Garbage In - Bad Research Out

Market Research is more necessary than ever - product development cycles are shortened, margins are thin(er), consumer driven innovation is building the next generation of companies...you get the idea. Grab a recent copy of Inc. or Fast Company and you will see articles on iCitizen (citizen generated government innovation), The Customer Is The Company - Threadless (fully crowd-sourced product innovation - we will call this market research, since we are research types), and many, many more. The connection between company and customer is getting tighter and research + technology must keep up with it to provide the data, communications and intelligence. For my take on this that was printed in Inc. read HERE.

What does all this mean for Market Research. It is positive and negative. The positive side is that research is getting a seat at the executive table, is part of product development, drives the customer experience and is an integral part of the innovation process. It also means panels are being over used, and some corners are cut by clients or research partners to "just get it done and get some numbers". If you don't pay attention to quality at the front - who is answering that fancy conjoint survey, all the segmentation and animated PowerPoint slides mean nothing, in fact they are worse than nothing, they are wrong.

How wrong?

In a recent Havard Business Review summary the following alarming facts were pointed out:

1. In 13 out of 18 panels 32% or more of panelists said they took 10+ surveys in the last 30 days (Research by: Burke)
2. 14% of panel respondents in one panel claimed to own all 10 items on a list - one of those items was the Segway scooter (only 80,000 were ever sold, so this is about 1,000+% off, that is well beyond the acceptable margin of error!). (Research by: Theo Downes-Le Guin at Market Strategies)

We can we as researchers do about this? Quite a bit actually. We will be writing more on this subject and launching a revolutionary new research platform to address some of these basic issues in the coming months. Questions before then? Give us a call or send an email to: infoATsentientservices.com.

A Year in Review – Google Style

What a whirlwind of a year 2010 has been… in world events, in life and in work. And what better way to reflect on the year than to utilize the largest search engine Google to see a snapshot of the biggest events and searched terms of the year both globally and by country.

Google recently released Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched. Here, you can find animated graphing using HTML5 (the latest and greatest in coding), which shows an aggregation of the terms that people all around the globe searched throughout 2010. Take a second to look at the search stars that have fallen and risen over the past year.

One of my favorite parts of this press release is the 2010 in Review video below. It shows a great recap some of the year’s biggest struggles, achievements, tragedies and milestones.



From myself and Sentient Services, we hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season. We cannot wait to see what 2011 will bring. Enjoy!

Does marketing really work?

One big question on every business owner’s mind: “Is the money I am spending on marketing and or advertising really working?” As part of my job, I spend lots of time trying to help optimize the marketing and advertising for companies. The problem is that it is not always easy to track and quantify with numbers if all their work and money is truly paying off in the end. Today I came across this quick survey that I found very interesting by CramerSweeney - http://www.cramersweeney.com/smiq.html. It tests the recognition of brands using 4 main areas:

1. Icon Identification
2. Tagline Memorization
3. Mascot Identification
4. Audible Recognition

While most of the brands used here are fairly mainstream brands, I think many people would be surprised at the amount of marketing and advertising they actually absorb unconsciously. I identified 17 out of the 20 brands, some of which I actually use and some of which I have never used but unconsciously knew the tagline or mascot.

So my point is this, while it is not always easy to quantify how well marketing works and allot a number of customers to the dollars you are spending, marketing and the messages you send to customers get absorbed in many ways (and that list is ever expanding with social media). This has implications for how ROI is calculated and how “standard” market research to develop and measure marketing effectiveness is done. Sentient is currently exploring new ways to do this. Let us know if you have any great ideas to share.

Last, but not least, we think the actual survey format and tool CramerSweeney uses is pretty cool, interactive and engaging. Let us know your thoughts on any other survey tools you find interesting.

Marketing 101

Believe in what you are doing, build great stuff and sell the hell out of it.

That is what Apple does. For a quick and funny snap shot of their recent release of the new MacBook Air check out the video below. And then read the quick summary on TechCrunch.

In today's market - product is marketing, marketing is product. When you realize that and break down silos between product development, design, research and marketing you get a team working seamlessly together with a shared vision and focused goal. The result is the video below.

Velvet Rope Clients

Admittedly this is a weak blog post - I am posting about another blog, that was posting about a book. However; it has been a very busy few weeks and the other post is really good and gets to a core tenet here at Sentient Services - we do great work, for great people and great companies. Life is too short to work on junk and with not-so-nice people.

We are very fond of saying "We don't have clients, we have friends that happen to pay us money.". And, that is very true. Our "clients" are great friends - we travel the world together (drink tea in Turkey, hike to through the alleys in Hong Kong, beer in Germany), work long hours, create game changing products, and have a lot of fun along the way...good friends + good clients = great times!

Read about what makes great clients and some guidelines on the GetSatisfaction blog. It covers Michael Port's books and philosophy.

The key takeaway:

Do you have your own red velvet rope policy that allows in only the most ideal clients, the ones who energize and inspire you? If you don’t, you will shortly. Why?

First, because when you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to book yourself solid.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!