presented to AMSRS 2012 conference in Sydney Sept 2011 - using the Alice in Wonderland theme - role of researchers in facilitating the market 'conversation' between marketers and customers, (or in getting out of the way!)
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf(CBTL), Business strategy case study
Through the looking glass - using client organisations to amplify research learnings
1. Through the Looking Glass
How to use client organisations as magnifiers for
research projects (and when to get out of the way)
John Griffiths
Creative Director
Spring Research
2. The mind of the market
“A market is a dialogue between the conscious and unconscious
perceptions of those marketing products and those consuming
them” Source: Gerald Zaltman: How Customers think
marketers consumers
Conscious processes
Unconscious processes
Where does the researcher add value in this model?
3. Enough command and control – Start listening!
“Research allows marketers to listen in to the conversations
between customers and discover how the brand can add value”
Andrew Walmsley
marketers
customer customer
Where does the researcher add value in this model?
4. What explicit value does the intermediary create?
External perspective
Speed – bypassing the internal politics
Expertise
Analysis
Sampling
Broader market experience
NB Providing access to respondents is no longer
a good enough reason!
5. The implicit value the
intermediary can provide
Helping to put implicit knowledge into
words
Seeing what the marketer can‟t or won‟t
see..
Because it lies in the marketer‟s unconscious – not verbalised
Or because what customers are saying conflicts
with the marketing agenda
7. Research once removed – client customer dating
Set up pairing between individual clients and customers – provide an
activity/discussion guide then researchers get out of the way!
Source: Tuned in Research
8. Research once removed - Co-creation
between marketing team and customers – the best place for it to happen
Role of researchers to prepare and calibrate
both parties – marketers own jewellery
experience to match customer experience
Creative „gangbangs‟ future of sport for
mobiles market
Stimulus as provocation – „throw content
into an online community and watch how
they play with it‟
Researcher as gooseberry – less is more !!
9. Conscription in the research process - Briefing meeting
The research brief & the embedded assumptions
The covert brief
Working hypotheses
Briefing meeting discussion guide
The RFP process misses out on all of this
10. Conscription in the research process – Assigning roles during
fieldwork
Note taking
Issue sheets
Washup sessions - explore the difference between client and participant worlds
(or are they merely a prequel to the debrief?)
11. Conscription in the research process – Analysis stage
The black box of research - should clients be invited in?
Valuable to find what can be implemented. And what won‟t be.
12. Conscription in the research process – Debrief process
Insights will emerge at the debrief stage
The audience needs to be actively involved
Insight sheets
Actions dates and owners
Capture process to pick up insights downstream
Workshops address some
but not all of these issues
13. You‟ve got to know your limitations..
Prospecting for insights is like drilling for oil
Even if the research agency finds it and refines it into fuel
Its worth nothing if it can‟t be put into the engine of the
organisation
And turned into energy - momentum – that is the skill of the
insight team
From a conversation with Pauline Williams
incite2action
14. Plannification..
Account planning after 40 years – embedded worldwide across all
communications
Is planning making inroads into client organisations?
The growth of insight departments and learning organisations
How is plannification affecting research agencies?
15. Subverting the client organisation – Supporting decision making
Deliverables which match the agendas and learning styles of different
functions in the client organisation
Audit trails of what has been sent to whom – how far has the knowledge
reached?
Source: Mesh Planning
16. Subverting the client organisation - Supporting implementation
Asking for feedback –
Recommendation adopted successfully
Recommendation considered and reviewed but business case
does not support change
X Recommendation ignored / not considered
Developing ROIs for each piece of research
Source: Pauline Williams
17. Subverting the client organisation - Embedding research as an
app
Can we turn research into apps – components in organisational processes and
not free standing elements which then have to be plugged in
The number of client customer interactions has blossomed – a potential threat
to research – can research thinking inform these instead of competing with
them?
19. Trending emergent behaviours – find cool things for people to do
We need to research containers and content not just products and customer
journeys
Source: Spring Research
20. Choice architecture – make it deeper or make it quicker
Designing the architecture of choice
Deep or wide?
How much attention does the marketer need?
What is the role of automated behaviour?
Is the creative content worth giving more attention to ?
More research is needed around the aftertaste
– how was it for you?
21. Understanding how context affects behaviour and content – so
much research assumes that context is irrelevant..
Context is a crucial frontier territory
Until now research has ignored context
Needstates belong to contexts as much
as they belong to people
Customers feel brand connections not just
when they are buying, consuming
or advocating..
22. Identify brand friendly eco systems
(where the brand does not need to speak its name)
Conversations are more important than sound bites or keywords
Map the conversations
Branded friendly territory doesn‟t mean
perpetual namechecking
23. Explore human microclimates (not mass markets)
“Focus on the little things” St David patron saint of Wales
It is the details of human behaviour which
engage people – not the generalities –
isn‟t this one of the learnings from reality TV?
The modest size of many marketing budget
should be permission to zoom in on the
particularities of a small audience
Insight is about somebody like me
– not what everybody thinks and knows
24. Use fiction
A century of positivism means we privilege testimony from authenticaled
witnesses and ethnography
We mistrust fiction and imagination as unreliable
and self serving
Fiction – the stories we tell ourselves
and which we choose to inhabit
We need to find ways to explore
shared imaginative spaces
25. Dealing with Disintermediation
What are the signs that our core skills are challenged?
The internet is disrupting every marketplace
Marketers able to take over many tasks
formerly delivered through market research
26. Vested research interests carrying on regardless
marketers own camera
marketers own camera
Qual researchers Quant researchers
19th C portrait painters 19th C photographers
27. To paraphrase..
“A human being should be ashamed to do anything a
computer can do”
Joseph Weissenbaum
A researcher should be ashamed to do
anything a marketer can do by themselves
28. About John Griffiths
John Griffiths, Creative Director
John has spent more than 25 years as a researcher and planner. As
planning director of MHA direct marketing and Grey Integrated he
developed numerous through the line campaigns. Since 2000 he ran his
own research consultancy Planning Above and Beyond during which
time he won the MRS prize for Best New Thinking twice in 2004 and
2010. To date he has run research for clients such as New Look, Tesco,
IHG hotels and most recently Kodak. John is responsible for product
development at Spring as well as managing specific projects.
Notes de l'éditeur
To make the most of the partnership with customers all parties need preparationIf its online then pre exercises are useful for marketers and researchers as well as participantsFor example if running a co-creation exercise about jewellery – encourage the marketing team to consider their own attitudes to jewellery – what they own and what they buy for themselves and others – a very different question from what brands of jewellery they are aware of
The research brief is an invaluable document because it gives valuable clues about the embedded assumptions – articulating the desired task and the orthodoxyThe covert brief – hidden and emotional agendas behind a research project only emerge in face to face meetingsThe written and spoken accounts are not the sum of the information being communicated – experienced researchers pick up a lot more! This is the opportunity to agree working hypotheses – what customers are believed to think and how they behaveThis meeting can be scripted – discussion guide anybody??The Request for proposal process bypasses all of this – research is a commodity purchased to meet a price point – leaving client assumptions about the market unchallenged
Note taking often crucial addendum for other researchers working on the processIssue sheets can be handed out to cue observers to particularly interesting or sensitive themes so they can watch for them and capture their own reactionsIf researchers and clients are attending all the same fieldwork it raises the question how to make the most of a client perspectivePotentially the washup sessions afterwards can also be used to probe more deeply into the difference between client and participant worlds (or are they merely a prequel to the debrief?)
The black box of research which justifies at least a third of the cost of the project – should the marketer be admitted to this source of value creation?Can be useful if there is a hypothesis meeting particularly at the interpretation stage to answer the question – is there an appetite for implementing this finding as a recommendation
Insights will emerge at the debrief stage – those which (embarassingly) the research agency is not aware ofBut this will only happen if the meeting is not just a pretext for the debriefing agency to demonstrate their industry and discoveries – with the audience set to passive receive modeInsight sheets can be handed out to be completed during the presentationActions dates and owners can be assigned during the meetingThere also ought to be a capture process to pick up insights after the debrief meeting – the creative process of analysis takes days – we can’t expect all of benefits to emerge during the period of the debrief meetingWorkshops address some but not all of these issues
Marketing much more preoccupied with the architecture of choiceLowest common denominator messages to reach the widest audience or messaging designed to snag the audiences’ attention for as long as possible start to look like bad manners and incompetenceHow much of the customers’ attention does the marketer need?What is the role of automated behaviour – usability and how well does this work, Most marketised behaviour is automated!! If we want longer or deeper attention – is the creative device intereresting and rewarding enough?There needs to be more research around the aftertaste of a marketing intervention – how was it for you?
Context is one of the most important frontier territories for the research industryFor as long as anyone can remember quant and qual research pretended that context was irrelevant to the gathering of research contentNeedstates belong to contexts as much as they belong to peopleBrand centric oriented thinking denotes purchase, consumption and advocacy as the belonging times. It may be that customers feel they belong far more in other contexts. I still feel like an iphone user every time I get frustrated with my Android phone!
Conversations are as neglectedby keyword obsessed technologists as category thinking is set aside to consider brands as if they operated in isolation from the other brandsMap the conversations, develop the ability to detect which conversation is being had – it will enable you to identify where your brand is able to contribute (even if the brand name isn’t being constantly mentioned
“Focus on the little things” St David patron saint of WalesIt is the details of human behaviour which engage people – not the generalities – isn’t this one of the learnings from reality TV?The modest size of many marketing budget should be permission to zoom in on the particularities of a small audienceInsight is about somebody like me – not what everybody thinks and knows
A century of positivism means we privilege testimony from authenticaled witnesses and ethnographywe mistrust fiction and imagination as unreliable and self serving Fiction – the stories we tell ourselves and which we choose to inhabit are much more permanent and engaging than the branded gazebos erected over peoples heads We need to find ways to explore shared imaginative spaces
What are the signs that our core skills are being replaced by faster cheaper (free?) alternativesThe internet is disrupting every marketplace and market research is no different Online research isn’t the same as offline research – brands have been able to take over many tasks formerly delivered through market research