As a researcher, maybe that’s why I like them. It only takes a few minutes wandering around an exhibition hall to see which brands have a real buzz about them, who has genuinely new and innovative products, and what kind of marketing messages are being touted. The big, household names tend to invest serious cash in creating huge, multi-zone stands with lots of bright colours, illuminated logos and interactive demos. Some even lay on entertainment to entice the punters to their stand. This year alone I have happened upon Justin Bieber (doing robotic dancing for TOSY Robotics), Earth, Wind and Fire (bashing out the hits for Sony) and Cirque du Soleil (doing somersaults for Xerox) taking the corporate dollar at trade shows.

Despite all the money-spinning, the celebrity endorsements and competition over square footage, so many exhibitors fail to make an impact. Not because their stand isn’t the biggest and brightest, but because they fail to talk their customers’ language. It’s amazing to see so many brands getting the basics wrong. In all the excitement, too much focus is placed on the technical details of the products, and not enough about why these are important, and what it means to me, your potential customer. You may get excited about the range of cable inputs that your new TV can take, or the energy efficiency rating of your latest tablet PC. Your customers would probably be more interested in knowing what it will cost in the shops and what colours it comes in. So what if your printer uses individual ink cartridges and has side-loading paper trays? Tell me why this is important, and why that makes it better than others.

Indeed, the trade shows and exhibitions in our own industry – market research – are no different. We are equally culpable. We’re too busy banging on about our quant and qual capabilities, and which kinds of conjoint we have done to realise that most of our clients don’t care about that – they simply want to know what makes us different from the others, and how precisely we can help their business. Quite an irony given much of the research we do is designed to help businesses reach their customers more effectively!

Perhaps in the rush to put on shows of such scale and complexity, they forget to think about their audience, and that what their product managers are excited about is probably not what their potential customers get excited about. Or perhaps it is down to the lack of natural daylight in these exhibition halls. Or the awful, overpriced fast food that everyone has to queue for. Or Justin Bieber. Yeah, let’s blame him.

These kinds of feeds represent an interesting expansion in the remit of twitter opening up significant historical events to a whole new audience, bringing history to life in a way that traditional teaching cannot, and democratising history by allowing anyone with any perspective to have their voice heard. Of course the dangers of reducing hugely significant and complex historical events down to 140 character sound bites told in the first person, are that it could dilute the importance of these events, and could even re-write history.

As a digital society, we are becoming increasingly reliant and trusting of online resources. Wikipedia has become gospel for many people, trusted to represent ‘the truth’, but of course even with its checks and balances it is written by only a few thousand people, many of whom are not experts in the fields they write about so authoritatively. The danger of re-telling history on Twitter – a hugely influential site, especially to the young – is that there is no censorship or peer review of the content that is placed on it and it has the power to distort historical events which could easily become accepted as ‘the truth’ – assuming enough critical mass is put behind it.

What relevance does all this have to the research world? There is a lot of buzz around social media scraping as a tool for harvesting insight, but what value does this insight have? The real value that the research world can offer surely lies in our capacity to collect, analyse and interpret the often conflicting messages generated in the twittersphere.  How distorted are people’s views and what is influencing and defining people’s opinions about any given topic/trend/brand? If Justin Bieber, with his 20M+ followers, denounces your brand, his influence has the power to damage your bottom line, but it doesn’t mean that what he has to say is accurate. What are we supposed to do with the mass of data that social media produces, and does the cost of separating the wheat from the chaff outweigh the benefits of hearing a million people’s opinions? I wish I had all the answers, and I’m sure that when they come they will make someone very rich. I guess only time, technology and our creativity will tell.

So after DWP published our recent research looking at how long it takes to transfer a pension pot, I was surprised to see this headline and a ‘Dawn of the Dead’ style killer-zombie graphic splashed over the Mail’s money pages:

ATTACK OF THE PENSION ZOMBIES: HOW DEAD INSURANCE FUNDS ARE HOLDING YOUR LIFE SAVINGS HOSTAGE

Now I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the title of DWP report, so I read on…

“Thousands of pensioners are being deprived of as much as £11,000 each by ‘zombie’ insurance companies which hold their savings hostage for up to four months.”

(Ah yes, hostage taking. That famous zombie tactic…)

“Some of these closed funds are dallying for a whole month before replying to savers who, desperate for a better deal, ask to transfer their pension to a new provider. It can then take another three months before the cash is released. Yet we can reveal the paperwork to transfer a pension fund can take as little as two hours to complete.”

‘We can reveal’? I think you’ll find RS revealed it in April.  This is your classic tactic of splicing together BIG, SENSATIONAL and UNRELATED numbers with some nice emotive language to fit the chosen narrative. I could point out that the ‘two hours’ in the quote above related to a different set of circumstances and assumptions, but, yep, you’re bored already aren’t you? Let’s read on.

“A Government-commissioned report accuses closed pension firms of deliberately dragging their feet in a last-ditch bid to fill their coffers with fees taken from their customers’ savings. The flopped firms can rake in as much as £100,000 for every 100 customers who want to move their savings elsewhere, Money Mail research estimates.”

Now. This Money Mail research. That’s £1,000 per customer isn’t it? £1,000 in charges by holding onto someone’s pension for an extra 4 months? The average pension pot is £25,000. So… how?

I guess we’re not supposed to start questioning the numbers, that’s not the point. I have to admit that this report does a far better job of conjuring up the idea of evil zombie pension providers in burgundy ties rolling around in wads of desperate pensioners’ money than our own report did (thank goodness).

Incidentally my personal favourite line is: “One pension firm, which wished to remain anonymous, in the DWP report told investigators…” Investigators! Andrew Wood, Research Investigator. I like that.

The whole article is based on just five sentences that appear on page 18 of our 36-page report: a report otherwise focussed on the fact that 60-80% of pension transfers are now trouble-free, and the average transfer time has reduced from seven weeks to one. But hey, that’s boring.

A similar thing happened when we published the results of our first RDR Professionalism Survey for the FSA. The key findings of the survey were that progress towards meeting the RDR deadlines by advisers was on track. But certain elements of the press focussed solely on declining morale among IFAs and described an industry where every adviser was supposedly headed for the door.

This is all fine of course. I’m not going to pretend I don’t like press coverage, and you’ve got to make a story that’s interesting out of what can be some pretty dense research reports.

But it does teach those of us in research (rather than PR or journalism) that when we’re writing that next report about the looming pensions crisis… we need to make sure what we’re saying is water-tight, so that if someone decides to pick out some random numbers, put them next to some stats about death rates and turn it into a Zombie thriller, at least we can stand behind our own data.

Remember – you can prove anything with facts. The finance press certainly will.

With thanks to Mel Duffield at the National Association of Pension Funds for spotting the article!

But to truly understand the effectiveness of options A and B, we need to understand the timing of the offer.  A lot of it comes down to time inconsistency:  how I think I might react when completing a survey in a relatively rational mode may not be reflected in how I will react in the heat of the moment.  How I react when studying the shelf on my own and at my own pace may be different to how I react when offered a deal by a salesperson.  How I react when there’s a queue behind me may be different again.  The price point of the product and whether it is the primary or secondary purchase will be key too.  Also, we need to consider whether it is a planned purchase or impulse buy or somewhere in-between.

It’s interesting to look at how some UK retailers are working their discount pricing strategies to drive impulse buying.  I spent a rainy afternoon shopping with my tweenage daughters last weekend, so I’ll focus on just a few stores I visited then:

WH Smith’s are combining impulse buying with discounting by stacking their tills with discounted chocolate and having the checkout assistant personally offer each customer the deal (a la McDonald’s “would you like to go large?”). If you take into account that many WH Smith stores are located in train stations, the ever increasing stress-levels of the UK commuter and the inhibiting effect of stress on impulse control (see research by MIT economist Abhijit Banerjee)  you can understand that this strategy must be paying off.

Claire’s Accessories routinely challenge their (typically pretty novice) customers at the check-out with one or more deals – tapping into the endorphin rush of a successful shopping trip to offload dubious tat.

Boots are a very interesting example. They use a layered approach where simultaneously you can benefit from buy one get one half price and/or buy three get cheapest free and/or spend X and get £5 off next purchase and/or buy 2X and get a free Y  … bombarding the consumer with offers.  While undoubtedly some do the maths, clearly, presented within the context of much-trusted Boots, this is designed to present the customer with a “no brainer”.

Now, while much web chat is dedicated to how the consumer can really benefit from Boots discounting strategy by paying under the odds for products that they actually want, much impulse buying results in the customer buying something that they would never need – will your customers thank you for being “duped” in this way?

With your consumer hat on, if you feel you’re in danger of getting caught up in the moment, check out this article on how to stop impulse buying.

Using focus groups and in-depth interviews we found that most people don’t realise just how pervasive cloud computing is in their daily lives. They are typically only dimly aware that their photos, music, games, documents and social media comments are largely stored on someone else’s computers at some unspecified location: i.e. in the cloud. But also a growing minority have embraced cloud services, often paying to get the chief benefits that virtual storage offers: cost savings, space saving, flexibility.

Almost all make assumptions that their data is being stored securely and responsibly, but very few bother to check. Consequently, hardly anybody we spoke to say they worried about security, or whether the host company will remain solvent  – instead, their primary concern is how their data will be used by the host company. Will they mess around with the privacy settings and allow others to see my cherished photos and embarrassing playlists? Will they use my private data to target advertising at me, and if so what will that say about me? Will my personal information be sold on to third parties?

There are plenty of compelling technical and commercial drivers for hosting your services in the cloud, but it’s vital to anticipate customer attitudes and market your services accordingly. Here’s 6 recommendations that came out of our research

1. Make privacy a selling point. Reassure your potential customers that their data is not only held securely, but that they as users will have complete control over who gets to access their content.

2. Peer review matters, so make it easy. Positive experiences from others are the single most effective catalysts in encouraging people to sign up for cloud-based services. Make it easy for customers to get social about your services

3. Promote the benefits, not the technical specifications. Cloud services are called cloud services for a reason, customers don’t need to understand what’s in the cloud, they want to know what benefits it gives them. Most customers don’t really understand what 100GB storage actually means – tell them what this equates to in real terms: the number of videos, photos and songs that they can store.

4. Be realistic about what your customers will actually buy.

So many companies take great ideas to the market – many of which people think are cool and innovative. But only a small proportion of these companies bother to check what their market will pay for, and bear in mind any privacy promises made when thinking of the commercial model.

5. If cost savings are a selling point, make the sums easy. Competition is only going to get stronger, and success will only come from showing customers the full cost savings they would get not just today, but over the lifetime of the service.

6. Above all, be human. People buy services from people. As trust is such an important factor in convincing customers to buy your services, make sure there is always access to real people. Our research tells us that people want human contact not just when things go wrong, but to reassure them that there is always access to someone who can explain things in plain English.

Further details of our research findings can be downloaded from our website.

The report shows why a customer’s experience in consolidating their pensions can vary greatly, depending on what type of pension they hold.

The industry is making great strides to change this with gamification, co-creation and online communities the buzz of the moment. I’m all for this, and at the simplest level, I’d like to bring the fun back in!  Surely respondents who are enjoying themselves, alert and engaged are more likely to come up with an insightful gem than the consumer shuffling his chair back into the corner, speaking up only when we subtly (or not so subtly) call upon them specifically? So here are my top tips for keeping the fun and upping the creativity:

1. Get rid of the table and get moving – 2 hours or more of inertia will send anyone to sleep.  If you are going to write or stick stuff on flipcharts, don’t do it yourself!  Get those participants up on their feet, moving round the room debating, sticking, writing and active.   Different ideas to test?  Set up a ‘station’ for each around the room and get small groups to circulate, building up reactions progressively, and responding to the ideas already shared. Get people moving at the start to break the ice and then again later on to avoid the dreaded mid-group slump.
2. Start a debate – Polarise your participants and set them loose on each other.  Why is A such an awesome idea or why should concept B be thrown out?  The more you can pitch people against each other (without obviously it coming to physical blows), the more impassioned people become about defending their ideas and hence revealing what really lies underneath.Alternatively, how about a team board game to get people to justify their priorities, their trade-offs and uncover what really matters to them?
3. Get arty – yes, we’ve all made more collages than we can count.  And they are great – I have nothing against some pritt stick based fun.  But let’s push beyond the images ripped from magazines and introduce texture or go 3D.  Let’s allow people to draw, build story boards and add soundtracks.   Ipod in your pocket? Soundtrack right there!
4. Get dramatic – How about getting the dressing up box out?  Ok, this might not be for everyone, but rather than talking the projective talk, live it. Enact it. It’s amazing how just putting a hat on can change your view of the world.  Or perhaps a bit of role play is what you need.
5. Channel that competitive streak – Do you have a team of clients with a string of the best ideas ever?  Put them to the test!  Take your inspiration from Dragon’s Den (with your consumers as the Dragons) or Strictly (who doesn’t like to vote?), or maybe look to the world of romance for a hot speed-dating event between clients and consumers.

Clearly it’s a case of picking the right technique for the right group – but let’s start to go beyond the brainstorm and the break-out group. Inspiration is all around you so draw on the ideas you see on TV, from your kids, from the worlds of science, psychology or the arts … and enjoy it!

To address this ‘disconnect’, we at RS/ Consensus have been conducting research internally, to learn how we can improve and innovate in future. So far we’ve participated in CRM focus groups and a workshop on ‘challenger brands’, based on a talk given by head of consultancy Relume Khurshed Dehnugara at a recent Financial Services Forum event.

For those not familiar with the term, challenger brands are organisations that challenge the status quo in their market space. Dehnugara sought audience participation at several points during the talk, asking questions such as “What is missing in your organisation’s ability to challenge?” and “What are your organisations ‘blindfolds’?” We replicated this exercise in-house, asking ourselves these difficult questions and delivering some crucial home truths about RS/ Consensus.

Engaging in the research process helped us to open up and articulate our views about the company, with less reservations than we would have about doing so in normal meetings. It has also given us the chance to be respondents for once – an opportunity that many among us have relished!

For example, I much prefer my German client’s take on it.  When I met with him last week he declared that he has the solution to the Greek debt crisis then rapidly ordered a round of ouzo . “We’ve all got to do our bit to save Greece” he declared” and I’ve worked it out, if we all drink 89,000 of these tonight and tomorrow night, and the night after that and the night after that und so weiter, und so fort, then we’ll get Greece back on its feet!”

Far funnier I thought, but also, while clearly meant as a joke, it indicates the scale of the crisis in the PIGS (pejorative term for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain – or even PIIGs as they’re sometimes known when Ireland is thrown into the mix) and the fact that we’re going to have to do something dramatically different to achieve economic recovery there.

A few things recently have convinced me that this crisis will make people in these beleaguered countries challenge norms, break systems and create new ones, an entrepreneurial revolution perhaps?

Good examples of this are:

1)As reported this week, Greek potato farmers bypassing the supermarkets and selling direct to the consumer – the consumer pays less, the farmer gets more than they would from the supermarket, and in cash and today, not in a year’s time.

2) I was in Lisbon earlier this month, conducting research among high-end electricians who, inextricably linked to the construction trade, have naturally seen a dramatic decline in volume of business. Their reaction: to reassess suppliers and stock lower-end models to ensure solutions for all budgets; to offer new services focused on repair and maintenance versus new installs and to differentiate with 24/7 service and support. Nothing earth-shattering but far more constructive than the lacklustre response of those we met with in less stricken parts of Euroland who favour continuing on as they always have while their business goes into decline complaining all the while that the powers-that-be aren’t doing anything to fix things.

Venture capitalist, Jeff Bussgang author of Mastering The VC Game favours pigs (ok, admittedly, he favours pigs not PIGS, but hear me out). In his advice on what to look for in an entrepreneur, he tells a story: “when looking at a plate of the traditional fare of ham and eggs, it’s obvious that the chicken is an interested party, but the pig is truly committed.” VCs like to back pigs, he continues,  entrepreneurs who are truly and completely committed to the outcome of their venture, have a lot of stake, and no fallback – rather than chickens.  And I think that’s just who we’ll see emerging from the PIGS – watch this space.

I spent yesterday at the MRS Conference which was full of great papers, reflecting on recent developments and pointing the way ahead for research in the coming years. One speaker joked that his job title is, “Head of Customer Insight, or what we used to call market research.” Delivering greater insight into the consumer is what the industry aims to deliver and why this title is so widespread these days. As can be expected, how to gain these insights in the first place is the challenge.

One interesting session looked at people’s perceptions of their own age and showed how those of a similar age can have such different outlooks on life, affected by issues such as separation, having children or not or just being outgoing and having an energetic approach to life. Simple segmentation can never capture this. Instead of trying to impose arbitrary boundaries we need to adapt to the aspirations of consumers and understand them from an attitudinal perspective.

Advances in neuromarketing help elicit deeper emotions than the respondent is fully aware that they are giving up. Many people project an image of themselves that they wish to believe but when probed further they may be more conservative. Some will say they want adventure from life but this could mean they like to see themselves as adventurous but reading a book by a pool rather than a jungle trek is what they really want.

But, an angle that was missing was that market research must work with its clients to help them gain greater insight. Some of the techniques developed in recent years can seem like they deliver results that can be obtained with traditional approaches or push client budgets in an already difficult environment. The challenge is to work with clients to deliver more nuanced answers that reveal in greater depth how their customers behave and why. How that is done has to be collaborative partnership.

A strategic partnership, rather than a simple transactional one, is more likely to lead to greater long-term benefits; as we develop a greater understanding of our client so we can help them improve their competitive performance. The relationship should not just be about surveying their customers but asking our clients if they are posing the right questions and ensuring they get the most insightful answers.

Whether we use the term market research or customer insight, use traditional or cutting edge techniques, stronger relationships are the key to unlocking the needs of our clients.