Too Bold for Them

Seven people told us our jewellery was too bold for them. Too loud. They preferred something understated and minimalist.

That was quite useful.

We’d been working on a positioning hypothesis for the jewellery. I’d spoken to a few people I knew, asked favours, gathered different opinions. I’d even used Codex to build something to help capture the feedback.

I was getting answers, but I still wasn’t very confident.

Yesterday we said, screw it. Let’s put some visuals and positioning statements in front of people through PickFu. Start with the actual product and see what it represents to them.

Thirty people responded. Twenty-three said they would buy. Seven said they wouldn’t.

The seven were particularly interesting.

They wanted a different kind of jewellery. Other people make that jewellery. That’s all good.

It helped me understand who ours wasn’t for.

I had this deeper philosophical aspiration for what the brand was about. Maybe that is still its main direction. But it was interesting to see what people picked up from the product itself.

Boldness.

Maybe we should lean further into that. More character in the stories, the visuals, the creative around the marketing. See what happens when we give that part of the jewellery more room in the message.

Maybe we don’t go that way. It’s something to test.

What surprised me was how simple it was to get feedback this way, after trying to gather little bits of it through people I knew.

It took a lot of guesswork out.

And the loop could become quite interesting. Use AI to help develop a hypothesis. Put together some versions. Get responses from people. Have an agent help read the answers and work through what they might mean.

Reading and deciphering it all is work too. The help doesn’t have to stop once the responses arrive.

What did people respond to? What didn’t fit? What could we try next?

Even our colours and visual direction might need another look. The message people respond to could change what we want the creative to do.

There are still choices to make. But I feel more confident having something specific to work with.

I want to use this more this week. I can also see how we could get addicted to spending money testing every little thing.

For now, one useful question has come out of it: what happens if we lean further into the boldness?

The people who wouldn’t buy helped us see that.