Marketing in Real Life

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...

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

This past week I made my first trip to the ESOMAR Congress, where Peter Mackey and I presented on Tuesday. Part 2 of a busy conference season! There were some great presentations which I won't get into but you can read a write up of many of them at the WARC blog at http://www.warc.com/ConferenceBlogs/ESOMAR-092008.asp . We'll be presenting again at the upcoming Market Research Event along with our client from Liberty Hardware. You can read what's going on at that one through their blog at: http://themarketresearchevent.blogspot.com/

At Invoke, we're in an interesting position regarding Innovation because we are constntly innovating ourselves and often play a role in our clients Innovation process. To learn more we attended IIR and PDMA's Front End of Innovation Conference this week. Three of the top themes I picked up... Ideas are everywhere and in many cases the easy part of the innovation process. Its narrowing the field and actually bringing them to market that is the hard part. Almost every company who presented has some sort of stage gate process in place for new product development. Research can drive this, but in many case its more a valuable input from the consumer perspective that is used at key points in the process. If Innovation is being used to solve problems, look outside your company, outside your industry, and potentially outside man-made products to see what has already been done that can be transferred. Innovation does not necessarily mean invention!

For the past few years I have been very intrigued by the power of word of mouth, starting from work I was involved in at Chadwick Martin Bailey creating presentations about advocacy and conducting a “marketing” project that attached dollars to word of mouth in the travel and hospitality industry. Soon after I was hoping to work at BzzAgent , a leading WOM marketing agency before joining Invoke. There are many good companies that are focused on measuring word of mouth or at a minimum embed it in their research designs. But without using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research its impossible to really understand what people are doing and why. Download the 13 page report here and let me know what you are doing to drive word of mouth for your business.

I just completed a survey about my shopping experience where only one question was open ended, and it was a throw away. “Do you have any other comments about your recent visit to XXXXXX? If so, please use the space below. Otherwise, click ‘continue.’” I do appreciate that they gave me the customer service number and hours to call with comments and complaints. A nice touch. One that was a bit undermined when they tried to get me on their email list. Back to the lack of open ends... don’t they want to know why I rated their check out staff and ease of finding products so poorly? I know I would if the survey was about my company!