May 2013
16 posts
Screener Blues
I posted - and then deleted - some intemperate Tweets earlier this evening, after failing to get through the screener of a community I was quite keen to join.
The sequence of events ran as follows:
1. Receive invitation to community, via work email. Community sounds really interesting - and specifically targeted to people in the insight biz, something to help each other solve common problems.
...
“Over the last few years, I’ve watched as teens have given up on controlling...”
– http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/05/22/pew-race-privacy.html
(danah boyd)
afarrell asked: The new ad for Carling British Cider (now visible in enormoposter by London Bridge Station) is the first one I've noticed which proudly trumpets a sample size. Do you think this is this a sign that ad agencies think people understand that 600 sample size is impressive? Alternatively, do you reckon that it's a sufficiently bold claim (more 'refreshing' than Bulmers / Strongbow /...
That Hideous Strength
If you like the stuff I write in Blackbeard Blog you will also like a piece I’ve just had published in http://mauramagazine.com/ on the topic of “business speak” and its discontents - it’s in Issue 20. (And subscribing to the magazine will mean you get to read thoughtful cultural criticism, new fiction, and pinball reviews on a weekly basis: GOOD THING)
I’ve been fascinated with the language and...
“Regardless of whether you think Kurzweil’s vision is revolutionary or pure...”
– I feel a little bad picking on this sentence in a blog I otherwise agree with quite a bit of, but I feel like I keep seeing this kind of construction come up: “Regardless of whether you agree with [x]….” - it’s sort of the “any publicity is good publicity” of...
BuzzFeed Starts Program to Train Agencies in the... →
Buzzfeed to offer training in storytelling to ad agencies.
Marketers who complain about how easy it is to make ‘branded content’ that spreads are in an equivalent position to their topic as music fans who roll their eyes at the simplicity of pop songs. But it’s hard not to be amused imagining the look of granite disdain on the face of an adland grandee exposed to this golden...
That Big Data Debate In Full
“Big Data doesn’t work!” (post by somebody who has never worked with Big Data.)
“No, Big Data is awesome, buy it!” (post by CEO of Big Data company)
“I have the same feeling toward the word “brand” as I do toward the word “Africa.”
– Malcolm Gladwell from this by @brainpickings from “Brand Thinking” by Debbie Millman
“Africa” is an incredibly problematic word for me. It’s a word used with great frequency to describe an intricately complex area made up of people, countries, and cultures that have no more in common than we do...
“What AltaVista has done in the past few months is to infuse its Web site with...”
– SFGate. Monday, March 27th 2000.”AltaVista Switches Web Portal Into High Gear / Revamped site adds new services.”
I looked this up because, on June 29, 1999, myself and my boss Mark Bockley, did a qualitative brand and category audit for AltaVista that clearly indicated that search was the...
“I taught a course in “motivation” almost 40 years ago. I gave everyone a B and...”
– http://indecisionblog.com/2013/04/29/research-heroes-barry-schwartz/
A Marketing Binary
I have been following the Nudge Unit story this morning. (It’s going to be sold off, quite unrelatedly to any bad behaviour on behalf of the DWP. Some smaller behavioural consultancies are understandably pissed off about the imminent appearance of a state-backed competitor.)
Anyway, people who don’t like the Nudge Unit - and there are many - tend to think one of two things about it.
...
April 2013
4 posts
Note On Emotion
This is very basic but I think often misunderstood - just putting it down for use in other work pieces.
“Emotion” in marketing isn’t some mystical quality which can be impregnated in a brand, advert, pack, etc. It’s a reaction people have to something. That’s all. If an advert plays and there is nobody to see it, was it emotional, grasshopper? No. It wasn’t....
Jobseekers made to carry out bogus psychometric... →
Unemployed people are told they risk losing benefits if they fail to carry out meaningless questionnaire
This is, obviously, the nightmare scenario for the Government’s behavioural economics / social psychology “nudge unit”. The Nudge Unit was always going to run into trouble on one of two grounds - they do something which the press thinks is evil, or they do something which...
Will Big Data Mark the End of the Market Research... →
hautepop:
In an inter-connected world, where products have sensors and are connected to the internet, companies will know in real-time how people use their product, when they use it, for how long they use it and when things go wrong. Whenever a product needs to be improved or a new product needs to be developed, organisations can simply look at the real-time sensor data pouring into the...
Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff,... →
Dodgy Excel? We’ve all been there, dude. Mind you at least my shameful Excel fuck-ups at worst resulted in some marginally poorer comms decisions by a major airline, rather than being a major influence on the macro-economic policy of an entire hemisphere.
(Seriously though this is amazing stuff and painful reading for anyone who does even the most cursory stats work as well as anyone...
March 2013
15 posts
Researchers Of The Future →
This is a bit of research Greenbook and Communispace did, about the skills “researchers of the future” will need.
Something that strikes me about this study is that the skills that come out really high are to do with strategy and expertise - “marketing strategist”, “data integration expert”, “social media expert” (have we learned nothing?) and...
Three Disruptions: A Year In The Shadow Of Google
Has it seriously only been a year since Google Consumer Surveys launched? Bloody hell. Here’s what I said at the time, which I think stands up rather well as a bit of analysis.
I want to zoom in on one point I made then, though - about how Google Surveys marries the rad (sample sourcing) with the trad (very basic, generic assumptions about what surveys are for and what they should ask). The...
Face's SXSW Round-Up →
This is good - there are other individual researchers who know their stuff on this, but Face in general gets the internet better than any other agency.
Anyhow I’m linking here because it ties in with the “Buzzword drought” thing I just posted. What all the buzzwords have in common - aside from behavioural economics - is that they’re either directly related to tech, or...
Where Have All The Buzzwords Gone?
THE GREAT 2013 BUZZWORD FAMINE
When submitting a biography the other week I ended up writing something like this: “Over the last several years, Tom has written and spoken extensively about online communities, social media research, gamification, behavioural economics and big data”.
Looking at this you might think that this must be a true thought leader with an incisive command of the hottest...
“He’s in the tradition of Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary – psychonauts who...”
– This was a fun ARF session to write about. http://www.greenbookblog.org/2013/03/20/rethink13-hey-ho-lets-flow/
Obviously the relationship between hippies, post-humanist snake oil merchants and marketers is an eternal golden braid, though.
I will probably do a Blackbeard post on the ARF once I get...
Also!
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME THING. 99% of this relationship kinship experiential transformational malarkey STILL boils down to “wow people are using social media and smartphones a lot”. But because we all shot our wad on Social Media Hype a few years ago it sounds corny to just say that.
A Message To The Strategists Of The World
“The [x] Economy.”
Stop coining new versions of this. Please.
You don’t need to. You don’t sound smarter. You don’t sound more businesslike because you use the word “economy”.
At one conference - one conference! - I have seen. The Kinship Economy. The Relationship Economy. The Experience Economy. The Transformational Economy.
I know it’s...
“Hot news does not make great research. But when a story is hot, it’s natural to...”
– From my work blog, so a vanity reblog I guess, but I do think this is an important point about the trouble with PR / news-driven research.
Source: http://brianjuicerblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/five-more-things-to-ask-before-reporting-on-survey-results/
Analytics With Purpose Conference Summary →
This is def. in the top 5 conference summaries I’ve written, maybe top 3. [/Alan Partridge]
Business Karaoke
This was a panel idea I had for the Analytics With Purpose conference, which has now finished so I can call it by its magical true name, Analytics With Porpoise. Anyway, the idea for Business Karaoke came from the long-running panel at the EMP Pop Music Conference, Critical Karaoke. In Critical Karaoke, a song plays and instead of singing over the top of it a rock critic stands up and, er,...
Research Conference Joke
There are only three certain things in life. Death, taxes, and a guy in your Q&A session saying “Great presentation - does this have any B2B relevance?”
Can't Leave Research Conferences Alone The Game...
RIGHT I am off to San Diego tomorrow to chair and present at the American Marketing Association’s thrill-powered Analytics With Purpose conference. You can follow my adventures at #AMAAnalytics if you like, plus on my other blog I will be posting heartbreaking pictures of baby pandas from my visit to the ZOO.
February 2013
15 posts
Emotion Week
I’m doing a series of posts on different emotions over at the workblog.
They’re quite fun - I’m not claiming them as life-changingly insightful but they’re on a par with the other stuff I do there. At the least it’s an excuse to put TLC and Kelis songs on the blog and those don’t come around too often.
Anonymous asked: Can people feel happy and sad at the same time? And does Brainjuicer measure this?
“social media is dictated entirely by consumers, not brands”
– If you still believe this, you’re an idiot.
Or you’re someone with a very convenient definition of brands which ignores the actual power balances, economics and distribution networks of “social media” in favour of a glib fantasy of ‘consumer empowerment’.
...
What Your Culture Really Says - Pretty Little... →
toffeemilkshake:
We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit
What your culture might actually be saying is… We have implemented a loosely coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce.
…
The desire to continue being a “culture fit” means it is harder for employees to raise meaningful critique and criticism of the culture itself.
YES! I’ve been interviewed by/...
Insights Of The Heart →
A pulse-racing Valentine’s Day special which is - notionally - promoting the conference I’m chairing in San Diego.
I expect this was more fun for me to write than it is for you to read. TOUGH LUCK, he smoothly hissed.
When Is An Ad Not An Ad?
I’m writing my presentation for the AMA’s upcoming conference, Analytics With Purpose: The Human Edge Of Big Data - which I’m also chairing! - and I was thinking about targeting and ads.
As I’ve written before, I’m not really a fan of micro-targeted ads - the sort you get on Facebook or from Amazon, where they’ve built an automated idea of what you’re...
Anonymous asked: Do you love or hate Marmite?
Anonymous asked: Why is there exclusively interest in behavioural economics in MR. Do you think that the broad principles of economics will come in vogue in MR? Do economic principles, such as budget constraints and utility maximization, provide a useful framework for MR?
Anonymous asked: How serious is the demand for/interest in behavioral economics in market research? And where do you see this influence going? (Asking this also as an experimental/behavioral economic academic thinking about alternative career options)
The Ballad Of System 1 →
This is how I spent my morning, explaining Daniel Kahneman’s ideas in sub-AA Milne ‘verse’. There are worse ways to make a living!
Anonymous asked: Hi Tom. Boring question, but do you have any advice on getting into market research today? I'm working as a researcher and writer in an academic field (not, sadly, quantitative!)
Ask A Researcher
I have been named - get this - the FORTY SIXTH MOST INFLUENTIAL BLOG IN MARKET RESEARCH.
Ahem.
Anyhow, to celebrate this momentous day I have decided to draw your attention to my ASK PAGE. Yes, you can ask me anything you like about market research (or social meeja I guess, I still know a bit about that) and I have even turned on ANONYMOUS QUESTIONS (spooky noise).
Maybe no one will ask...
Failure Rates
Every research company I’ve ever worked for - including my current one - has had a few innovation products: early innovation, insight testing, concept testing, sales estimation, and so on.
I’ve done marketing for these, and competitive analysis, and so I’ve seen an awful lot of people talk about an awful lot of innovation products. Some of these innovation products have been...
