“The point of a story can penetrate far deeper than the point of any bullet.”  - Laurence Nault

Getting to the point

There are seven basic plots in storytelling as we have seen over the last few weeks. These plots form the backbone of myths, fairy tales, novels and movies, and also of advertising, brand stories and how we can all communicate in business, including market researchers telling the story of their data. Here are seven reasons why stories will help you communicate ideas more effectively, helping you to build your story and helping your audience to remember the point of it all. Read more »

“Who are you going to believe: me or your own eyes?”  - Groucho Marx

In About Face, Dan Hill makes a clear and compelling argument for the use of emotion in advertising and it’s power to drive changes in behaviour. The book is full of useful examples and anecdotes and some statistics too. In one study by Omnicom, emotional engagement with customers resulted in 20% higher return on investment than mere awareness in advertising.  In another review by Pringle and Field (based on 880 case studies from the UK’s Institute of Practitioners Advertising Effectiveness Awards), ‘soft sell’ ads that inspire strong emotional responses in their audience make more money (almost twice as much as ‘hard sell’ ads with more fact-based and rational arguments). And more emotional ads also reduced price sensitivity, created greater differentiation and were more important in more mature markets. Read more »

“To express yourself as you are is the most important thing.”  - Shunryu Suzuki

Bathhouse presentations

In his latest book on presenting, Garr Reynolds urges presenters to get naked and focus on the natural behaviour which can help establish a personal connection with an audience despite the technology, tools and effects which can sometimes create a barrier between you and others.  This means being direct, honest and clear with your audience, focusing on the core of your message and stripping away unnecessary distractions and irrelevant information, in the same way that we all stood up for our ‘show and tell’ at school without the encumbrance of powerpoint and other distractions. Read more »

“It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.”  - Thomas Mann

“Always within an arm’s reach of desire.”  - Robert Woodruff (former chairman of Coca-Cola)

Getting connected

In the final chapter of How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp focuses on the key to great marketing: making your brand easy to buy.  There are two aspects to making brands available which are covered extensively throughout the book: mental availability (something discussed at length in this blog previously) and physical availability.  He argues (based on empirical evidence) that product innovation only works when a brand is salient and well distributed, through distinctive and clear branding and breadth and depth of distribution. Read more »

The transformation of market research

Last week I spent a great two days taking part in the MRSS Asia Research Conference (declaration: I had also been involved in it’s organisation).  On the first day, more than twenty young (and occasionally old) researchers took part in two stimulating workshops exploring research in the facebook age, and the busy executive’s guide to social media.  On the second day of the conference, 10 world class speakers spoke on a range of topics connected to the future of research in Asia.

My key take aways fall into four areas: the importance of emotions, the power of measuring real behaviours, the value of contextualising survey questions and the reality of Asia’s ageing population (surprisingly I’ve come back to affect, behaviour and context again!). Read more »

Home Economicus or Homo Sapiens?

We have seen that the majority of human behaviour is controlled outside consciousness.  This is in contrast to the classical models of economics which assume a model of man as Homo Economicus who is entirely rational, always knows what (s)he wants and is capable of calculating the precise consequences of any action.  We all know that this is nonsense, and recent economic events have once again highlighted the inadequacy of such models both for economics and further afield. Read more »

We are all ‘live wires’

How does the brain make connections?  Brain scans show areas of our brain ‘lighting up’ when we make decisions (although beware that more activity doesn’t make the decision more important).  But what is really going on?  There is a huge amount of activity (electrical and chemical) going on within our brains.   Read more »

A new mindset for research

Advances in neuroscience, psychology and related fields such as behavioral economics have changed our understanding of our minds over the last 10-20 years.  Over the next 12 articles, I would like to build a complete picture of what makes us what we are, and what this means for marketing and market research, incorporating the latest understanding from these fields.  The material is taken from a two-day training workshop, and if you want to learn more about these ideas, then please join us here. Read more »

“The easiest thing of all is to deceive one’s self, for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.” – Demosthenes
“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau

‘I would never have missed something like that!’
How many times have we all missed something important (hopefully with no serious consequences)? Too often I hear, ‘Did you see what just happened?’ when I am unaware that anything interesting happened at all!  The Invisible Gorilla explains my inattentional blindness as we have written about before, and also explains five other ways in which we all deceive ourselves, with illusions of attention, memory, knowledge, cause and potential. Read more »

The new year brought a wide range of predictions for the future of market research, mixing positive and negative sentiments about the industry.  The majority of the predictions were consistent in seeing a future where market researchers would need to develop a broader range of skills to take advantage of the changes in technology, consumer understanding, data accessibility and, above all, client expectations.  These changes offer great opportunities to the industry if embraced, and a huge threat if they are ignored. Read more »