A few weeks ago I posted a survey and after asking the usual questions about demographics and sizes, I got you to play guess the brand!
Naturally, a whole bunch of you immediately wanted to know if you had gotten the answers "right", neatly demonstrating a major problem in doing research with actual human beings; people who participate bring their own agendas, and most people like to be correct and make the researcher happy.
For me, there was no "right" answer; this was just the easiest way of testing out something I've been thinking about a lot recently; as we've been working with and selling more brands, is that changing things? Can people tell KMD apart from the other brands? Can you tell the brands apart from each other, and collaborations apart from guest brands? Of course, the brands themselves want to know these things too, and also they'd like to know if a pop-up with us translates into growth of their own later on Some of them do enough surveys and analytics of their own traffic to have a good idea, others aren't quite so sophisticated. And of course there's the all-important question; what happens in your mind when you see a picture of Morgana? ;)
Now I could either ask an awful lot of very complicated questions, or I could just make a picture quiz. Which would you be more likely to fill out, especially as even the short version had 15 pictures?
I started with some basics - did people know we had other brands, were they even sure what that meant.
It's probably worth noting that the average conversion rate, that is, people who see your website and then buy something, is only 1%.
If we are genuinely converting around 6% of people who see other brands with us to become customers of them, then that would be quite remarkable. I suspect what's more likely is that the sample of people who answered the survey are especially enthusiastic lingerie fans, so I'd give this statistic a fairly wide space for error. All that said - it's certainly encouraging for the guest brands and I know some of the smaller brands report up to 30% of their regular customers having originally found them here.
Now the important bit for most of you - what brands were those pictures from?! Unfortunately, it turns out SurveyMonkey doesn't work well on mobiles/poor Wi-Fi so I think about least 10% and possibly more like 30% couldn't see the pictures to fill in the brands.
And, of course, the majority of people are more fussed about products than brands, or given a text box, will fill it with their personal take on lingerie rather than a direct answer to the question, or panic that they aren't getting it right, or turn out to be a compulsive survey-filler-in rather than a genuine fan. But with those caveats, here's the "right" answers, and some figures!
This is actually a Kiss Me Deadly product - the Grace gown - but photographed by Bread and Shutter, rather than our regular photographer Morgana. Out of around 600 people, about 250 guessed KMD, with a handful mixing it up with Harlow and Fox or Amoralle.
Of about 550 answers, about 175 recognised this as Karolina Laskowska (although spelling was a bit more of a challenge). It was most commonly mixed up with KMD (nope, to strappy/skimpy to be mine), Playful Promises (who definitely don't use couture lace) and Agent Provocateur.
Now, I will never show you an AP image for the pure and simple reason that they could sue my arse into the ground if I did. I can use guest brand pics because I have permission, but to use another brands picture is inviting disastrous legal action. Especially in the US where you can face immediate fines running into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Of 623 people, 340 or so recognised this as Playful Promises. When it was mixed up it was usually with KMD.
I deliberately confused matters here; Playful Promises also run Peek and Beau. The brands are aimed at being noticeably different so I was curious to see if people got this one. Of 527 about 150 managed various spellings of Peek and Beau (I KNOW. I really struggle with it too), but about the same again identified it as Playful Promises, and it got mixed up as both KMD and Karolina's.
469 answers and less than 100 managed to identify this as Nightprowl, though some could clearly remember that it was a guest brand. Nightprowl are a very young brand (less than 2 years) and haven't settled upon a photography style as yet, which probably accounts for the fair amount of confusion.
Most brands worry about using the same models as each other and so I deliberately used an image from Ayten Gasson, one of my longest-standing colleagues in the business, that was taken by and of Morgana, who is also our photographer, to see if it would confuse people. I'd have liked to include a none-Morgana picture from Ayten too, but frankly this survey was already too long. And lo! Of 477 only around 70 said Ayten - more said KMD. Admittedly that will be impacted on by the context of being in a KMD brand survey.
Classic KMD imagery in style, but this is Sophie Roach rather than Morgana. 530 people, and just under 300 recognised it as KMD, the rest just didn't know.
We haven't had Fraulein Annie on the site for a while as manufacturing issues mean we're waiting for new styles - and it really confused people, split between FA and Harlow and Fox. They both have a focus on classic designs, unusual colours and bra fit, so I can see why - but Harlow and Fox are considerably more high end in terms of fabrics, lace and quantities.
Of 424 people about 70 recognised Amoralle; but more knew it had been on the site but wasn't ours. Quite a few people sort of recognised them but couldn't place the brand name, many remembered they were Latvian (?!), and one was just deeply confused as to what this garment is. It's awesome, that's what it is.
Harlow and Fox. About 150 people guessed this out of 375. I also enjoyed the answer "big tits luxury silk", which is accurate, but not an approved brand name.
It's been a while since we saw Betty Blue and her loungerie - and this is Morgana as model and photographer so I figured again, between that and the time elapsed, it might throw people. And yup, out of 450 people less than a 100 said Betty Blue; more went for KMD.
A big thank you to everyone who helped fill it in! I realise it was a bit of a pain in the bum but you've helped clarify quite a few ideas about improvements and changes for Kiss Me Deadly AND all our guest brands, along the lines of checking imagery, adding logos and taglines across the site, making sure our imagery is consistent, making sure our pictures of other brands have a different style, and so on. Oh, and I shall probably spend more time checking that Morgana hasn't taken up any high-risk sports.
I hope you had some fun with it; let me know in the comments if you have any favourite brands, or one's that foxed you, or people you think we should be working with!
