Preaching To The Converted: More Useful Than You Think?

We thought therefore, we’d start 2012 with a series of posts on what we think is the most important development in modern market research: our increasingly accurate ability to tap into consumer emotions.

In particular, we want to do our bit to move discussion of emotion measurement from methods and applications towards the more important area of marketing implications. Why measuring emotion accurately really matters.

One of our concerns is that too often emotional marketing is treated as more akin to alchemy than science. It’s as if researchers and marketers were engaged in a holy quest for a magic ‘emotional spell’ that would transform the most mundane marketing message into a vibrant, guaranteed to sell, proposition.  It’s a search for the dramatic “conversion moment”  that fails to take into account the fact that emotions are subtle and work in different ways at different points in consumers’ lives.

Let’s take just one example of this: post-purchase behaviour — well after the “magic moment” of brand attraction is over.  To quote J. Edward Russo of Cornell (writing in the MSI Relevant Knowledge Series) “one of the most robust findings in consumer behavior is the biased use of information after a product decision in order to bolster the buyer’s choice”. A recent purchaser often continues to seek out for information on the product they bought, and is subconsciously looking for materials, stories or emotional content that justify their decision. If they find such information it reinforces their brand preference, raises perceptions of value and increases the likelihood of recommendation. Pretty important stuff, arguably more important than simple brand trial, and incidentally an argument for clever brands to keep marketing strongly in the traditionally “quiet” period post holiday season when people are enjoying their presents, but need to justify (to themselves and others) their burgeoning credit card bill.

Marketing that plays to this post-purchase openness to the brand will be emotional of course, but a different quality of emotion is required. Here the brand itself is a primary emotional trigger (assuming you’ve delivered on your product promise, they already favour you) so the practice of “logo last” advertising may be less relevant. Similarly you’ll want to give people ideas, feelings and stories that both reinforce their biases and give them ammunition to repeat to others. At this stage marketing benefits from content, not just style. Words, slogans and information matter post-purchase, not because people suddenly become rational, but because emotionally they are searching for justifications and reasons to brag. That these justifications should be conveyed in a manner that resonates emotionally is obviously still important, but in measurement terms the issue becomes less about simply “is it emotional” and far more about the pattern of response – how specific emotions like Surprise, Sadness or Happiness interact with the marketing message as it unfolds.

Personally I think this means marketers should reconsider what they consider as “off-season” as such periods may in fact be when much of their brand equity is created. Not only that, it seems likely that these so called “off-periods” call for quite different campaign content than the peak sales periods. There is a lot of money to be made by preaching to the converted. But that is not the main point of this post. Emotion in marketing is about far more than creating change or conversion experiences. In turn measurement of emotion is more than simply testing the amount of emotion or “engagement” generated. The marketing and personal context that emotion is measured in matters. So to does the detail of how specific emotions are revealed and how these emotions interact with rational benefits and promises. Increasingly we have much more precise emotional data available – the task now turns to using it more wisely.

In the end we who study the role of emotion in consumers can’t transform lead into gold – but by careful analysis we can do far more to make marketing more subtle, more carefully directed and a lot cleverer. That, rather than the search for “magic moments”, should be the task of modern consumer research.

Facial Imaging: From Faces to Reports, No Questions Asked!

The appeal of such systems also came up in a discussion I had recently with a senior colleague that was spurred by news of events at EmSense:  http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/r-i-p-emsense.htm. While things may yet turn out for the best, it did seem to us that selling a system based on sophisticated hardware to US customers, in these tough times, cannot have been easy. As we tossed around the issues, it seemed apparent that as clients become ever more cost-focused and have to deal with massive amounts of data from multiple sources they become increasingly obsessed with research services that are both scalable and simple to implement and interpret.

The days of methodologically unique, time intensive, project-based services may be numbered with a few exceptions in niche areas that won’t be the growth drivers of our industry. Two “S’s” really start to matter:  (a) Scalability – can I collect, process and interpret masses of information in a scalable, repeatable manner, and (b) Simplicity – can I minimise the effort needed to get a research system understood, and actively used, across a large organisation whose internal MR units are getting ever leaner?

In this case, “scalable” and especially “simple” do not equate to “dumb” or “unsophisticated”. They imply instead that designers have thought how to integrate and present information from multiple sources and how to align new technologies to work with existing research techniques. Implementation and acceptance of new techniques is a key part of the simplicity and scalability requirement – technology and new ideas have to adapt to the ways of humans in organisations. Technical and process efficiency is not, on its own, enough to guarantee scalability and simplicity of implementation in the real world.

To the above two “S’s”, I’d like to add a third: “Shanghai”, where that city serves as a placeholder for emerging markets generally. A research service that doesn’t rapidly show evidence of its adaptability to emerging markets will have a hard time getting acceptance from clients whose strategies are increasingly global. To take a topic close to my heart, imagine a client who measures emotional response to a global campaign concept by EEG in the USA, by metaphor scales in Europe, by FGD’s in the Middle East and by Likert scales in Asia. (This scenario, btw, would be funny if I had not seen some rather similar examples in recent years).

Aside from the comparability of outputs, the challenges of translation, cultural norms and so on conspire to make building a ‘global view’ of a brand a nightmare for many clients. As the axes of MR spend move towards emerging markets, we have to adapt. At the very least this means keeping the cost of new research services down to acceptable emerging markets levels, and adapting services for delivery in diverse and difficult settings. These markets are already some of the biggest customers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Unilever and P&G, and before long they will be among the bigger customers of Apple and other high tech companies. Our services need to reach them.

Let me illustrate this with the facial imaging example we presented in Australia. The diagram at the top of this post illustrates the nViso 3D Facial Imaging process, but essentially it is simple – link to the nViso system in the middle of a standard online survey, collect pictures of a face (with permission!) over a webcam and the service automatically generates charts and data files showing second by second emotional response over seven different emotions to whatever it was the respondent was looking at. Now I should declare that David and I provide consultancy services to nViso, and have a small stake in the company, but the point I want to get across here is the “Triple-S” nature of the service (with apologies to the other “Triple-S” services and standards around our industry!).

• Simple - the equipment required is minimal (standard webcams on respondents own computers),
• Scalable- the automated process deals with large amounts of data collected remotely and cost-efficiently and easy to interpret outputs are available fast.
• And the final “S”, we recently carried out a study in China – including Shanghai!

Now, whatever you think of “facial imaging”, (email info@gordon-mccallum.com to know more!), consider this as an example of the new wave of research services which are coming on stream. These are taking off from the point where some of the higher cost and technologically demanding techniques, that received much PR in recent times, seem to have not met all expectations. It’s a trend of moving from applications that have outward sex appeal but are difficult to live with, towards methods that go beyond “Sexy” to comfortably encompass all the other “S’s”.

Examples of this new wave can be seen in the fields of mobile research, geo-location, online qualitative, MROC’s and others. These are united by a desire to make complex information simple to understand, a belief  that implementation is every bit as important as outputs, and a clear understanding that cost and geographic reach are key drivers for most clients these days.  Expect to see more examples of such “Triple-S” services as budgets tighten and ROI demands rise, while at the same time information gets ever more complex and money continues to move to emerging markets.

Both felt that, as well as the harder times in the market economies generally bringing everyone down, the organisational changes arising from consolidation in the industry may also be playing a part in this emotional change. In particular, the increased prevalence of personnel policies, necessitated by organisational complexity, was thought to be a key factor. The structures imposed by such were driving the ‘star players’ upwards (to staff roles) or outwards at many of the larger companies in favour of safe but not necessarily inspiring performers.

There seemed to be a lack of discrimination between those with a passionate commitment to good research and those who were otherwise, for want of a better term, prima donnas. Dynamic research agencies thrive on talent and special performers. No-one who is any good and has a new dimension to add to the organisation is going to be compliant and passive. A top agency MD can handle and motivate those people in the same way a great football manager can blend the geniuses and journeymen into a championship winning side.

However, there is tendency to lump the dedicated and the self-centred together and label them both as ‘high maintenance’. There’s a crucial difference in being high maintenance and displaying passion often unseen by those who lack the latter. High maintenance is all about ‘me’ and expecting everyone else to be also; the passionate only want the best for the company and can’t see why others don’t want the same. It is vital to identify (and reward) those committed to doing great work and those committed to taking the credit for it. In many cases, only those who have done the former, themselves, can recognise it;it’s a risk leaving the judgement solely to those who skill is in constructing the reward and recognition systems alone.

So leave some room in the side for the passionate. If you’re not careful and overlook or deliberately avoid this you’ll find yourself competing with some highly motivated researchers who should be part of the team driving your business today.

Image by atl10trader via Flickr

Many years ago now, I was taken out to a long ‘relaxing’ lunch (as was the custom of those days) by a senior industry player. I was just starting out on my managerial career, and I suspect his major motivation was to fish for competitive intelligence, or perhaps to see if I was wanting to jump ship. But, as he poured the second glass, he seemed to decide I was worthy of mentoring and so started to give advice on how to manage a market research company. One bit, in particular, stuck with me. Leaning over he intoned: “look Alastair, making money out of MR is a lot simpler than most realise: all you need to do is hire the best people in the industry, pay them 20% more than they’d get anywhere else, then work them twice as hard as anybody else would.“

A little while later, I was about to head off for my first overseas assignment, and at a far more genteel lunch our company chairman also offered some advice. I’d been probing him for clues on cultural factors that might impact my work and he’d been politely indulging me with helpful tips. Then he said “But you know, Alastair, that while all these things are important, there are two more important things in running a research business” . The first he said, was to know enough of finance and accountancy so your finance director could not pull the wool over your eyes (he put it more politely than that!). The second thing was to “recruit a team that is not like you, that compensates for your weaknesses, and will argue with you in an intelligent, rational way. If your team are all like you, and always agree with you, then sooner or later the company will be in trouble“.

Rehearsing the details of my ancient lunches is relevant for a number of reasons. Firstly, neither piece of advice is quite what it seems. To take the second first. At initial glance it seems like the now common plea for “diversity”, a safe and politically correct piece of guidance. Yet, this was no plea for introducing random and superficial variation among the people I was to hire. That was not the meaning – instead I was being advised, in the politest way possible, to carefully consider my own weaknesses and then to recruit people who could cover up for the gaps in my personality and skills.

Neither is the first bit of advice quite so completely Machiavellian as it seems at first glance. The point here is that the best MR people are seldom so mercenary that you need to pay them  a lot to get them to work hard. Almost by definition they enjoy their job. But they want to be acknowledged, and they want something to symbolize and justify (to themselves, and their spouses) why they are working so hard. Nothing is quite as good as money in this regard. So getting  them to work twice as hard (or at least twice as efficiently) than the norm is the easy bit. The hard bit is taking the risk on offending others, breaking HR relativities or whatever is required to pay such people the extra 20% it takes to recruit and retain them.

Putting these two bits of advice together has served me well. In recruiting people, I’ve often tried to think about both; are they better than most in the industry? and, what can they do that I can’t? People who deliver on both of these criteria will also deliver massively both in terms of company results and, on a more selfish note, in helping drive your personal career.

The other thing I’d like to point out about the above advice is that it is very straightforward, and delivered free of jargon in an intimate and personal manner. They stuck in my mind  because a couple of industry leaders took  the time to tell me personally what they really believed. Compare this to some of the so-called “Executive Leadership” programmes that now abound, programmes that for instance promise that:

“During the Forum [the trainers] will talk to a series of actual value pools and use real life examples of strategic staircases detailing growth opportunities.”   (All too typical executive training programme example quoted by Don Watson in his excellent book on management jargon: “Bendable Learnings”).

The simple fact is that a two day seminar on strategic staircases or management “value pools” is not what most young managers need. They need senior people to take them seriously, as people with potential who it is worth taking the time to share experiences with.

Market Research is an odd industry, in many ways unique. Executive development programmes do need to encompass generalised  theories, management techniques and good working practices, but unless they also convey the tips and experiences of those who have ‘been there, done that’ they will be sterile and ineffective. There are ways to do this that do not involve the more festive lunches, but they all require senior professionals to take a more personal approach to mentoring and training.

Tomorrows MR Gurus? All Question Answered, No Need For Survey or FGD! (Image by jef safi via Flickr)

Market Researchers are perpetually speculating on the future of MR; at times it is said, as a defence mechanism to save thinking about what needs doing today. In my view, this speculation falls between two extremes – expecting too much change (generally we under-rate institutional inertia in ourselves and our clients), or not anticipating enough (there will be some developments we cannot even begin to imagine).

Yet, there are stirrings in our profession of some genuinely revolutionary changes that will transform the lives of research’s next generation. These are not so much based in the oft heard predictions on new ways to access people’s thoughts (neuroscience, social media research etc.), but on the application of theory and modelling to understand and make sense of such thoughts. What then, might the future look like?

Recently a colleague described a small fantasy in which – hopefully many years hence – in our golden years, we tour around the elegant MR office of a client we helped on the path to success. We look in amazement not so much at the technology – the paper thin screens that bedeck walls, the robotic assistants and the like – but at the luxury of the surroundings. Meeting rooms are filled with top-end virtual reality mind-mapping simulators and are decked with comfortable sofas from which to enjoy fine selections of food and drink. We note the people who glance up as we pass are well coiffed, poised, looking relaxed and in control. They have not been up all night completing a questionnaire or finalising a presentation deck – they look decidedly ‘un-frazzled’.

The only sign of serious “work” activity is in a large room where 3 or 4 slightly more studious, some would say nerdy, executives work with large 3D simulators playing with a wall screen as they create life-size simulacrums representing the inhabitants of downtown Beijing. On asking, we are told they are entering heuristic decision-making parameters into an agent modelling programme. This in turn will power the A.I. underpinning a new product launch prediction show due to be staged later today. Here, the client can actively interact with the simulacrums, ask questions, change parameters in the trial product and check how those will impact his target market. So, almost by habit, we ask – “….where does the basic data for these predictions come from? How many people did you survey?”  They look at us benignly, before replying: “well the core is from our client’s customer sales and feedback databases, and for some specific parameters we’ve input data from facial imaging reactions we obtained last night. Then, we have ongoing dynamic up-dates by modelling reactions to similar events in social media. So we don’t really need to actually talk to anyone”.

In this brave new world, researchers have morphed into consultants who brainstorm with clients translating their needs into variables the modellers can apply. Or they have become the technical super-geeks who frame and articulate the key parameters for the design of the research models. Whole swathes of today’s research activities have disappeared: operations, conventional survey design, sampling statistics, and (some would say not a moment too soon) PowerPoint presentations.

Yet this is no fantasy, for in pockets of creativity all around the world, such developments are already well underway. At Gordon & McCallum, we are working with a client who can readily obtain emotional response over the web just by viewing a face though the web-cam – no questions needed. Similarly we are seeing ever more developments in understanding and modelling the vast stream of social media and customer data-base information. Outside of our industry, developments in A.I., machine learning, and agent modelling continue apace. The tools are there – even the 3D simulacrums are not so distant if you look at today’s developments in the media industry. What is lacking is a decent unified theory, an appreciation of how the various reactions we measure interact with each other. How short-term emotional triggers relate to long-term motivations for instance, or how habit and social influences interact in the consumers’ mind.

Yet even on the theory side, recent academic developments imply we could soon be much better at understanding people’s core emotional and decision-making processes. To take advatage of this new thinking though,  the research industry needs to invest both in new “methods” and to put more resource into developing a decent holistic model of how consumers and customers actually lead their lives.  This need not be too costly; investment in such thinking is less expensive than investing in a new technology. Yet, by its nature, it also seems more “risky”, less “tangible” to many senior MR executives and the financial officers they need convince.  Still, I have a strong belief that the firms that make some efforts in this direction will be the first to reap the rewards of all the new applications and technologies we see arising.

So, if we ever do such an office tour, will it really be as we’ve described? Probably not exactly – as I said earlier, there will be many unexpected developments I have not even begun to consider.  But the potential for a really radical transformation of our industry, based on new thinking and theory, not just new methods, is real. Whether you regard my fantasy as a dream or a nightmare may depend on whether increased time with clients and the lives of their customers appeals more than hands-on data and questionnaire analysis. But, however you feel, the impact of all the  technological advances in MR will certainly be accelerated if accompanied by a conceptual framework to hasten their implementation and application. If you are keen on “trend-gazing” in MR then, watch out for new thinking about the meaning behind the way people lead their lives or navigate though their maze of daily decisons, not just the new methods and tools that describe the elements of those lives.  (And, specifically, keep your eyes open for the latest developments in market research simulacrums!)

Buyers always use internal criteria and values to judge the acquired. Those ‘bought’ must understand that and prepare to explain or position themselves on those criteria and promote what else their team possesses that adds to the new owner’s business.

In 1994, Dun & Bradstreet purchased Asia-Pacific’s Survey Research Group (SRG) essentially, it was felt, for their Retail and Media Measurement Services in Greater China and SE Asia. D&B also picked up SRG’s significant Custom Research business. Initially, this was of lesser interest, custom research does not generally have the margins of the big syndicated services nor does it have the reassuring long term contracts.

There was even talk of the divestiture of the CR assets and staff morale needed attention. To pro-actively address this, CR was positioned in terms a publicly-traded acquirer would understand. It was pointed out that, due to needing less capital investment, custom research often had a higher ROI. Also, D&B could not expect their syndicated services to be market-dominant forever, so CR units were valuable to enhance and protect as the competition grew. Thirdly, an additional revenue stream meant overheads were spread over a larger base. And finally, with a major contract loss in CR, you are out next day prospecting for a replacement; not waiting 2 years for another bite at the contract.

So, wherever you work, someday the owners are likely to sell up, which means change. Acquirers need a plan to help the people in the purchased company adjust over and above the usual rationalisation. This should be more of an ‘invitation’ to the new employees to explore the potential and demonstrate how they can add value.  The acquired staff need, above all, to realise that the obligations are not entirely on the new owners to prove themselves. It’s better to be open-minded, detach yourself from emotions, and evaluate what benefits you and your team bring to the new situation. Then, express and exploit those benefits. If you’re still not happy, fair enough, maybe it’s time to move on. However, generally, you can carry on and thrive as you’ve actually had to think about and execute the value you’re creating which is a big part of your professional skill as a researcher.

Yeah Right. What's The Really Hot Talk? Image by Constantine Belias via Flickr

Last year there seemed to be such a plethora of posts (including some of ours) about the top trends in the market research industry that we thought it was time for a break.

But when Tom Anderson of Next Gen Market Research came up with the idea of a whole lot of NGMR bloggers simultaneously blogging on the top 10 issues the MR industry has to consider in coming years it seemed too much fun to miss. Here’s our views then — to be fair we’ve dropped out a few of the more totally obvious “top 10” and maybe elevated some we think are important but often overlooked — but we’ll be interested in hearing what you think (and do look up the others posts via Tom’s blog or on Twitter at hashtags: #NGMR #5Hot5Not).

Let’s start with our 5 “Not Hot”.

1. Reining in HR. After years of imposing restrictive salary structures and job description demarcations along with their depiction of creative staff as being ‘high maintenance’, senior management finally abandons the tedious tenants of HR orthodoxy and starts treating imaginative and innovative researchers in the same way the top advertising agencies treat their best art directors and copywriters. In some cases, they even get a place at the top table again!
   
2. Neuroscience Backlash. In the early 70′s researchers quickly became disillusioned with user-unfriendly mainframe driven multivariate analysis before embracing it fully as MVA enjoyed a deserved renaissance with the advent of the PC and the introduction of Windows. In the same way marketers will become disenchanted with the promises of Neuroscience until it becomes accessible, understandable, and scalable.
3. Dropping the hot BRICs. As the BRIC’s develop and competition intensifies, many major MR players will become more critcal about the BRIC markets. It’ll be realised that higher cash volume returns in slower growing but ‘absolutely’ larger dollar value mature markets can be driven by relatively minor business improvements and value creation efforts. Such ‘tweaks’  will be recognised as key to business profitability. Simultaneously, as some find it increasingly difficult to make inroads in the largest emerging markets, the next level of emerging markets (e.g Indonesia) will become more attractive.
4. Expats give way to Experts. As research becomes more and more mobile, and cost pressures hit companies around the globe, the attraction of expensive “on-site” managers and specialists in remote locations will continue to fade. But the need for scarce expertise and management skills will actually increase as the industry has simply not trained up enough people, especially in growth sectors/markets. So maybe there will be fewer fancy jobs in exotic locations, but expect to see MR firms making far more use of “mobile experts”, both external and internally sourced, on temporary assignments or working virtually to support local teams.
5. Shopper Research & the Emperor’s new clothes. It will dawn on Retailers and Marketers that Consumer Research and Shopper Research are one and the same thing and it’s the Directing of the Customer by the Retailers that’s the crux of the matter. Retailers will be key in driving this, as they diversify outlet types and sales channels while facing an increasing need to understand the impact of chain and private label branding. This will rapidly drive them to reach beyond the narrow confines of purely “shopping habits” orientated research.

And here’s what we think are the “hot issues” - the five that will determine the positive  momentum and direction of change in our industry

1. Renaissance of the Research Entrepreneur. The research entrepreneur has always been around, but we think the times favour a class of flexible, innovative senior executives who combine business skills with research and marketing nouse, are prepared to take a few risks and who invest strategically in new products and geographies. This is not a small/company big company thing – it’s about combining flexibility with planning, and adopting a entrepreneurial approach to business generally. We see signs of it in companies of various sizes and think it will be the mark of the next wave of successful MR agencies.
2. Pay for Performance  gets serious. For a couple of years now, people like Coca-Cola have been starting to talk about wanting better ROI from their MR and about “paying for performance”. We predict that, as measures of research ROI improve, this will get serious. Good news for innovative agencies and MR professionals, another nail in the coffin for those who fail to adapt their business models.
3. The “Soft Stuff” Toughens Up. Despite a lot of effort over many years the measurement of consumer engagement with brands and products remains complex, soft and fragmented with multiple, competing measures and indices. Client demand for greater consistency and more ROI from research will combine with the development of better methods of assessing equity, loyalty and emotion to produce more universally accepted measures of these drivers. Not quite the equivalent of TV Ratings as yet – but moving in that direction!
4. Tablets & Mobile Research. Mobile consumers need mobile research. iPad, Android tablets, smartphones combine with the new wave of RFID,GPS/GPRS and QRcodes to make everything and everybody far easier to research. Complex video demos can be taken anywhere, passive collection of all sorts of data in all sorts of location. Paradoxically, firms that adapt and update old school face-to-face interviewing and mystery shopping may be among the bigger beneficiaries of this.
5. It’s The Message Not The Media. Solutions that integrate results across media sources, and can capture a picture of total marketing effort will become ever more important. Understanding the cumulative impact of in-store, outdoor ads, web, TV, press, social media and word of mouth buzz will become more vital as marketers and advertisers struggle to balance tactical and strategic marketing budgets.

So that’s it, our top 10 of the hot and not. We’d be keen to hear what you’d add or take away for this list.  We’d also like to acknowledge borrowing  a couple of the ideas from a recent talk on “Top 10 trends for advertising in 2011″ by  Peter Fairbrother, Executive Director of Ipsos ASI Australia – thanks for the inspiration Peter.  And, as we said at the top – please do look at all the other NGMR blogs on this topic. Thanks also to Tom Anderson for thinking of this, and  organising us all!

Alastair & David.

Polygamy is Out: You've Got to Marry The MR Solution To A Specific Business Need.

I wrote earlier how I believed marketers and market researchers needed a more rational approach to that seemingly irrational subject, the measurement and analysis of emotions. As we better measure these “soft aspects” of human response, we risk losing sight of the fact that an understanding of emotion is not an end in itself: it has to be applied to specific business issues. I have to declare an interest here -  we’ve recently tied up with a company that has created a very clever method of directly recording and analyzing emotional response (more about that later). Even so, I do not think that emotional research of any sort, no matter how science-based, stands up on its own. We all need to start thinking a lot harder about applications, not merely methods.

Fundamentally I think there are seven key areas where understanding emotion better can transform marketing. This is a subject I’ve tackled in a chapter on Emotional Research in a book to be published next year called “Leading Edge Marketing Research” (edited by Bob Kaden and Gerry Linda of  “More Guerrilla Marketing Research” fame).

1.    Emotions act as triggers and create change. Strong emotional response is more likely to create a ‘moment of change’ for consumers than any rational evaluation of benefits. Marketing is becoming increasingly granular as Point of Sales and Guerrilla Marketing tactics supplant top-line advertising. Understanding and describing precise emotional tipping points is vital. We need to get better at understanding how emotions operate in very specific real-world choice situations, so emotional research needs to move beyond both “general purpose survey” and “laboratory” settings.

2.    Emotions reinforce and drive improvements in brand equity. Brands building up longer-term emotional connections with consumers enjoy higher levels of loyalty and improve their ability to charge a price premium.  A lot of research has been done on how broad motivational states or generalised “feelings” about brands contribute to brand equity, but very little on how short-term emotional “trigger” responses interact with broader personality and needs. We need to do more to track series of short-term emotional responses, so we can start to predict how constant exposure to a wide variety of different tactical pressures accumulates and impacts long-term brand loyalty or customer satisfaction.

3.    Emotions facilitate brand buzz and communication. People like to talk, twitter, share and recommend brands that evoke strong emotional reactions. In an increasingly connected world this is an important virtue (or potentially a major problem). The need here is to move from merely analysing the formal content and volume of “buzz” in one setting (e.g. social media) towards a much harder assessment of the emotional interplay underlying all forms of spontaneous communication about brands. Yes, some researchers are working hard in this area – but much more needs to be done.

4.    Emotions are essential building blocks around which a brand can define itself. The bedrock of a brand’s personality, a key component in most major brands efforts to present a coherent and attractive image to consumers, is the emotional connection between the brand and the customer. Brand personality is hardly a new concept, but I think the idea of carefully building and nurturing brand values risks getting lost in the plethora of discussion on short-term emotional response. Understanding how emotions interact with other marketing variables (price, availability, social drivers etc.) is the big need here.

5.     Emotions are navigators through an increasingly cluttered world of brands and media. One of my research interests is how all the work in recent years on consumer decision-making intersects with the new findings coming out on emotions. It seems that a key aspect of emotions in marketing is that a quick, superficial emotional response saves consumers thinking in-depth about every possible choice they are faced with, providing an instantaneous mechanism for choice. Such emotional responses reinforce habit, and hence the ‘leading brand advantage’. The key here is the ability to measure and analyse lots of quite small superficial emotional responses. It’s not just the big, dramatic emotions that matter.

6.     Emotions can be used to define psychographic and similar segmentations. By defining consumers in terms of the similarity of their emotional outlook on life, or emotive response to a product category, advertisers have often been able to craft more effective campaigns than by relying on traditional demographic segmentation. But this is an area that could be much refined and expanded: many segmentation analyses still rely on relatively superficial batteries of generalised “feeling statements”, unweighted by importance of each to the respondent, and with no direct connection to key behavioural attributes. Advances in emotional measurement and statistical techniques mean we can do much better than this.

7.     Emotions can help lower the cost and failure rate of new product development. New products are more likely to fail than succeed. Accurate reading of emotional response to a product or service must reduce this risk. More sophisticated methods of evaluating emotional reaction to visual and sensory stimuli (taste, tactile characteristics, aroma, etc.) open up better, faster ways of screening products. We can also now judge how branding triggers emotional responses that override purely sensory reactions. As some recent research has suggested,  if Coke had access to more modern measures on how the emotions of their brand impacted choice, they might have avoided the whole New Coke debacle. Linking more accurate measures of emotion with decent marketing models will be a core component of the next wave of NPD research.

Seven important ways then, that understanding emotion can improve marketing and drive sales. Each of these are so important in my view that they deserve far better, far more focused response than we as an industry have given so far.

We live in the era of the “app”, where general purpose all encompassing software suites are giving way to a series of highly targeted, easily accessible software modules. Many of these are simply “variations on a theme”, driven by similar underlying programmes – yet they offer a wide variety of user experience, price and specific features. Successful apps are distinguished not by “power” but by things like good looks, ease of use and (vitally) being early to market. This, to me offers a lesson for MR generally, and especially for the new wave of emotional research. We’re moving beyond the era of big “do everything” services, but at the same time the concept of totally ad hoc customised research is less and less viable.  We move towards the era of “research apps”. For those agencies studying consumer emotion this means it’s not the fact of being able to measure emotions per se that is key – it’s about the flexibility and “look” of your solution and most importantly being able to adapt research on emotions to a specific business need.

My hope then is that we’ll see research companies rushing to create carefully crafted “emotion apps” and hopefully, before long, we’ll see at least seven covering the areas above. Hopefully I’ll even be be able to download them to my iPad?

(Here’s the earlier post I mentioned:  “Let’s Not Be Irrational About Emotions” )

A recent Research blog by my ex-boss, Nick Sparrow, founder of ICM, extolled the virtues of offering equity to agency staff. In fact, it was Nick who taught me in the early 80′s how to sell research based on its benefits not its features (which given my statistician’s focus at the time was a revelation!)

Nick expounded his vision of a business “run solely for all the people employed” where a company is best run, and gives the best service to clients, when the people feel a sense of ownership. It’s interesting to note that two of the UK’s ‘thought’ leading agencies (both of whom have won Agency of the Year) Brainjuicer and Truth appear both to have embarked on similar ownership structures.

Although, ICM was owned by 10 shareholders before its sale, Nick was interested to see research businesses go further and make all employees shareholders. Here the clients benefited as their interests were best served and reinforced by the servicing team who in turn profited from satisfied, returning, regular clients.

Perhaps one of the best examples of success stemming from depth and breadth of staff ownership is the Asian-based Survey Research Group. SRG, founded in 1964 by Newell Grenfell, had a policy of regular rights issues to senior and long serving staff. When it was finally acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 1994, SRG was a global top 20 agency and its shareholding extended over 200 employees in 14 countries. These were not only senior managers but comprised dozens of the operational and back office staff who’d put in the hard yards to set up everything from the rural field forces in the remote islands of Indonesia to the sampling team continuously mapping and re-mapping Hong Kong’s ever-changing cityscape.

As a country manager, in the SRG environment, you were under pressure not from the ‘Street’ but more poignantly from your peers in the other markets. If you came in with poor numbers you had not only impacted your personal wealth but those around you with whom you dealt daily. Needless to say, those with the glowing bottom lines earned the bragging rights and the laggards felt honour-bound to up their game.

Given all these benefits, I am sometimes bemused when I hear senior staffers reluctant to take up equity when it is offered, especially in cases where they have to pay for it, albeit at a discounted rate.

Late last year, a former colleague asked advice on a new job she’d been offered. The salary was less than her current, but there was stock ‘valued’ at much more than the pay difference. She was concerned her living standard would drop, even though the job was very appealing. These are all reasonable concerns, but she was underestimating the potential upside of the equity, not only financially, but ‘emotionally’.

Holding equity is not just about getting a pay off when the company gets sold up stream. It’s about ownership and having some personal commitment to the success of the business. Or, as was put to me by John Lewis, President Nielsen US, it’s ‘having some skin in the game’. You’re not a spectator thrilled by your team’s win; you’re out there on the park creating and living that victory. If you have your own money in the business or you’ve foregone salary to get a slice, the pressure not to let team down elevates your performance and its impact on the business.

There are also substantial benefits to the ‘founder-owner’ of any service business both emotionally and financially. Prudent distribution of the equity defends against inward-thinking as others in company realise they too will lose money (not just a job) if management decisions are consistently sub-optimal. In effect, it increases the vision and visibility to the business of what’s happening outside in the market and amongst the competition.

So the advice to my colleague was to go for the job that had equity so long as she was sure the owners were sincere in making a go of it. You sometimes need to take a risk and make a few sacrifices. But it’s not so much the potential windfall down the road, it’s the sense of ownership which drives your performance and that brings its own rewards.

Tales of the Market Research Monster - Should Clients be Frightened? (Image via Wikipedia)

Our recent post on the “Myth of Market Research’s Failure” attracted a lot of readers, and recently a stern rebuttal (see comments at bottom of the post) from Philip Graves who is the author of a book called “Consumer.ology” (not to be confused with Martin Lindstrom’s similarly titled tome, “buy.ology”). Sub-titled “The Market Research Myth, The Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping” according to an unnamed reviewer on Mr Graves’ website the book “will send a shiver down the spine of the research industry”. Given that, it is not surprising he did not like our post!

Published last September, I confess I have not yet read his book, but it has got a “top 10” spot in the UK business books list on Amazon, and Philip seems to have been interviewed extensively including by magazines like “Wired” and even “Research Live”. It is then seemingly indicative of the trend towards wholesale lambasting of market research methods that we discussed in our post. The core argument as far as we can see is that surveys address the wrong side of the brain (i.e. miss emotive/intuitive response) and our qualitative methods are subject to bias and group think.

The great thing about this kind of attack is that it draws attention to the need for research to be more serious about providing better quality information to clients. The downside is that they tend to work by creating a “straw man” version of market research, in which out-dated and poor practices are treated as the norm and used as an excuse to belittle the whole industry.

Our view, stated simply, is that it is often perfectly possible to design fairly conventional research that can measure a good deal of underlying emotional or subconscious response and that where that is not possible with traditional methods there are a number of ways many of the “new MR” methods that are emerging can be applied to fill in the gaps. Clients or agencies who are dissatisfied with the quality delivered by their research deliverables should consider what can be done to improve them, rather than giving up on market research entirely. (As a disclaimer, we should mention that Gordon & McCallum provides clients with review and R&D support to improve MR systems and outputs – so we would believe that!)

Let us then, return to the specifics of Philip’s criticism of the “Myth” post. We are not defending all market research in all circumstances. Instead we are pleading for more effort in areas like research design, interpretive thinking and training rather than simply focusing on a search for superficially attractive “silver bullet” solutions. In this context the “70%” success figure applies to the helpfulness of “conventional” MR methods (e.g. surveys, focus groups) and does not imply that MR would fail 30% of the time, only that there are a proportion of marketing issues that are now better answered by newer MR techniques (e.g. those based on the emerging neuroscience, social media research, community panels and so on) or which are simply so complex or nebulous that (as Philip implies) a judgment call is going to be as helpful as doing research.

On the issue of the value of experience and seniority we do not argue against frameworks or systematic application of research practices (indeed helping clients get more ROI from research by applying such frameworks is what Gordon & McCallum specialises in). But research often tackles complex issues and no matter what systems you put in place, it is improved if you add some time for thought about design and interpretation and involve people with relevant experience. A core reason why research projects sometimes fail is that the role of time and brainpower is not fully appreciated. When we do research reviews, one of the big things we to look at is the development of frameworks and processes so senior researcher time can be redeployed from “mundane” tasks to areas like interpretation and research design. Few things add more value to research outputs, and in our view the fact that adjusting the research process can make such a significant impact on client satisfaction is in itself evidence that our problems are more about how we do things, less about what we do.

It is simply untrue that the fact that experience is helpful means that market research is unsystematic. The analogy here is with doctors – all doctors (hopefully) are well trained and have diagnostic and interpretive frameworks to work with. However, a 15-minute consultation with a junior general practitioner is not going to yield the level of treatment advice that a longer visit to an experienced specialist will provide.  That does not mean, however, that you should rely on self-diagnosis rather than seeing the junior doctor when you are sick!

As I mentioned, I have not yet read “Consumer.ology”, and I’m willing to believe it may avoid the issues noted in our post. However, we would note that “proof by example” is a poor method of debunking market research. MR is a multi-billion dollar industry consisting of a wide range of techniques and skill sets. In its current form it goes back to the 1920′s and examples of it’s success abound in journals (e.g. the Journal of Marketing Research) whilst every year in forums like ESOMAR conferences, clients voluntarily get up and present case studies of how MR has helped them. Even in the area of prediction (where most criticism of MR focuses), companies like Novaction or BASES have put extensive effort into validation and testing of their services. The scale of MR means it is relatively easy to find examples of poor research, but this is a tiny percentage of the total – critics of our practices need to show they have scoured the journals and can refute the far more numerous examples of success and validation.

This does not mean that market research cannot be improved or made more cost-effective. But this is primarily a matter of applying new methods creatively or designing questions and qualitative research with more care. As a simple example, Philip’s  point about “group-think” in focus groups identifies a real problem, but it is an ancient and well known one and avoiding it is frankly a “qualitative research 101″ issue. In most cases it results from poor moderation, lack of the right exercises and techniques or superficial analysis. Understanding of consumer emotions is another area where MR is often criticized, but here too there are a plethora of techniques and many exciting new developments that mean that the superficial responses derived from badly designed survey questions are perfectly avoidable. (On this one, Alastair is currently writing a chapter on developments in emotional research, in a book called “Leading Edge Marketing Research” to be published by Sage next year  – it will contain more of the references Philip requests).

Finally, we reject the false dichotomy between the role of a client’s judgment and the utilisation of market research. Good marketing is part art, part science and market research is only one of the inputs required in decision-making. But well designed research has proved to be hugely valuable to numerous clients and it is doubtful that companies like Proctor & Gamble or Unilever would be the size they are without their strong commitment to the systematic utilisation of market research. To reiterate: rather than rejecting the application of market research altogether, clients would be better advised to focus on improving how they carry out research. In many cases an independent review to ensure their research systems and practices are up-to-date and efficient would save huge amounts of money and solve most of the problems Philip mentions.

So yes, market research cannot solve all problems or predict every possibility – but it does a lot better than Philip implies in his response. While we can (and should) improve in many areas, the starting point for such improvements is thought and planning, not a simplistic rejection of the whole industry.