Some of the notes may only make sense when seen in conjunction with the slides which should be available from the above website shortly after the event.

Game Theory – using gaming to improve online surveys
Jon Puleston (GMI)

What r&d has shown us:

• making questions more game-like increase response

Results:

• less straight-lining – up to 80% less
• lower neutral scoring – avg 25% lower
• higher enjoyment
• lower dropout
• good cross compatibility vs trad grid questions

Simple changes can have real impact:

• change std round buttons to star-shaped
• re-wording questions – more playful/less formal (more vernacular)
• particularly valuable for more creative tasks
• make things more competitive – add a time limit for response
• use games at start to get ppl in right frame of mind, encourage creativity, and do subsequent surveys
• turned ppl into a judge on a panel show called ‘New Product Factors’ – appealing to their inner Simon Cowell!

In development:

• snowboarder going down hill, crashes through flags showing multiple choice responses
• words scattered on a screen, ppl can shoot ones they like
• create word clouds, allow ppl to re-arrange into their own clouds and to change the relative sizes
• guessing games: change ‘what brands can you think of?’ to ‘can you guess the 5 most popular brands of deodorant?’
• currently working with one client to make insight dashboards more fun to look at

Q&A:

• is there a risk of non-gamers mis-playing games? overcome this by training ppl with a few initial questions to train and gauge their ability to respond
• do surveys take longer? yes. but ppl have more fun in the process
• will gaming approach lead to ppl looking to ‘win’? use to your advantage as are trying to push ppl to answer as best they can
• bernie malinoff: the more interesting the question, the more likely it is to change the answer. this presents an issue? would always go with most engaging question
• comment: good to see ppl worrying less about survey length and more about its engagement
• are incentives for gamified surveys less or more? lower financial incentive needed

Play for a High Score – understanding gamers and gaming
Erica M. Ruyle (anthropologist)

3 G’s of gaming: gamers, games, gaming

• Erica refers to herself as a ‘fan scholar’

Gamers – a diverse bunch:

• data below is for US pop
• avg age = 34 (Atari generation)
• most freq age of game purchaser = 40
• 42% of US pop play on a wireless device/console
• 67% of US h/h play consoles/games

Games – key ways to engage users:

• 1. decent graphics
• 2. intuitive playability
• 3. award/achievement system
• 4. story/rationale
• 5. music
• get away from reality – ppl play games to escape reality

Gaming – importance of:

• work/fun – best games require a lot of work but are punctuated w/ fun – get ppl to reach a zen-like state so that they behave emotionally

Ideas for gaming in MR:

• mobile gaming/GPS
• virtual gaming community
• video game rewards
• choice analysis

Q&A:

• definitely diffs between cultures – above data is US-centric
• ppl not likely to disguise their identity in games

Game On! – a semiotician’s view of gaming and MR
Stefania Gogna (Head for Brand)

Gaming = a new way to get insight

Ten principles that make video games so interesting

• 1. participation: ppl take an active part in a peer group environment
• 2. exploration: ppl free to explore information w/out researcher
• 3. expression: ppl feel more free to express themselves
• 4. exchange: exchange ideas, sharing
• 5. simulation: ppl can reconstruct patterns of what they would like to see in the real world
• 6. close attention/scan ability: ppl pay strong attention to all important details
• 7. collaborative problem solving: ppl find new and unexpected ways to resolve problems
• 8. active thinking: more creative problem-solving
• 9. insider: active participant not passive consumer, in charge of their own experience
• 10. amplification: players generate a lot of output from little stimulus

Q&A:

• comment: issue for MR is need to share more w/ respondents
• comment: need to allow player to control some aspects, uncomfortable for some in MR

Research Through Gaming – opportunities for change
Betty Adamou (Nebu)

What is RTG:

• where a company gains data from a resp while they play a computer game and about the way they play the game itself

Fun theory:

• c.f YouTube video of VW piano stairs
• ppl started using stairs rather then escalators purely because of the fun element incorporated in the stairs

Entertainment snacking:

• ppl playing apps while waiting to do something/while travelling (on mobile device, via email, thru consoles)
• 1. avatar-based research games (ABRGs)
• 2. gaming as the incentive (GATIRGs)
• 3. questions as mini-games (QAMRGs) – e.g. flash app
• 4. social-media based research games (SMRGs) – e.g. farmville

Classification:

• video content would need to be classified by official industry/regulatory body

Q&A:

• some stuff you won’t want to gamify, e.g. if questions are sensitive

Let’s all Play the Game – applying game playing to qualitative research
Arthur Fletcher (Blauw Research)

Design Game:

• been working for 5yrs with a product called ‘Design Game’ – co-creation tool for design
• a game from beginning to end
• typically played in a focus group facility
• resps play for 2 hrs
• two phases: 1.identify issues; 2.synthesise solutions
• has generated some successful products
• a completely different way to gather info
• all tasks against the clock – highly productive
• clients absolutely love it as can observe
• really hard work for resps

Better than a discussion guide:

• 50% more content by volume
• 75% more content by topic
• no opportunity not to participate
• no opportunity to get bored – cognitive focus

Not suitable for all qual:

• fine for majority of assignments
• lacks scope for detailed probing
• more expensive
• purists wouldn’t like it

Game vs discussion guide:

Example 1:
• dg: “what sort of things frustrate you when shopping online”
• game: “in the next 60 secs, list as many things that frustrate you when shopping online”
• game: can refine importance by asking for top 3 reasons

Example 2:

• dg: “ok, so you mentioned security is a big issue, how to overcome?”
• game: “security has been identified as a major issue – in next 2 mins design a new security system and name 3 reasons why better”
• game: this works well in practice

Q&A:

• reaction to being told it is a MR exercise rather than a game? resps told it is a MR exercise from the outset – the game element is a pleasant surprise
• how sell into clients? need a good client relationship, they need to trust you. tough sell. have evidence that it works, and this helps to convince

Trust, Identity, Reach and Reward – the implications of social media
Nigel Legg (Trevanian Legg)

Trust is 2-way:

• ppl must trust researcher
• and vice versa

Trust based on identity:

• ppl invest time in identity
• social media relies on real world relationships w/ real world ppl
• twitter is old fashioned by allowing ppl to post under pseudonyms

Reach:

• getting the right sample
• hard to do/expensive with trad MR
• platforms only valid when critical mass of users

Reward:

• ppl must have a reason to press the share button – e.g. prizes
• different rewards for different types of participation (e.g. voting, giving ideas)

Coffeemat challenge:

• rcv prizes for submitting business ideas
• animation for voting

Other applications:

• crowd-sourced idea generation
• survey design
• SMM (social media marketing) campaigns
• SM (social media) platforms

Q&A:

• if rewards vary by activity, might this influence/game their response? fair comment

Mobile Social Games for MR – challenging boundaries
Leonard Murphy (Brandscan 360)

Mobile ecosystem:

• smartphone penetration growing to ubiquity
• ecosystem expanding rapidly
• real-time anywhere access to apps and functionality

New frontier for gaming and MR:

• 73% of US engaged in social media
• 32.7m ppl play social games daily
• 75+m ppl play farmville monthly
• foursquare, yelp and getglue engage millions daily
• morgan stanley: mobile device will be the primary web interface within 5 yrs

Using gaming in MR – engagement:

• reward users for returning in a short time
• reward users for helping friends
• allow users to create w/out typing
• offer increasing levels of complexity and mastery
• have surprises and limited time events

Revolutionary approach:

• web partners encourage users to download mobile app
• members earn badges for survey participation
• badges promote online reputation and influence, interests, brand affinity
• consumers rate brand perceptions, awareness, experience
• surveys received via LBS, push notifications, check-ins, can share w/ friends

Starts with the community:

• best way to engage consumers
• gaming driven by making it fun, social esteem, rewards

Badge benefits:

For users:
• users build reputation
• creates instant value
• users share badges

For brands:

• drop-in reputation across web
• define new rewards easily
• social analytics for brands
• new way to engage with customers, members, fans

Brandscan 360 rating:

• community members provide thousands of daily ratings
• based on brand touchpoints/interactions
• data mapped to location

Apps – the new currency:

• in-demand and WoM driven
• consumers earn points for participation

Q&A:

• since not everyone is interested in badges, does this create a source of bias? no
• location-based angles? opportunity to use for shelf testing

Prediction Markets for Fun and Prophet – putting gaming to work
Jeffrey Henning (Vovici)

Prediction markets:

• been around for a while
• became popular in 2004 w/ wisdom of crowds book
• hsx – hollywood stock exchange – given virtual dollars to invest in movies and stars – chance to be a movie mogul
• used by spread betters cantor fitzgerald to establish odds

Other pred mkts:

• simexchange – for games
• betfair
• iem – iowa electronic markets – politics – oldest pred mkt
• bet2give: wide range of topics

Why pred mkts work well:

• we see others better than we see ourselves

Combe case study:

• hair care products brand – just for men, grecian…
• traditionally used surveys for concept testing
• tried pred mkts due to low incidence rates (i.e. ability to use a general pop sample = cheaper)
• pred mkt ‘traders’ allocate virtual dollars to preferred concepts
• no sample selection – general pop
• ppl like the exercise, more entertaining

Benefits of pred mkts:

• ask ppl what would the market do (not what they would you do)
• variable incentives
• 3-4 days vs 3-4 wks
• half the price

Reasons for limited client adoption:

• companies reluctant to abandon normative databases
• failure has many fathers
• early adopters have expensive-to-reach mkts

Q&A:

• not had any papers refuting pred mkts so why are clients reluctant to adopt? idea not been sufficiently evangelised. forrester research just blogged that they are about to bring out a new paper on pred mkts shortly. stuff takes time to get adopted
• pred mkts is a different slant on gaming. are there other examples of different takes on gaming? gaming usually means simulations. lesson from today is the need to take inspiration from games to make things more fun and entertaining
• comment: trendspotting/cool hunting are examples of engendering a competitive instinct to encourage responses

We’re just back from the excellent two-day European Customer Experience Event where folks from Zappos and Harley-Davidson talked about how they build their ‘wow’ experience.

It’s our first time there and, to be honest, not the usual beat for us. But it should be – both for us and the insight community in general. Researchers who do anything related to loyalty or customer service should be attending this type of event because they get to meet the folks who actually put their work into practice – customer experience and service heads from major organisations, public and private.

We’ll blog more with some things that caught our eye. But first, in what’s becoming a tradition, here’s a wrap-up chat with three fellow delegates in which we talk highlights, learnings, customer experience in the public sector, digital natives vs. immigrants, behavioural economics, engendering loyalty by charging people (!), transparency and authenticity, convergence, and improvements for next year. Enjoy!

STARRING:

• Brian Koma, VP Research, Vovici
• Sharon Bayliss, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Toni Blumeris, MD, Harding & Yorke (S. Africa)

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

In the final of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn about his new tool, Infexious, which he says better predicts the likelihood that a campaign will go viral.

More precisely, David is interviewed by Rob Gotti and Robert Hall, both from the Boston Beer Company and who were intrigued by the tool and had a few questions.

David founded and runs the London-based quantitative outfit Conquest Research. The invention of Infexious, which uses visual metaphors to get a more emotional, pre-cognitive measure of consumer reaction, follows the earlier development of Metaphorix, a tool using a similar approach to measure how engaging a campaign or execution is.

We chat about…

• What the tool does
• Pre-testing the Cadbury Gorilla ad. failed – would Infexious be any better?
• The difference between an individual and a social response – and which is best measuring
• Is this tool really measuring pre-cognitive responses?
• Validation – Evian & Compare the Meerkat ads.
• Do clients always want their ad. agency to develop ads. that go viral?
• Persuasion in communications without being rational – the Carling campaign

In the second of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with anthropologist Grant McCracken.

Grant trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago), has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures. He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.

He recently published his third book, Chief Culture Officer, in which he argues that the time has come to elevate cultural understanding within organisations as part of both an offensive and defensive strategy.

We chat about the key themes in the book and are kindly joined by researcher Steve Gentile of Think Tank NYC, someone who I roped into the conversation once I heard that he had actually read Grant’s book

In the first of three short audio podcasts recorded at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Digital Strategic Services Online Division at Nielsen.

Pete was one of the early advocates of CGM and started a firm that eventually became part of Buzzmetrics, itself later bought by Nielsen. An author and prolific tweeter, we chat about…

• The implications for an organisation’s structure and culture as it grapples with responding to customer issues in real-time
• Which department should manage and own social media conversations
• The importance of ensuring that consumer trust is never ‘violated’
• Nielsen’s new algorithm for blending the potency of paid- (advertising) and earned- (social) media
• What CMOs are looking for from media measures
• The next challenge for social media: data integration, segmentation

Neither the BA strike nor the motley crew above could stop our first visit to the ARF Re:think annual confab in New York (a special thanks, btw, to Joel Rubinson and team for providing access).

Key themes this year were neuroscience, biometrics, social media management and measurement, integrating offline with online behavior (as advertisers and marketers look to link a stimulus on one with resultant behaviour on the other), and the increasing value of understanding cultural influences through ethnography. It was good to see a conference confidently devote so much of its agenda to the new MR, or ‘the new normal’ as the ARF referred to it.

Specific highlights for us include

• A marathon 2-hour session from various folks at Nielsen on ‘Thinking How Consumers Watch, Listen and Buy’. Led by Paul J. Donato, CRO, we learn, among other gems, that high search term prices was the reason for the bizarre but ultimately successful UK ad. campaign Compare the Meerkat. Donato also referred to big data sets – data abundance and mining was a clear theme, particularly among the big boys in audience and shopper measurement
• A panel discussing the new ways to understand influences on consumers, by looking through a social lens (Larry Friedman of TNS), a cultural lens (anthropologist Grant McCracken) and an emotional lens (Carl Marci, Innerscope). The different perspectives showed the value of diverse information sources and subsequent need to integrate or synthesise the data into a coherent, persuasive whole
• A lively debate among client-side folks on ‘How to Bring the Voice of the Human Into the Boardroom’. Some interesting ideas came out the debate moderated by Joel Rubinson: Stan Sthanunathan of Coca-Cola says they are slowly shifting to a pay-performance model for their MR agencies; John Forsyth of McKinsey says that his clients are looking for people with good synthesis skills; Susan Wagner of Johnson & Johnson talked of having shifted 15% of their MR budget to so-called new MR tools (she didn’t specify what these were). Stan also talked of ways to stimulate his internal clients’ thinking using more than just conventional research – for example by getting them to meet with folks in the army to share challenges and strategies

We managed to record a few short audio podcasts, do have a listen

• Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw on a new algorithm for measuring ‘blended media’ (paid + earned media) Listen here
• Anthropologist Grant McCracken on why companies can’t afford to continue without a Chief Culture Officer Listen here
• Conquest Research’s David Penn on his new tool for predicting the virality of communications Listen here

It was a pity we couldn’t stay for the final day when neuroscience and biometrics were covered in earnest. But we have recorded video chats with some of the key players and plan to bring the completed film to you later this year.

A big thanks again to ARF folks Joel Rubinson, CRO, and marketing director Heather James for giving me access to an event I look forward to attending again.

Here’s a couple of panel discussions from the event.

     
Paul Berney of the MMA probably said it best: giving the keynote at the Globalpark-sponsored 2010 Mobile Research Conference, he said that 2009 turned out to be the year that mobile became a serious consumer internet access device. But then he also said he wasn’t going to be held to that proclamation given how premature the prediction turned out in previous years!

Around 100 folks turned up for the two-day, well-organised event in London for what I believe was a meaty feast of the useful and practical. And there was good Wifi so lots and lots of tweeting (apparently nine tweets/min at one stage).

We took advantage of the Wifi to post these five podcast chats in almost real-time – hope the many hundreds who listened to these on the day felt the speedy upload was useful.

See here for audio from two of the panel discussions.

In the next few days we’ll add links to blogger commentaries:

Dan Pink speaking at this year’s TED Global in Oxford.

He takes us through a wealth of evidence – built up over four decades – which demonstrates that financial incentives tend to focus the mind and as such only tend to be productive on left-brain tasks, i.e. “problems with a clear set of rules and a single solution.”

In contrast, when financial incentives are offered to people to solve more right-brain tasks – those that are more conceptual in nature and require greater use of cognitive power – the incentives actually make the problem harder to solve because they narrow the focus when the solution tends to be on the periphery and so the solver needs to be thinking more holistically and laterally.

The issue, says Pink, is that we’ve known about these flawed links between problem-solving and financial incentives for decades, and yet despite that they endure. And more and more of the work we do is shifting to right-brain thinking as we delegate the routine, rule-based stuff to computers and outsourcing agents.

The solution: offer incentives based on intrinsic motivators. Specifically, autonomy (e.g. Google’s 20% time), mastery, and purpose.

John Kearon, Chief Juicer at BrainJuicer, explains how he is turning research on its head by shifting the focus from asking people to explain their own behaviour, to using peoples’ innate social abilities to comment on the behaviour of others.

A pioneer in the use of wisdom of crowds in research (since 2004), he also reveals the results of experiments in mass ethnography, mass anthropology and co-creation.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here.

Faris Yakob, EVP and chief technology strategist at ad. agency McCann Erickson, takes us through his six rules of social media engagement which he believes brands should follow to offer something more meaningful and powerful to people.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here.

We filmed this at a recent AQR ethnography training event.

It’s 15mins of edited highlights featuring useful tips and rich examples, drawn from a jam-packed 3-hour* training session run by ethnography expert Siamack Salari (of EverydayLives) and semiotics expert Greg Rowland (of Greg Rowland Semiotics). Enjoy!

You can also find a brief writeup of the event here.

More AQR coverage here.

* In fact the training ran all day, the bit we didn’t show was the half-day devoted to worked examples with full delegate participation

Mark Earls, author of Herd, talks about why copying is the important new paradigm for encouraging behavioural change.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here

After noticing that many events tend to mainly attract agencies, he began to wonder whether there was a way to significantly increase the client quotient.

Well, a few weeks ago he ran his inaugural Oktoberfest, a one-day event in London and Amsterdam with a hand-picked line up of ‘innovators’ as speakers. Each intimate gathering attracted over 100 clients.

The events were free and in true bootstrap fashion John partnered with Unilever and Philips to host the events and provide refreshments.

John Griffiths blogged about the London event. And we were asked to film, the result being the 17m highlight clip below (from 6hrs worth of material) which we hope you enjoy.

 STARRING 

• Andrew Gaule, Founder, The H-I Network
• BV Pradeep, Dove team, Unilever
• Jaroslav Cir, CMI director, Rexona (Unilever)
• John Kearon, Chief Juicer, BrainJuicer
• Mark Earls, Herdmeister, Herd Consulting
• Michael Spencer, MD, Sound Strategies

London:

Amsterdam Conference

John is one of the keynotes at the upcoming trends conference Consumer Alchemy ‘08. Hosted by Gfk Roper, here’s a short teaser we prepared earlier.

And below you’ll find the actual podcast chat (c. 20mins) with two other keynotes as they talk through trends they are seeing and what brands are doing, and can do, to capitalise on these trends (as usual, there’s a full list of talking points after the fold).

 STARRING 

• John Grant, independent brand strategy consultant (blog)
• Nick Chiarelli, global trends expert, GfK Roper Consulting
• Pamela Hamilton, head of creative development, ITV Imagine

TIMELINE [22:36]
00:00 Intro.
01:57 Trends being witnessed: global unevenness of credit crunch; adjusting to new realities; culture clashes as BRIC countries repurpose western values; megacities.
05:09 Climate change and confidence: the year of the small car, no longer eco luxury.
07:28 Consumers want simplicity of choice.
08:19 People want meaning (engagement, co-creation, spirituality).
10:36 Globalisation: developing economies have a huge appetite for cultural globalisation.
12:36 The globalisation paradox in entertainment.
13:46 Implications for brands: shifting from fantasy to authentic stories (Apple, Dove).
16:06 Resolving brand contradictions at Unilever.
17:30 Shifting curencies in an online world (reputation etc.).
19:37 Health: an example of globalisation in an holistic sense.

NOTABLE MENTIONS
“The Green Marketing Manifesto”, John Grant.
Apple.
BBC.
Brazil.
China.
Cisco.
Climate change.
Credit crunch.
Dove.
Economy.
Eric Hobsbawm.
GE.
Globalisation.
Health paradox.
IKEA.
India.
Kodak.
Levi.
Lynx.
Powergen.
Prius.
Steve Jobs.
Trends.
Unilever.
World of Warcraft.

MUSIC
Music courtesy of Jakit Patrick from the Podsafe Music Network.

 I think all the research industry should adopt a CFO, because what the CFO wants to know is not whether that ad. tested better than that ad., but does the whole program move us ahead in making brands more valuable in peoples’ lives and therefore dropping to the bottom line. (Alan C. Middleton)

ESOMAR’s 2008 Congress is nearly upon us and in this exclusive preCast, BrainJuicer Chief Juicer John Kearon chats with three of the keynotes about how cultural and technological changes are impacting peoples’ lives, and how the disciplines of marketing, branding and research need to adapt to keep pace with such change.

John is joined by former senior JWT executive Alan C. Middleton, popular anthropologist Grant McCracken, and design entrepreneur Richard Eisermann.

Listen to the podcast here

 STARRING 

• Alan C. Middleton, Assistant Prof. of Marketing and Executive Director, Executive Education Centre, Schulich School of Business, York University
• Grant McCracken, Anthropologist, Research Affiliate, MIT
• Richard Eisermann, Co-founder, Prospect
• John Kearon, Chief Juicer, BrainJuicer (host)

Listen to other podcasts in this series

Timeline [27:20]
00:00 Intro.
03:10 Brands as a shared construct (incl. 2-way conversations).
03:38 Edinburgh University’s research into the role of political brands (Alan).
04:52 “Designers will increasingly be providing the tools and methodologies for people to provide their own answers…the challenge is trying to provide a business model” (Richard).
06:20 Mass ethnography (Grant).
07:14 “In an experiment…noticed that everyone in a bar stopped drinking at the same time, even when they were blind!” (Grant).
07:33 Open-source branding (Grant).
08:29 User-created content is changing media consumption patterns (Alan).
10:10 Engaging people in the marketing process (“Marketers are becoming a symmetrical party in the relationship”) (Grant).
11:17 In a more complex world, research should be seeking themes and inspiration, not discrete answers (“Stop using research to invent products!”) (Alan, Richard).
13:38 Marketing needs to know when a prosumer vs consumer approach works (i.e. co-creation vs. prescriptive) (Alan).
14:30 Why ethnography can be more inspiring than traditional research approaches (Grant).
15:56 Designers need to understand ‘meaning’ and direct contact with consumers is the only source of this (Richard).
16:52 The need for ‘whole human research’ (Alan).
17:47 Innovation happens at the fringes, but most research doesn’t go there (e.g. off-road bicycles).
20:16 Overcoming risk-averse behaviour in corporations (“the high risk of not taking a risk”) (Alan).
21:59 Overcoming risk-averse behaviour in the MR industry (balanced score cards).
24:52 Wrap-up.

Notable Mentions
Andrew Keen, “Cult of the Amateur”.
Co-creation.
David Weinberger.
Design Council.
Disintermediation.
Economic downturn.
Ethnography.
IDEO.
JWT.
Naomi Klein.
Neil Gershenfeld.
Open source.
Sid Levy.
Edinburgh University.
UGC.
Whirlpool.

Music Theatrimus from the PMN

Series:AdTalk
Series:Events Series:ESOMAR Series:Congress08
Series:Commissioned

We’re not massive classical music fans. But if we had Benjamin Zander teaching us things may have been different. Not content with simply creating classical music fans, Benjamin talks of creating a better world through the power of music.

Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.

A leading interpreter of Mahler and Beethoven, Benjamin Zander is known for his charisma and unyielding energy — and for his brilliant pre-concert talks.

Oh dear, we feel a longer-than-usual post coming. Do bear with us if this is your thing

The inevitable result of over-hyping things is that most of the time you don’t quite deliver. And that was a bit of an issue with the Research ‘08 conference, run by the UK’s Market Research Society. It was advertised as ‘the great debate’ when in fact it was a goodish debate overall. Kinda makes you feel a bit deflated.

But we’re pleased we went. Although it started off a bit lacklustre, things did pick up. And there were a couple of format innovations that really seemed to excite folks (more on these later). Plus the networking opportunities were good because of the close to 1,000 attendance (usually held in Brighton, some remarked that the London venue helped to boost attendance).

Just so you know, although we didn’t record any podcasts during the event due to time constraints, we do plan to catch up with some of the interesting speakers over the next few weeks so keep a look out for these (subscribe via the links at the top right of website). Because we weren’t allowed to film due to the number of film crews already there. we were restricted to audio which we thought was better done after the event (or so we’re trying to convince ourselves!).

Some topline thoughts, then. First, things we liked…

• Something we’ve championed by strapline and example from the getgo over two years ago seems to be gaining traction, namely the need to engage and inspire clients – hooray. But while many of the speakers that referred to this seemed oblivious to the irony that their presentations were about as engaging as a bunch of grapes, a few speakers actually delivered: from the well-honed abilities of ITV’s Rupert Howell and RT friend and Publicis’s Dan O’Donoghue, to the passion and comedic charm of RI’s Tom Ewing. They all exhibited some of the qualities identified in the ‘The Big Planning Debate’ as critical to making research more potent: authority, clarity, vividness, engaging, critical thinking, analogy, simplicity, thinking about the ends and not means, building respect, inspiring.
• Keynote Allan Leighton’s no BS and highly pragmatic approach is always refreshing in a world dominated by over-hype and under-delivery, even though much of his talk was familiar to us because of the prior research we did to try and secure a chat with him
• Dan O’Donoghue’s session on Web 2.0 was electric. While some of the sessions suffered from flogging the proverbial dead horse with little to move things on, Dan’s session included a chat about in-game advertising which seems to neatly address many of the current issues around maintaining advertising’s relevance and engagement. We’ll try and bring you some of that goodness in the coming weeks
• For us the most intellectually-charged session (based on quality of ideas and debate), was ‘The Big Planning Debate’. However, as much as the pleasant Vanella Jackson (Hall & Partners) tried to convince us that they were having a conversation, they weren’t. It was still more parent-child Q&A than peer-peer chat, the latter being our definition of true, inclusive conversation. On this occasion, though, the session wasn’t the worse for being less conversational mainly because of quality of the speakers with their entertaining, useful and authoritative comments and ideas
• We intimated some format innovations that went down well. A bit of background about where we come from. Regular followers will know that we’re very keen on conversation – most bloggers, podcasters and those embedded in modern web culture think this way. We’re also uber fans of the TED conference. Among their secret sauce is that talks are strictly limited to around 15 mins. So it was refreshing to see elements of these seep into the conference. Specifically, everyone in the audience had a mobile phone type device to vote, sometimes fairly regularly depending on the session. Not all that innovative but pretty slick nonetheless (accurate results appeared magically within a millisecond of the vote closing). No. What was tres cool was the fact that you could text message stuff on a continuous basis through the session, and the moderators and panelists could see that river of questions, observations and occasional abuse in real time (think twitter stream for those into stream of consciousness). The sessions that used this well just seemed more inclusive and fluid. Not fully conversational but going in the right direction. It was funny when Rupert Howell admitted to getting confused as to what he was saying while also trying to take in the messages – the ‘older’ generation clearly have a lot to learn from gen-Y and their propensity towards continuous partial attention
• The other innovation we liked? In terms of length, many of the talks were way too long. Hence the rave reception that the Pecha Kucha session got at the end of day one (five presenters were allowed up to 20 seconds per slide and up to 20 slides to make their point, so a little over six minutes per presenter). PK is one of the innovations we’ve championed in our monthly column, and something the wonderful RLF performed at their debut event near to Research ‘07 (which may have been the inspiration for the organisers to give it a go)
• Talking of the RLF, spearheaded by Mesh’s Fiona Blades and Spring Research’s Steve Phillips, they also ran an event this year. Attendance was really good considering it was up against the official party (although a number went to both). Even better was the spirit of fun and letting your hair down – methinks they achieve far more for the industry’s profile including enticing new grads than anyone using more prim and proper methods (btw, although we’re privileged to be listed on their website as co-founders and fellow conspirators, Fiona and Steve actually do all the work)

And now a couple of low lights:

• It’s a pity but you really need to decide how much you want a conference for the quality of it’s content versus the networking opportunity. We say ‘pity’ because there shouldn’t be a need to compromise – you should be able to get both in abundance. We bumped into Inside Research’s Larry Gold who tells us that he visits at least a dozen events a year to convey the best bits to his senior executive audience. First of all, that job of curation he does so well should be done equally well by every conference organiser. But it’s not. And why? Well, when Larry produced conferences for the ARF, he worked out that the best content came from him carefully picking the speakers, and then deciding what they would talk about based on passion and authority – a level of control that mirrors TED’s approach. There was clear evidence at this conference that despite speaker rehearsals, appalling ones got through the net (the most obvious was from a consultancy that presented a completely useless and ad-filled 20min. video in place of them presenting – we’re not mentioning the name because they don’t deserve a name check). Larry also likes the notion of shorter presentations. Our view: if you can’t get it across in 15mins, you’ve failed (sic. Jeremy Bullmore’s viral piece about insights and refridgerators)
• In an age that’s increasingly embracing conversation, organic thought, it’s strange to see a few presenters tightly script their presentation and then robotically deliver that script. We won’t name names, for all we know they could have been virgin presenters and presenting isn’t at all easy, particularly when faced with up to 1,000 folks with intense stares. No, the fault’s with agency middle-management, it’s their responsibility to train to the requisite standard, they’ve failed if they’re not doing that. After all, presenting well, IOHO, is an art and science that can be perfected with practice

We may seem overly critical above. So do bear in mind that despite having been to a number of events already, this is the first that we’ve actually sat in on many of the sessions and so the first event that we’ve been able to comment on through first-hand experience. So, to get a more balanced view, do pop here, here, here, here, here or here – you should get something more articulate and richer.

Before we sign-off, among the chats we had with a variety of folks between sessions, we liked a little story from semiotician Rachel Lawes of Lawes Consulting. She mentioned that a steady trickle of people have commented positively on her podcast. She started to get a bit worried in case there was something controversial in there that was generating this feedback. So she decided to listen only to discover that it was just a good ole conversation, and people were simply relaying that. Nothing more, nothing less – it’s what we like to hear, it’s why we do this

Thanks to the MRS and Sophie Russell-Ross and Camargue’s Emily Luscombe for giving us event access. Event organisation was smooth.

Series:MarketingTalk Series:AdTalk
Series:MRS Series:Research08