A media company wants to provide a unique and lively experience for the upcoming 2018 World Cup tournament. In order to develop content and platform strategy for the coverage of this event, we want to learn what the audience’s current perception and expectations are.

We conducted 4 friendship group ethnos per market, each “friendship fan huddle” consisting of 4 fans.

We segmented 3 fan types:

– Bi-cultural Hispanic soccer fans,

– Hardcore fans

– Casual soccer fans.

Each ethnos were 1.5 hour long, with the exception of one ethnography which was 2 hours in order to watch a live game.

• Do make sure all the friends speak the same language fluently and agree to be recorded/filmed! While it’s not something we even have to think about when running regualr ethnos, it does become important when it comes to friendship groups.

• Don’t assume that after you are fully recruited, all is smooth sailing. Especially when scheduling friendship group ethnos, anticipate drop outs and have extra recruits on stand-by. Like some will make extra efforts in the name of friendship, others will also cancel last minute for xyz reasons in the name of friendship! Works both ways!

When scheduling a huddle group, there are a few challenges. Recruiting the same fan type who are also friends and also willing to allow a group of people into their homes adds a level of difficulty. We are used to these set ups but if that’s your first time using that approach, be extra careful!

There is always a surprise element when we work with groups of anything! Just imagine making plans with a bunch of your friends, the coordination of everybody’s schedule is challenging, not to mention the last minutes emergencies and no shows. Scheduling these friendship groups were no different. We had to do some very last minute shuffling around but since we anticipated this, we obtained a list of possible backup’s that fit our target from each “huddle leader” in the event of drop outs.

Additionally, one of the days we had to schedule the huddles landed on Valentine’s Day! Need I say more? We were able to form the huddles on Valentine’s Day with an extra incentive …which I’m sure went toward a nice gift!

Group ethnos can be unpredictable. Last minutes drop outs, unable to reach a respondent, and having a hard time finding the respondent’s home can happen. There is no such thing as being over prepared, get as much information as possible to avoid any last minute scramble.