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Marketers
and marketing researchers are about as close to a consistently
productive working relationship as Democrats and Republicans.
As Advertising
Age recently reported, "Just as marketers
often don't understand research, the researchers often
don't understand why they're doing it." Bob Barocci,
CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), explained,
"There is a general belief [among researchers]
that over 50% of the research done at companies is wasted.
They're asked to do things that, even if the research
project is perfect, won't be useful." Yet he admits
researchers aren't helping their cause: "Often
all we do is present numbers."
The
current situation is not a recent phenomenon. Going
back almost a half century ago, the pioneering consumer
behaviorist Joseph Newman warned about the looming conflict
between marketing managers and marketing researchers,
attributing at least some of the tension to the anxiety
managers feel that their experience and judgment will
get short-shrift when research is available. Just about
15 years ago now, Professors Christine Moorman, Gerald
Zaltman, and Rohit Deshpande pointed to "current
low levels of trust exhibited by marketing managers
toward their research colleagues." The combination
of uncertainty and distrust didn't do much for fact-based
marketing. As BusinessWeek reported at the time,
the effects of it include, "minimizing the role
of research in decision making."
No
matter what industry you're in, it's a complex, complicated,
ever-changing world out there—markets and media
are fragmenting, paradigms are shifting, buyers have
ever-changing needs, etc., etc. The situation screams
for research, data, information, insights that can enable
decision-makers—whatever their area of focus—to
better respond, adapt, sell, and deliver their stuff.
Yet like kids and spinach, marketers might know research
is good for them, but it's not enough to get them to
eat it. Indeed, just as they did fifteen years ago,
"marketers generally distrust research and data,"
according to Ad
Age. As a result, "market researchers are
as unimportant as ever....Like moguls with trophy wives,
marketers keep collecting them and keep ignoring them."
We've
seen evidence that marketers agree research is good
for decision-making in principle, but not in practice
again and again:
- According
to a 2006
Copernicus and Brandweek study, just 5% of senior
marketers feel their organizations spend too much
money on marketing research and analysis—in other
words a whopping 95% think they are spending the right
amount or not enough. Fifty-eight percent also said
their organization needs to conduct more quantitative
research studies that we do today. Yet Jack Honomichl,
the preeminent source of information on the marketing
research industry, reported that 2006 was a below
average year for the marketing research industry,
with eight of the Top 50 firms experiencing a decline
in revenue from work in the U.S. or did not grow enough
to cover the rate of inflation.
- The
Copernicus/Brandweek
study also found that while 67% of senior marketers
agree that "although large scale quantitative
studies take a lot of time and money, they really
improve decision making," 66% also say they "feel
very confident making marketing decisions based on
my own sense of what our customers will respond to."
- An
IEG/Performance Research Sponsorship Decision-Makers
Survey found "sponsor spending on research to
determine the impact of partnerships lagged behind
the lip service typically paid to wanting to measure
ROI." In fact, only one-quarter of marketers
spend more than one percent of their rights fees—what
they pay to do the sponsorship in the first place—on
research. A startling 81 percent did not have a dedicated
budget for either evaluating opportunities or measuring
results.
- The
founder of a Boston nonprofit that provides emergency
transportation came to us with a concept for a new
service his organization planned to offer. He emphasized
repeatedly throughout our meeting that he had a group
of investors who wanted to ensure the concept would
fly, that supporting marketing campaign was on target
and impactful. He said he wanted research to guide
the launch process, to improve the odds of success,
and reassure his investors. We sent a proposal, had
a few more conversations, then got the call that the
firm had decided to go ahead. The founder felt strongly
they had a good idea, a good plan, and felt comfortable
enough launching commercials in three markets to see
what happened. [As an aside, the commercials ran,
few responded, the organization wasted time and money,
and the idea died, not to be revived.]
Now
marketers at this point are getting pretty set in their
attitudes towards doing and using marketing research.
"It's becoming harder and harder to get people's
attention to do research," or so summed-up Tony
Palmer, Kimberly-Clark's CMO. And unfortunately marketing
researchers haven't exactly done a bang-up job of trying
to move up the food chain. Ad Age reported one
ploy some have used: "researchers have sought to
fix that image by no longer calling research by its
old, academic sounding name." The magazine notes
a popular moniker today is consumer or buyer or brand
"insights." "I can't stand the term 'market
research,"' a director of consumer and market insights
for Unilever told Ad Age. "I don't consider
myself a market researcher at all. I really consider
myself a marketer, which is why I like the [insights]
title."
Well,
maybe it's true that at this point, "marketing
researcher" has accumulated so much negative press
as far the mainstream marketing profession is concerned,
that a title change is indeed in order. But if it's
just a different day with a different title, but no
other radical shift in thinking about what added value
research brings or, more importantly, how to deliver
this added value so it's clear it's an actual VALUE,
then it's not going to work. If you just move spinach
from one side of the plate to the other, the kid still
isn't going to eat it.
We
very often work with the research folks—either
directly or indirectly—at companies and have observed
three more-than-skin-deep changes researchers have made
in their mindset and approach to working with marketing
that are working in bringing together principle and
practice, and improving their status, credibility—not
to mention job security—in the process:
1)
More than just the facts, ma'm. "Currently,
few technological reasons (and still fewer in the near
future) prevent a company from obtaining timely, valid,
and reliable information relevant to the most important
problems," as Moorman et al. wrote 15 years ago.
As the director of consumer and market insights for
Unilever put it, the research industry is "this
huge industry of billions of dollars that anyone basically
can do." So take it as a given that anyone can
be a bean counter—collect the data, do the analysis,
present the facts—what's going to make the difference
is going beyond just reporting the facts.
2) Actions speak louder. Listen to what marketers
are saying: they aren't kvetching that they can't get
the research; they're snarking about not getting research
they can use. As futurist John Naisbitt might
have said, marketers are more often than not, "drowning
in information and starved for knowledge." Or as
the senior director of consumer insights and intelligence
for Motorola told Marketing News: "It's
one thing to look at data and tell me that it's statistically
valid, and it's another thing to also make sense."
For it to make sense, marketing researchers have to
translate data and insights for marketers into the language
of marketing strategy or tactical programs.
3) Do your best Willy Loman. At this point in
time, it's pretty safe to say that marketers are, at
best, on the fence that what marketing researchers can
offer is a route to better performing programs and,
just as importantly, profitability. They need to be
sold on the idea. We're hearing a growing number of
researchers at organizations tell us that the biggest
part of their job these days is "selling in"
the information to "their clients," their
colleagues in marketing. Making the business case—showing
hard evidence of a market opportunity, profit potential
of a particular segment, financial impact of a new profit
concept—is a particularly compelling way we've
seen to quickly win over marketers.
Remember
the words of strategy guru Michael Porter and high-powered
consultant Victor Millar who predicted, "sustainable
competitive advantage will depend less on who has the
information and increasingly on who is able to make
the best use of the information." What seems to
be missing in many organizations today is not data,
information, and insights, but some important "how
to's"—how to use it, how to apply it, how
to interpret it, how to bring it to life, how to tell
if it's any good (see Mzine
Extra below for five ways marketers can tell
if research is any good), etc. It takes an understanding
of needs, wants, and motivations—along with some
creativity—to get a kid to eat his or her least
favorite vegetable. Marketing researchers would do well
to take the same approach with their marketing colleagues.
Mzine
Extra:
Five Ways Marketers Can Tell If Research Is Any Good
Just
as senior managers need not be accountants to understand
the principles and lessons of the profit-and-loss statement,
balance sheet, and cash-flow budget, neither do they
need to be statisticians to understand the principles
and lessons of fact-based marketing research.
The principles for any valid, replicable, projectable
research study are the same.
- Survey
a population that represents the total universe as
defined by the company. Whether your market is women
who might be interested in a new health club, food-store
decision makers responsible for shopping carts, or
homemakers who buy ground coffee, ensure that your
sample represents the population. For example, an
internet survey that is not weighted to control for
bias is not representative of any population other
than people willing to participate in internet surveys.
It understates the proportion of the market who are
not connected (i.e., minorities) and people who have
neither the time nor the interest in cooperating with
survey researchers (i.e., busy executives, hassled
moms, professionals in general). In such cases, you
must take care to recruit these under represented
groups into the study and to weight different types
of buyers into their correct proportions in the population.
-
Sample enough people within this universe so that
their responses are reasonably stable. Interview 500,
for example, and any percentage that you get is stable
plus or minus about 5 percent. Interview only 50 people,
and the wobble in your data increases to a point at
which it is relatively unusable. This is particularly
important when you are looking to break down your
total sample into subgroups such as users versus nonusers,
men versus women, high income versus low income, and
the like.
- Test
the questionnaire to ensure that respondents understand
what is being asked and are not being prompted to
answer one way or another. This is called pretesting
and is something that is becoming more and more rare
in marketing research studies.
-
Conduct experiments within your survey wherever it
makes sense. Expose half the sample to one new product
concept, the other half to another. Show respondents
three different price levels. Expose people to four
different positionings.
- Analyze
the responses in a way that makes logical sense. Don't
confuse correlation with causation; just because one
thing is related to another does not mean that the
first caused the second.
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