ESOMAR Congress Day 2 Vol. 2

After such an inspiring keynote in the form of Marc Lammers, head coach of the 2008 Olympic gold medal winning Dutch womens field hockey team before lunch, the afternoon of the difficult second day may have looked a bit of a slog on paper. But due to some great presentations and a confronting final session, the Key Clients Interview, the usual post-lunch dip was felt by only few.

[expand title=” Afternoon Parallel 1 – Impactful Business – Elias Veris & Adam Warner “]

Elias Veris

What if our job would just be to connect people with consumers? Well, it is, isn’t it? Tom de Ruyck and Stan Knoops of InSites Consulting talked about doing exactly this at the R&D department at Unilever for their presentation: Engage, inspire, act.

When Unilever went into a new strategy, they needed their research and development center to be aligned with the overall vision, and to be in the know of how this vision would resonate with consumers. In an ongoing process, Tom and Stan connected every single R&D employee directly with one particular consumer. The process involved games about general consumer insights, but also about that one consumer one is connected with. That way, insights are transferred to employees in a very easy way.

While a lot of gamification techniques were used in this process, this project is more about into realising how bringing change at the client side can actually be performed. As I talked about before, a lot of the Congress content is about communicating better to our stakeholders, and this is a brilliant example of it. Playing games about consumers based on general insights is pretty engaging as such, but having a direct line with one particular consumer is really a mind-shifter. I remember doing online ethnographic projects a while ago, and how very real that bond with your participant becomes after a while. Presenting such projects to clients afterwards is pretty fun, because you know a lot of nitty gritty details about the consumers you’ve interacted with, but you never get clients to a level where they really feel the participant like you do. This case is one where this hurdle is overcome, and I like it because of that.

As they put it, it’s about engaging, inspiring and leading employees into action. True change, backed up by solid research. Beautiful!

Adam Warner

Tuesday afternoon after the afternoon break in the Impactful Business sessions looked specifically at at achieving ROI through superior business modeling. We started with Hilary Perkins of MarketShare UK and Marcus Missen of the NSPCC. With an organisation like the NSPCC, ROI becomes of arguably greater importance, because every penny spent on marketing is money not spent on saving the life of a child. So when creating optimal forward plans it’s important to take into account the many consumer touch points of modern digital life. Hilary went on to state that the industry standard in online analysis; last click, was not enough anymore considering the number of media and channels open to people. Which is why ROI cannot be measured in silo’s, looking at the achievements of one channel or one project but must be measured on a holistic level, across departments and channels.

Up next was John Marinopoulos of Strategic Intelligence Group in Australia, presenting the details of some work they carried out with VicUrban, a property development organisation. John talked in details about the flexible, agnostic model he had created by breaking trhe value chain into key components, allowing VicUrban to lever certain factors and decide what kind of company they wanted to be. But for me the key take away of this session was the way that the agency worked with the client. Getting to know them inside and out, becoming more than just a supplier but a partner of the client. Agencies need to take further steps in not just delivering insights but providing and implementing change across departments as a partner of the client.

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[expand title=”Afternoon Parallel 2 – Impactful Research – Erika Harriford McLaren“]

Recently the Dutch market research association (MOA) formed a think tank to determine whether developments and changing landscape of the industry, changes affected the relevancy of their organisation and impacted how they worked and served their members.  This presentation was extremely interesting in that it clearly outlined how cooperative efforts from stakeholders can help provide an accepted and inclusive definition of MR to guide the industry into the future.

From the discussions, MOA discovered some key areas of focus:

• Newcomers do not feel themselves to be MR bureaus

• Explosion of data

• Unfindability and unawareness of information suppliers

• Privacy issues

• Positioning of the new suppliers

• Shift from representativeness to relevant

• Transformation/repositioning of companies

They discovered that there was a difference between the way classic and new information is processed, i.e. classic means distance (we observe proximity) while new means we stand next to you.  Classic is objective/representative while new is subjective/relevant.

From these learnings, the organisation  took some actions to reinvent and re-establish themselves to shift more into relevancy.

Step one redo our name – MOA is now The Centre for Information Based Decision Making & Marketing Research. This name reflects the incorporation of the non-traditional and puts the purpose first and methodology last in the name.  They also saw a need to develop quality standards for these new activities – i.e ISO updates.

“The general public requires it and we need to do it to ensure we have clear, transparent procedures”

They found that people have 4 reasons to join: protection of their interests, regulations concerning privacy, platforms to be found and traceability and then set up a 3 stage plan:

1.      Set up new behavioural codes alongside existing

2.      Formulation of self regulation

3.      Communication and Promotion – explain to clients, audience and general public that it is not about being representative but relevant.

As the MOA President noted: “Information based decision making is what we will continue to do…just with different players”

George Pappachen, then led the delegates through being strategic and being accountable in an age where modern and future media are powered by digital and thus define our data set.

Pappachen, of Kantar/WPP warned the audience that every action leaves digital footprints and researchers need to be aware not sit “sit this one out”.

Researchers are needed to help connect the dots since media is very fragmented.  Unlike others who provide help/assistance in this area, MR’s have a more holistic view and we need to take advantage of this.

We can’t forget that data sets are complex, and there is a blurring of the lines between media owners, marketers and researchers and data players. In the end all about reaching the consumer with the most relevant info as possible.

We also can’t forget that there are metrics needed to bridge the gap.  “They need our help and although we may not have the best tools, but certainly have the best talent.”

The session ended with what has to be one of the most unique and hilarious ways to approach this idea of guidelines and social media. Using Punch & Judy, a traditional British puppet show, Graeme Lawrence and Pete Comely walked the audience through the pitfalls surrounding data privacy and social media research.  Really well done and nice to have speakers involve the audience in such a fun way!

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[expand title=”Afternoon Parallel 1 – Key Clients Interview – Erika Harriford McLaren“]
Four global corporations – P&G, General Mills, Volkswagen and Reckitt Benckiser gave their views on the role of MR in decision making and the effect and future of our industry.

Starting off was Gilbert Heise, Head of Market Research at Volkswagen who likened MR to being a pilot in stormy weather – meaning new opportunities and risk must be taken into account to guide management to make good decisions.  He expressed how his organisation needs agency support for this, but far too often find that agencies are too fragmented into independent departments (i.e. R&D or Qual) and are not acting and meeting the client needs working as one holistic unit.

Volkswagen seeks high quality agencies and wants agencies that are global like themselves – important for certain standards of research they need. They want to empower research institutes to become consultant for them and want to see innovation and new tools from merging different disciplines.

Serendipity is involved in insights and Jeff Hunter, Director of iTech Consumer Insights, believes that we must keep that in mind when looking at how we approach insights. We need to look at what impact information can have and what structures we have to help that…

Hunter wants insights that make impact.  Does it really matter where they come from.  Unlike Heise, this doesn’t seem to be the case for Hunter or the other two panellists. They just want good insights. Period.  Hunter wants judgements based on real behaviour and he wants info quick.  It’s about getting there quickly – speed has an ROI.

Inspiring or irrelevant – Consumers are not waiting on us anymore! And with those words, Joan M. Lewis, Global Consumer and Market Knowledge Officer at P&G, also underscored the desire for global clients to get insights from anywhere to stay competitive – and this does not mean they want them exclusively from within the MR label. Food for thought, eh?

Lewis believes that there are three key P’s to focus on:

Purpose – Make a difference for the people we serve. People want companies that don’t just offer value but have values and we must be positive forces. What is our purpose? We need to be able to speak for consumers and their needs.

Presence – Be present in the game/world that is changing around us.  Be agile and not ideological about methods. Just being in the game and willing to try things will be an advantage.

People – need strategic leadership thinkers, personal courage and investing in others. We need to grow the pool – invest in people and aspirational parts of our work.

These three will make businesses truly successful in the future. Issues with qualify, methodology and leadership will serve as our potential obstacles.

The final panellist, Lorna Walters of Reckitt Benckiser supported the statements of Lewis, and said that as a client never before has her businesses or others had so much access to information.

She sees in the future of MR – great people, great methodological approaches and some of the best brains in the world. What businesses need: accurate data, clear point of view/direction, understandable and actionable business driving insights and lastly great presentations and great materials.  Showing an actual presentation given to Reckitt with over 270 slides, she really illustrated just how we as an industry need to consolidate and get to the point. She noted she could run a marathon in the time it takes to go through the decks they receive….

As she pointed out, we are an industry with a target on our heads – because there are lots of different ways to access info these days… and not just through us.  If others do our jobs better, more efficient and make it more manageable for the client, then we will not lose out to others. I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead… isn’t going to work for us.

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