Marketing in Real Life

We're recently been doing a lot of research around brand charisma - what drives people to thaink of brands as a trusted friend and choose one brand over another in the face of parity or even cost and convenience hurdles. One of the brands that has risen to the top is Corona because of the way the way people want to spend time with Corona and enjoy a relaxing moment in life. They've illustrated this beautifully in the contrast shown between Corona and non-Corona drinkers in this video on their web site. (click to play) Check back for our white paper about brand charisma and a case study on the beer category.

I applaud MarketTools recent announcement of their quantitative tool to evaluate survey engagement as documented in the July/August Research Business Report. I really do. But to me the issue of engaging surveys is simpler. Take it yourself and see how you feel. If you can't get through it without getting bored, distracted or angry than participants will feel the same way. And when clients push for more information to be included, have them take it as well! Because Invoke's Engage methodologies are designed to be engaging and interactive, we can get away with longer research sessions (60-90 minutes) but for standard survey environments a little common sense can go a long way.

There has been lots of talk recently about J. Crew's public apology about issues with their web site and whether or not they should have offered a "sorry gift." Two things I love here. 1. They have had a problem and they admitted it unprompted. Instead of trying to hide from their mistakes they went out of their way to tell people - who may or may not have experienced the problems - that they were sorry and fixing it. 2. They didn't bribe customers for forgiveness. Too often today company's throw free stuff at a problem and hope it will go away. Personally, I appreciate the apology for what it is and know that they are trying to fix it. I feel better about it than if they had simply given me $5 off my next purchase - which of course gives them more revenue in return. Good work J. Crew. Apology accepted.

There has been lots of talk recently about J. Crew's public apology about issues with their web site and whether or not they should have offered a "sorry gift." Two things I love here. 1. They have had a problem and they admitted it unprompted. Instead of trying to hide from their mistakes they went out of their way to tell people - who may or may not have experienced the problems - that they were sorry and fixing it. 2. They didn't bribe customers for forgiveness. Too often today company's throw free stuff at a problem and hope it will go away. Personally, I appreciate the apology for what it is and know that they are trying to fix it. I feel better about it than if they had simply given me $5 off my next purchase - which of course gives them more revenue in return. Good work J. Crew. Apology accepted.

Right now we’re conducting interviews to help finalize our upcoming analytics and reporting tool and one comment jumped out to me as a surprise. She said “it’s very green.” She’s right – being able to easily review and manipulate data on a screen sure beats printing out reams of data as part of your normal process. It is amazing how much paper is wasted in the creation of a normal research Power Point report. While admittedly it was not our intent, its nice to know that we’re doing our part to help! Have you thought about how you can reduce your printing?

Bob Skolnick , North American CEO of Synovate seems to think so in this month's Marketing News... This heightened need to understand competitors and consumers may well prove a boon to the market research industry, despite the struggles of the economy at large. Bob Skolnick , North American CEO of Chicago-based market research firm Synovate , predicts "was abobe average growth" in the overall demand for data. Because of the demand for data, Skolnick notes, Synovate has been under greater pressure to yield applicable results. "Client companies need to see smart research done to make sure they are satisfying their best customers and developing new business where they can," he says. "The market research business, while not recession-proof, is much less susceptible to budgets being cut."