Delivering Video Diaries to Bring Multinational Insights to Life

With in person filming off the table, self generated international video diaries were the safest and fastest route, but they required tight planning to work well.

First, we focused on recruitment. The client needed participants that their teams could easily relate to, with the right mindsets and consumer behaviours around sustainability. Given the tight timeline and relatively straightforward criteria, we used informal networks of friends, contacts and family rather than traditional research recruiters. This dramatically sped things up and kept costs down while still delivering a relevant mix of consumers in each market.

Next, we invested time in briefing. Rather than simply asking people to “film themselves”, we ran through detailed instructions and filming tips with respondents in every country. We created a clear questionnaire designed to generate at least five minutes of usable footage per person, ensuring they knew what to talk about and how to talk about it.

For upload, we chose WhatsApp as the main channel. This gave respondents a direct, real time line to our team, made it easy to send large numbers of clips from different countries and provided quick reassurance when files arrived safely.

Once the footage was in, our production team reviewed every diary against the brief, checking both content and technical quality (audio and visuals). From there, we moved into editing and storytelling, shaping the material into a tight three minute film. We organised quotes by theme and built a clear narrative that tracked attitudes and behaviours around sustainability across markets. To support viewers with English as a second language and make key ideas more memorable, we overlaid “buzzwords” on screen – simple, bold phrases pulled directly from consumer quotes to highlight what mattered most.

The final film did exactly what the client needed: it put real consumers at the centre of their virtual summit, humanising the broader research findings and reinforcing key trends from the quantitative work.

In just three minutes, senior stakeholders could see and hear how people in six countries think and feel about sustainability, making the data more tangible and emotionally engaging. The video became a powerful opener for discussion, created impact with a large global audience and provided a reusable asset for future internal communications around consumer centricity and sustainable growth.