I imagine consumers of the 1960s would be horrified if they knew what marketers can do to them now. To think that their thoughts can now light up a monitor screen in the form of brain activation or retailers might know their daughter’s pregnant before they do (et tu, Target?).

50 years later, we have computers, and algorithms which used to take days to run now only take seconds. While analysts of ages past were often slaves to Excel and had to build their own bridges, data analysis nowadays is easy and comes complete with nice intuitive graphic interfaces. This democratization of data has made marketers happy and market researchers somewhat weary.

Why? Because market researchers think it their prerogative to keep tabs on what’s going out to their business partners. When marketers brought home an analytics team, often conveniently embedded in their own function, market research sulked over their loss of control. When the analytics team started brandishing social media listening tools and data mining algorithms, some marketing functions started wondering if market research will go the way of dinosaurs with their surveys and focus groups. This premature tendency to ditch established methods is what one might call the Shiny Object Syndrome in analytics.

In reality however, this war of methods is much less a fight to the death than it is a simple redrawing of boundaries.  Some toes may be stepped on, but no one’s head should be rolling. In fact, on a higher level, it is driven by a common urgency to better understand the consumer and the ecosystem he/she lives in. Read More »

From à la mode To à la carte

Burgundy is apparently the new black this season. Or, as the luxury brand Salvatore Ferragamo calls it, “ox blood”, a less romantic shade but equally pricey. While the priests of high fashion tend to set the agenda, in research it’s the other way around with business partners dictating what is à la mode every season/quarter. Not infrequently, by the time market research scrambled to get a piece of research done as ordered, business partners’ interest has already shifted somewhere else.

Market research is certainly not blind to this constant lag in relevance and subsequent lack of influence.  Our survey of market researchers this year shows they are keenly aware of the gap between how many people in each function could benefit from MR’s insight and how many actually do. Without going into details in the graph below, let me direct your attention to one data point: MR estimates that 89% of sales people could benefit from MR’s insight yet is currently only able to influence 49%. This means 40 reps in 100 are deprived of some valuable MR information which could potentially help them cross-sell, up-sell or build better customer relationships, think of that in terms of lost revenue.

Our most progressive members bridge these knowledge gaps by following an “à la carte” approach instead – building a menu of foundational knowledge topics aimed at providing smart answers to non-strategic requests while deploying its best people to tackle strategic ad hoc items. The process of constructing such a platform could be simpler than you think:

• Select topics for long term, cross-functional/ cross-geographical relevance. It’s worth spending time finding overarching themes and identifying drivers for future growth. Alticor does it through a “top down + bottom up” approach while GM decides on topics based on whether it’s slotted for “Comprehensive Learnings” or the one-page “Customer Pulse”.
• Let business partners choose how much they want to read. Alticor’s strategic reports runs about 15-25 pages, yet allows skimming by highlighting key points and graphics. Alpha Company’s Foundational Knowledge Platform is in the style of a wiki, which is both broad and deep, but consists of bite-sized nuggets of info which makes it easy to use.
• Piggyback on existing channels for insight distribution. Since most of the work was done in choosing, reorganizing and repositioning content, little investment is needed on the distribution side. Intranets and newsletters are voted the most popular distribution channels, but secured drives are another option if access needs to be restricted. 

All right, Netflix has apologized to me, not just once, three times. Reed Hastings told me he “messed up” in an email last week, he also repeated himself in long form on the Netflix blog, then went on to deliver it face-to-face with colleague Andy Rendich on YouTube with a trashcan and service entrance in the background.

Being a customer, I wasn’t impressed, not because I believe Netflix has its strategy all wrong, but because they’ve missed a great opportunity. People pay attention to contrarian messages, but instead of delivering a brave statement about the future of media Netflix made many confusing statements. Saying something confusing in three different places won’t make it clearer.

If only this is a Netflix problem.

While you may not be communicating strategy and insights to the layman like Netflix, it is the same lesson for dialogues within the company.  Channel, again, is the easiest thing to change when communication turns ineffective (You didn’t read my email? Try this powerpoint presentation), but this effort is largely wasted. So what does get us listened to?  Our analysis on information consumption reveals two lessons:

• Relevance is Key: Other members of your company pay attention to relevant information that is targeted, accessible and field-tested. Sending irrelevant information in any channel is useless.
• Give them Value: People pay attention to valuable information that is targeted, gives clear recommendation, and stays unbiased and accessible. Sending low-value information in any channel is equally useless.

Knowing this, I’d start by making sure that the information I communicate is targeted and accessible. You say that different people have different definitions of relevance and value? Here’re two things you can do to solve that problem:

• Reach the right people. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Instead Market researchers at Nokia maximize their communication impact using a “power/attitude matrix” to map the power structure which allows them to identify and target company leaders.
• Work with instead of against human nature, take them through your thought process and show how your vision/insight benefits them. Wellpoint’s Internal Knowledge Marketing Plan path business partners by showing them the gap between current and desired understanding of customers and links research insight to strategic direction.  Finding it hard for employees to selflessly help each other on a regular basis, Sabre Holdings built “Sabre Town”, a knowledge transfer network which increases relevance to each individual by allowing self-grouping based on common interest.

For Netflix, this teddy bear version of events is sadly accurate:

Customer intercepted by Reed Hastings: Have you interacted with an actual human being before?

Reed Hastings: 010001011101011…………

I guess that’s a no.

As someone who wants to Google my keys if I can’t find them, a big, thick book is not where I usually go looking for information – especially when I’m in a hurry.

Unfortunately market research often reads like a “big, thick book” – chock full of information but impossible to use. Faced with a ream of information can you really blame business partners for asking Google? I do it all the time.

Turns out that big, thick tomes of information do serve a purpose – making people feel good. In a recent survey, business executives were most confident in a decision being “well thought out” when the supporting research was “comprehensive” and “accurate.”

But when asked if the supporting research made a difference in the business decision (not feeling good but having impact). A very different picture emerged. “Making a difference” requires market research to do at least one of two things: say something new or say something contrarian.

Now you may want to argue that one can drive business impact by making people feel good, we looked into that possibility too and found that the correlation between those two concepts is nearly zero — 0.006 to be exact. What it means is that while comprehensive and accurate information (the kind Research tends to provide) makes a decision appear “well thought out”, it does not “make a difference” in the decision process. If it is up to me, I’d stop massaging people’s ego and start sharing some news worthy information.

The first and most important step towards achieving that is knowing what’s news. What do people know already? What would be newsworthy to them?

• Proactively ask and help business partners articulate their needs and visions. This involves getting them to think at a level beyond silos and short term objectives. Johnson & Johnson avoided overlapping, low impact projects by getting research to work with business partners on identifying and prioritizing unknowns through a “Strategy-Driven Learning Agenda”. Similarly, Eli Lilly launched a “I Wish I Knew” process for business partners aimed at finding game changing questions that can improve understanding across the board.
• Find out what they know, then tell them what they don’t.  Instead of blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping to hit a pain point, asking business partners probing questions before and during the research process help eliminate much of the uncertainty regarding what and how to present. Members, see how one company discovered this through their “problem diagnosis and scoping process”.

Most of us want a collaborative relationship with business partners. Unfortunately less than a third of business partners see us as a strategic partner. It is not that market researchers are bad partners, but that we don’t understand how business partners really use information.

Lost in Translation

We asked business partners to state the importance they place on various channels and how they go about seeking new information when making decisions. We then asked market researchers to tell us what they believe business partners would do. In a true partnership, MR should be able to estimate fairly accurately, yet the results give us pause:

Researchers over or underestimates the importance of most channels, especially the importance of ourselves and that of formal meetings. The role of subject matter experts and customers are especially underestimated.



** Numbers in the graph represent the point difference (on a 7 point scale) between importance scores assigned to the same channel by MR and business partner, respectively.

Business partners just don’t spend much time with formal information channels like meetings, reports, or us! At least not as much as we think they do. Instead they prefer informal but seemingly trustworthy sources – customers themselves, “experts”, and colleagues – categories we systematically miss.

We want to be more consultative but learning influence skills is a different animal than learning to analyze surveys or generate insight. It is much more about people management.

Stay Tuned…

We know that good data come from good respondents, so, if you haven’t already, take our survey “Communicating with Internal Business Partners”

Look for more from this data in the coming weeks as we work through the variables. As one researcher to another, this is a journey we are taking together.