Voices: the CMB Blog

Last week’s Front End of Innovation (FEI) Conference brought together today’s brightest innovators to showcase designs, discuss developments, and. . .build marshmallow towers? (More on that later.) This three-day event provided countless opportunities to discuss innovation in today’s marketplace. Here are our top 5 takeaways: 

1. Be prepared to pivot. Peter Koen, Director of the Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship, kicked off opening night by having teams build a freestanding structure from marshmallows and wooden sticks. Although my team didn’t win, we did gain some insight into how using a learning strategy can enable quicker reactions to any issues during a process. Setting up processes for reacting efficiently and effectively after failure is becoming increasingly important for companies looking to keep up with the fast-moving marketplace.

2. Be a hero. Dustin Garis, Founder of LifeProfit, gave some great examples of brands (such as Coca-Cola and Expedia) that are becoming “heroes” for consumers by breaking up the mundane routines of our everyday life. Given that 80% of millennials prefer experiences over “stuff,” brands that can create an experience will have a much better chance of having top-of-mind awareness with younger consumers.

3. Fail fast. Deborah Arcoleo, Director for the Innovation Center of Excellence with The Hershey Company, reviewed some key points to remember when incorporating innovation into your corporate strategy. Her motto? Fail fast, fail cheaply, and make sure you capture the learnings. Innovation is often an iterative process. By catching failures early, companies can prevent costly failures further down the pipeline.

4. The innovation paradigm is shifting. Eric von Hippel, a professor of innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, drew our attention to the shifting paradigm of producer innovation and user innovation. Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” While producers and manufacturers were considered primary innovators in the past, users are taking an ever-growing role in the innovation landscape. Users are developing products on their own and taking advantage of open source programs to spread and build upon ideas. Even producers themselves are getting in on the fun by providing users with the tools to innovate.

5. Follow your passion. Miki Agrawal, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Wild, THINX, and SUPER SPROUTZ as well as author of Do Cool Sh*t, had a wake-up call when she slept through her alarm on September 11, 2001 and didn’t make it to work on time. From that point on, she dedicated her time to following her passions, including opening a health-conscious pizza restaurant and creating a children’s television program dedicated to healthy habits. In each of her ventures, Agrawal identified her strengths and weaknesses, and she built teams that complimented one another to achieve her goals, rather than taking on the venture alone.

While the face and pace of innovation may be changing, one thing remains clear—incremental change leads to incremental growth. It’s time to start pushing the envelope.

Blair Bailey and Hannah Russell are Associate Researchers at CMB and recent graduates from Boston University. Personally, they prefer egg drop competitions to building marshmallow structures.

If your brand were a meme, would it look like the one on the right? At the 2015 Yale Customer Insight Conference in New Haven, Connecticut, we heard a lot about the evolving marketplace, powerful consumers, and how to get it right.  We’re living in an increasingly customer-centric world—a world where businesses are taking cues from their customers like never before.  Deepak Advani, GM at IBM Commerce points out that more than three-quarters of customers think brands don’t understand them.  So, if you are doing it wrong…how can you get on track?

1. Visual language first.  Facebook’s Director of Global Agency development, Patrick Harris says that rather than talk about a good book/trip/movie, people are posting a picture of it to “show not tell.” Facebook estimates a 75% global increase in visual language.  Are you wasting time on content no one will read or resonate with?

2. Be loved by Millennials.  Millennials aren’t fighting the power…they are the power and they know it.  If they don’t love your brand, it is game over, you just don’t know it yet.  Anne Hubert over at Viacom’s Scratch asked us to consider a generation that’s 86 million strong and demands an emotional connection to your brand. You can call them raging narcissists with their heads in their phones and unprofitable for your business model, but if you think they aren’t a factor in your business, Hubert says they might be ignoring your brand.  And all that equity you’ve banked can disappear if they don’t want to work for you and they don’t care about your products/services.

3. Curate good (not branded) content.  GE may be among the largest companies in the world, but Linda Boff, GE’s Executive Director of Global Brand Marketing, is under no illusions that they need to curate exceptional content— allowing their values of optimism, innovation and flexibility to shine. For instance, GE created 100 pairs of sneakers to celebrate their role in the moon landing. The kicks had everyone from sneaker-heads and fashionistas to museums talking.

4. Self pace.  Ossa Fisher, CMO at ISTATION showed us the power of pacing and 1:1 learning. A child having trouble with a subject can self-pace their learning on smartphones and tablets, avoiding the embarrassment of being too slow (or too quick) in a larger classroom.  Without the stigma, the child can focus on what they know and don’t know, and work at a comfortable pace.  Even the classroom instructor is excited because she can monitor progress toward a goal without slowing down the class.

5. Share.  Richelle Parham (Former CMO of eBay) and Bob Adams (Senior Director at Visa) talk about the rise of the sharing economy. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and many others are disrupting entrenched businesses and focused on customer needs. For example, dog owners love their dogs and it feels very wrong to leave the dog in a small cage while the owners go off on vacation.  In the sharing economy, dog lovers can be matched to other dog lovers and can ensure their dog is also going on a great vacation in a loving home.

As you head into the summer months, recognize the ways your company may be “doing it wrong” and take strides to sharpen and grow your brand.

Last week’s FUSE conference gathered top branding and design leaders to talk about disruption, brand strategy, and the changing marketplace. Until recently, branding experts urged brands to focus on mindfulness: gather the data, listen, and react to the results. But a new economy demands a bold and proactive approach—listening is great but it’s not nearly enough. Here are my top 5 takeaways:

1. You can call it a comeback—if you’re willing to be radical. Legacy brand Kodak is rising from the ashes of bankruptcy, and its near death reminds us of the need for disruption. Kodak CMO, Steve Overman, described the company’s journey as that of a beloved brand in search of a product suite that will serve as the brand’s emotional glue. Is this brand going to climb out of the cracks? Who knows, but if it’s got a shot, it will be through a radical reimagining of Kodak’s products and not just a tweak of its messaging.

2. Don’t discount the incredible. Futurist @bkreit (Bradley Kreit) talked about the emerging tech that’s making its way into your reality. These include: mood-spotting—algorithms that can escalate a call based on your emotions, sensors to tell you you’re running low on Tide, apps like Dorothy which allows you to click your heels 3 times and order an Uber, 3D printed domiciles, and other things like sensors for major disease self-evaluation. We’ve got the data, we’ve got the technology, and it’ll be here sooner than you think. . .all of it personalized, inexpensive, and possible. 

3. Be real, be emotional. @MorganSpurlock (Morgan Spurlock), Oscar Nominated filmmaker (Super Size Me, 2004), shared his latest project—a channel called Smartish. The concept is brand entertainment curated by “smartish” talent. How can branded content be authentic? Spurlock explains that it’s critical to identify and develop your brand’s core essence and the emotional payoff it will provide for your target market.

4. Whether you’re selling candy or condoms—you’ve got to go there. Serendipitously, I sat between one of Wrigley’s design/brand people and one of Trojan’s folks (you know. . .the condom people). I asked them both what they were really selling. The brand manager from Trojan was quick to reply with “trusted pleasure” while Wrigley’s person said, “we offer simple pleasure.” This chance encounter reminded me how important it is to think waaay outside the box.

5. This ain’t your grandma’s motivation. According to James Fox, CEO of Red Peak Branding, Millennials, who grew up with internet access, report that their friends would describe them using outward facing adjectives such as “good looking, bold, funny, creative, stylish and successful.” The older crowd, who didn’t grow up with internet access, use descriptors like “a team player, independent, and a good friend,” which are inward and loyalty focused. Brands are facing off to groups of people with enormously different basic motivations, and their messaging needs to reflect that.

The world is transforming, and to be relevant and prominent, brands need to trade-off two key roles: consistently making well-thought-out brand decisions for the core (sharpening the brand) and innovating and growing. So forget what your mother told you, it’s definitely not enough to be kind and a good listener—you need to be bold.

Julie blogs for GreenBook, ResearchAccess, and CMB. She’s an inspired participant, amplifier, socializer, and spotter in the twitter #mrx community, so talk research with her @julie1research.

I once again had the pleasure of attending the CASRO Digital Research Conference this year. It’s the one of the best conferences available to data collection geeks like me, and this year’s presentations did not disappoint. Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s conference.

1. The South shuts down when it snows. After having a great weekend in Nashville after the conference, my flight was cancelled on Monday due to about an inch of snow and a little ice. Needless to say, I was happy to return to Boston and its nine feet of snow.

2. “Big data” is an antiquated term. Over the past few years, big data has been the big buzz in the industry. Much like we said goodbye to traditional “market research,” we can now say adios to “big data.” Good riddance. The term was vague at best. However, that doesn’t mean that the concept is going away. It’s simply being replaced by new, more meaningful terminology like “integrated data” and “multi-sourced data.” But one thing isn’t changing. . .

3. Researchers still don’t know what to do with all that data. What can I say about multi-sourced data that I haven’t already said many times over the past couple years? Clients still want it, and researchers still want to oblige. But this fact remains: adequate tools still do not exist to deliver meaningful integrated data in most cases. We have a long way to go before most researchers will be able to leverage all of this data to its full potential in a meaningful way for our clients.

4. There’s a lot more to mobile research than how a questionnaire looks on a screen. For the past three or four years, it seems like every year is going to be “the year of mobile” at these types of conferences. Because of this, I always attend the mobile-related sessions skeptically. When we talk about mobile, more often than not, the main concern is how the questionnaire will look on a mobile device. But mobile research is much more than that. One of the best things I heard at the conference this year was that researchers should “follow the humans.” This is true on so many levels. Of course, a person can respond to a questionnaire invitation on his/her mobile device, but so much of a person’s daily life, including behaviors and attitudes, is shaped by mobile. Welcome to the world of the ultra-informed consumer. I can confidently say that 2015 is most definitely the year of mobile! (I do, however, reserve the right to say the same thing again next year.)

5. Researchers need to think like humans. It’s easy to get caught up in percentages in our world, and researchers sometimes lose sight of the human aspect of our industry. We like to think that millionaire CEOs are constantly checking their emails on their desktop computers, waiting for their next “opportunity” to take a 45-minute online questionnaire for a twenty-five cent reward. I attended sessions at the conference about gamification, how to make questionnaires more user-friendly, and also how to make questionnaires more kid-friendly by adding voice-to-text and text-to-voice options. All of these things have the potential to ease the burden on research participants, and as an industry, this must happen. We have a long way to go, but. . .

6. Now is the time to play catch-up with the rest of the world. Last year, I ended my recap by saying that change is happening faster than ever. I still think that’s true about the world we live in. With all of the technological advances and new opportunities provided to us, it’s an exciting time to be alive. However, I’m not sure I can honestly say that change is happening faster than ever when it comes to the world of research. I’ve been a part of this industry for a very fulfilling seventeen years, and sometimes my pride in the industry clouds my thinking. Let’s face the facts. The truth is that, as an industry, we are lagging far behind as the world speeds by. Research techniques and tools are evolving at a very slow pace, and I don’t see this changing in the near future. (In our defense, this is true for many industries and not only market research.) I still believe that those of us who are working to leverage the changing world we live in will be much better equipped for success than those who sit idly and watch the world fly.

I’m still confident that my industry is primed and ready for significant and meaningful change—even if we sometimes take the path of a tortoise. As a weekend pitmaster, I know that low and slow is sometimes the best approach. The end result is what really counts.

Jared is CMB’s Field Services Director, and has been in market research industry for seventeen years. When he isn’t enjoying the exciting world of data collection, he can be found competing at barbecue contests as the pitmaster of the cooking team Insane Swine BBQ.

Last week, we spent a few days networking with and learning from some of the industry’s best and brightest at The Quirk's Event. At the end of the day, a few key ideas stuck out to us, and we wanted to share them with you. 1. Insights need to be actionable: This point may seem obvious, but multiple presenters at the conference hammered in on this point. Corporate researchers are shifting from a primarily separate entity to a more consultative role within the organization, so they need to deliver insights that best answer business decisions (vs. passing along a 200 slide data-dump). This mindset should flow through the entire lifespan of a project—starting at the beginning by crafting a questionnaire that truly speaks to the business decisions that need to be made (and cuts out all the fluff that may be “nice to have” but is not actionable) all the way to thoughtful analysis and reporting. Taking this approach will help ensure final deliverables aren’t left collecting dust and are instead used to lead engagement across the organization. 

2. Allocate time and resources to socializing these insights throughout the organization: All too often, insightful findings are left sitting on a shelf when they have potential to be useful across an organization. Several presenters shared creative approaches to socializing the data so that it lives long after the project ended. From transforming a conference room with life-size cut-outs of key customer segments to creating an app employees can use to access data points quickly and on-the-go, researchers and their partners are getting creative within how they share the findings. The most effective researchers think about research results as a product to be marketed to their stakeholders.
 
3. Leverage customer data to help validate primary research: Most organizations have a plethora of data to work with, ranging from internal customer databases to secondary sources to primary research. These various sources can be leveraged to paint a full picture of the consumer (and help to validate findings). Etsy (a peer-to-peer e-commerce site) talked about comparing data collected from its customer database to its own primary research to see if what buyers and sellers said they did on the site aligned with what they actually did. For Etsy, past self-reported behaviors (e.g., number of purchases, number of times someone “favorites” a shop, etc.) aligned strongly with its internal database, but future behavior (e.g., likelihood to buy from Etsy in the future) did not. Future behaviors might not be something we can easily predict by asking directly in a survey, but that data could be helpful as another way to identify customer loyalty or advocacy. A note of caution: if you plan on doing this data comparison, make sure the wording in your questionnaire aligns with what you plan on matching in your existing database. This ensures you’re getting an apples to apples comparison.
 
4. Be cautious when comparing cross-country data: A multi-country study is typically going to ask for a “global overview” or cross-country comparison, but this can lead to inaccurate recommendations. Most are aware of cultural biases such as extreme response (e.g., Brazilian respondents often rate higher on rating scales while Japanese respondents tend to rate lower) or acquiescence (e.g., China often has the propensity to want to please the interviewer), and these biases should be kept in the back of your mind when delving into the final data. Comparing scaled data directly between countries with very different rating tendencies could lead to to falsely thinking one country is underperforming. A better indication of performance would be to provide an in-country comparison to competitors or looking at in-country trending data.
 
5. Remember your results are only as useful as your design is solid: A large number of stakeholders invested in a study’s outcome can lead to a project designed by committee since each stakeholder will inevitably have different needs, perspectives, and even vocabularies. A presenter shared an example from a study that asked recent mothers, “How long was your baby in the hospital?” Some respondents thought the question referred to the baby’s length, so they answered in inches. Others thought the question referred to the baby’s duration in the hospital, so they answered in days. Therein lies the problem.  Throughout the process, it’s our job to ensure that all of the feedback and input from multiple stakeholders adheres to the fundamentals of good questionnaire design: clarity, answerable, ease, and lack of bias.

Have you been to any great conferences lately and have insights to share? Tell us in the comments!

Jen is a Project Manager on the Tech practice who always has the intention to make a purchase on Etsy but never actually pulls the trigger.  

Ashley is a Project Manager on the FIH/RTE practice who has pulled the trigger on several Etsy items (as evidenced in multiple “vintage” tchotchkes and half-complete craft projects around her home).