Voices: the CMB Blog

Our blog is special. We don’t just have one or two bloggers. All of our employees contribute to our blog, which produces a wide array of perspectives on all aspects of market research including analytics, loyalty, segmentation, and more! This is the perfect time of year to reflect, so before we embark on 2015, let’s take a look at a few of our favorite blogs from 2014:

1. Keeping brand trackers fresh can often be challenging. Caitlin Dailey delves into how we keep our trackers interesting in a blog entitled “Keeping Trackers Fresh: Finding that ‘Special Something.'”

2. Here’s another one of my favorite things about our blog: we’re able to take aspects of popular culture and talk about how it connects back to market research. In a blog entitled “A Perfect Match? Tinder and Mobile Ethnographies,” our Director of Qualitative Research, Anne Hooper, does just that by relating popular dating app Tinder to mobile ethnographies.

3. A Colorado Symphony concert show series was sponsored by the cannabis industry? This is just one of the odd sponsorships that Kate Zilla-Bâ dives into in her blog post entitled “Sponsorship Advertising: Odd Couples That May Succeed.”

4. This year, we had the privilege of being honored as one of the “Top 100 Women Led Businesses in Massachusetts.” Take a look at what our President and CEO had to say about the honor in this blog post.

5. We do a variety of events in the community throughout the year, but our favorite event is the annual Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). In this blog post, Catherine Shannon talks about how our involvement started.

6. Jessica Chavez segments the parents at the tumble gym and discusses how to make segmentation studies relevant, meaningful, and actionable in this blog post.

Is there anything you’d like us to cover in 2015? Tell us in the comments, and we look forward to talking with you next year!

Kirsten Clark is a Marketing Associate at CMB who’s also pursuing a M.A. in Integrated Marketing Communications at Emerson College. She looks forward to ringing in the New Year by watching all 6 Star Wars movies back-to-back. 

Did you ever think we’d live in a world in which you could grow facial hair to promote a cause? Well, ladies and gents, that’s the concept of Movember in a nutshell. A few of the guys here at CMB have decided to grow out their mustaches this month in the name of men’s health. You’re probably asking yourself: what the heck does growing a mustache have to do with promoting men’s health? It’s a fun way to spread the word and get the conversation started. Plus, it keeps those upper lips warm against the November chill.Let’s take a look at some facts:

• The average life expectancy for men in the U.S. is almost 5 years less than women
• 50% of men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime
• Men are 24% less likely than women to have visited a doctor within the past year
• Of those Americans who died by suicide in 2012, 78.3% were male
• 12.1% of men ages 18+ are in fair or poor health

So, men: it’s time to take action. Visit the doctor when you’re not feeling well. Go get checked for prostate and testicular cancer. Understand the importance of spreading awareness. And, ladies, you’re not off the hook either. Become a Mo Sista by telling the men in your life about the risks they face and by challenging them to join the movement.

What else can you do to help? Well, you can join us late in the game and start growing out your ‘stache or you can simply donate to our team’s page. Every dollar raised goes to help fight prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental illness.

Check out CMB’s Movember team in various stages of the ‘stache growing process: 

Kirsten Clark is a Marketing Associate at CMB. She's a self-proclaimed champion for men's health and always enjoys a good mustache (Tom Selleck, anyone?). 

We’ve been gearing up all season for two conferences later this month, and the time has almost come. Will you be at the QRCA conference or TMRE? If so, you should check out our presentations!

Anne Hooper, our Director of Qualitative Services, is headed down to the one and only New Orleans, Louisiana for the QRCA Conference! She’ll be enjoying the warmer weather, experiencing Cajun food, and giving a presentation entitled Get More Business by Partnering with a Full Service MR Firm. Her presentation will explain how QRCs get on our radar and what is required within the vetting process when working with a full service firm such as Chadwick Martin Bailey. Attendees will also obtain insight into how CMB chooses our partners at the outset (RFP stage) and/or after a project has been won. This presentation will address the logistics of working together from multiple points of view (i.e., sales, project management, accounting)—focusing on what works (or doesn’t work!) for CMB in this context. The session will conclude by addressing what a QRC can do to keep the relationship moving forward, thus increasing the chances of getting more work from full service firms on an ongoing basis. You can see her present on tomorrow—Wednesday, October 15 at 2:30PM.

Next week, we’ll be heading down to sunny Florida for TMRE! We’ll spend our time catching up with our wonderful clients, sharing insights, networking, and hopefully catching a glimpse of that bright Florida sun. If you’ll be there, you should check out a presentation from our own SVP of the Financial Services Practice, Jim Garrity, and Aflac’s Senior Market Research Manager, Kelly Bowie. Their presentation, entitled Quacking the Code of Customer Loyalty: An Aflac Case Study, will discuss why old benchmarks are no longer as meaningful for companies tracking customer satisfaction. In this presentation, you’ll learn how Aflac has adapted its customer loyalty program by leveraging dynamic benchmarking and other storytelling components to ensure that it drives the change necessary to maintain a strong market position. You can catch them in the Brand Insights & Engagement track on Tuesday, October 21 at 11:30AM.

We can’t wait to see you!

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Later this week, we’re packing our bags and jetting off to the Windy City for the Corporate Research Conference! There, you’ll find us sharing insights, networking, catching up with our fantastic clients, and sneaking a piece of Chicago-style pizza.

While you’re there, don’t miss a presentation from our very own Chris Neal and Research Now’s Melanie Courtright on an industry hot topic: mobile! Their presentation, entitled Modularized Research Design for a Mobile World, will discuss the collaboration between CMB and Research Now that allowed us to modularize a traditional purchasing survey, which will enable researchers to reach mobile shoppers en masse. They will also review sampling and weighting best practices and study design considerations as well as what works—and what doesn’t work—to impute and/or to “data-stitch” the resulting data file together for different types of variables to work with a “whole” data set that minimizes error. You can catch them on Thursday, September 18 at 4PM at the Research Now Genius Lab.

Make sure to use hashtag #CRC2014 to join the conversation and the excitement. We can’t wait to see you!

Want the latest scoop on webinars, conferences, and insights? Click the button below to subscribe to our monthly eZine!