We are single-minded about the need to get business to truly listen to customers.

We believe that marketing people should come out from behind the mirror and talk to customers regularly, face to face. We have seen for ourselves the difference it makes. And so have our clients.

Here you can read more about our views and, more importantly, the experience of our customers.

Through the looking glass

If you really want to understand your customers, then meet them face to face

As we progress rapidly towards a multichannel world, everyone agrees that businesses must be ‘customer-centric’ with ‘the customer at the heart of the organisation’. 

But for many business people this requires a considerable change of mindset and culture, which explains why some organisations struggle to develop a customer-centric business; they still keep their customers at arm’s length.

To build businesses that have the customer at their heart, we need to make sure we deal with customers as people, not just sources of data. We need more open listening, more thinking about customers all the time. And by everyone - not just the marketing team - so that we can constantly tap into customers’ changing wants and needs.

Historically, market research has been about finding out what customers think, as objectively as possible, about specific issues, concepts and opportunities and transmitting these findings to the organisation. The problem is that today it can be too late to act, by the time you find out what your customers think. When you are more tuned in to your customers, you will know what you should do in good time.

Traditional research methodology discourages clients and customers from meeting, wary of compromising objectivity. The one-way mirror or screen on the wall of the viewing studio embodies this idea: the client observes customers, commenting on what they say but not really getting close to them. There is no personal interaction and the results are fed back in a formal report or slide presentation. But being with a customer in person and hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth, is a highly charged, memorable experience for a brand manager or board director. They do not forget what they have heard.

It is time to step through the looking glass, make eye contact and shake hands with real customers– and on their own territory; in shops and car parks, coffee bars and pubs, at the school gate and in the workplace. Such hands on engagement can deliver powerful insights that, interwoven with high quality quantitative data and commercial thinking, rapidly transform marketing and business strategy. It can accelerates the whole process of new product development, category planning or brand repositioning.

What is also important is that meeting customers in this way changes the way that people – especially senior people - think. For a start, it means they think about customers a lot more - customers literally have a greater share of their mind. And when you change the way you think, you change the way you behave. Organisations that seek out and champion customer experience behave differently, at every level, including the boardroom. They are truly putting the customer at the heart of the business.

Jonathan Salisbury, Managing Director, 100%Cotton

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We worked in partnership with Annabel Karmel and a major global entertainment brand to develop a new family of healthy-eating products for toddlers which made their Mums even happier than the nappy-wearing consumers.
“100%Cotton have been extremely refreshing to work with. They are proactive in their approach and deliver real clarity in their results. In short, they add value.” Roger McLaughlan, Asda Living Managing Director
"100%cotton have played a major part in our securing new contracts worth over £10m in the last year. Their consumer insight has helped us achieve partnership status with two major supermarkets." Steven Phelps, Former Sales & Marketing Director, Gala Coffee Ltd
"Having worked with 100%Cottton across a variety of consumer research projects, what sets them from the norm is a passion and desire to transform insights into a deliverable, tangible conclusion".   Dave Clack, Zetar plc Business Development Director and Kinnerton Confectionery Sales Director
“100% Cotton are a breath of fresh air, they offer a client-focused approach  centred on getting really good research and then get that research understood and applied in the (client) business; they don’t let you keep the power point presentation  in the drawer!" Chris Cole, Make It Cheaper MD
“Our strategic partnership with 100%Cotton marks a new way of working; we intend to bring about a cultural change so that all our people – not just those in the Marketing Team – actively seek market insight to help them better understand and engage with our customers.” Sarah Taylor, (formerly) Screwfix Brand Marketing Manager
“The whole idea of Trade Point is that it is designed from the customer’s perspective. 100%Cotton has helped us achieve this by getting us out from behind the one-way mirror and putting us in the same room as customers.” Ian Herrett, B&Q Business Development Director
"100%cotton always bring incredibly pertinent and level-headed thinking to our business. Their approach is thoughtful, but they don't duck difficult issues." Hamish Renton, Former Managing Director, Riviera Desserts, a division of Uniq plc
"Having worked with 100%Cottton across a variety of consumer research projects, what sets them from the norm is a passion and desire to transform insights into a deliverable, tangible conclusion".   Dave Clack, Zetar plc Business Development Director and Kinnerton Confectionery Sales Director

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