Looking beyond numbers

With adman Piyush Pandey expressing his distrust for armchair research in his book Pandeymonium, the spotlight is back on the relevance of research in planning breakthrough campaigns

Black-box research is useless

There is some new heat around the subject of advertising research and while Im not a worshipper of black-box research icons, I do believe marketing research has a very meaningful role in helping us understand consumers better and craft more meaningful and effective advertising. It is apt to recall the words of David Ogilvy who said Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

Avoid blind belief

When advertising creative directors make scathing comments about advertising research and that gets blown up in media, it does disservice to both advertising and consumer research professionals. If we were to read between the lines it becomes clear that what creative directors object to are what could be called black box copy tests. The blind belief of brand managers to use these copy tests as crutches is what often gets criticised. Consumer research plays a very useful role in helping understand consumer dynamics. Large scale quantitative studies help us fix benchmarks on brand scores against competition and help plan advertising strategies and set advertising goals.

Listening posts

In the last decade we have also seen the rise of new ways of interpreting and understanding consumer behaviour. Ethnographic, anthropological and semiotic studies have grown in stature and use. Cultural nuances that affect consumer behaviour have also been studied. The other development is the rise of social media analytics and social media listening. Large brands are well advised to set up listening posts to keep track of consumer discussions in open forums about their brands, the competition and the category in general. This is in fact free market research. Consumers are sharing their experiences, often more bad than good, and brands get to listen in to these conversations.

Finally, to create effective advertising that will engage with consumers you need good consumer knowledge and insights. Consumer research is a critical cog in the wheel of advertising and communication. No wonder marketing research was incubated in the advertising agencies of yore.

M.G. PARAMESWARAN
Advisor, FCB Ulka Advertising

Never abandon common sense

Different organisations at different points of time in their lives across different industries and categories treat research differently. The organisational focus on research is determined first by the sophistication of a category and second by the cultural philosophy of a company. Most importantly, research plays a big role in cluttered and highly fragmented markets as it helps marketers understand consumer behaviour and choices.

As far as we are concerned, we have to pursue research under a lot of constraints which typical FMCG businesses dont face. For instance, we cannot undertake a days research at a gathering without a research licence. Awareness and knowledge around beer among people here is low. They largely drink to get a high so the brand replaceability is quite high.

Benchmarking

Customers are barely able to articulate what they want in a beer. To overcome these challenges, United Breweries has developed a fairly robust research ecosystem. As part of Brew Tracks the company researches its products against competitors. Further, as part of Brand Tracks, we measure consumer health scores for major brands versus competition. The typical traditional ways of research including consumer dipstick and interviews is very much alive. Certainly there are new research methods including whats called listening post where in-depth expertise is required to decode behavioural communication pattern of consumers. We are supporting the traditional ways of research through new research tools including mobile and digital.

Trust your gut feeling

Research, if done well with the right target audience and the right objectives in mind, is at best an approximation of reality. Very often research does not tell you what consumers want. At best it validates what you already know. Sometimes research holds out against what you know. In such times, managers have to step in and trust their gut feelings as they weigh the pros and cons of the action to be taken. Most importantly, marketers have to learn not to become slaves to research and never abandon their common sense while taking decisions.

SAMAR SINGH SHEIKHAWAT

Senior VP, Marketing United Breweries

Reach out and ask the right questions

Every great campaign idea sits at that perfect juncture of brand truth meets consumer insight. So, the first step to a great idea is intimate knowledge of both the brand and the consumer. I see research playing alongside communication development around three pillarsexploration, crafting, validating.

Uncovering hidden truths

The job of exploration allows for research to influence and uncover the main idea. For example, uncovering the new definition of friendship as being about a phone book full of friends rather than BFFs as the key insight around which to develop the new proposition for Airtel would be an apt example of meaningful exploratory research. An equally important job of research is crafting and validation. This is where my perspective differs from conventional advertising and the Pandeymonium wisdom; which bases its argument on the fact that consumers are either forced to or are incapable of sharing honest opinions on advertising shown, and hence such research is meaningless. The truth is consumers are people and people have opinions on everything and seeking their opinion on communication meant to influence them cannot be a bad thing.

Refining the idea

Gaining consumer perspective on unfinished work will only help make it sharper and more effective in getting them to buy it six months later. Surf Excel is a great example. The global Dirt is Good idea in its pure form bombed in India but when it was given the context of social good (brother fighting a puddle for his sister, cleaning the streets), it became the iconic piece of communication.

This role of research, doesnt see a dramatic change even when we narrow it into digital communication. In fact, research has an even more important role to play when we start using it to refine user experience for consumers across digital properties. From using models of research, which lead product development in the physical world to help define website/app functionality to prototype task and flow testing, research still works well in the crafting process of digital properties and content.

PREETHI SANJEEVI
Head, Consumer Insights, VML South Asia

Consumer research is foundational

An advertising agency business banks on breakthrough ideas for its bread and butter.Needless to say, creativity is its most potent force. But with a difference. A breakthrough idea is deliberate design. It is like a guided missile, designed to deliver the desired result on the target. What fires that missile is insights, what fuels insights, is research. Research is fundamental. It is foundational.

Interpreting it right

Research does come with a resident risk. As intentional as its effect might be, coming up with an idea asks for combining four key ingredientsinformation, intuition, inspiration and imagination. The beauty of research is in its interpretation. A great researcher interprets the information with intuition and serves it as fodder for inspiration and imagination. Taken literally, research paralyses; interpreted laterally, it pays handsomely. Left as information, it is a waste; translated into inspiration, a wonder. From casual consumer conversations to deep cultural investigation, from the exploratory expanse of qualitative research, to the relatively conclusive nature of quantitative techniques, the modes of research may be ubiquitous, its merit unquestionable.

Capturing nuances

In recent times, just as advertising has seen improvements with technological innovation, so has research. Although, most of this advancement has taken place in the area of idea testing. Neuroresearch, for instance, is nascent yet fascinating in the way it captures nuances of consumer response to stimuli. Ethnography and semiotics are relatively newer techniques compared to traditional and often tiresome focus groups. In creativity, ethnography and semiotics could often be more powerful as they rely on observation and interpretation. Not just documenting what people say, but unearthing the unsaid. Sadly, neither is practiced nor understood widely. The best research technique in coming up with a breakthrough idea is less a science, more a practice of nursing ones natural abilities of listening and observing.

AMIT KEKRE
National Strategic Planning Head, DDB Mudra Group