ESOMAR Best of Canada - The Digital Researcher

This week in Toronto, myself and 100 others in the marketing and research community gathered to hear a sampling of research projects that strive to use the new digital communications tools that are already so crucial to our lives. Coming on the heels of the successful Digital Dimensions conference in Miami (#eso3d on twitter), this sold out event was highly anticipated.

Myself, Annie Pettit (@lovestats) and a few others were live tweeting from the event using the #esobest hashtag on twitter.  Here are my thoughts on the morning's presentations. 

Cam Davies started the morning with a few stats about research worldwide.  The room was surprised to note that in the US, only about one-quarter of research spend is on "online" research. Canada was substantially higher (second only to Bulgaria!) at 42% of total spend. Although this does acknowledge that other methodologies have not gone the way of the dodo quite yet,  it doesn't reflect the proportion of projects that are being moved to online (and mobile!) based research.

Cam followed this up with a challenge for researchers, pointing out all the ways that we can continue to improve ourselves - from live conferences, to now frequent webinars (including this week's virtual festival of NewMR and the upcoming MRIA virtual mobile conference), to reading articles curated by your peers (a.k.a. twitter and blogs).   

We then moved on to the meat of the morning, with three case studies that utilized mobile to enhance and develop research results.

Corrine Sandler and Olga Churkina @FreshIntel started the day with a lively two person presentation illustrating a combination of traditional online quantitative and mobile qualitative.  Citing the feeling that people use their "head, heart, and hands" to shop, this research needed to augment the head with more insight about the "heart". During the online survey, respondents were asked for their mobile numbers and phone details, as part of a potential participation in future research (25% agreed). From this group, 15 respondents were asked to complete tasks throughout a weekend, related to the product in question (air fresheners). They took pictures of the odor problems in their home, they went to their grocer, took pictures and commented on the choices they were faced with. They sent in text messages as responses to questions pushed to their phone. And they did all this for a $10 incentive!



@EliasVeris from InSites Consulting  then showed us how gamification and crowdsourced insight interpretation provides a rich research experience. This project focused on Gen Y, and encouraged participation in a variety of activities over a six week period. We've all worked with MROCs before, but what was interesting here was the idea to ask a sub-set of the participants to curate and interpret responses from the larger group. He showed that the insights generated by respondents  were on par with those developed by willing research professionals recruited prior to an earlier presentation of this work.


Lastly, Sean Conry of Techneos Systems showed the results of a multi-modal monitoring of a major cultural event in the UK - the wedding of William and Kate. Sean's presentation showed that digging deeper, and in particular monitoring individual comments leading up to the wedding that there was more interest than the public may have perceived (the press was reporting a great deal of ambivalence).  Respondents sent texts, were monitored via GPS and provided photos of their activities on the day.


All in all, this morning inspired attendees to continue to modify and improve with the ways that they engage with respondents. These are examples of new solutions to an issue not always well handled by quantitative research - how to engage with respondents in more natural and engaging ways.

Do Less With Less

It is a well known phrase, in marketing research and other industries: Do More with Less.  But can you really do more with less, or does this lead to:  Garbage In Garbage Out?


At the recent American Marketing Association Research & Strategy Summit, the question was posed to a group of CEO's from leading research firms:  "How do you do more with less?"

Their answers provide some concrete ways to stretch your research dollars and still gain the valued insights that your company needs.

• You are paying for people.  Remember that a research firm's greatest cost is in its people. Although there are certainly efficiencies in process and technology that firms achieve, inevitably, what you are paying for is the quality of the team working for you. Although you may pay more for a single research project, you also are likely to get better insights that will pay you back down the road.
• Rewrite that RFP. Involve your research partners as early in the process as possible. Instead of taking a procurement perspective (get the RFP out to as many firms as you can, to get the best price), involve a few trusted partners to work with you to ensure that you have designed research that precisely gets to the business issues at hand.
• Synthesize your research. In the past there has been a trend to naming your research problem, and then doing a project (e.g., the branding study, the pricing study), resulting in a lot of research that is overlaps other work. By ensuring that all internal researchers have access and awareness of all recent and planned research, you can design a research program that answers the most questions with less overlap, and less overall spend. 
• Instead of doing more with less, do less with less. Consider if every question that comes your way requires a research project? Can a few smaller issues be combined, or tackled as an add on to another project? Can it be researched via an omnibus? Is the research need strategic?
• Be strategic about your spend. Research departments fund projects with a combination of their own budget and a departmental budget. Follow the lead of Jeff Mercer at Microsoft, who focuses his research dollars on projects that align with the strategic goals of the business units they support, and either defer or don't fund research that doesn't align. 

How market research clients can help their partners "come to the table"

This is the one of an occasional series of posts that focuses on strategic marketing.  Market researchers who are valued partners "at the table" are increasingly turning to their marketer skill set. 


I recently attended the AMA 2011 Research & Strategy Summit, and was reflecting on lessons learned from one year ago. One of my highlights was a breakout session entitled "How to Be A Bold Researcher", by Gayle Lloyd of Batesville Caskets.  This was wonderfully excerpted by @lennyism at GreenBook (http://www.greenbookblog.org/2010/09/28/a-few-quick-notes-on-the-ama-mrc/).

"Researchers of the future will need to be savvy business people first and researchers second.  The mantra “think like a business person act like a purveyor of information” will be the key to getting a seat at the table and keeping that seat. The skills to be a good researcher go way beyond data analysis. The researcher of the future will need to be a strategic and creative thinker, knowledge management guru, confident and most of all fearless and willing to go where no researcher has gone before and that’s just for starters."

One of the ways that Gayle integrates the research conducted at Batesville is through a twice-annual research summary. This step, built into the planning cycle, ensures that common threads and themes emerging across the research team are uncovered and synthesized. Importantly, these summaries are also shared with trusted research vendor partners.    More organizations should consider bringing their research partners into the planning, review and synthesis cycles.  Often researchers are selected for their niche expertise (whether this be expertise in certain types of research, geographic coverage, or other purpose), but may be one of several researchers actively working with a client organization. By ensuring that your researchers have "the big picture" you can also ensure that your researchers provide the strongest, most strategic insights possible.

The Strategic Marketer - Know your customer

This is the first of an occasional series of posts that focuses on strategic marketing.  Market researchers who are valued partners "at the table" are increasingly turning to their marketer skill set. 

My alma mater, Wilfrid Laurier University, is currently celebrating its centennial anniversary. As part of these celebrations, the university recently named 100 Alumni of Achievement. Cam Heaps, of Steam Whistle Brewery, represents my class, and I wanted to share a simple, but important lesson, courtesy of a speech given at the 2010 Market Research Industry Association Conference.

Greg Taylor, Cam's co-founder, first introduced the brewery, and its vision. A key to this vision is the employees of Steam Whistle, the "Good Beer Team". Greg told us that the employees of  Steam Whistle must know all aspects of the brewery, and must understand it's vision.

When asked by an audience member what advice he had for market researchers, he surprised us with his answer - the number of potential market research partners who came on a a sales visit, but failed the very first question they were asked - "Have you ever visited the brewery?".

In answering this question, Greg reminded us to practice what we preach  - if we are in the business of knowing consumers, we also need to know and understand our clients. This is the first, but most important step in being a strategic marketer.