Marketing in Real Life

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...

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/

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.

Very interesting development in the research conference series with the EXPLOR Awards moving from the AMA Research Conference over to The Market Research Event. This takes what in my opinion was already the best research conference on the market and makes it even better. I had always assumed that EXPLOR was an AMA offering, but this is just another signal that the AMA needs to step up their game if they want the conference to remain viable. Speaking for myself, I would have had a hard time justifying two west coast conferences in two weeks, especially when I found last year's Boston based event to be very disappointing. As a former local AMA President and AMA member, I wish them the best of luck and hope it rebounds. Read more at: http://www.iirusa.com/research/track-six.xml http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS161794+11-Mar-2009+BW20090311

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...

We're excited to invite you to join us for the first session in our free 2009 webinar series. In this session Rich Schreuer, an SVP here at Chadwick Martin Bailey, will be delivering an encore of his presentation from IIR's 2008 Market Research Event. Topic: Inside Out Branding: How to Avoid the Brand Death Spiral featuring a Toyota Financial Services Case Study You'll learn: What the brand death spiral is and how to avoid it Tips for measuring brand delivery at each customer touch point and its impact on the bottom line How Toyota Financial translated the research findings into tactical action plans Time and Date: April 3, 2009 Noon ET Registration: Register via webex here.

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..."

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...

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/