Marketing in Real Life

One of the presentations I attended at The Market Research Event was Tina Bronkhorst from Digitas and Jen Drolet from iModerate talking and why and when to use Hybrid methodologies. We live the the "hybrid" world, so much of this was not new to me, however at least once audience member asked "what exactly is hybrid?", reminding us once again that most research is still being done the old fashioned way They discussed three main ways of conducting hybrid: Online survey with IM-like chat intercept ( iModerate ) Online focus groups/interactive research sessions with closed ended, open ended, IM-like chat and redirects ( Invoke ) Online communities ( Communispace , Passenger ) Watch here where Tina and Jen give a few tips from their workshop. Thank you both for a great workshop! Read the full post on the TMRE Blog here

My favorite story from the last two conferences came from a cocktail party conversation I was having with a senior level executive of a large, traditional research firm. He said "I feel like I am a Walmart buyer at a Couture fashion show. My clients buy grey sweatshirts and are happy with them." Going to as many conferences as I do, I tend to forget that while all of the talk is on the cutting edge, most of the research being conducted is traditional, simple, expensive and slow. The good news is that I am seeing incremental improvement that at least acknowledges the participant experience and begins to take advantage of technology. As made famous in the classic move What About Bob , "Baby steps to the car..."

For those people who think that just because I have multiple Tivo's I never see commercials, you are certainly wrong! I have seen the scary Southwest Ad too many times, but am absolutely in love with with the Nike ad that follows Troy Polomalu and Ladianan Tomlinson through their football life until they meet in the NFL. I get the chills every time and actualy rewind to watch it. If Nike is trying to inspire, they've got me... now if only their shoes were cut a little wider.

For those people who think that just because I have multiple Tivo's I never see commercials, you are certainly wrong! I have seen the scary Southwest Ad too many times, but am absolutely in love with with the Nike ad that follows Troy Polomalu and Ladianan Tomlinson through their football life until they meet in the NFL. I get the chills every time and actualy rewind to watch it. If Nike is trying to inspire, they've got me... now if only their shoes were cut a little wider.

If you only go to one conference a year, I really recommend IIR's The Market Research Event. The speakers are great, the presentations are practical, and the attendees are excellent to talk to. I'll be blogging about a few of the presentations over the next few days, but hope everyone who went got as much out of it as we did. Thanks to IIR and everyone who participated. More to come...

I love this video posted by Hubspot!

I love this video posted by Hubspot!