Voices: the CMB Blog

How do you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? It’s a simple task, but using only words to explain the process makes it seem far more complex. Images are easier to interpret and comprehend quickly. Show an image of a PB&J, rather than detailed instructions, to a sandwich-making rookie, and you’ll get your sandwich a lot quicker.The human brain processes visual images 60,000 times faster than any other type of stimuli. The use of images is a powerful and efficient tool to help convey your message. In today’s digital world, not only are people using visual communication more than ever, they’re also communicating better.

Using visuals enables your audience to see the meaning behind complex or large amounts of information by breaking it down into digestible pieces, simplifying the communication process and enhancing comprehension. Graphics can demonstrate hard to understand information and increase recollection and retention of information. In fact, information presented visually is six times more likely to be remembered days later versus information presented orally.

Although visual communication alone is shown to be more impactful than purely textual communication, the most effective method combines both types of content since visual communication is sometimes ambiguous and needs clarification. According to a study by Robert E. Horn back in 2001, combining visuals and text enhances comprehension by as much as 89%.

We approach deliverables with this in mind, and since there are a variety of visual techniques that can draw out (pun intended) the story behind the numbers, we often have to decide on the best route. For example, simple charts can enhance comprehension
of data, and by adding color coding, iconography, and other graphic elements, a higher level of detail can be revealed. The data becomes more organized throughout by displaying structure and visually mapping relationships within the research results.

Some visual methods are designed for impact, and are more likely to be remembered and shared, which is something to keep in mind when considering socialization within an organization. Using an infographic or interactive presentation to report results is 30 times more likely to be read and absorbed than plain text. These powerful mediums can convey meaningful results faster and more effectively than a data-heavy report. They strike an attractive balance between content types while telling a compelling and relevant story. Infographics, in particular, can be very engaging, and their versatility makes them a value-add for any industry’s research results.

No matter what medium you use, insights are only valuable if they are provided in a way that makes them easy to implement. So whether you use video, posters, dynamic presentations, infographics or plain old PowerPoint, make sure you keep them clear, concise, and easy to understand by your audience.  

Betsy is CMB’s Graphic Design Specialist and has been in the market research industry for over 15 years. At work, she enjoys turning ugly ducklings into swans…and speaking of ducks, she lives on a 30-acre farm in rural Maine with her husband and once had a duck named Monty that thought he was a cow. 

Watch our recent webinar with Research Now to hear the results of our recent self-funded Consumer Pulse study that leveraged passive mobile behavioral data and survey data simultaneously to reveal insights into the current Mobile Wallet industry in the US.

Introducing CMB's EMPACT^SM: A practical approach to understanding the emotional impact of your brand.

Emotions matter in driving consumer choices. 

This is fast becoming a truism—thanks in part to behavioral economics making its way to the mainstream press.  For evidence from your own life, take a moment to think about your favorite brand.  What do you like about it?  What are the products or experiences it provides?  Now think about how those things make you feel.  Or think about the last time you swore off a brand.  Like the last time I bought something from Ikea.  They sold me an extra part they said I would need.  They didn’t deliver the part, then they told me I didn’t really need it.  But they charged me for it, and never credited me despite my investing 3 hours of time in calls with their customer service.  I felt so frustrated, and so angry, that I swore I’d never buy from Ikea again.  NEVER AGAIN!  [shakes fist at sky]  And, to date, I haven’t.  But I digress… The point is that scientific research, marketing research, and conventional wisdom all suggest that, if you’re trying to attract and engage consumers, emotions are an important piece of the puzzle.     

So what’s the best way to understand how your brand or product makes consumers feel, and what role those feelings play in shaping their choices?  Many marketers and market researchers have been wringing their hands over this question.  Which, in turn, has led research vendors to serve up an array of solutions—including some positioned as ways to get at “unconscious” emotions, or to tap into how people feel without having to ask them. I call these “Superman Methods.” 

If Superman wants to know what color your underwear is, he doesn’t need to ask.  He can see it without your saying a word.  He can see it even if you forgot which pair of underwear you chose this morning.  And if you don’t want Superman looking at your underwear, too bad!  HE CAN SEE IT ANYWAY. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had Superman-like methods that tapped consumers’ emotions directly, without ever having to ask them how they felt? 

I was witness to many a sales pitch for “Superman Methods” while I was on the client side.  It's hard not to be drawn in by their promise.  But ultimately I was bothered by a few key things:

• Biometric measures (e.g., skin conductance, facial EMG, brain waves) are often positioned as Superman-style tools.  But even when they do a great job of measuring how good or bad someone feels (as with facial EMG), they don’t provide good measures of discrete emotions.  For example, they can’t tell you if negative feelings are driven by Anger vs. Anxiety, or if positive feelings reflect Amusement vs. Pride. 

• Facial coding does measure some specific emotions.  But it only gets at the “basic” emotions, which are: Happiness, Surprise, Anger, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Contempt. 

  Notice anything about that list?  There is only one positive emotion.  The rest are all negative—except Surprise, which could swing either way.  So unless you’re trying to help Dan Aykroyd sell the Super Bass-o-Matic (for which disgust, anger and contempt could top the list of consumer reactions), understanding how your product makes people feel would ideally capture more granularity in terms of their positive emotions. 

  For example, what about feeling relaxed?  Proud?  Entertained?  Secure?  Indulged?  And even among negative emotions, there is more nuance.  What about feeling frustrated?  Bored?  Disappointed?  Or embarrassed? 
  
  Consumers’ emotional lives are more complex than what the “basic emotion” faces can reveal—and understanding that complexity can help you find a more direct (and competitively differentiated) route to capturing their hearts. 

• While it’s true that people don’t always know why they do what they do, it doesn’t follow that they don’t know how they feel.  I might not know all the reasons why I choose Seventh Generation for my kids, but I know how its brand promise makes me feel.  And while we can’t always trust the reasons consumers give, isn’t that why we derive importance through experimental designs and predictive models? 

• Furthermore, how much “Superman Methods” really tap the unconscious—or add value to self-report measures in consumer domains—is debatable.  For example, many scientists question whether the oft-cited Implicit Association Test (IAT) actually measures unconscious associations.  And meta-analyses (including one led by a creator of the IAT) have found that it doesn’t work as well as self-reports to predict consumer preferences. 

What measures like facial coding, EMG, and the IAT do do well is subvert socially sensitive situations—where people know how they feel, but don’t want to tell you.  (The IAT was first developed to study prejudice—a great use case, since people with racist attitudes usually try keep them on the DL).  But if you want to know how your brand, ad, or product makes people feel, in most cases you can trust what they tell you.  Especially in a context where they feel comfortable being honest, like an online/mobile survey.  In the hands of a skilled moderator, in-person discussions can also be a great way to uncover emotional reactions, but that method isn’t scalable to large samples. 

At CMB, we do a lot of research that calls for large samples, so we wanted to develop and validate a way to measure how brands/touchpoints make consumers feel that is: practical (e.g., scalable, fast, cost-effective, easy to combine with other measures such as brand perceptions); comprehensive (in terms of the range of emotions measured); robust (leveraging insights from the scientific study of emotion); and systematic (to enable brand comparisons, or track over time).  Oh yeah—and we also wanted results that are clear and compelling.  Because, if you can’t effectively communicate them to people who need to use them, what’s the point? 

Our solution is a survey-based approach to measuring the emotional impact of brands, communications, products and experiences called EMPACT^SM. Curious? Watch our webinar!

Erica Carranza is a CMB Account Director with supplier- and client-side (American Express) experience. She is also our resident social psychologist; she earned her Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University.

After nearly a decade working on highly complex and strategic research projects, I’ve learned the one thing you can count on when dealing with massive amounts of data is Murphy’s Law—anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. No matter how much planning we do (and we take planning very seriously), the nature of market research means there’s bound to be a hiccup or two along the way.One of the best ways to deal with Murphy's Law is to accept that issues will arise but to make sure they don’t get in the way of the end goal—actionable insights. At CMB, our ability to seamlessly execute projects hinges on our capacity to adjust and course correct (when needed) to keep things on track. We put a lot of preparation and time in putting together solid project plans, focusing on business decisions, and conducting stakeholder interviews, but we also place a lot of emphasis on hiring and training strong problem solvers. We do this because we know that even the best laid out plans can still go awry, which is why it's important to manage problems proactively. For example, CMB firmly believes in conducting stakeholder interviews at the beginning of nearly all research engagements. This allows us to proactively re-shape/re-think the questionnaire design based on the information we’re hearing from the stakeholders. This helps prevent getting to the final presentation and delivering insights that are not relevant or useable for the key stakeholders.

Even the Patriots, as successful as they were this season and in the Super Bowl, run into problems and issues in each game that they play, regardless if they are playing the worst or best team in the league. If you read Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column the day after the Super Bowl, you'll remember that he highlighted Bill Belichick's pre-Super Bowl game meeting with his staff. Josh McDaniels, the Patriots’ offensive coordinator, summarized the meeting and said that Bill's main message was this: "This game is no different than any other one. It’s a 60-minute football game, and whatever issues we have, let’s make sure we correct them, coach them, and fix them. That’s our job." During that meeting, McDaniels, wrote two notes on his game play clipboard, "adjust" and "correct problems and get them fixed." Going into the game with those mantras was a reminder for him that the game is dynamic, and even the best laid plans need to be adjusted throughout the course of play.

While we can’t rely on Tom Brady, our approach to research engagements is no different. We encounter complex challenges day in and day out, and as our clients' needs change, we continue to think creatively and provide new and better solutions. When working with CMB, you can feel confident that we're putting together a solid project approach while simultaneously planning for the problems that may lie ahead. We might not be the Patriots, but we’re champions at execution just the same.

Cara is a Senior Research Manager. She enjoys spending time with her husband and dog, and she is STILL reveling in the "high" from the Patriots Super Bowl win.

Are YOU a strong problem solver? Come join our team!

An old friend recently remarked how crazy it is that I’ve been at the same company for over 16 years (and I’m not even that old!). I hadn’t really thought it was a big deal, but among my peers, I’m an outlier. A recent article claims Millennials are putting a “time-limit” on their time at a company—91% expect to stay in a job for less than three years. Kids these days!Of course, economic, cultural, and social reasons all play into the shift away from long-term employee tenure. But when I think about why I’ve stayed at CMB, I keep coming back to the role loyalty plays. If employers want to keep and grow their most valued employees in an increasingly competitive job market, they need to take a lesson from the brand loyalty playbook. Here are 5 principles worth developing:

Value: 

If you want your smart, curious, and driven employees to stay, you need to offer opportunities to keep their skills fresh and relevant. When I was interviewing at CMB out of grad school, I was excited that analysts were exposed to all aspects of project work (sampling, questionnaire design, data collection, reporting, and analysis). Over the years, we’ve also developed the CMB University (CMBU) program, which includes weekly seminars on the latest techniques, case studies, and innovations. All this emphasis on staying competitive means I’m never bored and my skillset is constantly refreshed.

Pride: 

It doesn’t matter whether your company is a small firm, a global giant, or somewhere in between—employees who are proud of their work and their culture are going to stick around. Just this past year, CMB was named to the AMA Gold Top 50 US Market Research Organizations and the 2014 Top 100 Women-Led Business in Massachusetts by the Boston Globe. I take pride in knowing my contributions to the company (small and large) helped win these awards. Bottom line: as an organization grows, so does the degree to which an employee can thrive. 

Advocacy:

Word of mouth is an essential component to hiring and sustaining a good employee base, as well as for promoting a brand. When employees feel valued by an organization, they’re going to tell family and friends. The key is to leverage that advocacy to work in favor of the organization. At CMB, there is a referral program. Our employees are the face of our company, and our referral program encourages employees to reach out to peers as potential candidates and talk about their positive experiences at CMB.

Passion: 

79% of Millennials say it’s more important to genuinely enjoy their job than to make a lot of money. They want to love what they are doing and not just see it as work. I am a data dork and proud of it. Syntax, formulas, advanced design, efficiencies gained when brainstorming with colleagues—love ‘em all! My passion is digging into the data, wrapping my head around a problem, and troubleshooting . . . all of which come with my role as a data manager. 

But during my time at CMB, it’s not just the work I’ve enjoyed, it’s the sense of community. There’s a camaraderie in our work environment—we work hard together, and then we play together. Throughout my years here, I’ve been privileged to form friendships in addition to great working relationships. 

Trust:

Loyalty is definitely a two-way street—when an organization believes in you, it really inspires you to believe in the organization. As an employee, you have confidence that the company will do right by you and that you will earn both hard benefits (401K, health insurance, vacation, etc.) and soft benefits (flexibility of hours, virtual commuting, working from home when you are sick, etc.). Having a 401(k) is important, but retirement plans are offered at most companies in some form or another. Here’s what really makes me happy: not missing my child’s first grade holiday concert, and CMB makes sure I won’t.

So after almost two decades at the same organization, maybe I am an exception . . . but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Laurie McCarthy is a Senior Data Manager, and she has been with CMB for over 16 years. She’s had 9 desks, sat on 4 floors, had 2 kids, and has gotten married once.

Want to join our team? Check out our current openings.