• Projective Techniques
• Personification
• Category Sculpting
• Modified TAT's
• Collages
• Fantasy Excursions
• Sensory Immersion

Projective Techniques: allow researchers and decision-makers to delve beyond people's surface cognitions or rational explanations for their attitudes or behavior. This broad heading involves a broad range of tools and techniques.

Personification: requires respondents convert a product, brand, or organization into a person with a full range of personality, psychographic, demographic, and behavioral dimensions. The results can be used as input in all types of strategic planning where a thorough understanding of image dimensions and drivers are important.

Category Sculpting: explores the image dimensions as well as the relative strengths and weaknesses of competitors in a category by asking respondents to identify competitive brands as members of a family. Each position within the family is then explored for a full range of image dimensions and its relationship to other brands in the family.

Modified TAT's: are based on the interviewing procedures used in psychological research in which neutral or abstract visual stimuli are used as springboards for attributions for behavior. They are used to help people describe thoughts and feelings that would not otherwise emerge.

Collages: allow respondents to compose visual representations of their thoughts or feelings. This technique allows people to move beyond the bounds of language to more accurately and completely communicate their opinions.

Fantasy Excursions: projects respondents into fantasy arenas to help them explore their images, wants, and needs concerning products and services. This technique is particularly helpful in helping respondents to move beyond the trite and timeworn explanations for their thoughts and feelings.

Sensory Immersion: is a tool in which respondents are engaged in exercises using each of their senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound) to define and elaborate concepts or ideas. These characteristics are then projected into product or category specific descriptions.

A major urban arts organization had recently received a major endowment to restructure its total effort to generate a new image and audience base. They were facing multiple problems. Their audience had been steadily aging over the last decade and they already knew from previous research that their image was conservative and stodgy. While this endowment allowed for major innovations and marketing efforts, they wanted to make sure that they did not alienate their long time subscribers and yet they did want to appeal to a new, more youthful and socially active audience. Purpose of the qualitative research was to provide ideas and input for the creative director of the organization and its agency concerning qualities and image dimensions that were essential to maintain as well as types of innovations that might broaden this organization's appeal.

As early input to the planning process, Burke conducted a series of small group "vision development" sessions with "arts active" consumers in the area. Respondents were selected to include subscribers of the sponsoring organization as well as socially active arts enthusiasts who did not attend performances of this organization. In these sessions, respondents were provided a variety of materials from which they could select photographs and other images to create images or collages of the current and ideal (more diverse) audiences for this organization's performances. They also created playbills and promotional posters for the performances that they thought would attract the ideal audience. These collages were then discussed in detail concerning who the people were in their image collages with full psychographic and demographic characteristics, what experiences they might seek from attending such performances; what about the playbills or posters would attract them, and other experiences they may be seeking from performances.

In all sessions, the creative directors were in the room to ask clarifying questions that would assist them in developing and elaborating their thinking or ideas. In all cases the moderator and creative directors posed questions that helped to define just how far this organization could press the envelope in its efforts to innovate while maintaining its tradition of quality in the arts. Ideas that were generated in each group were not used as for specific executions but were examined for themes, images and input for internal brainstorming sessions with the organization and agency.