Last week, after a busy morning in the office I escaped to the rare sunshine of London and made my way to the Hilton London Bridge for Insight Intelligence’s Market Research Summit. The programme promised a jam packed schedule of talks covering every aspect of Market Research and it didn’t fail to deliver.
I started the afternoon by finding out how the NFL worked with Tempo and CrowdEmotion to better understand their UK fanbase. They used real time research including facial coding to make informed strategic decisions about their programming on the BBC.
Next onto the panel discussion ‘Do you get what you pay for?’, with opinions from insight leaders at Just Eat, Orange Group, Etsy and Worldpay. The panel highlighted that despite the rumours Agencies aren’t going out of fashion, rather Corporate Insight Teams are becoming more empowered and more selective around how and when they use them. The more complex the project and the less bandwidth the team has, the more necessary the agency in bringing their expertise, not just in research but in the view of the market.
The second half of the discussion focused on the limits of technology for Market Research, most notably in the analysis of data where researchers are still required to interpret data and tell a story. Jemma Ahmed from Etsy referenced the one-dimensional dashboards of their current automation tool (naming no names). Richard Clarkson of the Orange Group spoke about the barriers of hitting the right demographic with automated tools, demonstrating the importance of working with a company which has the ability to utilise extensive profiling. Importantly, Brendan Morgan from Worldpay pointed out that automated tools are only as good as the end users, so training is key.
Zalando and Happy Thinking People win my prize for best presentation, using gamification to present their case study in an engaging and fun way. I think all the market researchers in the audience appreciated being referred to as the ‘fortune tellers’! Their presentation demonstrated the role contemporary qual research played in their new approach to brand and advertising.
Joe Catling, Head of Analytics at Relish Research made the case for greater unity between the data analyst and the market researcher in his presentation ‘Big Data and Research Data: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship’. Using a case study of Sky, Catling demonstrated how bringing the data analyst in earlier in the project enables a greater understanding of existing data and how to make the research solution most actionable.
Giulio Dulcinati from Digital MR presented some interesting research conducted with Nielsen about ‘Health & Wellness’ as discussed in Arabic. By plotting various sources of data including survey data, social listening and other traditional research methods Dulcinati uncovered the most accurate insights possible in this case study.
The keynote of the day came from Jo Fairly, co-founder of Green & Blacks, by the end of the presentation Jo had everyone in the audience believing they could become an entrepreneur, with her fantastic story of the evolution of this iconic brand. She won the whole room over, not least because of the free chocolate…
The day ended with a panel answering the question ‘How to make insights greater than the sum of their parts?’. The panel, including insight professionals from BBC, Smart Energy and the founder of Walnut Unlimited, didn’t focus on changing the research process as much as on changing the view of research within a business.
The contrast between Smart Energy a smaller business with 70 people, and BBC, a large complex organisation with various insight teams demonstrated that it’s harder to change perceptions after the fact. Smart Energy has made research integral to every aspect of the business and thus have the buy in to make their insights reach further, at the BBC the insights team have to work harder to be heard.
Overall, it was a great afternoon, with key learnings taken away by everyone who attended. More and more innovative solutions are being incorporated into Market Research, from facial coding and social listening to neurological thinking and automated/self-service tools. However, what the conference demonstrated to me is that no matter the technology, the human aspect of Market Research is as important as ever. Researchers with an in depth understanding of the individual business, the marketplace and the projects are required to help interpret the rich data provided by these technologies to build a story that can inspire true change.
