4 Secrets For Doing Gonzo User Research

Fast, cheap, and out-of-control insights can help you to outsmart the competition. Here’s how to gather them. A few years ago, I got to partner up with one of the world’s best ad creatives, Steve Henry. We spent the morning working on a brief for premium frozen foods. We blasted out a load of ideas and then hit a lull, as creative teams do. Rather than start to talk about last night’s TV, Steve said, “Let’s go shopping.” The two of us hung out in the frozen food section of a local supermarket. We surreptitiously dropped some premium goods from elsewhere in the shop into the freezer. We could instantly see how subtle designs like Kettle Chips disappeared in the mist. Tossing a pack of premium potato chips into a freezer may have saved us weeks of mocking up classy line-drawn brown paper packs. It was a kind of instant prototyping, made up on the s...