Jun 1 2012

Government Intelligence: Alex Marland #MRIA2012 #MRX

mria 2012Welcome to this series of live blogs from the MRIA Sample the Edge conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. All posts appear within minutes after the speaker has finished. Any errors, omissions, or silly side comments are my own.

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  • We’re starting with name/company roll call of everyone in the room
  • public opinion research is anything on the front page of the newspaper, not just what average joe thinks
  • Government decisions are not always based on research
  • We don’t know how much money the govt spends on opinion survey research
  • the govt cares about what makes the top news
  • Talk radio listenership differs massively by geography – newfoundland by far prefers talk radio; PEI couldn’t care less about talk radio
  • Quebec spends the most on media per capita because they need to create all their own french materials, Ontario the least. Saskatchewan is a weird outlier, but an outlier in the middle of the dataset (think about e.g., 0,0,0,0,0,5,12). Why is it an outlier?
  • 92% of PEI media monitoring is tourism, manitoba is 75%, nova scotia is 72%
  • Energy in alberta 35%, health in newfoundland 23%
  • They have public servants who do multiple jobs so it’s difficult to determine what portion of their job is on what task – and it is different in every province.
  • New Brunswick says they do “not conduct public opinion surveys”
  • Conclusions:  Whereever you are, you assume it is the norm. Richer provinces are more likely to do this work. Every department in NFLD monitors media.
  • MRIA should lobby govt to post their opinion research online
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Jun 1 2012

Solving Real Client Problems: Watson, Crockett #MRIA2012 #MRX

mria 2012Welcome to this series of live blogs from the MRIA Sample the Edge conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. All posts appear within minutes after the speaker has finished. Any errors, omissions, or silly side comments are my own.

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  • Social media is more than frequency distributions
  • Worst projects are when client was told to “do something in social media”
  • How do researchers take this information and fit it into the problem solving area
  • Find REAL client problems not just “do something”
  • Want to integrate social media data into their existing programs, makes it accessible for clients,  easier for them than simply deviating from everything they already know, gives them a frame of comparison
  • SM data is just another piece of data they are collecting, roll it up into a solution that works for the client
  • Case Study #1: traffic congestion in toronto, clients wanted to know where GTHA residents stood on awareness, perceptions, opinions, priorities, did social media scan and telephone polling
  • Findings: duh…. congestion is an issue and tax payers are frustrated. But are they willing to pay tolls? Parking tax was more positively received, gas tax was more negatively received.
  • They looked at blog publishers and divided people into for/against revenue tools and informed/uninformed
  • MR data is intended to represent the population – opinion leaders, mass market, brand fans, local customers some of which can be seen from blogs, twitter, facebook, communities and in the right places there
  • Case Study #2: Augment mutual funds
  • Need to understand attitudes towards socially responsible investment held by professional investors and general population
  • Started with focus group method. Used social media to develop the discussion guide for the focus group. [fab idea]
  • Social media identified a new segment – thought leaders, current subscribers, mass market investors. Didn’t expect to find financial advisors
  • Many financial advisors thought Sm is a compliance headache best avoided. Two thirds use NO social media tools.
  • SM can more easily bridge the gap between target populations
  • SM is most effective when complementing other research [shouldn't ALL research be multi-mode?]
  • Case Study #3: Syndicated tracking in telecom monitoring @provider #provider and provider
  • They mapped interactions between different brands. Could see which provider appeared on which part of the map and how much was overlap.
  • Twitter data is very focused and they coded all the tweets using a code frame. e.g., contract, handset, coverage, apps, data plan, billing, brand, question
  • They saw breakout of topics by brand
  • Is there a net promoter score for social media? [yup]
  • You can see recommendations within twitter data
  • Data sources may be difference but this doesn’t mean the analysis approaches need to change [My standard line is "social media research is market research using a different dataset"]
  • SMR can identify communication gaps
  • Lessons learned: SM is best to complement other research. Does SM access your target market. SM can bridge the gap between target populations. The nature and context of conversations is just as important as sentiment. Use tools from your existing research toolbox.
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Jun 1 2012

Market Research 20/20: Levy, Murphy, Skillen, Sandler #MRIA2012 #MRX

mria 2012Welcome to this series of live blogs from the MRIA Sample the Edge conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. All posts appear within minutes after the speaker has finished. Any errors, omissions, or silly side comments are my own.

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  • Steve Levy
  • Top Priorities in 1991: New product development, brand equity, customer sat, marketing effectiveness, talent
  • Top priorities now: Market productivity (ROI), brands and branding, managing customers, growth innovations, attracting new talent
  • Different rank order, same issues, more ponderous words [yes, bigger words means it's more important]
  • Lenny Murphy
  • How do we compete against globalization
  • Predictive analytics and big data are growing quickly, massive massive new data that we never had before
  • Now we have big data in behavioural data – CRM, social media data, loyal data [sure it's new data but we always had big data]
  • The world is interconnected from data and we didn’t have this just a few years ago – we can use this for predictions
  • Recall the case where a teenager was sent marketing materials about pregnancy, which upset her dad because “my teenage daughter isn’t pregnant!” But she was. Her behavioural data predicted it – e.g., the types of lotions she bought.
  • In 2020, big data will be the defining technology factor of our lives and research will fit into this warehouse
  • data is meaningless unless you do something with it
  • Imagine if Target knew you bought shoes 2 years ago and they send you a text that said if you go buy shoes in the next 20 minutes, we’ll give you 20% off
  • Tim: Researchers consult, advise, partner – he never said “collect data”
  • Corrine Sandler
  • Imagine being able to connect unconscious emotion states nionverbal cues purely based on visuals
  • Adidas uses facial recognition software to scan your body to ascertain your age gender height and serve up product/promotion specific ads as you walk by their store
  • Mobile is your “alter ego”
  • Mobophobia – fear of being without your phone [I do NOT have that]
  • Imagine doing your shopping but NEVER going to a cashier. You just walk out. Every product has a tag which is associated with your tag and the payment is automatic when you walk out the door. [COOOOL!]
  • Immigrants know nothing about our brands – we should better understand them, we should quota sample for immigration groups
  • Social networking is going purely visual like pinterest, it is things you are passionate about, aspire to be

    Photo from Bernie Malinoff

    Photo from @BernieMalinoff

  • How do you convert a pin to a purchase – that will come in 8 years
  • Shane Skillen
  • We don’t treat respondents well – we call them at dinner, knock on their door, screen them out, give them really long surveys, and give them no incentives
  • The future of survey research is questionnable
  • How do you get a grunge rocker to answer a 25 minute U&A survey?
  • Kids today don’t even talk in full sentences – they talk in text speak
  • In 8 years, data will be voice and automatically collected as you go about your day
  • Will social media replace surveys? No. What you look for creates the answer.
  • Social media is an early warning system. When a big decision needs to be made, we need to use traditional survey methods.
  • Eric Kandell – memories are embedded at our cellular level.
  • We will be able to reverse engineer the human brain at some point
  • You can measure how people are feeling just by measuring their bodily fluids
  • 90% of the worlds data has been created in the last 2 years [i think 3 presenters have hit this stat, soak it in people]
  • 900 million people on facebook. where was it 8 years ago?
  • facebook is not going to go away unlike what corrine said
  • Watson, the computer, will soon be able to answer “How can I be happier”
  • Steve Levy could be on the cover of Time in 8 years time
  • The more you spend on research, the less likely it is to fail
  • Huge product mistakes – Coors, new coke, tropicana packaging due to poor research
  • Tassimo bar coder was the differentiator – it came from RESEARCH
  • What do you DO? Be inspirational. Market researchers shape where we are going.
  • Panel
  • Fad or trend? We need to get into people’s heads without huge expensive machines
  • Understand unpoken is not a fad. The process to get there will get sorted out. Can we analyze video pictures automatically? Not just yet.
  • Is anyone paying for SMM? Do we expect it for free? People are paying for the REAL services.  People don’t need to pay for it [oh I so disagree, quality costs money] Need an expert who knows how to pull out insights
  • SMM will be much better in 8 years
  • Sentiment can’t be done by machines [ouch again :) ]. You must have context or its meaningless
  • Big data early warning signals is a fantastic use
  • Don’t base business models on data collection. Human element is what matters.
  • We don’t speak to “respondents” as if they are human. People don’t SPEAK like this. ten point scales? who does that? [Hello mother, please describe the nutritional supplements that you prepared for our family of two adults and any associated children in the last 24 hours.]
  • Story telling is massively important. People don’t always write what they think but their stories do.
  • [I couldn't help it. I had to bud in with a comment and demonstrate that human coders have strong weaknesses just as automated coders do. Do YOU know what SMH, lekker, clutch mean? Do YOU know when I'm being sarcastic?]
  • If something is in the public domain, we have a right to use it
  • Are people buying multicultural research today?  Yes, it’s expensive and harder to obtain. Sample sizes are smaller.
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May 31 2012

Interpreting Polls: Fiona Isaacson #MRIA2012 #MRX

mria 2012Welcome to this series of live blogs from the MRIA Sample the Edge conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. All posts appear within minutes after the speaker has finished. Any errors, omissions, or silly side comments are my own.

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  • The Alberta election is a great example of this
  • April 23, 2012 was Alberta’s general election and it was predicted that the Wildrose party would dethrone the PC party. assumed it would simply be whether it was a majority or minority govt.
  • The real excitement was the tweets about the “failure” of the prediction
  • Reporters had to file their story early, reporters figured they were fine with their story because the prediction was so clear
  • In the example, a reporters story was scrubbed from the internet but still appeared in print
  • Pollsters just criticized the outcome, they had planned for Wildrose to win easily so obviously something was wrong
  • …. Polls are not statements of fact. They are polls…
  • People had no problem using the polls to write their stories but afterwards the polls were trashed
  • Media will ALWAYS report based on polls. They are easy stories. Sometimes, the horse race is the only thing to report on when there are no real issues.
  • There is always a battle to be first in social media and this encourages poor reporting
  • Lots of places have quick easy unscientific polls on their websites which lowers the value of accurate polling
  • Many journalists boast they are bad at math. [great. that's something to really be proud of :( ]
  • DON’T create sexy headlines that over inflate the results [wow, isn't that every headline?]
  • DO put everything vital in the release, not in the attachment
  • DON’T bury the results of undecided voters
  • DO include method, MOE if applicable, sample size, time period, list of exact questions, who paid for it, and put this at the top of the release
  • MOE – most journalists have no idea what this is, they figure it’s a “cut and paste” line that just needs to be there for some reason or another. They may cut it if they run out of space.
  • DON’T bury the margin of error but demonstrate what it would mean by showing the range
  • 29.7 vs 28.2 with a MOE of 2.8 means the numbers are EQUAL
  • It’s easy to “plug the numbers in” without paying attention to what they really mean
  • Showing the poll questions without the results helps them see whether it’s even a good poll to begin with
  • Sometimes the story is not the poll results, but how biased or leading the poll question is, especially when written by one political party. e.g., Given how ridiculously horrible that plan worked, do you think this plan will work?
  • DO have more local polls
  • DO run more polls on issues so media has something to grab to other than who is in the lead
  • DO run fewer polls to stop over-reporting when really there is no change in the numbers
  • DO leave the twitter bickering to the media and the public. Pollsters should not be arguing there unless they are simply discussing methodology.
  • DO send background information during off-season so it’s in their election folder ahead of time
  • DO erase the myth that cell phone users aren’t being polled
  • DO offer to teach a 2-day course at journalism schools — pro bono [someone take this up!]
  • What happened in Alberta? Voters make the final decision and they did it at the last minute.
  • MRIA must take the lead in educating about polling
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May 31 2012

Never judge a book by it’s sexy cover: Cam Davis #MRIA2012 #MRX

mria 2012Welcome to this series of live blogs from the MRIA Sample the Edge conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. All posts appear within minutes after the speaker has finished. Any errors, omissions, or silly side comments are my own.

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  • WAMMO – reliability, validity, representativeness are the first words out of Cam’s mouth!
  • We all live in hype, get rid of the smoke and mirrors, actually we’re living and working in the cloud
  • Canada is 2.5 to 3 years BEHIND the rest of the world
  • Cam just told us not to tweet so… i’m going to tweet
  • In 60 seconds… 700k facebook messages sent, 2 million youtube videos viewed
  • Cam recommends stealing slides from slideshare [he's completely kidding. cam is FUNNY!]
  • Cam puts up an old school slide – 20 bullet points in small font.  Point? There is so much data being created on the internet so quickly it is impossible to keep up with it all
  • Hype cycle – technology trigger –> peak of inflated expectations –> trough of disillusionment –> slope of enlightenment –> plateaus of productivity (graphic includes a little person falling and screaming down from peak to the trough)
  • Cam admits to plagiarizing all his slides [he's using a slide from Lenny who is in the room, fyi, Cam always asks permission]
  • Gap between what buyers use and what suppliers use
  • Lots of buzz for gamification, biometrics, facial analysis, neuromarketing. Buzz is mostly hype. There’s a lot of catching up to do if you’re paying attention to hype.
  • “Everyone uses social media” – well, not true. Majority aren’t visiting in the past 24 hours. We know you shop, we know you rode a bike, but did you do it TODAY?
  • Response rates to CATI in 2012 – 9%!!!!! it was 36% in 1997
  • PEW is a great website, absolutely look at it if you haven’t before, great for demographic, internet statistics and research
  • Majority of revenue is NOT from online – it’s cati and mail and focus groups and more
  • Non traditional MR suppliers aren’t using SPSS or SAS but they are using analytics
  • We need something NEW to sell but 99% of new products fail
  • Most #newmr research never uses the terms reliability, validity, and representativeness but when they do, they misrepresent the terms
  • Pop books have replaced academic sources and journals
  • Is academia years behind? A brand new book has 1 page on neuroscience and gamification isn’t even mentioned
  • [poor cam, his clicker isn't cooperating]
  • Is everyone equal in social media? #influencers. No. 1 person could equal 100.
  • Return on Influence by mark W. Schaefer is a great book.
  • We’re not in a marketing mode, it’s frowned upon or people won’t retweet you. it’s called influence marketing.
  • Forrester measures types of internet users, from creaters to critics to joiners to spectators to inactives. 24% are creators. 14% are inactives.
  • Do you… Build an alert for your daily Klout score, check your date’s twitter followers, know how to schedule tweets
  • Dollywagon did research on the top tweeters, @lennyism is first, @lovestats is second (That’s me!)
  • hardly anyone follows #MRX or #NewMR. [wow, tweeters should really check out these hashtags]
  • games are everywhere, why not in market research
  • Try following #gamification on Topsy.com
  • Do games disrupt the dynamics of group? Is gaming infotainment?
  • Jon Puleston says #gamification reduces straightlining in surveys by 80%, lowers neutral answer by 25%, reduces drop out from 5% to 1%, and experience ratings go up, but surveys are often longer
  • Third party validation of gamification in published journals.
  • GAMES are not gamification.
  • Hard to track issues over time with gamification.
  • Instilling game mechanics is very costly.
  • Who is Betty hiring? not market researchers. usability and web designers, that’s who!
  • Behavioural economics says that people are not rational and well informed  and psychological factors distort predicted results [DUH! I still don't know why this is big news. People are just discovering this?]
  • Context influences decisions [another DUH! but this time by me and Cam]
  • More choice leads to paralysis or buyers remorse
  • Big rant on “how do i know how many flights I took, what do I carry a notepad? go through all my files?”  [my favourite one is how many bars of soap do you use in an average month]
  • Rotten tomatoes movie review Cam suggests a movie must have a score of 70 before he goes to a movie – We rely on decisions from other people before we make our own decisions. it’s quicker and easier.
  • Crowdsourcing is the complete opposite to sampling
  • “Film yourself using our product” and real commercials come out of it
  • Mobile research has been the next best thing for 15 years [same with "We need to write a better survey"]
  • Most mobile surveys are completed at a desktop
  • Mobile is usually a horrid text survey shoved on a mobile survey
  • Are tablets REALLY mobile?
  • Not everyone tweets and blogs and does linkedin and facebook, not every provider of social media data collects EVERY piece of data that is online
  • [ah Cam, we love you. you're a hilarious speaker :) ]
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