Stories sell, so get storytelling

It’s been a month since the MRS Conference. Like previous years it was a good mix of networking and inspiration of different hues. Caroline Hayter‘s session on how storytelling techniques can help us deliver projects is the one which made the most vivid impression on me.

The whole session was anchored by the question: to what extent should the subjective vs. the objective play a role in research?

It’s a fascinating one to ponder.

The reason researchers are commonly perceived as mild-mannered compared to our marketing brethren is often put down to our supposed objectivity. It’s all too easy to sit on the fence and just play “messenger”. I’d argue however that to do your job properly you need to jump off the fence and inculcate change, using all the tools you have at your disposal.

Novelist Neil Griffiths kicked off the session with a whistlestop tour of character development. In his view “the paradox of human life is that we are both similar and different from each other.” Researchers in presenting a coherent narrative are aiming for similarity – difference in this sense “spoils the story.” This ignores the fact that difference is revealing – “we like to find our peculiarity in others”. Be it Emma Bovary or Harry Potter it is this empathetic connection that makes fiction compelling. The lesson? Don’t be afraid of the idiosyncratic when you are doing case studies and pen portraits.

Ella Fryer-Smith, an ethnographer from Ipsos was next up. Her view is that difference can be useful way of approaching your research subject. For example, not sharing a common language means you approach collecting data in a more open and questioning way – pushing you beyond habitual assumptions.  Convening a diverse research team who are both similar and different from the audience under investigation is often fruitful because of the different angles investigated. Academics call this the emic and the etic (the local and the outsider). The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Anthony Martin took a professional photojournalist on a fieldwork trip and shared the results. We’re all aware of the power of the image in research, but they took this to a different level. Their tip was to use a professional; not only will they capture better images but they’ll not get under your feet.

Darren Hanley & Amanda Anderton from Hope + Anchor closed the session describing how they have brought structured reality filming techniques from TOWIE to research. Following accompanied shopping sessions they add stage at end where respondents are asked to “perform” key moments observed in the interview in situ with a professional camera crew. What surprised them was that asking people to “do a TOWIE” was intuitive and fun for respondents – it meant they revealed more second time around, volunteering more and relating it more to their true decision making. The clip they played was priceless – a couple spending £1500(!) on a pushchair – the husband admitting what was driving the choice wasn’t really its features (as he’d said before) but its status.

An inspiring hour full of creativity and enthusiasm. My takeout? We are trying to inspire change as researchers. Stories sell, so get storytelling.

Advertising that breaks the fourth wall is doing my head in

It’s a truism that people are more marketing savvy nowadays. The average focus group attendee will have some understanding of the marketing process, and perhaps have strategies to use it to their advantage.

Advertisers were always bound to start toying with this notion of being “in on the joke”, responding to it in playful ways.

What used to be witty and subversive is now feeling desperate. I’m seeing more and more self-referential advertising, with brands (or agencies pushed for ideas) giving a knowing wink to this knowledge.

Breaking the fourth wall as actors would put it.

Get the tone right and it can be playful, different, adult-to-adult.

Get it wrong and it is intensely annoying.

The end of the recruiter?

TaskRabbit is a work bulletin board connecting busy people with long to-do-lists to those with time on their hands.

People post tasks, the site sets the price, and interested parties respond. Once the task is complete, the money changes hands.

As well as delivery, cleaning and handyman tasks, it’s used to recruit respondents for market research.

Example MR tasks on TaskRabbit

Henry Tsai has written a great summary  about how he used TaskRabbit to recruit people for a UX project.

His experience showed it to be quick, cheap and reliable.

The benefits mean that there must be opportunities for qual recruitment more generally.  I could see it working for telephone interviews.

Posting up a general task description (e.g. “Looking for internet users aged 25-44) and following up with a screener looks like the best way to go.

Example MR task on TaskRabbit

Whilst TaskRabbit isn’t going to replace your recruiter tomorrow, it’s worth considering the implications. The internet has disintermediated many professions – why should recruitment be any different? 

Amazon mobile: the interface dictates the behaviour

Amazon marketplace is a bit like eBay: you can buy new and used goods, but at a fixed price rather than an auction.

I used it today for the first time because I happened upon Amazon’s mobile site.

Amazon marketplace products are much more prominent on the mobile site. To my eyes they also look more “official” and “premium”.

The result: instead of overlooking them, I browse and buy from Amazon marketplace for the first time. Instead of spending £21 I spent £9.50 (for an identical, brand new product).

The interface drove the decision: context, not preference.

Amazon’s legendary user experience costing them profit? Now there’s an irony…

Book review: Decoded, Phil Barden

If Phil Barden is right, all students of marketing should switch to psychology today.

His book Decoded – The science behind what we buy – represents a paradigm shift in marketing theory and practice. The upshot is that marketing begins with an understanding of people, not ‘markets’. Mugging up on psychophysics, behavioural economics and experimental psychology will make you better at your job than being able to recite Porter’s Five Forces.  

Barden is a veteran marketer who ventured agency side after 25 years in the hope that decision science would be the first explanatory framework for marketing to really get to the nub of consumer behaviour.

I think his efforts have been suitably rewarded.  

The book does a great job of joining the dots between the scientific ivory tower and the real world of marketing strategy and tactics. It’s clearly written and jargon-free, marketing acronyms and self-aggrandising scientific terms are mercifully omitted, allowing you to focus on what we should be doing differently. This is an achievement in itself.

A good example is Kahneman’s two modes of thought. Rather than the abstract System 1 and System 2, these are characterised as the autopilot (the automatic system 1) and the pilot (the effortful system 2). On the face of it this is a small difference, but it’s one which makes digesting the implications far easier.

That said, it’ll still take me a while to digest all of the implications, but my five immediate takeouts are as follows:

1)       Design with peripheral vision in mind

There’s some fascinating evidence relating to how we perceive the world around us. We rely on our peripheral vision to scan the world around us, bringing objects of interest in the world to our full attention. What’s interesting is the poor level of resolution this peripheral vision has: it’s like looking through a window smeared with Vaseline.

Figure 1: The difference between focal and peripheral vision (p76)

Briefing a designer with this information in mind changes your priorities.

2)       Relevance drives attention

Barden summarises evidence that shows how perception is goal-oriented. For example if you are hungry when you walk down a high street your attention is more likely to be drawn to fast-food brands. Perception is therefore not a neutral or passive process, as our autopilot is actively factoring in relevance without us knowing. Our autopilot lets messages in when they fit our subconscious goals.

This has huge implications: the consumer “cannot be manipulated at will”. More practically this means that if we interpret the world in a goal specific manner, goals themselves can activate brands in your memory. Research should reflect this. With this knowledge “top of mind awareness” seems a blunt tool; researchers should link brands to goals – for example “which brand comes to mind when you need a tasty snack on the high street.”  

3)       Strong brands are bought on autopilot

Our mental resources are limited and it takes energy to think. As Kahneman says “Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats” – we only do it when we have to. Familiar brands enable us to make decisions quickly – eventually by autopilot. This “automaticity” of processing is the hallmark of a strong brand. As Paul Fishlock points out in his review of the book:

“Scans of a brain reacting to a strong brand and a weak brand show one lighting up like a Christmas tree and the other causing hardly any activity at all. The epiphany is that it’s the strong brand that makes you think less, as it’s already understood so is valued more highly than the brand that demands energy to evaluate it.”

Amongst the cacophony of sights, sounds and smells the world assaults us with it pays to be clear, distinctive and consistent. Viewed this way, brands that are wisely curated, and which build associations over the long term cut our brains some slack. They make it easier for us to notice, understand and buy them. Any brand manager eager to refresh their portfolio should start from this assumption.

4)       Brands frame our experience of a product

As Barden and others have pointed out, much of what we do is carried out on autopilot without involving any conscious decision-making.  

Working below the level of awareness, our subjective experience is mediated by our prior beliefs. For example how something tastes is strongly influenced by how we expect it to taste. The book describes a memorable experiment involving cake. Brown food colouring was added to a vanilla cake, to make it look like a chocolate cake. Respondents expected it to taste of chocolate because it was brown and indeed many reported that the cake was indeed chocolate flavoured afterwards. Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised to find this out, because this is the same way the placebo effect works – and we’ve known about that for years. Expectations change subjective experiences. 

Evidence from blind taste tests show identical products are rated more highly when sponsored by a brand. I’ve seen this myself, with dish A outscoring B under blind testing conditions, but B outscoring A when people know which supermarket its from.

Barden uses framing as to explain the role of branding: we build up an associative network of beliefs about a brand; these operate in the background “framing our perception and experience of the product”. Otherwise identical products are perceived differently because of the implicit frame the brand provides. This is best understood by visually: the small grey squares are identical colours in the diagram below. We perceive them differently because the frame.

Figure 2: Identical, but perceived differently because of the frame

In the real world, framing is why people pay about two grand more for a VW Sharan over a Ford Galaxy, virtually identical cars made on the same production line.

5)       An end to marketing la-la land?

In his preface to the book Rory Sutherland makes the point that CEOs trust their CFOs – they have a shared language of share prices, profit and loss. They have an innate suspicion of marketers, whose language they do not share (“Brand iconography? You may as well be talking about the healing power of crystals.”)

The crux of this lies in the difficulty marketers have explaining brand equity. Whilst the evidence is plain sight – people paying £3 for a cup of coffee or queuing overnight to buy a mobile phone – until now the explanatory framework has been missing. However, the principles outlined in this book provide us with an explanatory framework and vocabulary for “what enables brands to command a price premium compared with more commodity like alternatives”.

Who knew marketing was a science all along? 

References

[i]Decoded’s website http://www.decoded-book.com/

[ii]Kahneman’s nobel prize lecture: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/kahnemann-lecture.pdf

[iii] See page 76

[iv] Paul Fishlock’s review of the book: http://mumbrella.com.au/science-knows-more-about-behaviour-than-marketing-ever-uses-135676

[v] Kahneman’s nobel prize lecture: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/kahnemann-lecture.pdf

[vi] An evening with Matt Watkinson and Rory Sutherland, #ogilvychange event, 6th Feb http://www.ogilvychange.com/events/

Surveys aren’t always the answer: actual vs. self-reported alcohol consumption

The BBC website published a worrying article today about actual vs. self-reported alcohol consumption.

“University College London researchers compared alcohol sales figures with surveys of what people said they drank.

They found there was a significant shortfall with almost half of the alcohol sold unaccounted for in the consumption figures given by drinkers.”

It’s a great reminder of why you’ve got to choose your methodology carefully.

Asking how people much they drink has three major flaws.

First, people find it hard to remember what they drank, and many people don’t understand what a unit of alcohol is.

Second, people want to be viewed favourably by others, and don’t want to admit to socially undesirable behaviours. The social desirability bias.

Third, they may also have a vested interest in under-estimating what they drink. It can be easier not to face up to things.

GPs know this. A medic friend says he doubles the self-reported alcohol consumption data given to him by patients. He’ll be glad to hear his rule of thumb confirmed by the UCL survey.

The Drinkaware trust know this. They realised that – whatever you say or admit to yourself - the contents of your recycling bin doesn’t lie. Their 2008 campaign uses behaviour to confront attitudes.

Behaviour (sales data), is more powerful than attitudes (what people say) if we’re interested in an activity with strong social norms like alcohol consumption. Attitudes have more of a role to play in explaining why.

I for one want to know what lies behind drinking behaviour, and how social norms differ by tribe. Overlaying attitudes and context should get us there.

Matt Watkinson book launch: The ten principles behind great customer experiences

Last Wednesday I spent a lovely evening at the cosy bar at Ogilvy, and after a couple of drinks headed in to the packed boardroom to see a presentation by Matt Watkinson.

Matt is a world leader in customer experience with an impressive worldwide client list. Although I had my doubts about whether I could take someone who owns a red Porsche seriously (sorry Matt) it was pretty easy to see the truth in what he was saying. The evening’s chair, Rory Sutherland, kept up the tempo and the chuckles with his uniquely contrarian perspective.

Matt cuts through the flabby thinking that tends to accompany the world of “customer experience” – a term which he defines as the qualitative aspect of any interaction that an individual has with a business, its products or services, at any point in time.

The book is exceptionally well written: there’s a zen-like clarity, his words selected with laser-like precision. I love the pictures of his research material in the accompanying website; it’s also got downloadable worksheets to help people structure their customer experience thinking. Useful.

Matt’s research materials

Rather than list or summarise its principles (buy the book or start here) I thought I’d mention the themes which remain with me a week on.

Measurebating

Analysis paralysis stands in the way of improving things for real customers. The era of big data means we’re drowning in numbers, to the detriment of empathy. We spend hours constructing complex market share models without acknowledging that these are only models of reality, not reality itself.

Any linear relationship between a single metric and satisfaction is dubious. Rory described how economists’ arguments for HS2 use length as the single determinant of success, ignoring the bigger picture. This conveniently ignores the fact that a) you can work on a train and b) if you’re going to Brum from London you’ll probably still need a day out of the office even if the journey is 38 mins shorter.

The lesson? Quantitative metrics “cannot replace an empathetic feel for what might delight the customer”. Get out there see your customers for yourself.

Understand why people really buy your product

You can look at consumption through several lenses:

• Use value – what it does e.g. a fridge cools
• Exchange value – what it costs
• Sign value – how it compares to other objects, what it implies about the owner

Sign value is critical as you cannot generate good customer experiences without understanding why people buy your product. Ask yourself “If our brand is the answer, what is the question?” We’re after the truth here – not what people post-rationalise after purchase. Matt gave the example of Superdry. Faux-Americana and Japanese cultural signifiers of authenticity are beside the point. Their founder is quoted as saying they produce “clothes blokes can go down the pub in and not be laughed at.”

It’s easy to see how strategy and tactics can tumble from such a powerful insight.

Engage the senses

This is one I’ve spent 6 months thinking about for a client project which is now bearing fruit, so it is a particular favourite. Consider each sense in turn – are you engaging with it? Have you overlooked anything?

Website UX testing often sees users asking for more photography. The question is whether this stated need belies an implicit need – to get closer to the product, to engage more than sight alone.

Matt gave the example of this video from Leica, who convey quality through sight and sound, giving you an immersive experience of texture and weight.

When you think about it, capitalism has brought us to the point where we have oversupply in every category. Any consumer product is likely to be pretty good. As Mark Earls points out in Herd: “..it’s 10 years since JD Power revealed that there is no such thing as a bad car; they’re all good.”

Points of difference are precious few, so seek them out. You could even build an identity around them. Sticking with cars, here’s Martin Love in the Observer on “surprise and delight” features:

“The reassuring clunk of a door, the rubbery nub of a tactile indicator stalk, the balletic unfolding of a drink holder – these aren’t design solutions, they are the salesman’s hook.”

We are all educated in design now. The bar rises daily.

Taken from the book’s first chapter:

“10 years ago, when faced with confusing technology many would simply say ‘I’m not a technical person.’ Nowadays the consumer knows better. There are no technical and non-technical people, there are products that are well designed for their intended audience and there are those that are not, and we are now far more likely to blame the product rather than ourselves. This reflects a growing role that design plays in our lives. Amazon was not the first online bookstore, Google was not the first search engine, and IKEA was not the first furniture manufacturer: their success is intrinsically linked to their excellence in design.”

Inspiring stuff. I’m already looking forward to the next #ogilvychange event.

7 skills that separate great from average researchers: originally published on Brand Republic

“CDs? I’ve never bought a CD. I download it all to my computer and my phone.”

There’s nothing like speaking to a teenager to make you feel old. I grew up thumbing through the sale racks at Our Price, my musical horizons limited by my budget. The young people I interviewed on a recent project had only ever downloaded music and with free sources everywhere, their tastes were eclectic, unbounded.

It was a lesson in how technology changes behaviour and a reminder of how quickly things change.

We live in a complex world. Clients commission market research to help their organisations navigate through that complexity, developing strategy and tactics that will allow them to prosper. They come to the researcher with questions, problems, issues – all being well once a project is completed they leave with answers, solutions and ideas. Every commission involves trust and teamwork, working together to get to an answer.

A researcher needs to be skilled in many areas, as befits the variety of the job. There’s lots of information out there about core skills required for qualitative or quantitative market research roles. However I’d argue that beyond these characteristics there are broader skills which great researchers have.

1)  An opinion! The first part of your job is to understand people, markets and buying situations: it requires objectivity. The second is to guide clients to meaningful action: this requires charisma – the courage of your convictions. The average researcher stops once the data is delivered; the great one uses their personal influence to ensure clients make the right decisions.

2)  Great communication skills. Market research lives and dies by how it is communicated. Inspiring presentations, video & infographics are in; 200 slides of synapse-wilting data are out. Adapt your approach to your audience.

3)  Curiosity bordering on obsession. Or being nosy in other words. You’ll probably spend a lot of time wondering ‘why?’; you’ll have your own research interests beyond client work; you’ll become irritated when you can’t find an answer. Develop these instincts.

4)  Diplomacy. You’ve got to deliver bad news (“your employees are unhappy and the majority are looking for other roles”) & good news (“the campaign delivered record-breaking ROI”) but more often it’s a mix of both. You’ll have to arrive in a room, understand quickly whose agenda is where, and flex your approach accordingly.

5)  Adaptability. I’ve worked in research for 10 years: even in this short time I’ve seen online research become the main data collection method from a standing start, and approaches like semiotics and behavioural economics change industry thinking. The current talk is of ‘big data’, Google consumer surveys and location-based mobile research. Evaluate which market developments are fads and which are keepers – then get using them.

6)  Being able to build rapport quickly. In qualitative research relaxed respondents are good respondents. You may be speaking to a parent about washing powder or an oil rigger about health and safety: the start of any interview is for listening, understanding and making a connection. Once you’ve made that connection the rest will fall into place.

7)  Enthusiasm. If you’re at an agency you’ll work with a huge range of clients. Monday might be a charity, Tuesday a bank, Wednesday a B2B online startup. Embrace each one with vigour; fake it if necessary.

In summary? If you are interested in the world, how people act and why – research could be the right place for you.

———-

Originally published in December 2012 on the Brand Republic Careers Blog

http://wordpress.hbpl.co.uk/careers/2012/12/11/the-7-skills-that-separate-great-from-average-researchers/

Twitter surveys: the respondent experience

Twitter surveys have been live since October 2012.

This morning I noticed my first survey invitation; I completed the survey, eager to see what the platform was like.

A good user experience 

I was using Twitter’s iPhone app. The promoted tweet came 2^nd in my feed (below). The tweet came from @TwitterSurveys rather than an individual or research sponsor. Users know that the invite is bona fide and objective.

@TwitterSurveys invite

There was no introduction or preamble, straight into the first question. Rather than linking to another site, the user fills out the survey within the Tweet itself, giving a seamless experience.

The user interface is clean: text is kept to a minimum & the survey buttons are large so even those with sausage fingers won’t mis-code.

There is a FAQ link on each survey screen to reassure respondents. Each screen also tells the user how many questions are left, managing expectations.

My survey was short, 4 pre-coded questions plus a “thank & close” page: 5 clicks in all. It took me about 15 seconds to complete.

Overall? As you’d expect from Twitter the user experience is intuitive, well designed and should cause people minimal problems. I’d imagine the average user won’t find surveys overly intrusive if they are kept to this length.

Issues for research sponsors

The main issue I found is multiple user completions. The survey link is generic meaning I was able to re-click the link in my feed and re-complete the survey. This obviously has implications for data integrity.

Research magazine’s recent article neatly sums-up the pros and cons of using Twitter for market research. As Annie Pettit points out, Twitter users make up a unique and siloed population, and this builds bias into any data collected. You would imagine any research sponsor will be using Twitter to triangulate other research findings, not in isolation.

Mori data from July 2012 shows UK Twitter users are young (<34), ABC1, affluent and by definition connected.

Young, affluent connected ABC1s are exactly who Everything Everywhere is targeting with their new 4G services, presumably with a campaign that includes promoted tweets.

Twitter need to evidence campaign ROI to encourage advertisers: surveys now mean traditional brand metrics (as well as retweets and favorites) are now part of their toolkit as a media owner.

It’s not all doom and gloom: positive characteristics of Generation Y

Media coverage about Generation Y tends to be negative. Young people are made out to be feckless, workshy; their heads full of pipe dreams and their mouths full of double-negatives. This is not reflective of the young people I come into contact with.

Tamara Erickson’s article on the characteristics of Generation Y in a recent RSA quarterly magazine provides a more balanced view.

Erickson defines Gen Y as those born between 1980 – 1995; the eldest were the first digital natives, who grew up with computers, the youngest had moved out of their formative years by the time the financial crisis hit in 2008.

Generational characteristics are shaped by their members’ shared experiences. At a global level she argues terrorism and technology have heavily influenced their worldview. She writes:

“Rather than the institutionally driven, government-controlled hardship of war faced by previous generations, Ys have been subject to random, unpredictable, individually executed acts of terror and, particularly in the US, school violence.”

A sense of immediacy is the rational response to this. Why not make the most of today when random, unpredictable events can prevail?

Growing up in society where authority figures are increasingly diverse in respect of race and gender has shifted norms. As a consequence they are “much less likely than older generations to imagine that there is one correct answer or single authority” – they are willing to listen and understand multiple viewpoints.

The impact of technology is everywhere, at a general level allowing Y’s to multitask and find shortcuts to problems. This can lead to a sense of possibility (e.g. “I can fix that”), rejecting boundaries (e.g timeshifting work/leisure to when suits you), and working collaboratively (e.g. being used to “sharing information openly and solving problems through communal wisdom”).

Indeed there is indicative evidence younger people are enterprising. A YouGov poll by the Adam Smith Institute in August 2012 showed that half of 18-24 year olds (49%) agree that they would like to run their own business at some stage. This intention drops with age.

These macro trends provide a useful counterpoint to all the negative commentary out there.

============

Some more useful Generation Y commentary:

1)    Generation Y needs to earn twice the salary to match their parents lifestyle according to a First Direct survey from 2011.

It is financial pressure not fecklessness that leads to young people delaying key life stages. http://www.newsroom.firstdirect.com/press/release/generation_gap

2)    Is business the new rock and roll? Luke Johnson in the FT argues that young people increasingly want to create their identity through enterprise:

“In previous eras, youth found music, sex and drugs as ways to revolt against their parents,find their identities and break away from the past. However, my generation, the baby boomers, have already captured those pursuits. They aren’t shocking any more… Now entrepreneurship is seen as the much better route to deliver change and make a mark in the world.” 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60bffafa-115e-11e2-9c94-00144feabdc0.html

3)    The rise of subscription ownership: financial necessity and/or different priorities?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that younger people are embracing subscription ownership not just for music and entertainment but in categories like cars too. Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar, promoting his service in the LA Times:

“Millennials really live a different way. Car ownership isn’t as important to them. If you asked people to name their top brands, it used to be that a car brand would show up quickly, but that is lower down for millennials, maybe into the second 10. If they had to pick between a smartphone or a car, they would pick the phone.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/01/business/la-fi-autos-zipcar-20120421

4)     The end of ownership: financial necessity and/or different priorities?

Derek Thompson in the Atlantic magazine

When older generations wonder what’s the matter with Millennials, they often judge their younger cohorts against such financial and social benchmarks as finding a job, getting married, and buying a home. These observations often come wrapped in weak science — “blame Facebook for their indolence” — or dripping with judgment — “blame their parents for making them weak.” The science is weak, but the observations are true. Fewer young people are finding jobs. Fewer young people are getting married. Fewer young people are buying homes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-end-of-ownership-why-arent-young-people-buying-more-houses/253750/

5)    The smartphone replaces the car as the must have purchase?

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann in the Atlantic magazine

Subaru’s publicist Doug O’Reilly told us, “The Millennial wants to tell people not just ‘I’ve made it,’ but also ‘I’m a tech person.’ ” Smartphones compete against cars for young people’s big-ticket dollars, since the cost of a good phone and data plan can exceed $1,000 a year. But they also provide some of the same psychic benefits—opening new vistas and carrying us far from the physical space in which we reside. “You no longer need to feel connected to your friends with a car when you have this technology that’s so ubiquitous, it transcends time and space,” Connelly said.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/2/