ResearchTalk

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Amazon should give away barcode readers (29 August)
Get a Whiff of This! The Amazing Power of Scent Marketing (28 August)
Publicis’ Tobaccowala: Mass Media Is Far From Dead (But It’s Not Growing Either) (26 August)
Is Google More Expensive Than TV? (26 August)
Is Paul Feldwick God? (26 August)
P&G Taps Bloggers, Moms for Unconventional Product Launch (23 August)
Lending to the poor has rich rewards (23 August)
Grabbing Lightning (21 August)
ESOMAR ‘08 keynotes on keeping pace with change (21 August)
Free Baby Free (20 August)
Profanity works (20 August)
Innovation and the Tragedy of the Anti-Commons (20 August)
Bus Stop Swing Set: A Public Transportation Playground [Bus Stop Playground] (20 August)
The Economist visits with three digital nomads (19 August)
Ofcom Communications Market Report 2008 (17 August)
Li Ning stays one step ahead of rivals in Olympic brand race (15 August)
Gartner Hype Cycle 2008 (11 August)
Planning's very own Clover Machines (7 August)

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 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

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Common sense would probably tell you that stealing a bicycle using brute force in a high traffic area was nigh on impossible without being stopped or challenged. Well, think again. This video shows how easy it was for a guy to steal his own bike in busy NY using a bolt cutter, hacksaw and electric saw. And not just once but several times. He did this to try and understand how his bike kept getting stolen despite the fact that he secured it well. There’s a couple of funny bits towards the end: a police van drives right past him attempting the theft in plain sight, but intercepts the camera guy and cautions him not to stand in the car lane. Also, one person does eventually bother to intervene but there’s a twist that you really have to watch to believe. The result is a revelation not just for the guy himself but also for those manufacturing security chains and locks as it changes the assumptions they often work to.

via dvorak.org/blog

Series:MarketingTalk

Sky News Technofile is a weekly segment on the UK satellite news channel.

Around nine minutes long, the latest edition provides a roundup of shopping technology from the likes of Infosys and Fujitsu and focuses on how it benefits consumers as they shop in physical stores. There’s some useful stuff including a mobile app that provides shopping ideas (a la amazon).

You can find this and other episodes of Technofile here (also available in podcast form).

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If you think this is in bad taste, just wait for the bit where you say to yourself “No, she’s not seriously gonna do that!”

via AdFreak / Brief Blog

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Image credit: smaku/flickr

Every day we scan hundreds of blogs and mainstream media for choice content that we think you should read/imbibe.

We’re picky and deliberately avoid articles that make it to the mainstream because this just adds to the echo chamber. The result is a manageable set of hopefully useful links that you may not have ordinarily come across.

To get these in real time, subscribe to the special Trends & Insights RSS feed or the daily email.

If you haven’t already subscribed then here’s what you’ve missed over the last couple of weeks:

Is Unilever running out of ideas? (31 July)
Thinking about design research? (31 July)
How big is the free economy? (31 July)
Portugal signs up for 500,000 Intel Classmate laptops (31 July)
Segment Watch: the businessthlete (31 July)
On broadband and oil (30 July)
P&G goes for design thinking (29 July)
Insight (27 July)
The World is Flat, for free (24 July)
The magic of marketing (24 July)
Ted Mininni: newly minted expressions? (22 July)
NEC technology identifies person’s age and sex, delivers targeted ads (22 July)
30 somethings & Age: a generation of denial (21 July)
John Steel "Planning at 40" (21 July)
The accountability of research (21 July)
Emily Bell: If Google should falter, how many others will follow? (21 July)
New face recognition system helps stores to identify VIP customers (18 July)
Nudge (18 July)
Georgie in Campaign (18 July)
Is user-friendliness a sure marketing bet? (13 July)

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For control freaks like Apple, partnerships must be really frustrating. Famous for wanting to control every aspect of their product – hardware and software – plus sales, service etc., the torrid iPhone experience over the last 24 hours must have sent Steve Jobs fuming to say the least. It’s not absolutely clear who is to blame, but the guns are pointing at Apple’s partner, AT&T (and other carriers overseas).

So even though many decry Apple for being a relatively closed platform, the events of the last 24 hours may have brought some people round to Apple’s way of thinking, or at least made them more sympathetic.

But the reality is that partnerships in most sectors are an increasing necessity. As markets mature, product life cycles and development lead times shrink in today’s ever competitive landscape, organisations have to pair up to provide services they couldn’t do themselves, or at least not cost/time effectively.

Apple clearly sees the mobile market as a crucial one. So would it make sense for them to become a mobile carrier to control the experience end-to-end? Well, that would seem overkill. The bad experience involves activation, the general experience using AT&T and other carriers doesn’t seem to be a particularly big issue (or is it?). Apple is not in the pipes business, so why worry about the mobile pipes if it doesn’t worry too much about the fixed broadband pipes?

So, this got us thinking. As the title of this post conjectures, is the Apple/iPhone brand damaged by having a partner that is a weaker link in the brand experience chain? Anecdotal evidence from people being interviewed outside Apple/AT&T stores would seem to suggest (a) many folks attributed the blame to AT&T, and (b) the diehards waiting in line, sometimes for hours, love the iPhone so much that hurricanes probably wouldn’t have stopped them. And although mainstream news covered the travails, we can’t really see it denting iPhone desirability or demand.

But then you wonder, did Apple anticipate this beforehand and decide to accept the consequences because to have improved it (the back-end systems supporting activation) significantly may have cost too much or been too much hassle? Was there a trade-off?

We are, of course, drawing a parallel here with the BAA/BA fiasco a few months ago at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, where some believe BA may have skimped on the staff training to try to save a bit of money. If that were true, it would have been a spectacular own goal given how much it’s cost BA in compensation and negative publicity, not to mention the senior heads that rolled.

Conspiracy theories aside, it seems we need a clearer way of showing senior decision-makers the short and long-term costs of making key decisions like those discussed above. Because just as environmental costs are starting to be factored into the price of goods, businesses need to be aware of the full hinterland affected by the occassional short-sighted decision.

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Our Spotlight column in the Mar ‘07 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

Being prepared and empowered to take risks is fundamental to true innovation and progress.

In the words of Sir Ken Robinson, the inspirational Educator and Innovator, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
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The beauty of the internet for those keen to understand consumer needs and desires is that people naturally express these in social networks and other social media.

iWant is a simple, experimental tool we’ve built to mine this info from the twitter stream. Give it a spin if you dare

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