Normandy New Guitar Project

Case Study: Normandy Guitars

What happens to customer loyalty & revenue when an American custom guitar manufacturer co-creates a new line of instruments with its community?

• Normandy is an award-winning $2,500 custom guitar manufacturer with a reputation for artisanship, big sound & indestructible aluminum bodies

• Normandy’s leadership believed there was an opportunity to make an entry-level $900 guitar, but was concerned that it might cheapen their brand & alienate their fans

The need to engage customers

Step 1: Issue Identification• We know that the key to engaging

communities is to identify real, significant issues that will benefit from community feedback

• Normandy needed to know if customers’ brand loyalty would be diminished by the introduction of a lower-cost, no-frills model

• Additionally, Normandy wanted to see if there was market demand for such an instrument

Step 2: Interview Design

• The interview was quickly programmed by drawing interview “branches”

• The interview was ready for deployment within minutes of the issue identification

Step 3: Deployment

The community was invited by the community manager to become engaged with the initiative.

Step 4: EngagementWith one click, community members engaged in a discussion that “listened” to their responses by following the branches of the conversation. This experience of an “intelligent interview” had measurable results:• 79% completion rate • 8-minute average interview length (without incentives)• 20 pages of intelligent open-ended feedback detailing the “why” behind the data’s “what”

Step 5: Analysis

Normandy quickly created “personas” based on individual responses. With this strategic perspective, they gained the insight necessary to know how to build this new line without alienating their existing customers.

Step 6: Insight With the integrated open-ended questions that followed up their responses, Normandy was able gain insight into the reasons behind their opinions and open the door to new possibilities that they hadn’t previously considered.

Step 7: Community Feedback

Normandy quickly turned the findings around into a presentation back to the community, simultaneously demonstrating their smart listening abilities & building community loyalty.

Step 8: Testing a new offering

Normandy developed a second interview to confirm its findings and created a natural sales funnel as a result.

In just 4 weeks Normandy Guitars:• Co-developed a new guitar line• Pre-sold over 30 guitars• Grew its Facebook followers by over 5%

FUSE gave Normandy critical strategic insight & measurable outcomes

“Prior to working with Fuse, I used social media as a sort of pulpit to announce new products or great

media reviews. I never thought I could really engage my fans and get their help to create a product. From those folks, we received great

input and ultimately have the type of sales leads you only dream of. I mean, these people helped create this product and want it! All we have to do is finalize the sale....that's just incredible!”

-Jim Normandy

We’ll help you build customer loyalty & revenue with your next initiative.