Mar 11, 2009 0
Feb 16, 2009 0
How Retailers are Surviving the Downturn
Our article in the Feb ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
How a passionate focus on value along with other basic approaches are helping retailers to survive and thrive during the downturn.
My, oh my, how things have unravelled.
Back in September, Research World looked at the impact of the downturn and the focus was on the collapse of financial organisations.
But now the focus has shifted to collapsing retailers, among them household names such as Circuit City in the US and Woolworths in the UK, one of the world’s oldest retailers.
What’s more, “Ten chains ‘face closure’ in 2009” declares a headline from a UK consultancy as a dismal prelude of the carnage to come.
In this Darwinian environment, retailers need to adapt or face the real prospect of death.
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Jan 18, 2009 0
Buyology: Sound Science or Wishful Thinking?
Our article in the Jan ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
Martin Lindstrom’s new book and company, Buyology, hope to kick start the next wave of neuromarketing. Will they deliver?
We talk to Martin Lindstrom from his New York City hotel.
Just hours after Barack Obama is elected US President, Lindstrom is getting ready to leave the US for his European book tour, the US tour having generated over 700 articles, including many in the mainstream press and an appearance on the couch of TV’s The Today Show.
It’s his bid to popularise the business book: “I realised that no one reads business books any more…what people, including business people, really read is novels…that’s the style I’ve tried adopting in Buyology.”
And the book is indeed a pleasant, easy read. But that’s one of the criticisms levelled at it by the Bob Barocci, CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation, who apparently dismissed the book in an Advertising Age article by saying that the ARF did not review “pop” books.
Notwithstanding that, the book has received widespread praise and is a bestseller.
So, just what is Buyology all about?
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Dec 9, 2008 0
Just How Healthy is Brand Health Measurement?
Our article in the Dec ‘08 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
Brand health monitoring is an important tool, particularly during tough economic times when managing RoI becomes critical for CMOs. But what are some of the tools, and are they fit for purpose?
The Millward Brown Approach
Don’t say we didn’t try.
In the ceaseless search for simplicity, we ask Eileen Campbell, CEO of Millward Brown for a single measure to encapsulate brand health: “We aren’t really advocates of single number measures – the same way you wouldn’t monitor your personal health with a single number.” Sounds reasonable.
Instead, the philosophy behind BrandZ, their brand health tool/framework, is to measure the strength of the consumer bond, says global brand director Peter Walshe: “Consumers have relationships with brands, and the intent is to strengthen those relationships.”
Strength is derived from a couple of (exotic-sounding) metrics: ‘bonding’ and ‘voltage’.
Bonding refers to one of five levels that indicate the strength of the consumer bond. It is based on factors such as: spontaneous awareness, knowledge, relevance, performance, and perceived competitive advantage. For example, the lowest level (weakest bond) typifies a consumer who is simply familiar with a brand and nothing else. The highest level (strongest bond) reflects a consumer who regards the brand as relevant to them and way ahead of the competition.
And voltage? That, says Walshe, reflects how effectively consumers move up the bonding levels. Strong brands tend to have high conversation ratios between the levels.
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Dec 3, 2008 0
Giveaway: ‘Buyology’
And the winner of the Buyology giveaway is…Elizabeth Luke.
Elizabeth is a senior at the University of Southern California spending her final semester abroad at the University of Amsterdam. She is a communication major with an interest in persuasion and consumer behavior. She will be graduating magna cum laude in December 2008, and shortly after, she will begin her career as a research analyst for emerging consumer products at Nielsen BASES.
Elizabeth’s book is on the way, thanks again to Martin Lindstrom and publishers Random House.
Here are Martin’s responses to some of the questions you sent in (thanks for all the entries):
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Nov 25, 2008 0
Building a Research Community
There’s quite a bit involved in designing and running good research communities, so we decided to create this podcast where we speak with a couple of folks who have been actively developing communities for a number of years.
First up there’s Tom Ewing, yes theTom Ewing who created quite a stir at this year’s Research ‘08 conference. Back in 2000, Tom created the ILX (I love music) message board as a personal endeavour and it grew viraly. At the time of recording Tom was in a marketing role at Research International. But soon after, parent Kantar had the sense to make him a social media adviser.
Next there’s Matt Rhodes of FreshNetworks, the online community-building part of the award-winning FreshMinds. Matt’s an active blogger and recently revealed that FreshNetworks had won a £5m ($7.5m) interest-free loan as part of an entrepreneur competition – quite a nice prize in the (economic) circumstances.
Hoping, as always, you find this useful.
STARRING
- Matt Rhodes, Head of Client Services, FreshNetworks
- Tom Ewing, Social Media expert, Kantar Operations
Nov 17, 2008 0
Why Qual had to Change
Our article in the Nov ‘08 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
In an age where innovation is de rigeur, we look into how well qualitative is keeping up with the times.
“You must have mis-recruited me,” says Chris Forrest of qualitative house The Nursery, “I’m not sure there is lots of innovation in qualitative.”
Moreover, he feels there’s no need for innovation: “Qualitative research is quite evolved… a major tool for us is the good old focus group…it’s just a very good way to get people to interact with each other.”
But far from being a Luddite, Forrest is innovating, it just takes him a while to acknowledge this. And that’s not dissimilar from the initial reaction we get from others we spoke to.
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Nov 11, 2008 0
BrainJuicer’s Innovation Conference
BrainJuicer’s Chief Juicer John Kearon is a regular on the conference circuit.
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:
Oct 24, 2008 0
John Grant: “I wonder about the longevity of branding”
Famed planner John Grant is now well known as a sustainability consultant. But not only in the environmental sense – he holds strong views on the sustainability of brands in an era of greater transparency and accountability. An era in which brands are being compelled to stand for something relevant in peoples lives.
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
Sep 29, 2008 1
Peanut Labs: focus, focus, focus
Peanut Labs has an innovative take on a pretty unglamorous but fast-changing part of the research industry: online panels. Unlike other panel providers, they generate sample on-the-fly through social networks. As a result, not only can they source difficult-to-get Gen-Yrs, you can also think of them as Google Adsense for social networks, i.e. a powerful monetisation engine that social networks seem to love.
They’re doing pretty well – created only 14 months ago, they already have an annualised turnover of $10m. Not bad for a company started by a bunch of twenty-something college dropouts.
Based in Silicon Valley, we managed the above quick chat with founder Murti Hussain, and newly annointed part-time CEO Simon Chadwick (the adult supervision!) during a recent trip to London. We cover a number of key strategic decisions they’ve made including why Simon is joining now, their strategy for maintaining the fast growth, hiring tactics, barriers to entry, mistakes, exit strategies and who we think will end up buying them.
Below the fold you’ll find some more info on their background and ambitions (based on a profile we wrote for trade pub Research World)
BTW, props to the wonderful folks at Starbucks in Wardour Street for cutting the background music while we chatted – much appreciated.
Podcasts
