What's Fascinating About Research?!?!

Cross posted from my other blog at: http://floridaresearchgroup.wordpress.com/

I just finished listening to an American Marketing Association (AMA) webinar entitled “What’s Fascinating About Market Researchers”. Led by Mike Brown, the VP of Marketing at YRC Worldwide (his Brainzooming Blog can be found here) and Sally Hogshead, author of “Radical Careering”.

Sally’s new book about Fascination (Available on Amazon Here) Mostly applies to how companies use the concept of fascination to market their products, but the speakers attempted to make it applicable to how market researchers “sell” their research insights up the ladder to executive management.

In a way, as a Director of Research, I am responsible for creating a brand around myself so that my managers, co-workers and clients trust what I have to say and put my ideas and insights into action. For researchers, the heart of what we do is answering questions. However, early on in my career, I’ve experienced many times where the answers I provided were discarded or discredited. Many times, to my delight, I often found my exact insights discovered by research turned out to be true, but it was to no avail for my company. Over time, I’ve learned how to position and brand myself as a trusted source of information, leading my “clients” (that is, my co-workers, managers and sales clients) to be more willing to accept my insights and research on site.

How can a market researcher develop that trust, and thus develop their brand? This webinar did have some interesting insights. The main point I jumped onto was the concept of fascination, which, when it comes down to it, fascination is a way of captivating your audience’s attention so that your message is heard. Why is this necessary in this day and age? Because people are overwhelmed and distracted. We are offered too much choice in our lives, from products to buy to the ways we can choose to spend our time. One study by the BBC News revealed that, due to web browsing, the average attention span of an adult has diminished from 20 minutes to 9 seconds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1834682.stm). Nine seconds is roughly the same attention span as a goldfish.

For researchers, our key job is too wade through mounds of data to provide answers to questions. Our “clients” asking those questions do NOT need any more data in their lives. In this ADD World we live in, I believe the less is more approach is more effective. The most talented research directors I know have the ability to wade through the mounds of data to find that ONE piece of data that answers the question, and present it in a way to the question asker in a way that earns their attention and commands their respect. Knowing that my senior manager’s mind is being pulled in a thousand different ways, I have use my 9 seconds of attention time to fascinate and captivate my reader so that they will HEAR the answer to their question, REMEMBER the answer and insights and insight ACTION on their part.

Later on, I use another blog post to go through the seven triggers for fascination, and how they apply to marketing and the media world, so keep checking back. Apparently, I’ve only got 9 seconds of your attention, so short and sweet and directly to the point is where I need to be!

PS. If you are interested in viewing this FREE webinar offered by the AMA, visit http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Pages/Webcasts/Whats_Fascinating_About_Market_Researchers_072109.aspx and click “View this Content”.

My Favorite Media Research Related Quotes

Cross posted from my other blog at: http://floridaresearchgroup.wordpress.com/

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.” (Albert Szent-Gryorgyi)

“The trouble with research is that it tells you what people where thinking about yesterday, not tomorrow. It’s like driving a car using a rearview mirror.” (Bernard Loomis)

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.” (Marston Bates)

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” (Zora Neale Hurston)

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.” (Unknown)

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” (Wernher Von Braun)

“Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.” (William W. Watt)

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” (Mark Twain)

“The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” (David Ogilvy)

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” (Naguib Mahfouz)

“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” (David Ogilvy)

“Advertising research is one-half frustration, one-half exclamation point, and one-half question-mark. If this adds up to more than 100 percent, it proves that mathematics and research sometimes gives confusing results.” (Michael P. Ryan, of Allied Chemical Corp, 1968)

“Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.” (Jimmy Buffett)

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” (Carl Sagan)

Social Media Gold Star Goes to Mountain Dew

Somebody did their research on this one. Mountain Dew decided against the typical media campaign trying to reach Men 18-34 and realized that a select subgroup of society are rabid Mountain Dew fans, and not limited by sex or age.

This subgroup? Gamers. Historically, nearly every gamer I've ever known has been a raging fan of highly caffeinated drinks - from Mountain Dew to Red Bull to Bolt to Ballz.

Mountain Dew recently launched an amazing social media marketing partnership with one of the big behemoths of the online gaming world: World of Warcraft (aka WoW). For those of you not familiar, World of Warcraft is an online fantasy game with more than 11.5 million monthly subscribers. WoW is estimated to hold a 62% share of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) market.

Within WoW, there are two factions: Alliance and Horde. The fight between the two factions can get vicious, and Mountain Dew is taking advantage of this competition to promote their product in a big way. Mountain Dew launched two new colored Mountain Dew Drinks, with each color corresponding to either Horde or Alliance. It is a race to the end to see which side can purchase more product, and an online website tracks who is "winning" at any particular moment (http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/).

In addition, the partnership uses social media to generate its own viral buzz. Players can win prizes for recruiting new players into the site, as well as for clicking through to the Mountain Dew Facebook page or Twitter feed, watching a video, sharing links on their own Facebook pages, or actually clicking on Mountain Dew banner ads on a number of various websites.

The partnership extends even into the game of World of Warcraft itself. By playing the Mountain Dew game, WoW players can earn exclusive in-game items found nowhere else. And although I myself do not like drinking Mountain Dew, I found myself even sharing a link through to the Mountain Dew World of Warcraft site on my own Facebook page, simply because I wanted that in-game exclusive item. Once that shows up in my newsfeed, all of my friends (many of which are both hardcore Mountain Dew drinkers and hardcore World of Warcraft players) will see and potentially buy this product.

In my mind, this is a perfect combination of the right product, with the right audience, using social media in the way it was meant to be used. Gold Social Media Star to Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft.

Not TV Research, But Still An Interesting Perspective on Newspapers

Source is SNPA (Southern Newspaper Publishers Association)





Commentary
Newspapers are Fact-Checked, Hand-Delivered, No Pop-up Ads – What's Not to Love?
In his last moments as editor of USA Today before moving to the No. 2 spot at the Newseum, Ken Paulson offered his insights at the inauguration of the National Press Club's new president. Paulson congratulated the Club for choosing Donna Leinwand as its leader for 2009 and discussed the situation of the newspaper industry. This column is reprinted from the Web site of the National Press Club.

I do think there's room for some perspective. Yes, it's true that there have been significant layoffs at America's newspapers, but there have also been huge layoffs at Home Depot, and no one is predicting the demise of hammers.

You have to separate the troubled economy from the special challenges facing the news industry, and it's important that we not undervalue the power of print.

I can certainly understand why newspapers are not viewed as trendy. After all, they were really the iPods of 1690.

But humor me, and consider this alternate history: Imagine if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press, and that for centuries all of our information had come to us online.

Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the “newspaper.”

That press conference might go something like this:

“We're pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.

“Just consider the hours you've spent on the Internet looking for information of interest to you. We've hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.

“We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called 'fact-checking' in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.

“In addition to saving time online, you'll also save money. You won't need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.

“You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.

“You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the Internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.

“And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.

“It's also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane's radar.

“To top it all off, you don't need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you're not happy with this product on any day, we'll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”

I can see the headlines now: "Cutting-edge newspapers threaten Google’s survival.”

My point, of course, is that newspapers remain an extraordinary information bargain, and we shouldn't be selling them short or lose sight of the qualities that make American journalism so critical to our democracy.

Digital TV Research

I've been doing a lot of research lately on the upcoming digital television transition in February 2009. There's been a lot of articles lately on the subject, with people trying to gauge the potential impact. Nielsen even submitted US estimates on unready homes, and provided sample estimates for LPM markets. Although these sample estimates are not balanced to any universe estimates, they are estimates, but it gives us an insight to potential impact.

Nielsen places TV households into three categories: Completely Ready (all televisions in the home are digital), Partially Unready (some of the televisions in the home are analog only) and Completely Unready (all televisions in the home are analog only). Nationally, 12.6% of homes are Partially Unready, and 9.4% of homes are Completely Unready. The Tampa-St. Petersburg DMA over-indexes the U.S. average for Partially Unready homes, but under-indexes for Completely Unready Homes.

I'm trying however, to isolate exact how much MY station will be impacted by the switchover. Its all well and good to say 9.2% of the market is unready, but if 20% of my viewing comes from these homes, then I have a bigger problem than most. Nielsen, unfortunately, has not developed a study for this particular question, and as I question industry colleagues, no one else has designed a way to get to this information either. I can't be the first person in the industry to have thought of this question, am I?

To get around this, I've requested a custom report of our ratings for people in the sample that get our signal Over-the-Air only. This is a bit of a false look, as it could include homes that are viewing our over the air signal digitally, and the report excludes homes that are labelled "partially unready", but it is a start.

Anybody else have any ideas?

This is a great description of my job most days...

Tribune, WFLA Staffs Offered Voluntary Buyouts

Things are a bit grim around here....

From TBO.com:


By TED JACKOVICS The Tampa Tribune
Published: April 14, 2008

TAMPA - The Florida Communications Group said today it is offering voluntary buyouts, including severance packages, to about half its 1,326 employees, including those with The Tampa Tribune and WFLA, News Channel 8.

The program is aimed at reducing staff and other costs in a difficult economic environment in the Tampa Bay area, said John Schueler, president of Florida Communications Group, which oversees the operation of The Tribune, WFLA, TBO.com and other Florida media outlets.
Schueler said the program includes severance packages depending on years of service with the company for eligible employees.

For example, some employees would be eligible for severance up to 39 weeks. Schueler said that if not enough employees accept the severance offer, layoffs are possible.
He said that FCG has not determined the amount of money the company wants to save or the number of employees it must shed but that the cost savings needed are significant.

In addition to the Tribune and News Channel 8, FCG, a subsidiary of Media General, includes TBO.com, Centro Grupo de Comunicacion, Sunbelt Newspapers, Suncoast News, Hernando Today and Highlands Today.