Oh so naughty, with Volvo?
By Steve Mullins. Are we the only ones who don’t like/get Volvo and all this ‘naughty’ business? It all seems to be about getting away from the safe, dependable and solid brand which is Volvo. Why do this? Because the car marque has a naughty model to show off in the S60 and consumers can even test different levels of naughtiness, that’s why.
That was early this year and we thought the brand had grown out of this phase. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. Because now we have before us Volvo’s ethnographic observational study of the Subject60 event in Berlin, London, Milan, Paris and Madrid. Yes, we’re talking about the Finding The Naughty Capital Of Europe report by none other than Dr Katarina Graffman, consumer anthropologist and CEO of Inculture. (We thought this was pure cod at first, but it seems not).
Anyhow, this multi-city study involved observing behaviour, facial expressions, party mood and reactions to certain hidden experiments – Lady In Red, Karaoke Car, VIP Door etc – to differentiate between the various types of naughty behavior on show. The idea being to find out if there really are cultural differences when it comes to naughtiness.
In Berlin, Naughty behavior was more prevalent in the restrooms, because ‘when opportunities are at hand, rules are easily broken and limits transcended’.
In London, ‘the later the hour, the crazier the dancing – guests jumped on and off the sofas, used bars as dance mates and stood on the tables’.
In Milan, the crowd came to party, not to be naughty.
In Paris, ‘the French were really excited by the hidden experiments – they interacted repeatedly with all of them during the course of the night, varying from trying to get into the VIP Room, to flirting with the Lady In Red’.
In Madrid guests stayed mainly at the bar and preferred to talk to their friends than to mingle and dance. ‘In actual fact, a number of persons stayed in the same spot all night – preferably in the bar area- whilst others were repeatedly interacting with some of the experiments’.
So, to the hard numbers. Over half of participants in all five countries said they wish to be naughtier. However, the Germans seem to be most satisfied with how naughty they are (39%), and the French least satisfied (78%).
