Point of View by Millward Brown's Nigel Hollis addressing the question 'can marketing and research become better by design?' For more insights into new directions for market research you can visit www.mb-blog.com.

1. CAN MARKETING AND RESEARCH
BECOME BETTER BY DESIGN?
POINT OF VIEW
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Key to the rise of design has been the growing
understanding that successful design is user-
centric—that is, a product or service must be
optimized around the needs of the people who
are going to use it. This focus on the needs of
the end user has helped design become a factor
not only in the development of products, but also
services, organizational structures, and brands.
At its best, design encompasses form and
function, utility and aesthetic appeal. The power
of good design as a means to create value is
epitomized by the success of Apple. The visual
and tactile appeal of Apple’s simple, intuitive
products has helped Apple become the most
valuable brand in the world, according to the
2013 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global
Brands Ranking. Similarly, good design lies
at the heart of the success of Amazon, where
it enables both operational efficiencies and
a positive shopping experience.
Market research has something in common
with the field of design. Like designers,
market researchers set out to uncover insights
into human behavior that are relevant to
client objectives. And like designers, market
researchers rely on research. (Designers might
say they are making “observations,” but their
observations are, essentially, ethnographic
research.)
Though these similarities exist, the fortunes
of design and market research have gone
in opposite directions in recent years, and
marketing, the discipline that depends on market
research, has struggled as well. We all know
the statistics: most new products fail, most viral
videos go nowhere, and click-through rates are
laughably low. Is it any wonder that a study by
the Fournaise Marketing Group finds that 73
percent of CEOs think marketers lack business
credibility and fail to drive financial growth?
Nigel Hollis
Chief GlobalAnalyst
Millward Brown
nigel.hollis@millwardbrown.com
www.mb-blog.com
Can Marketing and Research
Become Better by Design?
Over the last decade, the importance of design has grown beyond the
traditional concept of making an artifact look good to take a more central
role in business, academia, and government.
At its best,design encompasses
form and function,utility and
aesthetic appeal.

2. CAN MARKETING AND RESEARCH
BECOME BETTER BY DESIGN?
POINT OF VIEW
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MARKETING AND RESEARCH:
DIVIDED WE FALL
I believe that one issue underlying many of the
problems faced by marketing is the approach that
marketers and researchers take to teamwork and
collaboration. Contrasting marketers’ approach
with that of designers may be useful.
In the design process, the same group of people
is involved from the definition of the problem
through ideation, insight, and implementation.
The continuous involvement of the same team
of designers creates a seamless process and
ensures that the insight remains central to the
implementation.
By contrast, the practice of marketing is often
distanced from the research function that ought to
enable its success, and different developmental
stages often involve different people. This can
result in misunderstandings, inefficiency, and a
dilution of purpose. What starts off as a racehorse
of an idea often ends up looking like a camel of a
product.
In my experience, the most successful research
projects are those that involve the same team
of people during the discovery, analysis, and
implementation phases. Bringing together multiple
stakeholders with different backgrounds and
expertise helps minimize the effects of personal
bias. It also helps ensure commitment when a final
solution is implemented. To shift toward this type of
approach will take time and effort, and there will be
a cost involved. But if marketers and researchers
learn to work more like designers, the result will be
more effective implementation of new and valuable
marketing initiatives.
DESIGN THINKING:
WHAT’S IN IT FOR US?
What else can marketers and researchers
gain from studying the example of designers?
Besides their collaborative methodology, is
there something genuinely distinct about their
approach to problem solving? What are the
hallmarks of “design thinking,” and do they have
any applicability to our disciplines?
MAKE ITYOUR BUSINESS
Never delegate understanding.
– American designer Charles Eames
Like many creative people, the influential
modern designer Charles Eames is reputed
to have avoided the “market research” of his
time. But I take Eames’ command to mean that,
whether you employ researchers or not, if you
don’t have a thorough understanding of a need
and its context, you will reduce your chances of
implementing an effective solution.
One of the biggest problems facing marketing
and consumer insight today is the expectation
that “insight” is the responsibility of a specific
department or agency. If we learn anything
at all from design thinking, it should be that
without all the stakeholders–and particularly
marketing–being involved in the definition of
the central question, the risk that research
investment is wasted will be high. If you do
not really understand what question needs to
be addressed, your research is all too likely to
produce vast amounts of information and very
little understanding or action.
ASK STUPID QUESTIONS
Question: How many designers
will it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Why a light bulb?
– from a review of design thinking in Fast Company
The quip above may be funny, but it contains
more than a grain of truth. An open, curious,
and questioning mindset characterizes design
thinking. Designers don’t accept a brief at face
value; they step back and ensure that the definition
of the problem is correct. Don Norman, in his
The practice of marketing
is often distanced from the
research function that ought
to enable its success.

3. CAN MARKETING AND RESEARCH
BECOME BETTER BY DESIGN?
POINT OF VIEW
SHARE 3
article “Rethinking Design Thinking,” suggests
that there is great power in the ability to ask
“stupid” questions, the ones that no one inside an
organization would ask because they are blinded
by what seems obvious. A friend of mine who
works in new product development confirms this,
saying, “Designers go back to zero – minus five,
even – and work to re-envisage and reengineer,
not just amend what already exists.”
Are consumer researchers equally willing to step
back and look at the big picture? We researchers
are a challenging and curious bunch, but we
may be too quick to accept the premise that is
offered to us. That is, instead of asking “Why a
light bulb?” we may be more likely to ask “What
type of light bulb?” We need to be brave enough
to ask the stupid questions and to keep on doing
so until we get good answers.
FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR CONSUMER
To create good designs, you first have to understand
people—what they need, want and enjoy, as well as
how they think and behave.
– Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO
Designers put human needs at the center of their
approach to problem solving. But Bill Moggridge
cautions human designers about assuming too
much about their human end users. “They will
probably be surprisingly different from you,” he
said, “so it will only be by understanding them that
you can avoid the trap of designing for yourself.”
Marketers and researchers also strive to
understand people, but we need to go beyond
their behaviors to understand their underlying
motivations if we are to build meaningful and
well-differentiated brands. So we need to ask
ourselves: Do we really know the people who
use our brands, not just as people to be sold to
but as people to be served? And if not, how will
we go about getting to know them?
Designers tend to rely solely on observation
to gain insights and so risk misinterpreting
why people behave as they do. By contrast,
researchers have traditionally gravitated toward
asking questions, using verbal or written probes
to understand attitudes and behavior. Ideally
we would combine observation of both physical
and digital behavior with questions designed to
elucidate these behaviors. New tools such as
facial coding and other implicit techniques can
add a deeper understanding, which is particularly
useful when people may not be able to vocalize
why they do something. Our job as researchers
is to draw on the combination of methods
that can best help us understand people’s
motivations and instinctive responses.
EMBRACE YOUR CONSTRAINTS
One of the most interesting design
tensions today is between cost constraints
—especially given the economic crisis—
and sustainability constraints, or the impact
on the natural environment. Some of the
most attractive design solutions are driven
by both constraints.
– Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, Interviewed
for strategy+business by Art Kleine
All design is about working within constraints.
No one should know that better than those who
design research projects. What can we use as
stimulus material? What interview methodology
is feasible? What budget do we have?
Designers understand that constraints help
produce better solutions, even when the
constraints are budgetary. That understanding
All design is about working within
constraints. No one should know
that better than those who design
research projects.

4. CAN MARKETING AND RESEARCH
BECOME BETTER BY DESIGN?
POINT OF VIEW
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applies equally well to marketing and research.
None of us have the budget we think we
need. But constraints go far deeper than mere
budgets. Marketers are constrained by people’s
ability to appreciate their offer. Time after time,
failed “innovations” prove that it is truly difficult
to get people to adopt new habits. Brands that
are not aligned with consumers’ experience
and expectations—even if they offer real health
benefits or are environmentally friendly—are not
going to succeed.
MAKE IT TANGIBLE
Stupid question: What’s the difference between the
outcome of a design process and the outcome of a
consumer research project?
The simple answer, which may evoke the
response “So what?”, is that a design process
produces something tangible, such as a
package, product, or process, while a research
project doesn’t. Research delivers potential. The
ideas and insights we present will have value
only if they are acted upon.
Too often the potential of research is not
realized. So how can we increase the chances
that our marketing insights will be acted upon?
We can work to convey our research findings
through something more tangible than a slide
presentation. At the very least, we can weave
our facts and findings into a compelling story.
But we might also go beyond PowerPoint to
more experiential methods. For example, we
might try to engage our audience in a task, such
as drawing up a map of the consumer path to
purchase, brainstorming scenarios using Post-it®
Notes, or presenting the key research finding in
the form of a slice of cake. Above all, we must
move people beyond superficial head-nodding to
deeply felt understanding.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
In writing this Point of View, I have been dogged
by the feeling that some of the practices outlined
above were once regarded as accepted best
practices. Maybe for some companies they still
are, but I suspect that for the majority they are
not. Why? Because the business of marketing
has become overly siloed, fragmented, and data
driven. At a time when researchers have more
tools than ever to help create insight in
a timely manner, we are faced with an
even bigger challenge—how to promulgate
understanding and inspire action. Maybe the
most important thing we can take away from
design thinking is the fundamental question:
“Does it have to be this way?”
To read more about new directions
for market research, please visit
www.mb-blog.com.
If you enjoyed “Can Marketing and
Research Become Better By Design,”
you might also be interested in:
“Big Ideas: Research Can Make a
Big Difference”
“Creative Storytelling: For Sponsors,
an Olympic Sport”
“What Makes Market Research such
a Popular Whipping Boy?”
Too often the potential of research
is not realized; the ideas and in-
sights we present will have value
only if they are acted upon.