Latest GutCheck Version Release 1.0

Posted November 29, 2010 by Matt Warta | Permalink

The latest version release of GutCheck is now available

After many weeks of usage by our beta customers, receiving great feedback and many development hours, the latest release of GutCheck has arrived. New and current customers will see additions to the Projects dashboard, a more seamless Project creation process and updated educational information within the application. Customers will also be able to quickly reference samples our Education section from within the GutCheck application.

Be Our Guest

For those of you that want to explore the GutCheck application a bit further, we want to make sure you can view the application, as a Guest, before making a decision to create an account.

Guests can go into the application, toggle Recruitment Engine criteria, test the Chat Guide preparation area and view our Stats ability to find your target customer. As a Guest, you can do everything except for ‘Save’ what you create and perform a chat interview.

Click the ‘Check Us Out’ button on the Sign In page to continue on as a Guest.

Choosing your GutCheck Plan

This release now enables anyone to create, and fund a GutCheck account to perform quick qualitative research. GutCheck customers can choose to either pay per chat (as you go) or buy a block of chats for a known quantity of chats to perform. You can review that information in greater detail on our Pricing section.

For our Beta Users

We sincerely thank you for your patience with us during this development and growth process. Your feedback has helped bring us to this point and we couldn’t have done it without you.
As a token of our appreciation, we’ll roll over any unused quantity of your standard GutCheck chats you received as part of the Beta program. Any unused quantity of Beta chats will expire from your account on Dec 31, 2010.
We look forward to your continued use in a great product that your feedback helped create.

Login, Create an Account or Be our Guest

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Can Illy Convert Coffee Lovers?

Posted November 11, 2010 by Matt Warta | Permalink

In the November 8 edition of Advertising Age, I was drawn to the CMO Strategy article written by Natalie Zmuda featuring Beverly Stotz who is the VP of Marketing at Illy Caffe North America.  Being a bit of a coffee snob, I was immediately drawn to the article.  It was full of cool information such as who Illy is targeting (professionals, highly educated, mid 30s to late 50s); interesting ways Illy is generating trial without a huge paid media budget; walking customers up the value curve from mass market brands like Folgers to more premium brands like Illy; and the trend toward single-serve systems among others.

Given my affection for coffee and also curious to see how other coffee drinkers view Illy, I did some “gutchecking” on some of the concepts reported on in the article.  In terms of targeting, I used GutCheck’s recruitment engine to find individuals 35-59 with a bachelors degree, and who have full-time employment.  I also inserted some custom questions which screened out individuals who don’t drink coffee several times per week, and I also used custom questions to identify which brand of coffee the respondent preferred.  As is typically the case, it only took a couple of minutes to find the respondents.  My respondents were a mix of male and female.  Half of them used mass products like Folgers or Maxwell House, and the other half used a premium brand, primarily Starbuck’s.

My findings from this exercise might be of interest to Beverly and her team.  Half of the respondents had tried Illy coffee, and they preferred it over their current brands which included Starbucks.  One individual who regularly drinks Starbucks, tried Illy last week and it seems to have displaced Starbucks as his favored coffee.  Price mattered to those who drink the mass products.  However, they are willing to move up the price curve, but only seemed to be willing to meet Illy half way between the mass product price and where Illy is.  All of the respondents like the single-serve products because of the huge convenience, variety of flavors, and the inability to distinguish between it and a fresh-brewed cup.  Finally, the kind of trial Beverly is focused on should do well with coffee drinkers.  All respondents were highly interested in trying new brands, so it seems that none were incredibly loyal to their existing brand.

I hope Beverly and her team are successful in bringing Illy to coffee lovers everywhere.  I know I am a big fan.

If you have some questions about your target market, let us know.  We’d be happy to let you gutcheck it .

Posted in Checkin' It Out | Bookmark Bar

Real-Time Marketing

Posted November 1, 2010 by Matt Warta | Permalink

Our friend and adviser, David Meerman Scott, just came out with his latest book entitled Real-Time Marketing and PR.  If it is anything like his other marketing bibles, it will definitely be a hit.

As the name implies, David discusses the basic foundation an organization requires to market in real time.  David also does a brilliant job of showing the financial impact of what a real-time mindset can do for a company in his new e-book.

One of the lessons that David espouses in his book is the idea of incorporating a real-time technology infrastructure for a marketing organization much in the same way trading organizations of all types have incorporated for many years.

At GutCheck, we couldn’t agree more with this approach.  There are obviously numerous mainstream social tools like Facebook and Twitter which will occupy prime real estate on this real-time marketing dashboard.  I am looking forward to using the many other tools which will emerge as enabling components.

What tools do you think are needed for a world of real-time working?

Posted in DIY Research | Bookmark Bar