It is the technique of looking at and understanding customers’ attitudes and their behaviour in all aspects of considering a brand. Research is about measuring and diagnosing. Research is your radar system. It is there to help you, not to make decisions for you. But a good research insight can lead you to a brilliant place.
But there’s a problem. Research is used politically so people in business can blame the consumer … ‘Well, they said…’ to substitute for the marketers’ own failure to think.
‘Most people use research much as a drunkard uses a lamppost – more for support than illumination.’
(David Ogilvy)
And I love this from the late, great Anita:
‘Using research to manage a business is like using the rear-view mirror to drive a car.’
(Dame Anita Roddick)
We know that research is, at best, a pretty blunt tool. We know that asking, ‘What do you think of lavatory paper?’ is unlikely to provoke a useful or even a truthful answer.
We have seen a diminishing credibility in the accuracy of political polls, with the remarkable exception of YouGov – due in part to its being completed privately and online. Doing things online tends to make you dispassionately honest in a way a normal questionnaire doesn’t. An expert recently described the web as a ‘disinhibiting environment’.
This original piece of research was conducted online in August and September 2011. The objective was to see what 18 senior marketers felt about their jobs and the context in which they were operating.
These were the 10 key findings:
Would we have had the fire or wheel if they had undergone market research?
There was a series of films created by the Idea Group in San Diego about focus groups held with cavemen. (Check it out on Google.) The first was about fire, which to a Neanderthal they agreed would be better if it were cool not dangerously hot, and more symmetrical, and if it were green not red, which is too aggressive a colour, reminiscent of blood and death. If there were a cool green fire I might buy it, one said. So fire, as we know it, got the thumbs-down; as did the wheel, which they thought might run away downhill and hurt someone. So much better, they agreed, if it were square – much safer. Watch it – if nothing else puts you off focus groups this will. It’s a brilliant little campaign, very funny and pointed, but most of all containing terrifying notes of truth.
New-wave research is trying to involve respondents as partners rather than objects of observation. Recruit a diverse group of creative minds and have a conversation with them – this is the way to go, as opposed to old-fashioned ‘clocking-in’ research.
In simple terms, there’s ‘quantitative research,’ which involves recruiting large panels of customers that can comprise:
And there’s ‘qualitative research’, which commonly comprises:
‘Respected’ research is expensive. By this I mean the sort of research private equity and investment banks like. But limit this if you can and spend your own money on understanding, provoking and advancing consumer ideas.
Good researchers are often the brightest and most exciting intellects you’ll encounter in marketing and tend to be adept at benchmarking things such as advertising and new products. When a professional researcher says, ‘In my experience …’ it usually pays to listen, especially if they’re relaxed and ‘off duty’, because they have listened to an awful lot of people in their time.
Useful web sites are the Market Research Society, the market research national and international body which has two useful sites: www.mrs.org.uk and www.theresearchbuyersguide.com (I refer to this latter one later on). More is more when it comes to learning.
Good, investigative research leads to discoveries like the one Prius made about their solar panels and air-cooled snoozing drivers. Good research tells you a deodorant called ‘No-Sweat’ might work in Australia, but probably not so well elsewhere.
But our mission is brilliance, not mediocrity, which is why I want to focus on some easy-to-set-up research techniques that can lead you personally to eureka moments. As Warren Buffett said:
‘In the end I always believe my own eyes rather than something else.’
But if you want to know what’s going on in a market go out and talk to people. What could be simpler? It may not be objective but it’ll get you thinking.
Lampposts and babies. Butch Rice (a South African marketing consultant) played a game whereby he produced a graph showing the relationship between the number of babies born and the number of lampposts in the world. He sought to show (quite bogusly, of course) that birth rate was lamppost-dependent. Whereas the number of lampposts actually indicates density of population. One of the best examples of ludicrous correlations you could find, this is an excellent example of lies, damned lies and statistics.
In getting people to support a charity there are three rules. One, you must ask and ask and ask. Two, you must be pleasant and clear. Three, you must make it easy to respond. In the recently published book Yes! by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, they described how they’d researched the difference between asking for a donation for the American Cancer Society with and without this line: ‘even a penny would help’. Donations with that line were 50 per cent, without it 29 per cent. QED: the case for using research well.
Research is a vital tool in brilliant marketing, but it is a chisel and sometimes your brilliance has been to create a beautiful marketing mahogany table. Be careful how you use one on the other.
Real brilliance comes from a passionate interest in people and a desire to know how they tick. It also comes from the realisation that many people change their minds, their habits and nearly 40 per cent of them their partners.
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