling with bold design choices can elevate your content marketing — and why brands should invest in research they own, not borrow.
Ryan: Kim, thanks so much for joining me today. I’m excited to talk about designing original research in content marketing. I’m here to talk a little bit about the design process for a recent, client project for Canopy, and you’re going to talk about the research. So let’s jump in first. Tell me a little bit about, like, what original research is and why is it something that we highly recommend that our clients pursue?
Kim: Well, it’s pretty easy. Original research is data that you own. Not data that you borrow from someone or get from somewhere else. Anything that answers, a question, that maybe our audience cares about. Our audience. Audience cares about. You can generate, original research for. And so it’s about, about generating the data that you own instead of finding it somewhere else.
Ryan: What is the research process look like?
Kim: So we think about the theme that we want to ladder up to in the questions that we want answered. And then we design what’s called the survey instrument. And so we usually it’s when we’re designing a survey, it’s a set of multiple choice and open ended questions. Then we pick, audience panels. If it consumers, it’s it B2B customers.
Are they in certain segments. And then we will calculate sample size based on the total size of population, based on estimates sometimes of that perfect science. And so we choose our panels. We define how many, the n number, the, amount of responses. We want to design a survey, we upload it into our survey platform, and then we deploy the survey in the field.
We analyze the results to make sure they’re they’re clean, to the best of our ability, the quality results. And then we analyze what people say. Usually that looks like internally. There’s a few dashboards and charts that I build out so we can see what each of the questions, what the breakdown is. I do lots of back bars, lots of pie charts, lots of data visualization.
And we look at that holistically. Before we do the next pies, step, which is, figuring out with a survey a thing. What’s the story here? What’s the narrative? Oftentimes we’ll see an interesting correlation between the first question and the sixth question. And we’re connecting the dots and what that would mean. From our position in the industry and our point of view, being in the industry and our client’s point of view.
Ryan: Let’s get into the Canopy report specifically, why did we think that a research report was ideal for them? What sort of opportunity was facing their company and the industry? And how do we end up with fast food?
Kim: Well, our our client, Canopy has this really amazing platform and technology that, if applicable, and useful to a lot of different markets and a lot of different industry sectors. And so the challenge that they have is standing out across these market, being specific and tying in their value to specific markets enough, even though their solution crosses, several different market and with the fast food casual industry.
There’s huge opportunity there for their platform to make a big difference. But we needed to connect with the market in a way that was authentic to the market, not necessarily authentic to the brand. That was it. So it’s one of those segments that once we get the right message across, it’s a huge opportunity for our client, to do business and, and continue to do business.
And once they can show, and, and when they can show in a really authentic and specific way how their product can add value to, to fast food in the, in the fast food industry. Right. So once we got all of the data in and we’re looking at what the narrative was, how did you approach designing. The report for the research.
Ryan: We, felt like this particular audience that we were trying to reach was, very interesting and a little bit unique, and we wanted to make sure that we stood out. And so, with a couple previous projects we done with Canopy, we had a good understanding of sort of their, their appetite to push boundaries and be creative.
And when we paired that with our goal of really making this report, have a big splash, we sort of needed to figure out which direction we’d want to take this report. We had a lot of ideas coming out of a kickoff call. So we kind of needed to get them organized. And the way that we did that with was with some, mood boards.
That’s sort of our first step. And we put together three mood boards. They ranged from something that felt, pretty on brand. Pretty familiar and comfortable. Put it in the, like, less risky column. And then we had a middle option that sort of introduced some new brand elements. Particularly some new visual elements that, would support the content and, and really bring in a unique fast food look and feel.
And then we had a third option that just was, true to a lot of the brand elements, but we had manipulated them and evolved them in a way that, just made the overall direction look and feel really different. And a lot of the times when you present a client, with three options like this, you’re either going to get someone who wants to kind of combine a few options or, more often than not, there’s a big, aversion to the risk, but not with Canopy.
With this one, they said, let’s go with the big and the biggest change. And, that was really special for us because they recognized the opportunity for this report to really stand out, and they trusted us to, to honor the brand that they have, but also evolve it into something unique and special for this particular application.
Kim: What are some of the details that stood out to you as like pushing that, pushing the, the design a little bit.
Ryan: The biggest thing was that we introduced these, illustrated fast food cartoons. So, there’s a cheeseburger with a big cheesy grin, and it really brought the peace to life and, made it feel fun. And, the whole inspiration was, to make it look and feel like a vintage restaurant menu. And so the, the changes to the brand colors and, we introduced a new typeface for the report, and those characters were really what, what made all of us fall in love with the final product?
Kim: So how did it turn out? Where where did we end up with the report?
Ryan: Yeah, the the final product was something that, I think told a really relatable story. I think most of the data points that, we felt really spoke to anyone who’s been to any type of fast food restaurant in the last, 2 to 5 years. And something we had set out from our initial kickoff, we had this idea of like, how do we create some kind of ranking to say who is who is winning the fast food tech game?
And through our research and our writing and design, we were able to do that. It’s something that I think ultimately, the report was a really great way to interject Canopy into the conversation in the fast food industry in a way that is really relatable to, the everyday consumer, but also to the target audience of, the people who are making these tech decisions at the fast food chains.
Kim: Okay, so we have this compelling and fun design lesson, but that, you can design, and write amazing things all you want. How how did we get it in front of the right people? To enjoy and and read and learn all this interesting stuff we put together?
Ryan: Yeah. The PDF really is that, anchor piece of content. But from there, it’s important to really have a solid strategy for distribution and amplification. So, we worked with our client to develop, an email blast and took a lot of the same visual elements that we put into the report and built them into, headers and footers.
For the email, we took a GIF that we had created of some of these character, the food illustrations and, animated them and included those in the email. We developed a string of stats from the report that could be, shared out over social media over time. And, then our, our media folks got to pitching, trades and people that we felt like, needed to have this report in hand.
So it was is really a team effort. And it all leads back to, the the group effort to get that report into a spot where, we had a clear story to tell and a clear visual direction that, made it interesting and exciting for someone to read it. Ultimately, it was a really great, a great point of success for the client.
Kim, thank you so much for talking with me today about research and design. If there is anything you want to see from this, you can check it out ink-co.com/insights. You can read Kim’s blog on this, as well as check out our case studies.
