Last night I headed along to a market research session with two of my most outspoken friends, to offer feedback on a branding and marketing strategy in return for wine and freebies (note: If you do market research, you will be surprised at how much people will do for a free glass of wine)

The product was targeted at females and is a hot hair conditioning treatment… Which is all I’ll say because although we weren’t sworn to secrecy, it feels way more exclusive when I’m one of a small group who knows about it. However, here we are ‘testing’ the product:

Market research is a very interesting thing. These guys did a good job of getting a range of people, with a range of values and finances. They even let me go even though my hair has never been fortunate enough to be treated to a hot conditioning anything. I did feel like maybe this set me outside the target market, but I think I managed to come up with an alternative marketing strategy that would entice me to make a purchase (I have a cold and anything hot on my head sounded like heaven last night). Lessons we learned (other than Verity is allergic to vege crisps):

People who care about ethics need a LOT of convincing before they believe you

As Marie-Claire pointed out, we use RIDICULOUS amounts of products that quite literally harm others. While there were still a few eye rolls when the topic was approached,it became apparent that most of us do care, and most of us are rather cynical about modern marketing. If you are using cotton in your product, you have a responsibility to know WHERE it is sourced, WHO it is sourced from and HOW MUCH money they get in return for their labour. You also need to know what chemicals are used in the process, because we are not OK with you polluting any river, even if it’s not in our backyard.

And unless you stick a BIG MASSIVE label on the outside packaging specifying every single potential sin you could have committed and how you didn’t commit it, we WILL assume you are a bad guy. One person even commented she wont buy any cosmetics unless they are from an Organic retailer because otherwise she just DOESN’T know, another person pointed out that people are happy to come and spend $1,200 a pop at the shop she works at because they cannot live with the idea of purchasing clothes that have caused misery or harm.

It’s fashionable to be clean, green and human/animal friendly

Our wide rage of situations and finances did not stop us from having one nearly unified voice on what we expect from luxury products. We are sick of being pummeled with chemicals, we are happy to pay more to ensure the bunnies were not tortured and we just can’t feel comfortable with the idea that our beauty products produced through exploitation.

This is quite true. Maybe in 5 years there will be another fashionable issue (because I’m pretty sure a lot of people knew this stuff was happening years ago but didn’t have quite the same passion about putting a stop to it). But either way, you’ve still got a good few years to get on this particular train, so why not jump on the first carriage and get a headstart?

Girls care about their appearance

I think I am not very feminine, as I didn’t even know half the things people were talking about and clearly missed out on beauty school somewhere (I blame my equally non-fussed school friends). But other women DO care. They sit there with stunning gorgeous hair and complain about how they wish it was shiny. Crazy but true, so they are certainly willing to pay for this stuff (as I suppose the large cosmetic companies figured out a few years before me)… But they want to know it will WORK - they are sick of failure.