Xploring is probably the world’s oldest research technique. You want to understand how a lion hunts? You don’t go to the zoo. You go to the jungle.

Xploring isn’t about data points or traditional market research. It’s not about sitting in front of your computer feeding words into a search engine.

Xploring is about getting involved and living in reality. It’s about shedding stereotypes and conventional wisdom to experience that reality with every sense wide open.

Xploring was born through a desire to give businesses real, honest insights about new markets. Insights that can only be gained through intimate contact with people – something that is rapidly disappearing in our electronically connected world.

One in a Billion is the story of the original Xploring journey.

Its author, Sandy Thompson, is Planning Director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York and Canada. In the late 1990s she worked for Saatchi & Saatchi in Hong Kong, as Planning Director for Asia. At first, she struggled to understand China, the region’s largest but least-comprehensible market.

Focus groups were no help; they produced the same rational responses from people regardless of whether they were asked about cars or shampoos. Sandy and her team were getting numbers, but they weren’t gaining understanding.

Gone Xploring
Sandy hit the road in 1997 to learn about China from scratch. She and her team of planners set out, accompanied by photographer Chien-min Chung, to meet and talk with the people who live, work and play in China.

The Xplorers sat down and talked with thousands of people in what turned out to be a 50,000-kilometre odyssey by van, boat and train. The insights that Sandy gained were later turned by her colleagues at Saatchi & Saatchi into award-winning communications that truly resonated with the Chinese people.

The Journey Continues
Since that first trip into the Middle Kingdom, Saatchi & Saatchi has gone Xploring in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Africa, and the United States.

Xploring is a universal tool; the lessons it offers about connecting with consumers apply equally to any society, any ethnicity and all markets.

This site will be regularly updated with details of our Xploring projects from around the world.

We’d love to talk to you about how Xploring could benefit your business. We look forward to hearing from you. Contact us.