Hot off the press. Another collection of porcupine reads…

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Thinking ahead to the future; to the other side of this fiscal meltdown. I wonder what the brandscape (for the want of a much better word) will look like.

Which brands will feature? Will your brand be there?

What’s your brand doing to understand how people’s attitudes and behaviours are changing? How their value equations are changing? What are you doing to ensure that you’re more relevant and more appealing than your competitors? (Hint: you probably won’t find the answer in a fortune cookie).

May the most relevant brand win.

Scenario 1

Customer research was commissioned. The project ran smoothly and the findings have been debriefed. You’ve got your insight and it’s fresh, it’s relevant and bonus – it lends itself to a cracking creative brief.

It’s all systems go until, uh oh. Those meddling cogs (the people who actually have to put your wheel in motion, eg the technical crew, customer service, product developers, etc) are butting in again. “Nope. We can’t actually do that/deliver to that! Sorry, but no”.

Arrgggh…back to the drawing board.

Scenario 2 (the preferred option)

Customer research was commissioned. The cogs were invited to help write the brief and brief the research agency. They came to the groups and/or listened to the interviews. It’s groundhog day and The project ran smoothly and the findings have been debriefed. You’ve got your insight and it’s fresh, it’s relevant and bonus – it lends itself to a cracking creative brief.

It’s all systems go. The cogs are delighted; “Yes. Let’s get this baby moving!”

Next time you plan to do research, invite your stakeholders to participate from the very beginning. This will mean that the research output is useful and actionable. Yay!

What do you want from me?

This is a question clever brands are asking their customers as marketing initiatives move online, and they start to develop conversations with their constituencies.

Understanding what customers want from the conversation helps to define the right platform, the right voice, the right words; what to say, what not to say, etc.

But even assuming pencils are sharp, keyboards are polished, les mots justes are flowing, and that customers are engaged in useful, meaningful banter, there’s a bigger issue to consider. Perhaps it’s not as exciting as the conversation itself, but let’s not forget the backend strategy.

What are you going to do when…

Just as important as getting the conversation right (no easy task in itself), is to consider how the brand will respond when customers call on what they perceive to be the ‘friendship’. This domain, after all, is founded on the search for friendship (there’s a pun in there).

What happens when they start asking for things?

Because you’re mates now. Or that’s what they thought. That’s the impression you gave. And what?! You can’t help them with X, Y or Z? Oh. You’re not actually like a real friend? It’s just cleverly crafted lip service and brand bollocks? Disappointing. But, sigh, just as they deep down suspected.

Do you have a strategy?

Open the dialogue and you have to listen. More than that: you have to be ready to respond in accordance with customers’ expectations of you. A conversation outside the standard feedback loops will set expectations for customer service that many companies will struggle to meet.

To realise the opportunities in the Web 2.0 environment, companies will have to change the way they fundamentally operate. Even the most beautifully fashioned dialogue won’t survive a flimsy or non existent response strategy.

For most companies, this will mean a major reallocation of resources. New policies will need to be drafted and new systems will need to be developed and implemented. And all the while, a culture that can support these new policies and systems will need to be both embraced and rewarded.

Social media marketing is a lot bigger than the conversation per se. It really is a case of the tail (the conversation) wagging the dog (the brand).

Customer satisfaction. You want it. You need it. Your KPIs demand it.

But how do you get it? And how do you measure it?

“Already onto it!” you say. “Covered that in our customer satisfaction survey, with some questions asking our customers how satisfied they are.”

BBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZ.

Wrong answer.

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not very helpful to ask your customers how satisfied they are. If they rate you highly, the most you’ll get out of it is a warm fuzzy feeling. If they rate you poorly, you’ll be scratching your head, wondering why.

Either way, it’s a waste of both time and money to ask them how satisfied they are without understanding what ‘satisfaction’ actually means to them.

An important step in the market research process – but one that’s all too often overlooked – is to identify the dimensions of satisfaction from your customers’ perspective.

How do they describe it? What does it feel like? What does it depend on? And so on…

Good qualitative research can answer these questions: it can give you important and relevant detail that you’d otherwise miss.

And this kind of information has legs that go beyond KPIs (which always seem to get in the way of organisations becoming truly customer focussed, but that’s another discussion in itself). Good qualitative research can tell you exactly what action you need to take. It can tell you what you’re doing right, what you could be doing better, and where the opportunities lie.  

Pretty good eh?  

See here for a brief explanation of the Porcupine principle.

Julian Cole, of Adspace Pioneers fame (and Social Media Strategist extraordinaire over at The Population), has compiled a list of the top marketing blogs in Australia.

So it’s actually more like 100+ porcupine reads: each with its own clever blend of fine thinking and discourse. Value.

And Zebra Bites made the list! Currently sitting, stripey and pretty, at #96. Interestingly, Zebra Bites is one of only 3 market research blogs on the list. Even more interestingly, it looks like it’s the only qualitative market research blog listed…

: o

This is a qualitative make-over post. 

I’m going to do a ‘before and after’ on a sentence I pulled from a qualitative research report I was asked to read recently.

Here’s the before sentence: Of the 4 groups, 83% of people said they liked the design.

Now some of you reading will, at this point, know exactly what I’m talking about: You can go and play. For those who don’t please keep reading.

There are many things wrong with the above sentence being part of a qualitative research report. Here are 3 points to start:

1. It’s not robust

Percentages, in a qualitative context, are pretty much meaningless. While at first blush, a grand 83% looks pretty good, what does it really mean? It means that, assuming 4 groups of 8 participants, 26.6 research participants, screened to fit a particular profile, and willing to attend a particular research group, said they liked the design. That’s a very small, skewed sample: hardly robust and hardly worth reporting. But that’s only the beginning…

2. It’s not controlled

To get a good, clean read on any particular issue in a quantitative survey, the way the questions are ordered and the way they are asked is key. For all intents and purposes, and as much as possible, the survey should be administered in a controlled environment. Even rotating the order of questions is controlled. This ensures reliability (being able to replicate the findings) and therefore, some confidence in the results.

In contrast, to get a good read in a qualitative study (we don’t necessarily go for clean in qual), we need to dance around a bit. Cover the floor. A good qualitative facilitator will bounce around, jump ahead, reverse, turn corners, step to the side…you might even see a grand jeté.

="font-family:verdana;">The point here is that the context within which the question is asked, ie the discussion group, will vary wildly for each group. In effect, it will be confounded by all sorts of, well, confounding variables; not least, the discussion itself. The fact that 83% of people said they liked the design means absolutely zip without understanding the discussion that came before.

3. It’s open to misinterpretation

The third and most worrying point is the potential for misinterpretation. The most obvious here is making the assumption that 83% of people, per se, liked the design. And then using this ‘finding’ to make Big, Important and Expensive decisions, like changing the design.

Here’s the after sentence: Positive feedback for the design was based on factors X, Y and Z.

Note the glaring (and appropriate) lack of percentages?