Research 2.0... your thoughts?

Now that all five events are over, we'd like to know what you thought...

How did you find the sessions?

Are you currently using web 2.0 applications in your business?

Have your research projects included 'research 2.0' methods in the past? Have you noticed any benefits? What were they?

Are you now thinking up great ideas on how a web 2.0 application used with research may help deliver insight to your business?

We'd love to keep this discussion going and hear your perspective...

A moment in time

I hope that the presentations in the five cities demonstrated what a web 2.0 world might look like in the future and helped our understanding and critique of some of the trends we see in today's world. Hopefully you can relate this to your own particular world.



The roadmap presented should provide a measure of future proofing in marketing terms through leveraging the products of collaboration, community and co-creation.



I have very much enjoyed presenting and it really was an honour. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Research and Platforms

Today we presented in Perth. Always a wonderful venue. Thank you to everyone for making this a great event. I hope that it lived up to billing.

This entry relates to platforms and research effects. Ok Jon. What are you talking about this time?

The evolution of an electricity grid gave way to Punch Cards. A certain company called International Business Machines built their core business from this.

The evolution of telephones gave rise to CATI.

The evolution of early internet - dial up and ADSL gave way to on-line survey forms.

And the evolution of broadband is giving way now to a new platform - the internet as a way to deliver opportunities for participation and co-creation.

Brisbane

Hello everyone from Brisbane,

The Web 2.0 Sixth Sense Series is going well although I have to admit that the travel is starting to take its toll! I have really enjoyed the sessions and I hope that we have been true to our words. Thank you for the feedback so far.

The question today came up about IP protection. Let's think about that a minute....

Normal rules apply. If something is red hot then we must think twice about researching it in the public (community co-creation) arena. However, now we have to play with the idea that panelists (maybe Future Shapers) could create good ideas....Who owns the idea(s) then? This comes down to recruitment and opt-in at the start of the process. Harvesting the value to all with the right people could generate create business impact ideas - it's how we place the Governance at the start the ring fences those ideas.

Jon

Where did it come from?

Firstly I would like to thank our valued clients and guests from Canberra this morning. The session went very well I hope and we lived up to our promise of there being one or two things to take away and take forward. I should also thank the TNS Canberra team who always make me feel welcome.

Where did all of this come from? And how does that relate to research? Some commentators refer to a third economic wave which is internet related. The internet will become a general purpose technology which we can (and already are) starting to harness to do life's work, in much the same way that electricity was in the late 1800's. So Edison becomes Berners-Lee (or O'Reilly as some people might say). This will lead to spatial changes and variations in the rhythm of life, just the same as we experienced (and now take fore-granted) with electricity becoming a networked utility. That's the backbone of the argument (no pun intended).

But where does that relate into research?

For me we are in a third wave and I have gone on record with this, for example at ESOMAR, Orlando in late 2007.

- Fordist Economic System: Think Henry Ford mass production and consumption, optimises the mass marketing, interruption style of marketing. This gives rise directly to a mirro response in research of interruption research: It's called F2F and CATI

- Flexible Accumulation: Think General Motors, customisation, just in time creates the need and expectation of permission marketing and efficiency. This found its home in research with permission research, AKA as panels

- Globalisation and Offshoring: Think India, increasingly China and Vietnam. Globalisation creates engagement paradigm which offers new opportunities for engagement research AKA 2.0

Each epoch is a new layer with new possibilities. It leads to new innovations and new insights in conjunction with the 'established' approaches.

I will reach Melbourne Thursday night, ready for Friday's session. I look forward to meeting more of you then!

Jon

The Technology You Grow With Is the Technology You Use

Out of an interesting article that indicates those people online spend more than twice the time online than they do watching television comes the point that consumers tend to use the media channels they grew up with.

From the Web 2.0 / online community perspective, this means that the size of the population involved in such communications is only going to grow as the internet displaces television, print and other forms of media as the channel of choice. This is especially true among the younger members of the population, who already find it hard to imagine a time when there wasn't an internet.

- Huw Hepworth

Juicing 2.0

We have examples from the following markets: Australia, Saudi Arabia, Korea, United States, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada so this really is becoming a global phenomenon and almost established within some Sectors, clients and research needs.

One of the examples looks at harvesting the conversations on the internet for strategic advantage: What are people saying about my brand? How does that compare competitively? What is the reaction to my new marketing campaign? What are the trends in the market place? Give me a read on the current breaking news story for this brand, product or service.

This demonstrates the point about web 2.0. We are almost drowning in data. The secret is to know what information to look at, when and from whom. And then to make sense of it. That's leading to meta-research. Let's look at that trend.

Next we will look at where all of this came from.

What do you think, Charlie Brown? - a social network turns into a market research entity

As an example of how market research is evolving online, a former social network has turned itself into a market research entity. Peanut Labs, formerly Xuqa, has started to run surveys across numerous social networks after they found it was a more successful business strategy than just relying on revenue through normal social network channels (as well as being squeezed by more popular applications like Facebook and MySpace on this front).

Given that online communities can be large and diverse, there's certainly a lot of attraction in moving to what is a very dynamic and active online environment. However, the question always has to be "is this methodology going to be communicating with the right people?". For some products / clients, social community research through companies like Peanut Labs will be a good fit; for others, there will still be a gap between the audience on social networks and the type of research that needs to be conducted.

- Huw Hepworth

Every Brain in the Game

Web 2.0 is about many things. A next generation of services that are delivered through collaboration and co-creation - whether that be between people or between technologies.

And for me research needs to deliver insight (can I have a dollar for dropping that one in please) and innovation, for these are two of the hottest needs from marketing research right now. Ok, but how can we maximise our chances?

Well, maximising the number of (qualified) brains in the game seems like one sensible approach. And that is what communities can do - it can hardwire your Organistion to the latest trend, the latest idea, the latest hidden need, the latest problem and connect internal stakeholders to the conversation. But we can do two other things quite easily:

- develop an open source strategy where we can harvest information readily available on the internet and harness it into a central architecture. Why? Because it is not only readily available, it can add context to the current market

- utilise some participation architectures like for example the forum or the Blog and be able to crunch through information to develop insights on the market. Not new? Ok, maybe not. But the ability to connect different people - internal and external and give (permission) access as a way to possibly envisage new angles to the data could be.

All of these can lead to anticipation. That is insight.

Communities Point of View

I feel that the Blog is starting to find its pace now and it is crytallising a number of areas that we will cover in the Seminar.

Let's look at Communities. The issue with Communities and research is one of value. And that plays out in two directions:

- How can we add research value to a Community?

A group of people discussing threads can be interesting if those topics are of interest to you. And you can build relationships. But the key thing is of what tangible value is that to you as a marketer beyond the relationships? (I don't underestimate that part alone). If we want to gain marketing research insight then we need to wrap a research design and research skill around the platform. In this case the design doesn't mean a survey of course. You don't need research for a discussion thread!

- How can the Community harvest some value for their input?

The participants will need to receive some value. That doesn't necessarily mean cash or points (but could do and probably will do). It could also mean fun and the chance to discuss things of real interest. Our Incubator case study will demonstrate one idea in this direction.

This is where the idea of building Social Networks for research only breaks down currently. Social Networks are horizontal communities, based largely on personal and kinship relationships to drive them. On a sustained basis you cannot build this for research only - but you can harvest the value from it. Harness that energy.

So it is really about right people, right platform, right insights.

Harvesting the value from Social Networks, building Communities of value and using a 'Community' to do qualitative research will all feature in the Seminar.

BTW One further point. Will we talk about Second Life? We will mention Virtual Worlds. Maybe. Maybe not. Ok, yes why not! But this is not a seminar about Orientation Island or anything like that per se.

Let’s talk about that issue right now….

WEB 2.0 AND HYPE....

I know what some of you may be thinking. You’re thinking why all the hype? Everywhere I go these days this two-zero thing comes up. This is just another seminar series claiming that 2.0 will change the world. And how can we make money on that? How can we understand the consumer better? How can I keep my boss and stakeholders internally happy?

I am not going to tell you that this will change the world, but with some synchronization to the way the world works today it may just add some incremental benefit to your world.

Take for example ‘communities’, these have been called in some quarters the natural successor to the general consumer Access Panel. I don’t believe that at all. Communities are not new. The first I have heard of, of the phenotype we know today, was built in the United States back in 2000/1. Did that change the Access Panel? The dynamics of the internet are driving the adoption (of Communities) as well as the potential tangible business benefits of them (which we will look at). But the Access Panel isn’t broken and as Jackie Huba states in ‘Citizen Marketer,’ in every single group of people (call that a Crowd or a Community today) there are 1% of people willing to contribute with sufficient passion to make a difference. At least we can find who that 1% are! That sounds like good research but it isn’t the totality of research per se – and that’s why the community is a great platform alongside and integrated with your existing research program

Seriously now, going beyond the hype I hope that you can take away a few quick wins for your business or your organization that are straight out from a 2.0 world. I hope that we can help you to future proof your decisions and the strategies and tactics behind making those decisions.

Passion and Participation

HOW CAN WE HARNESS THESE WEB 2.0 DRIVERS?

Business is fundamentally about buying and selling. What do you need? What do you want? Or if you are in public service it’s about demand and supply. And this takes and is optimized by conversation to understand changing desires, tastes and receiving feedback in a loop. The great relevance of this is that web 2.0 is exactly about conversation and this is why there is so much energy around the discourse for business. Could it make our brands and our services better?

It is this energy that is changing your world and your market(s). Web 2.0 has removed some of the gatekeepers; consumers comparison shop leading to changing dynamics in commitment and your margins. It has led to rampant innovation through extreme connectivity and competition which can endanger some intellectual property. It has led to extreme niches which demand increasing customization and genuine brand experiences. With extreme, globally connected competition, it is draining your resources in (sometimes extreme) customer support needs. It is leading to infinite channels of contact experiences which create marketing efficiency questions.

Let’s harness that energy to bring your internal stakeholders closer to the customer and the market. Let’s look at how we can drive structured innovation. Let’s look at how we can draw in customers for greater relationships and understanding. Let’s look at how we can optimize the marketing mix with so many channels available. Let’s look at how we can review and integrate information on where our brands and our services sit in a wider context. Let’s look at how we could use all of this to expand your markets into Asia and beyond….

Those are some of the questions and considerations we will be looking at.

The research roadmap

Our series of sessions on Web 2.0 is coming soon...

OUTCOMES OF THE SESSIONS

We are delighted that you will come to the session and we will do our utmost to ensure that the content adds value to your existing knowledge, your brands and your marketing decisions. We will demonstrate the key points using salient case studies from around the globe. This session is not focused on technology per se, more the tangible marketing issues resulting from web 2.0 and of course how marketing research can evolve to inform, participate and add value under the emerging discourse.

Currently, much of the narrative around web 2.0 in research terms is related to communities and semi-structured conversations. This session will certainly look at this emerging participation and co-creation research phenomenon. It is important to note however that this session will aim to go further. It will provide an Interactive web 2.0 research roadmap, which will equip you as marketers, researchers and decision makers with ways of thinking and practicing in a 2.0 world both now and into the future. The impact of web 2.0 on research is so much more than communities which are receiving a great deal of coverage.

We encourage your questions and your insights before the session on this Blog and we trust that post the event we can share a few more case studies as well as answer or give perspectives on any areas that are relevant to your business / department and which may not have been covered in what is inevitably a cut down session due to time constraints.

Look forward to meeting you at the session.

Jon*

TNS Web 2.0 sessions in Australia:

Wednesday 27 Feb - University House, Acton, Canberra - 8am breakfast

Friday 29 Feb - Sofitel, Melbourne - 12pm lunch

Monday 3 March - Star Room, IMAX, Sydney - 12pm lunch

Tuesday 4 March - The Brisbane Club, Brisbane - 7:15am breakfast

Wednesday 5 March - Matilda Bay Restaurant, Crawley, Perth - 7:15am breakfast

* Presented by: Jon Briggs, Regional Director, 6thdimension Interactive Research, TNS (Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa region)

Two Weeks to Go: Start to Synchronise

Hello everyone and thanks for dipping in here. We hope that you will find this useful for your career, your brand, your organisation, your service and perhaps even your mind.



As an introduction: I saw this the other day (Thanks Deanna)....




Forrester: Agencies Need to Reboot
Feb 8, 2008
NEW YORK Forrester Research believes today's ad agencies are not well-structured to take on tomorrow's marketing challenges, needing to move from making messages to establishing community connections.
In a new report, the research firm paints a grim view of the current state of advertising, which it believes is in "a world of hurt" because consumers are tuning out the messages the industry is predicated on producing. Instead, it believes shops need to be organized around communities, not disciplines. What it is calling "the connected agency" would not only know certain communities but also be active members of these groups. Pushing messages would give way to encouraging voluntary engagement, and ongoing conversations would replace time-based campaigns.
"I can't say there's an agency now that's the agency of the future," said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst and co-author of the report.
The research firm is certainly not the first to assert that agencies haven't kept up with changing consumer habits and technology. Accenture in November said the shift from analog to digital media is catching shops flat-footed.
In Forrester's view, a simple fact is driving the need for wrenching change in how advertising agencies are structured: consumers increasingly do not trust marketing messages. Instead, they rely on advice from friends and others in their various communities to make product decisions, while using tech tools to tune out ad messages they deem irrelevant. On top of that, consumer media choice has made the notion of a "captive audience," other than during some sporting events, a thing of the past.
"I don't think agencies are going away," Kim said. "They're going to be the ones that help marketers to communities of mutual interest."
He anticipates agencies made up of community members -- moms, for instance, helping Procter & Gamble play a constructive role in communities of other mothers.
Since marketers will continue to focus on results from their marketing, particularly as digital media makes it easier to track, advertising agencies would get geekier, Forrester believes.
Despite these changes, Forrester said creative and media agencies are still built around the mass model: to either produce messages or distribute them. Digital agencies have gone farther, in Forrester's estimation, in centering their businesses around "interaction," but it finds them lacking in the branding skills of traditional shops.
Clients are finding their agencies wanting. Forrester quotes one marketing exec calling agencies "a necessary evil," rather than a strategic partner to grow his business. Another complains, "Most senior ad execs appear more comfortable with conventional channels, which they claim are 'integrated' because they have tacked on a Web site."
"The first step [agencies] need to take is with digital integration," Kim said, adding that the organization of agencies around specific skill sets is the root of their problems.



Now swap 'ad agency' for many brands, organisations, products and most market research companies. This is what the SSoB seminar will address....

Welcome!