By Adam Warner @keenasmustard
And so here we are. Slightly groggy, a little tired and delicate, welcome to day 3 of the ESOMAR Congress.
Yesterday afternoon, to ensure I was appropriately suited and booted for the ESOMAR Awards Dinner, I sent my blog to the editor before seeing the final keynote of the day. But Peter Lovett, Dance Psychologist at Hertfordshire University (Herts represent!) gave such an engaging session it’s worth mentioning today. Exploring the benefits of dance in encouraging divergent thinking, and in the social situations, it genuinely showed that there was more to dance than many think.
The ESOMAR Awards Dinner was also last night which was a lot more formal than last year’s Congress Dinner, which would have pleased many returning delegates this year. I, however, had a bloody excellent time last year in Nice, but I think I was in a minority. All in all, it was good to see the ESOMAR awards get a bit more stature this year, the highlight of last night being to see Joy Uyanwune, pick up the Best Representative Award for her work in Nigeria.
But fast forward to today in room 1. Today room 1 was all about the good market research can do in cultural and social research. Although it was a shame to miss out on the The Business Value of Visuals sessions in room 2, it’s the social research that, to me, really does demonstrate the value in market research.
Yesterday, Matt Taylor of Twitter made a shout for changing what we communicate, as an industry, to the public and specifically graduates and potential researchers. This was a key point for me over the week. And today, the highlight was the content we should be using to promote the industry.
Millennials are not going to be interested in hearing about how, through research, Coca-Cola increased their profits by an extra few million, or sold more Coke in Brazilian favelas. In fact, I don’t want to hear about that, that’s the ugly side of market research. And as Samantha Bond talked about yesterday millennials want “morals not money”. The Social Impact and Impact of Social session this afternoon is exactly what we should be communicating, in particular the award winning Belief, Intent, ACTION! paper, showing us the real positive impact research can make. Forget polling, forget taking commercial papers and clients to university visits – this should be the public face of market research.
Anurag Vaish, Jeff Mulhausen, Katie Plocheck, Maaya Sundaram, Maria Eletskaya, Ram Prasad, Sema Sgaier, Steve Kretschmer and Timothy Sweeney talked us through an incredibly challenging study in Africa that addressed male circumcision in the region, hoping to avert 3.4 million new cases of HIV by 2025. This is research that saves lives.
After lunch the thread continued with the When Democracy Fails to Deliver from WIN/Gallup and Ireland and Same-Sex Marriage: Predicting Social Change, with Aengus Carroll and Eric Meerkamper of RIWI, which showed how innovative survey techniques were used to guide the strategy of the successful Yes campaign for the Irish marriage equality referendum. Again, a powerful story of how research can be used for significant social good.
We finished the day with two keynotes Panti Bliss, a gender discombobulist, and “the world’s greatest explorer” Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Two very different keynotes to end the Congress, but equally as fascinating.
Ranulph Fiennes in particular held the room with easy charm. While at first glance seemingly dry at the fore, you have the hilarious tales of a man of incredibly strong character fatalist who talked to us of the importance of teamwork and resilience.
Both Panti and Ranulph are national treasures in my book.
And that was it for Congress 2015. All that was left was for ultimate MR double act Finn Raben and Laurent Flores to sum up and sign out. There’s been a hashtag doing the rounds all week -#imaproudmarketresearcher. I didn’t mention it before because I bailed out of the session that featured it, I do hate audience participation after all. But it does well to sum up the event. This is not the first Congress, or the last, that will have an undercurrent of celebrating the work of the industry in order to promote it to a wider audience and ensure the growth and the security. For me, ESOMAR Congress 2015 showed that there is the will and the content behind it to make a strong push to improve the public perception of MR. You just need someone to take responsibility and take action.
Adam Warner is one of three RWC bloggers, reporting straight from Congress 2015 onsite.
Adam Warner is Communications Manager at Keen as Mustard.
