Marketing in Real Life

A little different than the custom primary research we normally talk about in this space, but an interesting article in today's USA Today about the impact of the media's negative reports about retailers and the negative impact on their brands. Three excerpts from the article... Retail implosion forecasts typically come from the same handful of retail consulting gadflies — at least one of whom says he makes money when retailers' stock prices fall — and the forecasts are often based on subjective criteria that do not jibe with widely accepted methods of assessing corporate health. "People are really paying attention to these articles, and the effects are extremely damaging," says Tracy Mullin, CEO of the National Retail Federation, which represents most major retailers. The complications of analyzing retailers' financials go beyond just a sound bite. "It is very dangerous to speculate who may or may not be surviving without being inside the circle of knowle...

My friend Jon Godin, CMB's Director of Analytic Services, is a brilliant guy but clearly never feels quite smart enough. So he recently attended the Sawtooth Software Conference to lean more about the latest and greatest trade off tools and techniques. We'll be posting some of what he learned over the coming weeks. First up is a presentation from our friend Chris Goglia at Critical Mix .... Here is the abstract from his presentation. “To Drag-n-Drop or Not? Do Interactive Survey Elements Improve the Respondent Experience and Data Quality?” by Chris Goglia and Alison Strandberg Turner: Abstract: Chris Goglia presented a paper on the increasing demand for interactive survey elements in questionnaires (like sliders instead of rating scales and drag-and-drop functionality instead of numeric rankings). What they found is that these interactive elements increase time-to-complete but there were not significant differences in the resulting data. Furthermore, other studies on slide...

We obviously have a bit of bias on the topic, but over at eMarketer, their CEO Geoff Ramsey makes a nice case for why now is not the time to be cutting research budgets and that they should be evaluated indpendantly from advertising budgets. He cites three reasons why you might want to put yourself in the “increase” (or at least “maintain”) market research camp: With the economy clouding the future, why throw away your flashlight when it could shine on intriguing consumer insights, hot technology trends and market opportunities? Market research can help you preserve budgets, projects and even people. Prepare for better times ahead. Take a read by following the link below and feel free to post your thoughts. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1007001

Response, LLC and Chadwick Martin Bailey were recently the recipients of an award from the CT Chapter of the American Marketing Association for their work with Stanley-Bostich in 2008. Working in partnership, the team was able to proviode strategic direction across multiple channels that was immediatley put into action by the client. "Every single page of that final research report went to our key business leaders, and was used in the goal deployment process," said Todd Langston, Director of Brand Management at Stanley-Bostitch. “It has been extremely impactful in all areas of the company, from product management and sales to engineering, operations, and even finance.” For CMB, working with Carolyn Walker and her team was an excellent experience and we look forward to working with Response again soon to deliver great client results. In addition to the Stanley-Bostitch research, Response also won awards for their trade show, web/interactive and print work. Congratulations, C...

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.