Archive for the ‘market research’ Category

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

I noted recently that it is important to distinguish brand loyalists from simple brand users, even heavy brand users.  Loyalists have a special relationship with your brand and are key to understanding a brand’s identity.

But, how do you identify these loyalists?  Here are five behaviors that are worth developing in your customers because they are sheer signs of a heightened bond with your brand.  And they are qualities to look for when you want to investigate your brand’s essence with those most in touch with it.

So, you know you have a brand loyalist when…

• She talks about your brand and recommends it to friends.

This is the classic definition of a loyalist.  If you want to talk to a true partisan of your brand, ask her if she has recommended it to someone in the past month.

• She uses your brand in unique ways.

I recently read some questions on the web from women complaining they could not find a particular kind of Kraft cheese.  They seemed quite upset.  The cheese was essential to a number of recipes they made.  A true brand loyalist not only loves your brand for what it is; she also loves what she can do with it.  Consumers who have these alternate uses for your brand have integrated it much more deeply into their lives and identity.

• She really “knows” your brand.

A brand loyalist really knows your brand.  When I have wanted to talk with NBA fans, I made sure they watched a certain number of games every week.  But, I also asked them to name the two teams in last year’s finals and four teams in the Eastern Conference.  It was always amazing to me how many “fans” who watched a couple of games a week could not answer those questions.  True Rice Krispie loyalists would know the names of the three signature characters.  True Heinz ketchup loyalists would know in what colors other than red the product has been available.

• Your brand is part of her family’s rituals and traditions.

Does she set out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve or does she leave a bottle of Coca-Cola with a snack?  When a true loyalist describes a family event, she includes the brand name in her story.

• She “owns” your brand.

The true NBA fan wears apparel with the logo of his favorite team.  But it is possible to “own” many brands.  A true Kraft Singles loyalist brings them home from the grocery store and puts them in a blue “Red and Ned” Kraft Singles box in her refrigerator.  A true Starbuck’s fan drinks her favorite coffee from a Starbuck’s mug.

To be a loyalist is to take charge of the brand.  A true brand loyalist defines the brand and the experience as much as any sophisticated positioning effort.  Marketers have always developed “clubs” and the like to encourage an affinity with brands.  What is remarkable now is that social media is essential to this effort and makes it so much easier for the consumer to wrest control of the brand from the marketer.  It is truly the age of the loyalist.

At C+R, we are continually looking for new definitions of brand loyalty and ways for the marketer to find these true loyalists.  Let us find yours.

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I have been talking recently about metaphors and how better storytelling can make our insights more compelling.  I don’t believe that Kurt Vonnegut was ever in the position of presenting a segmentation analysis, but his advice is worth considering.  I think I always want “someone to root for,” whether I am reading a novel or an analysis of a series of ethnographies.  Or, at least I should.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

One of the most difficult experiences for a focus group moderator is to be in a room with eight people who are supposed to be “loyalists” of a particular brand and discover that most could care less.  The assumption, of course, was that anyone who was a heavy user had to have an affinity for the brand.  So, you made sure that everyone purchased the brand in the past month and had purchased the brand three times in the past six months; they were very heavy users.

But they stared at you blankly when you tried to discuss what the brand stood for or what it meant to them.  The fact is, to develop a meaningful understanding of a brand’s essence, you can’t simply talk to users; you have to talk to people who are passionate about the brand.

So, here are four things to remember when looking for your true (blue) customers

• Users are not always loyalists.

This is the most obvious point.  When you need to talk to or understand people who are passionate about you brand, don’t be coy.  Don’t create elaborate usage algorithms.  You need to be assured that they do use your brand, but it is more important to ask them, “Is this your favorite brand?”

And, a corollary might be the usage is not affinity.  Efforts to build loyalty, such as loyalty programs, can stimulate and reinforce usage, but they do not necessarily build affinity and engagement.

Finally, loyalty and affinity may be as much a feature of the category as it is of your brand.  Coke and Pepsi have spent years and fortunes building up the notion that it is important to be loyal to one or the other.  How could I not be a Coke or Pepsi loyalist?  In effect, you have to be passionate about soft drinks before you can be a Coke or Pepsi loyalist.

• Loyalty is a disposition.

Some consumers seem more disposed to being passionate about the brands they use.  They want to engage with them.  They derive satisfaction from the simple act of choosing a brand and feeling it is “theirs.”

• Loyalists bring as much to your brand as the brand gives to them.

As much as marketers like to see themselves as charting a brand’s essence, users have often been in the driver seat.  In the years of Honda’s rise as a major automotive brand in the US, it crafted an image as a solid, reliable car.  Yet, when I talked with Honda owners, I was always struck by how solid, reliable and careful they were.  How could a car not be reliable when it was driven by such owners?

• Look to their youth.

Loyalty to your brand does not come out of nowhere.  If it is deep, it has been there for a long time.  As a child I remember watching 20^th Century on CBS television. It was sponsored by Prudential Insurance.  The Rock of Gibraltar will always be in the back of my head when I think about my insurance.

If you are really looking to find your loyalists, you might well discover that they have had a relationship with your brand long before they actually purchased it.  A large number of Porsches are driven by people who have wanted to own one since they were twelve.  Ask the question, “What are your first memories of a brand?”  If they can’t go back into their past, they probably aren’t a true loyalist.

This all seems to point to the importance of social media in building a brand and engaging loyalists.  Social media give loyalists an arena to engage with brands, to define both themselves and the brand.  But, there is a trap in social media for marketers.  Recent research suggest that most individuals “friend” retailers on Facebook to get deals.  That is, social media encourages usage.  Does it create engagement and bonding; is it a two-way street?  That is what social media must do to encourage loyalty.

At C+R we are ready to help you understand your “loyal” customers and how to stimulate their engagement with you.

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

One of the advantages of sticking around an industry for a long time is that you have a decent chance to have known someone who left a mark on its development. I was lucky enough to have known Saul Ben-Zeev, one of the guys who developed the focus group as a marketing research tool. I went to work for Saul in 1978, fresh out of graduate school, and I worked beside him as a junior analyst, then a senior colleague, and then, eventually, as a partner in the business.

I say that Saul was, “one of the guys” because focus groups, like most things, came about because several people were working with similar ideas at about the same time, and, in this case, all of them contributed to the “group depth interview,” as focus groups were then known.

Groups were developed from the “focused” one-on-one interviews that were pioneered by Robert Merton and Patricia Kendall in the mid 1940s. The depth, or focused, technique was applied to groups for therapeutic purposes in the 50s, when therapy groups, or T-groups, became a standard tool for psychologists.  Saul, a product of the University of Chicago psychology department, was familiar with the technique and was one of several practitioners who worked to re-purpose group interviews for MR starting in the late 50s, when Creative Research, the predecessor to C+R, was founded.

The motive behind “group depth interviewing,” for both psychology and marketing, was mining for insights. And a great deal of serious thought was given on the academic side to the nature and quality of the “insights” that could be discovered. It was something Saul had spent a great deal of time thinking about, both as a student and a research professional.

So it may seem surprising that I’ve never known anyone in the business who put less stock in “insights” than Saul. He was particularly tough on what he called “gurus” who traded in “insight” without the benefit of rigorous analysis or meticulously constructed argument. And he was equally dismissive of those focus group moderators – several of whom we hired over the years – who felt their wealth of “insights” made up for their poor analytic skills. “Insights,” Saul said many times, “are a dime a dozen.”

What cost much more than a dime, and was the only truly worthwhile goal in Saul’s mind, was the ability of closely reasoned logic to instill a sense of confidence in the reader of a report, specifically, the confidence to make a decision.

What Saul realized a half-century ago is something that the MR industry seems to struggle with, learning and re-learning. Most marketing research is conducted because someone has to make a decision. A team will have to align around that decision, argue for it, and support it through a process involving intense scrutiny and, often, intense pressure from other teams to take a different course.

The industry seems to have learned that no one in business today needs more data, but the blogosphere seems to be all over the idea that they all need “insight.” Saul will be 86 this summer, and he doesn’t come around the office very much anymore, but every time I hear that a client is “starving for insight” I can hear Saul’s voice dismissing the thought.

Dictionaries say “insights” are intuitive and that they reveal some deep truth or essence. Saul certainly recognized that clients needed deep truths, and he delivered them – week after week, report after report – over a long, distinguished career. I went to many presentations with him, and saw the way his clients idolized him. And I can tell you without hesitation that the insights poured out of his pen (or pencil – he never really did get comfortable with a keyboard).

The thing about insights is that they feel deep and intuitive when you hear them and you’ve got the context that they fit into ready in your mind. The key fits the lock, turns, and suddenly, you get it! Without that context, that set up, an insight doesn’t hold up. You may feel its rightness in your gut, but you’ll have difficulty getting your team to align behind it and even more defending it. (It’s more than interesting to look at some famous insights when you’re a bit removed from the right context; often they’re not much more than gibberish without the support structure. “The medium is the message.” “Business is like the Beatles.”)

For an insight to be insightful, the audience has to be ready to get it. And for one to have an impact, they have to be able to get others to get it, even in the face of opposition. And for that, as Saul taught all of us who worked with him, you need to provide the supports.

Maybe one reason that clients feel starved for insights is that they’ve seen too many that were nothing but intuition; insights that evaporated at the slightest hint of a challenge. Or maybe they’ve seen too many tortured arguments that never got down to the deep level where insight lies.

Clients are starved for insights wrapped in a well thought-out supporting structure.

Personally, I think this was one of the many things Saul right. What’s really needed is an analyst who has the experience to understand the decision to be made, who carefully works through how what’s been learned relates to the issues that drive the decision, who can then find insights that will feel deep and intuitive. Anything less really isn’t worth a dime.

By Gene Del Vecchio
Author, Creating Blockbusters!

I’ve spent a career investigating and dissecting what youth audiences want. While they gravitate toward the timely and contemporary, they still find great comfort in the timeless and true. It’s the blend that makes for blockbusters, along with a good dose of what I term marketable artistry.

In a nationwide study that I conducted for my new book, Creating Blockbusters!, fielded by C+R Research, I asked four hundred people ages 8 to 55 what they like, dislike, and expect of today’s entertainment. Here’s a glimpse of what the 8 to 19 youth segment wants, as outlined in Creating Blockbusters!

Like all of us, youth audiences want a deeply emotional story. They want protagonists to face life and death struggles and to muster the bravery to achieve their full potential. These were among the top themes of over 20 tested.  But to break through, the story must be served up in a dramatic, unique way.  The Hunger Games comes to mind with its female protagonist and her selfless sacrifice to take her younger sister’s place in a futuristic battle to the death.

Youth audiences also love narratives that tickle their fears. Children age 8 to 12 want heroes to feel the terror of making big mistakes at school (37%) and being publicly humiliated (36%). The desire for these types of characters fueled interest in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Children this age also greatly fear spiders and snakes (35%) which undoubtedly provided a great platform for the original toy called Creepy Crawlers of the 1960’s as well as kids’ interest in recent reality shows such as Fear Factor. These fears are even more top of mind than the fear of death (29%). Being rejected by friends/peers is an important teen fear (36%). This provided a great foundation for many teen angst stories such as The Breakfast Club and is a more prominent issue among teens than the fear of terrorism (21%).

Youth audiences expect franchises to stay continually fresh. The Simpsons does so by addressing cultural issues related to race, religion, politics, sex, and celebrity, just as the TV show Glee uses revolving pop music artists.

While youth audiences appear to want things that are entirely new, they actually lean toward timeless products dressed up in new clothing.  The recent film Avatar with its environmental message and romance between two people from different worlds is very similar to Disney’s Pocahontas.  Beware of being too new and different.

A key to gaining a broad youth audience (along with adults) is to take a child-like idea from the depths of kid culture and make it edgy and/or sophisticated enough for older tastes. That’s what led to the broad appeal of Transformers, Harry Potter, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and even ABC’s new hit, Once Upon a Time.

Youth audiences fall in love with characters that have personas they admire. The persona might be coolness (e.g., James Bond), sweetness and innocence (e.g., Cinderella), mischievousness (e.g., Hans Solo), empowerment (e.g., Mulan), and even grumpiness (e.g., Shrek).  Kids want to reflect those same personalities on their T-shirts, posters, video games, and toys. Great character attitudes travel across business categories.

Youth audiences seek franchises that display marketable artistry. That is, products invented in ways that enhance their marketability.  It might arise from our politics (e.g., Barbie as Presidential candidate during election periods), from an advancement in technology (e.g., James Cameron created news by advancing the performance capture technique for Avatar), from a great name that communicates (e.g., Finding Nemo), to a great tagline that comes from the essence of the story (e.g., “May the Force Be With You”), to promotional events that get consumers closer to the franchise (e.g., Power Rangers national tours).

Youth audiences listen when you use their mediums. This occurred spectacularly when the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park was announced to only seven popular Harry Potter bloggers during a secret Webcast. Excited by the news, the bloggers sent the message to thousands of followers which was then relayed by news outlets to 350 million people worldwide in just days.

Most blockbusters don’t happen by accident. They are carefully conceived, developed and marketed using sound principles. The more you know about what youth audiences want, as set forth in Creating Blockbusters!, the more likely your offering will be the next Youth-buster, capturing not only kids but the kids that live in all of us.

—Gene Del Vecchio is an entertainment researcher, consultant and the author of the new book, Creating Blockbusters! genedv@aol.com http://creatingblockbusters.com/

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

About a year ago, I described how smartphone apps could change the face of grocery shopping.  I had been converted by Grocery Gadgets.  It organized my planning and list making; it guided my trip through the store.  I was focused.  The experience was great.  I was a more efficient shopper.

Well, I have been using Grocery Gadgets for about a year.  I finally came up for air and looked at my fellow shoppers.  During all of that time, I have yet to see a single individual using a smartphone while grocery shopping.  Not a one.  What’s going on?  Where is the predicted mobile commerce revolution in the grocery store?

One answer, is that there are people out there going up and down the supermarket aisles guided by their smartphones and I just haven’t noticed them.  It is also possible that the transition will take a bit more time.  But, the mobile commerce experience, at least in the grocery store, still may be a work in process.

• Grocery Gadgets is a very elaborate shopping list.  So are other grocery shopping apps.  Even apps from the stores themselves are shopping lists connected to an electronic version of the weekly circular.  Simply moving material from one medium to another is rarely successful.  Something from the original medium is lost.  What is simpler than a list on the back of an envelope stuck to the refrigerator door?  And, it fails to take advantage of the strengths of the new medium.  Reading the local newspaper on my smartphone was never very satisfying, but reading stories related to topics in which I am interested aggregated by Google News is fantastic.
• There is no feedback.  The communication is all one way.  I create a list, I select the items, and I check them off.  Increasingly, consumers expect a sense of community in their mobile shopping experience.  If I create a list of grocery items for my trip to the store, I should be able to see my friends who like the same things, and the store should tell me which of those items are on sale.  Or, it should suggest alternatives that are on sale.
• Think about your grocery shopping.  When you are in the store, what are the questions you have?  Where is an item…or an aisle?  What’s on sale?  What flavor does my family really like?  Which cut looks better?  Which melon seems fresher?  Is a 20 oz. bottle at $1.50 a better deal than a 12 oz. one at a $1?  My grocery app cannot answer any of these questions.  So, it is disconnected from my real in-store experience.  To respond to my real needs in the moment, the store will need to be aware of me and my smartphone.  And, if it can, I am likely to accept its tracking me.
• You do see people in the grocery store using their phone.  They are calling spouses and asking them to clarify something on a list or asking what they can get instead something they can’t find. They ask children what they might like.  In other words, real people use their phones in the store to be flexible.  My grocery shopping app isn’t.
• Some shoppers insist that going to the grocery store is drudgery.  But, I have talked to just as many who say a trip to the grocery store allows them to indulge themselves or their family.  They may not be able to splurge on jewelry at David Yurman, but they can treat themselves to some fancy chocolate or gourmet cheese at the grocery for just a few dollars.  Grocery Gadgets and its’ ilk make shopping more efficient.  They also need to inject some fun into the process.

I am sure there are many more ways that the mobile commerce in the grocery store can become more engaging.  Making me a more efficient shopper was great, but I want more.   I want my smartphone to create a reciprocal relationship with the store that makes it a new experience every time I enter.  At C+R, we are excited to explore what that means for you and your customers.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

When I began my career in marketing research as an interviewer, I assumed that I would be leaving my academic training behind.  Of what use would my knowledge of manuscript hands, scholastic philosophy, and Anglo-Norman devotional literature be when I was talking to ten-year-olds about the latest iteration of microwavable pizza?

So, it was with a good deal of interest that I read a recent post on the Anthrostrategist blog about the lessons to be learned from effect of the stained glass windows in gothic cathedrals for the design of retail space.  It points out that the windows of the gothic cathedral were much more than a new architectural technology.  They served to educate an illiterate congregation.  But even more, they created a sacred space that insulated the people from the tribulations of the outside world and primed them for worship.  The church itself elevated the experience.

The retail environment must do the same.  It must do more than simply draw the attention of consumers to the features and benefits of products.  The store should draw shoppers into the ethos of a product and prime them for the total experience in which a product participates.

An impressive analogy.  I am sure it is possible to get there without a knowledge of Abbé Suger, but it sure helps.  So, I remember the first time I realized my academic training was not useless.  I was behind the mirror in a focus group facility listening to a brand manager rail about the stupidity of the consumers I had just interviewed.  They refused to recognize the benefits of his new product — qualities he felt were obvious and should be manifest to everyone.

With a certain degree of temerity — I was rather new then — I suggested that my respondents were merely looking in all honesty for what they saw as the benefits in the product.  They were not willfully ignorant.  In the back of my mind was a vague recollection of St. Augustine’s stricture about sin, that people are not really evil.  Rather, “all people seek the good.”

The lesson in all of this is larger than the utility of gothic architecture or medieval philosophy to understanding shopper behavior.  Insights, or at least the ability to perceive them in consumer actions and statements, are often the product of our ability to bring a new frame of reference to bear upon familiar evidence.

It is not simply academic pursuits that can be useful.  To be sure, what you may have learned studying history, or geology, or French literature can provide you with a set of mental frameworks that will compliment what you have learned studying marketing.  But, so too will the experience creating schedules for Little League, coordinating a Girl Scout Cookie sale, or organizing your MP3 collection.  The more structures we have in our mental quiver to layover what we observe, the richer the insights we will see.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Shopper Insights has proven to be an incredibly valuable construct.  It moves the focus of marketing and of research much closer to the actual decision and purchase.  It is real.  We are not asking consumers (a rather vague and distant term in its own right) in a vacuum how an ad makes them feel about a product.   We are in a store with a real shopper; we observe how a real shelf set of products impacts her decisions.

At the risk of injecting some un-reality back into the process, just who precisely is this shopper in shopper insights?  Well, it’s the person in the store doing the shopping.  D’uh!

Not so fast.

Consider three “shoppers” in a grocery store.

• The first is there making her weekly trip to replenish the pantry and prepare for the upcoming week.  She is a bit harried.  She has a list, although it might have some wiggle room in it.  She may even have a few coupons.  She quickly glances across the condiment section looking at the yellow mustard.  What’s on sale?  Does her family really care what brand it is?  How much should she buy?
• Our second shopper is planning a party for the weekend.  She will be serving a buffet with ham.  She too is gazing at the condiment section, but much more slowly.  How many kinds of mustard should she get to satisfy her guests?  Which mustards look interesting?  Are there mustards that will make the table more impressive?
• Finally, we have the shopper who rushes up to the condiment section and grabs a small jar of Dijon mustard from the shelf.  She wants to make a salad dressing tonight, and she has run out of an essential ingredient.

In each case, we have a shopper looking at the same section of the grocery store, scanning the same array of products.  But, each is sensitive and attentive to different cues.  Each has different needs.  The interplay of these needs and cues drives markedly different decisions.

Of course, these are not three different shoppers. It’s the same person visiting the same store, but driven by a different set of situational considerations.  But, from the perspective of the store trying to satisfy her, she is fundamentally three different people.  It is the situation, not something in her tastes and character, that conditions her decision making.

For many years, our restaurant research has been shaped by this fundamental insight — it is the occasion more than the individual that drives decision making. I may go to the same restaurant with my family that I do with a group of friends. But I do so for very different reasons with very different expectations.

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

C+R does a lot of online qualitative, which means we use a lot of newly designed research platforms and try even more. We’re also very interested in using DIY survey tools as a means of giving our analytic staff a shorter, faster, less expensive path to fielding a client’s project. So, again, we’re constantly looking at new tools.

There are a lot of new tools and platforms entering beta or being rolled out, and they’re increasingly attracting investment and developer interest. There’s a huge amount of variation across tools, of course, but their designs have a lot in common, too. All of them have given a fair amount of thought to how to design an interface for the supplier/user, the people who are going to conduct a project. They have also thought a good deal about the respondent interface. But the interface for the end data – often dominated by a “report” that can be exported to PowerPoint – doesn’t seem to have received the degree of thought given the others.

And this last interface – which should be designed around the needs of the client, and should have been designed with the awareness that every client is looking for at least some insight and maybe an actual working plan – just regurgitates data in shiny graphic form, delivering “Marketing Research” rather than “Marketing Insight”. Why didn’t the smart engineers and web design people think more about this?

The main reason, I think, is that they’re listening to research providers, not the clients who buy the research and ultimately pay the bills. Either that or they’re just not watching very closely to see how the business is changing. Even if we allow that the model of the research report– delivered to the end client by a firm that conducted the nuts-and-bolts research, analyzed the data, and wrote the report– will be around for some time to come, we should also recognize that it’s already under siege. As time frames compress, team decision making grows, and the quest for insight replaces the delivery of data and analysis, team working sessions replace presentations and reports.

C+R frequently works this way especially for community-based, social, online qualitative projects. It’s also our standard approach for clients using Interactive Query powered by Invoke, a real-time, interactive, collaborative platform that offers surveys with statistically solid base sizes combined with the flexibility of on-the-fly questionnaire changes and one-on-one respondent interaction. Invoke is the only platform I’m aware of that is based on a model of a collaborating team interrogating the data being collected in real time and leaving at the end of the day having achieved consensus on its meaning. Kudos to them for their vision, but I want more, and I think our industry should, too.

So here, in no particular order, is my wish list for tools whose back ends are designed as decision support systems so a team of clients and research suppliers can have tools at hand for getting past the data and on to the decision. Some are pure flights of fantasy that I have no idea how to realize. Others are grounded in currently realizable technology (I think), given sufficient determination and resources.

• The “back room” team should have the same kind of information-sharing and messaging tools that we give the people in our marketing research online communities and that many corporations provide for their day-to-day operations. Every team member should be able to start discussions, join groups, and upload their thoughts and notes for comments or votes. Simply conceiving the team as a group and providing that group with the kind of functionality that we find in many corporate social networking platforms would be a huge advance. It goes without saying that the team should be able to assemble in virtual space, and should not have to be physically together at one site.
• Every team member should be able to independently, or with a group, explore whatever data the platform is collecting and working with. Everyone should be able to keep private notes with the ability to post ideas publicly to other team members at will.
• Team members should be able to tag or otherwise annotate items of interest in the data or produced by other members of the team when they find them especially insightful or meaningful. This is especially crucial in qualitative projects, but could be equally valuable in many quantitative projects. When a team is looking for insight, revealing items and ideas need to be marked as they are discovered so they can be quickly retrieved and easily shared out and discussed further.
• Functionality for data analysis specialists will have to be available. A coding team should be able to code/tag texts or media with the results then being posted for the team(s) to utilize. Video specialists should be able to retrieve tagged segments to compile “highlight reels” for sharing. The team should be able to tap statistical specialists, text or data analytics professionals, or other kinds of specialists as needed.
• Every team member needs access to information beyond the boundaries of the immediate project. This means access to the internet, of course, but the platform should make it easy to bring in information from corporate data stores and libraries, or from supplier data repositories. Being able to retrieve previous work or supplementary data is a key aspect of making good decisions– no project stands alone.
• Teams are often actively led by facilitators whose job it is to help the team move the process along. Tools to help expedite the process like voting and sorting tools that let groups work through piles of ideas to identify areas of interest and consensus would help.
• Displays of the results of the team’s discussions should be designed so that they are, in effect, self-reporting: the final state of the display should reflect the result of the team’s effort. Ideally, someone viewing such a display should be able to drill down into the top, final state to see more of the underline processes that led to the final display state, the “result,” “conclusion” or “decision.” The requirement of producing a PowerPoint “final report” should be left behind for a more powerful metaphor.

I would love to hear suggestions about this topic. Do you work in collaborative teams? What kind of collaboration tools do you have available? Are you using any tools or platforms that have incorporated a “back room” for your team, and, if you have, what do they provide?

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

C+R, like many of the companies that used to happily refer to themselves as “Marketing Research Companies,” is finding itself less and less comfortable with our traditional moniker. We look back and ask, “What have we been doing?” and then look ahead and ask, “And what are we going to do in the future?”, and then face the stark reality of the present, and try, “And just who am I?!” It’s as though we looked at an old picture of ourselves and suddenly felt uncomfortable that we were still wearing our hair the same way or hadn’t gotten new glasses.

One of my colleagues is on the External Advisory Board for a major university graduate program in Marketing Research. In both of their last bi-yearly meetings, there was long and active debate about how the graduate program should position itself… as a “Market Research” degree?  As a “Marketing Research” degree?  “Marketing Insights”?  Marketing Consulting?  Business Insights?  Marketing Analytics?  And many more.  After two such discussions, involving 30 research veterans at the top of their careers, there has still not been a consensus!

Personally, I’m in favor of “marketing insights” — at least for now. “Marketing research” is not only dated, it’s just plain wrong. No one wants “research,” they want the results that come from having done research, by which I don’t mean data or the analysis of data. What’s wanted is at least currently described as “insight.” It’s like the old story about nobody wanting a drill; what they want are holes, and drills are just a means to that end.

I’m not that sanguine about the long-term prospects for “insights” though, because I don’t think anyone really wants them either. “Insights” aren’t decisive enough; you don’t make decisions based on “insights.” If someone hands you an “insight,” you’re still stuck trying to decide what to do about it. “Insights” feels weak to me, but I don’t have a better term that doesn’t feel like over-selling (at least for the moment). But the long-term goal is probably more like a “plan,” “agenda,” or at least a “decision,” and the eventual term for the discipline needs to get closer to those ideas.

I find myself thinking a lot about whether the time has finally come when we can get past our fascination with collecting and presenting data. We’re much, much closer to it than we’ve ever been – but we’ve all got a lot of historical baggage to overcome. So I’m in favor of “Marketing Insights” as a stake in the ground, and a claim on where we’d all like to be, even if I don’t think it’s really where we need to be yet.

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

I’m not a news junkie, but I’ve always read newspapers. Having grown up and gone to college in New England, I’ve been reading the Times since I was a kid, and I can’t remember a time when www.nytimes.com wasn’t the home page on my computer.

My opinion of the Grey Lady has varied over the years. I’ve always admired how the Times tried to be the newspaper of record, even when it fell short of its own standards. And although I’ve thought they made some remarkably dumb moves over the years (see “Paywall, failure of”) I’ve increasingly come to admire the Times as an online innovator.

Although it’s commonplace today for online companies to have an API, the Times was the first major newspaper I was aware of to do so. It’s also the only newspaper I know of that has an experimental development arm, beta620. And although it’s almost impossible to imagine a news site without graphics, the Times has been especially thoughtful about the graphics they build and how they relate to the principles of journalism.

But the Times has also been working on data collection projects – I first noticed these around the last Presidential election cycle, but there may be earlier examples. I remember sending friends of mine links to an online “mood tracker” that aggregated answers to the question, “What are you concerned about right now?” into a timeline and used type size to indicate the number of people sharing a common concern. It was simple, informative, constantly shifting, and sometimes surprising.

More recently, the Times took a step further and created what looks to my eyes – practiced as they are at looking at surveys – as a truly re-imagined survey. It was in  (a) timeline.” Here’s a small screen shot of what the display looks like:a year-end piece about the future of computing, and it asked readers “to make predictions and collaboratively edit

If you hover over any of the entries, it will open up and show a longer description of the topic. Here’s what you see under “Routine Voice Interaction”:

This is a survey question – something on the order of, “In what year do you expect routine voice interaction to be available on all computing devices?” But, besides displaying the question, the Times survey shows who suggested it (they also link to information about the proposer), the current consensus answer, the number of respondents who have previously disagreed with the then-current answer, and an invitation to vote on moving the date forward or backward. Imagine how grueling this would be set up in a typical online survey. The Times version has 53 separate events – I can hardly imagine a way to make responding to a survey grid that size bearable.

A lot of things are going on here; one being better graphic design than most survey tools can support, of course. But the more I think about this, the more it strikes me that the big change is that the Times has shifted the concept of this “survey” from a model of “we ask questions, and you answer them,” to one that puts more power in the hands (and mouse) of the “respondent,” who is invited to explore this space of topics, to think about topics in a context of their own choice rather than in the sequence that the questionnaire author chose, and to ignore topics in which they have no interest and/or knowledge. The “big idea” here is a significant shift of control from the researcher to the respondent.

I encourage you to go to the site and try it – especially if you’re a tech person who knows and cares about computing. You’ll find that you don’t just respond to one topic at a time – you can, for instance, look across the items that are now all clustered around the same year and think about whether, in your mind, they should all belong together. You may advance one of the items a few years, which may make you re-think one of your earlier answers, so you go back and adjust that one to bring it into line with how you’re thinking now. And you’ll almost certainly give some items a pass.

Let me be clear here: I know the analytic reasons for questionnaire order and error messages that say, “You must answer all of the questions on this page before continuing.” And I’m not suggesting that this exercise represents the future of all surveys or that it’s even the best possible expression of a more user-driven alternative.

But ask yourself whether the ability to conduct certain kinds of statistical analysis based on certain kinds of sampling models, with control over order effects and incomplete data records always and in every case would outweigh the value of considered responses from involved respondents. The MR industry’s answer to data quality issues almost always involves a critique of survey design, so why do we continue to produce surveys that perpetuate the ones we designed for phone interviews in 1992?