Bureau West

It’s great when marketing development works.  An article in Fast Company magazine provides a great example of how research + insight = effective marketing.

Sales of baby carrots were down, and a major producer was looking for ways to reverse the decline.  They contacted ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.  Market research found that people were buying regular carrots instead of baby carrots to save money in the recession, and then forgetting about them in the vegetable drawer.  They also learned that, after customers open a bag of baby carrots, they dry out.  And the agency knew that advertising that tells people to eat their vegetables for health reason tends to be ineffective.

The insight: instead of marketing baby carrots as an antidote to junk food, they decided to portray baby carrots as junk food. The baby carrots were repackaged in individual snack packs made of brightly-colored crinkly plastic that look like a bag of chips.  They launched an ad campaign called “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” in two test markets, and even installed baby carrot vending machines in a couple of high schools.  See the website http://www.babycarrots.com/ to get a feel for the campaign.  The result: sales in the test markets were up 10%-12% over the year before, compared to virtually no improvement in other markets.

To learn how your customers and prospects feel, talk to them!  Give us a call at (818) 752-7210.

Sources: “The New Junk Food,” Fast Company, April, 2011; babycarrots.com

Since I’ve been giving presentations about online research methods, some people assume I’m saying these new methods are better than the traditional, face-to-face methods, such as in-person focus groups.  That’s not the case.  Which is better?  Unsurprisingly, the answer is: “it depends.”

In some cases, logistics make online methods the clear choice.  For example, if we want to talk to people who are so rare that we can’t find enough in one location for in-person focus groups, then we might consider webcam focus groups or online bulletin boards.  Or sometimes online bulletin boards are the only research method that can fit into some busy professionals’ schedules.

But in many ways, in-person focus groups just can’t be beat. A good moderator can develop a group dynamic that gets us beyond the “politically correct” answers to how people really feel.  Once the people in the room have bonded, they can “let their hair down” and open up about their emotions regarding the topic being discussed.  Is that easy?  No.  And a lot depends on the moderator’s skill.  But it’s well worth finding the right moderator who can elicit those deeper insights.

When choosing among research methods, we really have to start with the research objective.  Are we trying to understand the emotional motivators in the purchase of a certain product, or are we just looking to make sure that people understand an ad campaign?  Do we want to find out if people can navigate a website, or do we want to know if people have any interest in coming to the site in the first place?  Choosing the best research method for a given project really depends on weighing all the factors: the type of information we hope to uncover, logistics, timing, costs – they all have to be considered together.

To discuss the best method to answer your research questions, give us a call at (818) 752-7210.

Sources: Bureau West research; “In Praise of Focus Groups and Moderators,” researcharts.com, January 20, 2011

In marketing circles, “social media listening” or “social media monitoring” refers to the practice of collecting and analyzing comments made in various social media outlets (such as facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) that are relevant to a company or a product.  There can be a great deal of value in those comments, since they enable us to learn how people discuss a topic among themselves in a natural and unprompted manner.  This type of analysis also enables us to see the rise and fall of “buzz” around a certain topic.   Dell, for example, has allocated significant resources to the practice; a few days ago, it opened its “Social Media Listening Command Center,” which will track 22,000 daily topic posts related to Dell.

That’s impressive, but also highlights one of the challenges of social media listening: handling the great volume of data.  Several providers have developed software that attempts to automate the process of analyzing the data.  Dell is using a popular tool provided by Radian6.  These tools are very helpful, but it’s important to understand their limitations.  For example, one of the functions provided by the software is measuring the volume of positive versus negative comments.  But how would the software classify the following comment?  “I hate when people say they don’t like Dell computers.”  Most likely the comment would be classified as a negative, because of the phrases “hate” and “don’t like.”

This is not to say these tools don’t have value.  But it’s important to remember that social media listening provides qualitative data on a quantitative scale.  So the quantitative analysis provided by the software should be done in conjunction with a real live person reading a good sampling of the comments.  It’s also important to remember that the people posting comments online may not be a representative sample of your target market.  They tend to skew young.  And they tend to be people who are particularly happy or particularly unhappy with your product, who have strong enough opinions to take the time to post their comments on the topic.  While those opinions can be valuable, we need to keep in mind that they usually represent the ends of the continuum rather than the middle.

To utilize social media listening for your market research, give us a call at (818) 752-7210.

Sources: “Social Media: A Game Changer for the Qualitative Industry?” Kathy Doyle, presented at QRCA Annual Conference, 2010; “Dell To Launch Social Media Listening Command Center,” Mashable, December 8, 2010; “Is Social Media Monitoring the Next BIG THING in Research?” SmartPoint Research Blog, December 13, 2010