Marketing in Real Life

Remember 6 weeks ago when everyone was up in arms about Facebook’s Timeline being forced on brand pages?  Well, the conversion date came and went and anyone not obsessed with social media marketing didn’t seem to notice.   That’s because even with Timeline  in place (which I like), the average Facebook user doesn’t go to Pages, they spend their time in their own newsfeed.  In the end, all that matters is the content you are posting and whether it is relevant and engaging for your audience.  Which of course is nothing new and has nothing to do with Timeline.   Check out some recent research I helped out with below to see why people like your Page in the first place.

Last month I attended The Market Research Event , my favorite market research conference of the year. It lived up to expectations once again and six things keep bouncing around my head as I reflect back on it. 1. The innovation conversation is focused on qualitative and distribution: Judging by session attendance and the nominations for the EXPLOR and NGMR Disruptive Innovator awards, the vast majority of innovation is coming in the form of qualitative research methodologies and information distribution. This is being driven by the continuing emergence of technology first companies into the market research space, as opposed to new entries using traditional ideas and techniques. This new life in the industry is a good thing for sure, but getting from cool technology to useful insights is easier said than done and those who don’t understand the end goal of what researchers are trying to accomplish will likely fail. 2. Quantitative topics aren’t sexy: There was not much talk of adv...

Originally posted at: blog.cmbinfo.com The question posed to the group of 5 Bloggers this month was: "Mobile surveys - For/Against, Pros/Cons, Right Situations/Wrong Situations?" Links to my fellow bloggers Annie Pettit, Joel Rubinson, Bernie Malinoff and Brandon Bertelsen can be found below. Mobile devices are changing the way people interact with brands, each other, and market research. From the reduction of land lines among younger consumers to the prevalence of internet usage via smart phones and the proliferation of text messaging as an option. Below I have laid out some of the factors contributing to the research industry understanding and adopting mobile research as a concept. 1. "Guys, where are we?" - Charlie on ABC's Lost Three or four years ago there were a plethora of SMS (text-message) based survey tools developed and launched in the market. Many were self serve but simple, others tried to simulate the full traditional survey experience with skip pa...

When I was younger I used to make the case to my mother that playing video games was good for me. Turns out people are starting to agree! My firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB), recently conducted research and found that 59% of Americans were contemplating making a resolution to lose weight. The difference this year is their approach. While the majority (41%) still plan to lace up their running shoes and pound the pavement, there is a growing trend of consumers turning to interactive fitness products to shed those extra pounds, all without leaving the comfort of their home. In fact, more Americans said they plan to use an interactive fitness solution like EA SPORTS Active™ or Wii Fit™ (13%) rather than purchasing traditional fitness equipment (6%) or joining a traditional diet program like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or NutriSystem (5%). Read more here... To me this isn't shocking at all. As time crunches increase and the complexity of the fitness games increases, this is becoming...

As reported on Boston's CBS News, we did some recent research on what people do with unwanted gifts and found that 59% of people simply kept them around instead of returning them for credit, selling them through online sites like eBay's Kijiji or Craigslist. Watch the clip for more on the story!

As holiday parties kick into full gear, many of us are scrambling to find an appropriate “grab bag,” “Yankee Swap, ” or “Secret Santa” gift. Of the 29% of people planning to participate, we found that motivations varied. According to recent research conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey of 1000 consumers: 71% want their gift to be something they would like to get and maybe will end up with it 25% want their gift to be in high demand and the one that is stolen most often Only 4% want their gift to be the least desired and look forward to someone getting stuck with it

My wife and I are seemingly crazy. We still care about buying thoughtful gifts and spend all year building up our pile so that we’re not wed to craziness at the local mall. But we’re clearly not normal. According to recent research conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey of 1000 consumers 19% of people (25% of males) don’t get started until December rolls around. In fact, when we asked people in October, 12% already knew they would wait until the last minute to buy all of their gifts (17% male, 6% female.) So, as you finish shopping take comfort in knowing you’re not alone. And think of me sitting by the fire with a nice glass of wine. Happy Holidays!

I am privileged to be one of 5 bloggers who, each 15th of the month – will produce a POV on an issue facing the Marketing Research industry. You’ll also be hearing from Annie Pettit (organizer), Bernie Malinoff, Joel Rubinson and Brandon Bertelsen. Links to their posts will follow. I am also particularly excited about this first topic: interactive questioning and its impact on the research industry. A little background… I work at Chadwick Martin Bailey , a high end, mostly quantitative research firm with a focus on segmentation, brand, product development, and customer loyalty work. I have been here for most of the last decade, with a two year stint at Invoke Solutions in the middle. So I see the traditional angle and the non-traditional angle from an inside perspective. Question: Is technology helping or hurting the research industry? Answer: Yes. That is to say that it is not a matter of helping or hurting, it’s about accepting and embracing the reality of technological advances a...

In a recent blog post , Forrester's Brad Bortner lists three ways that researchers might want to consider utilizing social media: Create a private Market Research Online Community. Mine open communities for discussions of interest. Harvest quantitative sample from social networks. These are all completely valid ways of using available resources that live within the comfort zone for researchers - or at most, slightly outside it. But it misses a big opportunity to (in the words of Crimson Hexagon's Candace Fleming ) "listen to consumers in the wild." With constantly improving tools that are tunable to answer specific questions it is now possible to really "hear" the online conversation and make sense of it all. By determining tone and level of influence you can glean tremendously valuable information that feeds other explorations and informs potential online strategies. So why do researchers scratch their heads? We don't know who these people are, wh...

We recently conducted some research on holiday travel plans for the 2009, finding that 39% of holiday travelers will stay with friends or family and43% of those traveling will drive instead of fly . The study also found that over half of all Americans will still travel this holiday season, 85% are traveling to visit friends and family. "We see this news as very positive for travel companies," comments Judy Melanson leader of Chadwick Martin Bailey’s Travel and Hospitality practice. "At least for the holiday season we are not seeing big drop-offs in actual travel or spending. People may be shifting their dollars but they are not simply staying home." There’s also good news on the spending front. Most are spending the same or more on holiday travel this year than last. Many (43%) are choosing to drive instead of fly this holiday season, while 39% are staying with friends and family instead of staying in a hotel. All of these measures are helping consumers to still tra...

An interesting post today over at Nigel Hollis' blog about academics at the 7th Annual Marketing Directors Conference in Athens, Greece minimizing the value of research in their speeches. When probed further they stated that it was the literal interpretation and simple surveys they were referring to. I think the big difference between quality research and simple data collection is the value proposition that all good custom research firms provide. We may write better questionnaires or more tightly manage projects, but the special sauce is generally in the interpretation of data, not the collection of it. And just as much in the evangelization of it (or at least facilitating evangelization). As Andy Vranesic of GE Healthcare said in our joint webinar today ( watch here ) - 10% of it is the research, 90% is putting the research to work in a business context.

We just finished up some research about holiday shopping, trying to understand what people are doing and why and trying to better grasp the Black Friday phenomenon. Personally, I think its crazy, but my wife loves it and aparently the 84 million adults planning to hit the stores on Black Friday, 18 million before 6AM, agree. It’s no surprise that the majority (85%) of Black Friday shoppers hit the stores to take advantage of the sales, while others (18%) want to get the hot gifts before their gone, but Black Friday is becoming much more for some holiday shoppers. We found that it’s also the element of competition and a sense of camaraderie that drives many of these early morning shoppers to engage in the thrill of the hunt. "For many Americans shopping on Black Friday has become an annual tradition and a fun way for friends and family to spend time together," comments Jeff McKenna senior consultant at Chadwick Martin Bailey. "Still, while many consumers will be out on Bl...

Some interesting insights from our recent research.... Marketing Performance Advantage Study of 400 companies links performance to specific marketing management best practices Boston, MA (11/3/2009) – Mid-sized firms and B2B companies are struggling the most at improving the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, according to the results of a landmark survey of more than 400 companies by strategic marketing consultancy CMG Partners and market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey. The recently released study -- entitled The Marketing Performance Advantage -- found that while 75% of all participants expressed interest in measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives, mid-sized firms and B2B companies were also more likely to report having no measurement in place or only limited measurement. For example: B2B companies and mid-sized firms were both three times as likely as other companies to have no measurement system in place 44% of B2B firms report limited or no marketing ...

Great week at The Market Research Event in Las Vegas. The mood was generally positive although some companies are still struggling to meet their goals. Lots of great conversations, great people, and great presentations. Looking forward to San Diego next year! In case you missed it, here is the lowdown on our presentation with Facebook's Meg Sloan. http://themarketresearchevent.blogspot.com/2009/10/skinny-on-marketing-research-at.html And read here for more great on-site blogging from April Bell, summing up the event: http://themarketresearchevent.blogspot.com/

With the upcoming launch of Windows 7 - and the hope that people will soon forget the Microsoft Vista debacle, we reecently conducted some research to see what IT professionals thought about the new release and their plans to adopt or not adopt Microsoft's latest operating system. One of the things we found was that for Netbooks specifically, Windows 7 is likely to make huge inroads and continue Microsoft's stronghold over Netbook OS's. Read more in Computerworld...

A snipit from CMB and CMG Partners' upcoming white paper, the Marketing Performance Advantage. Boston, MA (10/7/2009) – Only one-fourth of companies believe they are managing their marketing efforts effectively, according to the results of a landmark survey of more than 400 companies by strategic marketing consultancy CMG Partners and market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey. But the study also found that those companies that actively use marketing effectiveness best practices are reaping positive results in areas such as share gains or revenue growth. The study, entitled The Marketing Performance Advantage, surveyed more than 400 companies across a variety of industries and company sizes to determine the key attributes of successful marketing organizations and to understand what marketing practices they employ. “We found a high degree of interest in marketing measurement, but surprisingly very few executives reported success with translating that interest into improved marketin...

We're looking forward to co-presenting with our client from Facebook at The Market Research Event in a few weeks. The conference is fast approaching and we hope you can check out our presentation at 8:30 AM on the 19th! Topic: The New School of Market Research – Creating An Insights Practice in the World of Social Media Learn how Facebook, along with help from Chadwick Martin Bailey, is building an insights practice specifically designed to support decisions in the world of social media that include information from and for employees, users, and advertisers. Get a peek inside the world’s preeminent social networking company Learn how to create a research department that meets the needs of a constantly evolving business Get tips on how to best partner with research firms to enhance your position within a client organization Speakers: Brant Cruz, Vice PresidentChadwick Martin Bailey Meg Sloan, Facebook Visit www.themarketresearchevent.com for more information.

In case you missed it, here is the wrap up from our recent Technology Pulse Series on IT Services. Series Summary: IT Services This week marks the final installment of our Pulse series on IT Services. Before moving on to our next series on Operating Systems and Web Browsers, we've pulled together some of our key findings from the IT Services series research. You can also get a full rundown of the results by watching last week's webinar on the topic. Click here to watch a playback. What We Learned: IT Services provisions are increasingly becoming the standard across organizations and verticals to enhance internally deployed IT services. Although these services can be extremely varied within companies we chose to focus on 3 generic types: professional-consulting, annual subscription (most often maintenance and monitoring) and outsourcing services. Overall, we found that these IT services have become essential to the enterprise. This is illustrated by the fact that few IT profess...

We're looking forward to supporting our client, Andrew Vranesic from GE Healthcare as he presents on B2B Segmentation at The Market Research Event coming up soon in Las Vegas. If you're attending, make sure you check it out and swing by the CMB Booth to say hi! B2B Segmentation: Helpful Hints to Address Challenges in Segmenting Organizations While its true that even in a B2B setting people buy from people, research conducted to understand the decision making process needs to incorporate a different set of parameters to make sure the insights are actually useful.B2B purchases often involve multiple and sometimes competing belief systems, have longer decision and product life cycles, and unit purchase amounts that, as a consumer, can be hard to comprehend. This session will share some of the valuable lessons we have learned over the years that you can use to craft a successful B2B segmentation model. Know what type of segmentation is appropriate to use Using pattern recognition t...

As we do more and more work around understanding and strategizing for comanies deciding whether or not to get involved with social media, the bigest misnomer seems to those who only think about Facebook or Twitter. That's why I loved this quote from AMD's CMO, Nigel Dessau, from an interview on B2B online . "To use social media effectively, you have to have a very strong sense of what is and is not social media. At a minimum, social media is a two-way conversation that emphasizes relationship-building with your audience and customers. It's a means of spreading messages and influence, and something that should be equally applied across all corners of your brand. On the flip side, social media is not just a new way of push marketing. For us, it's not just a Facebook or blog strategy alone. And it's not just for business-to-consumer marketing. We have a thriving online community with our partners and enterprise customers who appreciate the value of having AMD emp...