Customer insight, styled for the retail experience.
kate spade needed to understand its most loyal customers more deeply—and turn those insights into something useful for the brand’s future. Madplum helped transform qualitative research into a richly designed storybook that made the customer voice tangible, memorable, and unmistakably kate spade.
The insight was valuable. The challenge was making it feel as distinctive as the brand itself.
Qualitative research can reveal powerful truths about how people see a brand, but the findings are often reduced to presentations and reports that are quickly forgotten. For kate spade, the opportunity was different: capture the voices, attitudes, and aspirations of brand loyalists in a form that reflected the playful sophistication, wit, color, and emotional character of the brand itself.
Madplum turned research into a brand artifact designed to inform, inspire, and be remembered.
Working closely with The Curious Company, Madplum helped shape qualitative research into a visual and editorial story spanning more than 100 pages. Customer insights were brought to life through typography, illustration, photography, fashion quotations, and expressive use of color, creating a fuller portrait of the brand’s “playful sophisticate” customer and voice. The final book was presented as an experience in itself, carefully produced, in linen boxes, finished with silk ribbon and peony flowers, turning strategic research into a gift for the brand. So kate spade.
The work gave kate spade a more memorable way to see and understand the people who loved the brand.
The storybook turned qualitative findings into a lasting internal resource that could help inform future thinking, creative decisions, and brand direction. Just as importantly, the experience demonstrated how customer insight could be made more useful by making it more human, more tangible, and more emotionally connected to the brand itself.
“Intuitive, inspired design and flawless execution made the work Madplum did for kate spade perfect in every way—from reference and tone to production values and process. They are strategic, attentive, and deeply committed to delivering creative solutions. A joy to work with.”
