Back to results Research : Question time Focus groups, the telephone and (shudder) creative testing are still core business, but the emergence of the online panel is a key new factor helping keep the research sector afloat in 2009. Patricia Moore reports. By Patricia Moore Ask market researchers about the effects of the recession and responses are mixed: Phrases like “feeling the pain” and “pretty rough” suggest it hasn’t been all wine and roses over the past 12 to 18 months. Roy Morgan’s Mark Dansey says the situation is “pretty stable”, perhaps helped by keeping client fees at last year’s level, while at Synovate, Debra Hall says they’re finding a significant shift in the type of work being commissioned. “It’s much more strategically demanding; more demanding on the delivery of advice at the end of it.” And in Christchurch, Carl Davidson at Research First says the recession has made people think much more carefully about what they need to know most. Many multinational clients have slashed local research budgets, says Colin Yee at Research International. This has seen continuous projects – like brand and advertising tracking – maintained, albeit at a reduced level. Ad hoc projects have been cut back to only the ultra-important, he says. “This has had a major impact on industry revenues because ad hoc makes up about 45% of the market.” Further reductions in spending by government departments, significant users of research, would continue to impact negatively, he says. But along with slashed budgets has come a kind of breathless enthusiasm for new techniques. “People are clamouring for all sorts of new methods because they seem novel and sexy,” says Davidson. “There’s nothing wrong with that in principle but in practice you need to be very careful to match the media to the audience.” The online panel is probably the most widely used of the ‘novel’ methodologies. “Web surveying has been a bit of a saviour for our industry in a way, because it’s reduced the relative cost per interview,” says Colmar Brunton’s Chris Vaughan. He acknowledges there are some groups that may not be represented, “but with over 80% of New Zealanders now online in some shape or form, you’re excluding only a relatively small chunk of the total population.” Twenty years ago people were concerned about face-to-face interviewing being replaced by the telephone, says Tim Grafton, executive director at UMR Wellington. “What we’re seeing now is a transition to online. It’s ubiquitous and there’s a very high proportion of people who are online and easy with it.” And tens of thousands are leaping at the chance to have their say. Panellists at Buzz Channel now number over 30,000 and growing, reports general manager Justin Boyes. “In the five or six years since we started, online has become the growing area of research methodology.” It also enables clients to get results fast. “We’ve done work where we’ve been briefed in the morning, had a survey out in the afternoon and had initial results ready that evening. But those are extreme cases.” So is the telephone now a survey-free zone and has the focus group gone the way of the Dodo? Self-completed web surveys are fast and remarkably cost-effective, and they’re completed when you have time to complete them,” says Davidson. “But it’s very difficult to have complexity in any self-completed survey. A telephone survey is a conversation and research is really a guided conversation; with web surveys there’s no opportunity to have a conversation. No ability to understand where there’s confusion.” “We still maintain a telephone call centre and also have our SAYit [online] panel,” says UMR’s Grafton. “We’ve done runs where we’ve asked questions using both methodologies and haven’t found particularly wide gaps in terms of the outcomes we’re getting.” And focus groups? “They’re still important,” he says. “A lot of stuff can be done online but there’s no substitute for actually sighting people in a focus group. Different tools and techniques which can be brought to the live situation give greater depth than doing stuff online.” Indeed for many projects, tradition rules. Roy Morgan’s main product, its Single Source survey, (based on 12,000 respondents) is still the product of choice in many cases, says Dansey, and Colin Yee reports diaries are still the major currency for measuring radio audiences in almost every country in the world. But are we in the midst of a data explosion? “Everyone’s got bucketloads of the stuff,” says Chris Vaughan. “It’s about being able to make sense of it and make use of it, rather than just having vast amounts of it.” At this year’s World Advertising Research Centre conference in London, chairman Rory Sutherland (ECD, OgilvyOne London) raised the issue of over-reliance on data and analysis and the effect on creativity. “It’s easier to count the bottles than describe the wine,” noted one speaker. There were also references to ‘the rise of the arithmocracy – a group whose obsession with numbers and measurement is stifling creativity’. “In a recession where accountants have come very much to the forefront of most businesses, counting is valued and creativity is not,” says Synovate’s Hall. “It’s the rise of process over imagination.” “Research is about minimising the risk,” says Vaughan. “A lot of the time the most effective research is done in the very early stage of the process. If you’re going to spend your money it’s better to do it at that end rather than when things have gone badly wrong.” So are the arithmocrats prevailing? Are calculators and spreadsheets contributing to what’s often been a less than joyous relationship between researchers and creatives? Paul Catmur, ECD at Barnes, Catmur & Friends: “I think data and analysis are very important but use them as a guide to where creativity ought to go, rather than to judge creativity.” He doubts research can decide whether or not a campaign will be successful. “If researching advertising concepts worked as well as its proponents say, then every ad would work its socks off – and they don’t,” he says. Where there’s a weak marketing department, you’ll find an over-reliance on research, says Toby Talbot, ECD at DDB. “They can’t make decisions themselves and lean on market research companies to make them for them. Research is essential and a wonderful tool. It’s interesting – talk to any creative person in New Zealand and one of the things they love about being here is that clients don’t use research as some kind of crutch. By and large it’s used sparingly and in an intelligent way.” Attitudes to research have moved on from getting in a bunch of housewives to choose the best ad, says Talbot. He cites client Cadbury as one of the new breed. “They’re very wedded to qualitative and quantitative research but ultimately respect the creative process and understand that research isn’t the answer in total.” It’s a process of taking on board the points that are relative and ignoring those that aren’t, he says. “The best marketers are able to actually go through research and ignore things that may be a bum steer and take on board the ones that are salient.” Research versus creativity; the debate goes on. The best and most effective market research is conducted when there’s collaboration between all stakeholders – a recurring theme at the recent conference of the Market Research Society of NZ, says president Horst Feldhaeuser. “But to get to this point requires willingness and trust, with all stakeholders being open to sharing information and strategies.” Delegates also discussed the possibilities new media and social communities present for researchers. “Basically it is changing the way we do things. Social media can now be used as a means of gathering information and as a platform for people to become more than just a respondent – have an active input into what’s going on.” It’s an area where researchers and agencies can work more closely together, says Feldhaeuser. “We need to decide what we are going to do with all this information.” “Using social networks is a very new area and we’re all learning about the best ways to actually tap into them,” says Justin Boyes. “But it’s something we’re going to see developing over the next year or two.” Already businesses are using online ‘community’ panels to engage at a deeper level with their immediate customer base. “It’s the fastest growing area in the research world,” says Hall. These in-house, organisational-aimed panels, merge research, PR and marketing by encouraging customers to dialogue with them. “It’s really turning the tables on the ‘we ask the questions, you answer’ method,” says Hall. “In the community-panel world customers are asking questions as well. They’re engaging and deciding what they want to talk about and they become an insider group of people who care about the brand and are keen to share their opinions and ideas. “It’s an incredibly rich source of information which researchers can then interpret and advise on what next needs to be done. You need to get into that space.” The contextualists Many people believe that a researcher’s role – qualitative or quantitative – is to drill deeper and deeper into a market, as if that’s where the meaning of greatest value is ... like gold or oil. “With marketers already so focused – to the point of obsession – with their own worlds, we find that the greatest contribution we can make is to put their views into context,” says Phoenix Research director Jeanette McKee. “This is rather like taking them up to look at the view from the top of Mt Eden. We try to inspire our clients with a panorama perspective.” The clients Phoenix (www.phoenix.co.nz) works best with, she says, are “like-minded learners”. “The team at DraftFCB are a remarkable example. As strategists, they have that all-too rare quality of having the patience to take time for the deeper engagement with research that results in invaluable learning for the long term.” Phoenix has contributed to the agency’s success with award-winning campaigns like Depression. There is a Way Through it (John Kirwan) and Like Minds Like Mine, and It’s Not OK (the campaign against family violence). “Our prime focus is on change,” says McKee. “We seek to evolve our client base aligned to the big winds of economic, social and technological change. We are less FMCG and more – but not exclusively – services-driven with a strong foray into social marketing.” © Copyright AdMedia magazine October 2009 All material appearing is copyright and cannot be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher. Please contact the copyright officer: Ph 0-9-845 5114, Email copyright@mediaweb.co.nz.	Username Password Keep me logged in on this computer Forgotten your password? 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Research : Question time

Focus groups, the telephone and (shudder) creative testing are still core business, but the emergence of the online panel is a key new factor helping keep the research sector afloat in 2009. Patricia Moore reports.

By Patricia Moore

Ask market researchers about the effects of the recession and responses are mixed: Phrases like “feeling the pain” and “pretty rough” suggest it hasn’t been all wine and roses over the past 12 to 18 months.
Roy Morgan’s Mark Dansey says the situation is “pretty stable”, perhaps helped by keeping client fees at last year’s level, while at Synovate, Debra Hall says they’re finding a significant shift in the type of work being commissioned. “It’s much more strategically demanding; more demanding on the delivery of advice at the end of it.”
And in Christchurch, Carl Davidson at Research First says the recession has made people think much more carefully about what they need to know most.
Many multinational clients have slashed local research budgets, says Colin Yee at Research International. This has seen continuous projects – like brand and advertising tracking – maintained, albeit at a reduced level.
Ad hoc projects have been cut back to only the ultra-important, he says. “This has had a major impact on industry revenues because ad hoc makes up about 45% of the market.” Further reductions in spending by government departments, significant users of research, would continue to impact negatively, he says.
But along with slashed budgets has come a kind of breathless enthusiasm for new techniques. “People are clamouring for all sorts of new methods because they seem novel and sexy,” says Davidson. “There’s nothing wrong with that in principle but in practice you need to be very careful to match the media to the audience.”
The online panel is probably the most widely used of the ‘novel’ methodologies. “Web surveying has been a bit of a saviour for our industry in a way, because it’s reduced the relative cost per interview,” says Colmar Brunton’s Chris Vaughan.
He acknowledges there are some groups that may not be represented, “but with over 80% of New Zealanders now online in some shape or form, you’re excluding only a relatively small chunk of the total population.”
Twenty years ago people were concerned about face-to-face interviewing being replaced by the telephone, says Tim Grafton, executive director at UMR Wellington. “What we’re seeing now is a transition to online. It’s ubiquitous and there’s a very high proportion of people who are online and easy with it.”
And tens of thousands are leaping at the chance to have their say. Panellists at Buzz Channel now number over 30,000 and growing, reports general manager Justin Boyes. “In the five or six years since we started, online has become the growing area of research methodology.” It also enables clients to get results fast. “We’ve done work where we’ve been briefed in the morning, had a survey out in the afternoon and had initial results ready that evening. But those are extreme cases.”
So is the telephone now a survey-free zone and has the focus group gone the way of the Dodo?
Self-completed web surveys are fast and remarkably cost-effective, and they’re completed when you have time to complete them,” says Davidson. “But it’s very difficult to have complexity in any self-completed survey. A telephone survey is a conversation and research is really a guided conversation; with web surveys there’s no opportunity to have a conversation. No ability to understand where there’s confusion.”
“We still maintain a telephone call centre and also have our SAYit [online] panel,” says UMR’s Grafton. “We’ve done runs where we’ve asked questions using both methodologies and haven’t found particularly wide gaps in terms of the outcomes we’re getting.”
And focus groups? “They’re still important,” he says. “A lot of stuff can be done online but there’s no substitute for actually sighting people in a focus group. Different tools and techniques which can be brought to the live situation give greater depth than doing stuff online.”
Indeed for many projects, tradition rules. Roy Morgan’s main product, its Single Source survey, (based on 12,000 respondents) is still the product of choice in many cases, says Dansey, and Colin Yee reports diaries are still the major currency for measuring radio audiences in almost every country in the world.
But are we in the midst of a data explosion? “Everyone’s got bucketloads of the stuff,” says Chris Vaughan. “It’s about being able to make sense of it and make use of it, rather than just having vast amounts of it.”
At this year’s World Advertising Research Centre conference in London, chairman Rory Sutherland (ECD, OgilvyOne London) raised the issue of over-reliance on data and analysis and the effect on creativity. “It’s easier to count the bottles than describe the wine,” noted one speaker.
There were also references to ‘the rise of the arithmocracy – a group whose obsession with numbers and measurement is stifling creativity’.
“In a recession where accountants have come very much to the forefront of most businesses, counting is valued and creativity is not,” says Synovate’s Hall. “It’s the rise of process over imagination.”
“Research is about minimising the risk,” says Vaughan. “A lot of the time the most effective research is done in the very early stage of the process. If you’re going to spend your money it’s better to do it at that end rather than when things have gone badly wrong.”
So are the arithmocrats prevailing? Are calculators and spreadsheets contributing to what’s often been a less than joyous relationship between researchers and creatives?
Paul Catmur, ECD at Barnes, Catmur & Friends: “I think data and analysis are very important but use them as a guide to where creativity ought to go, rather than to judge creativity.”
He doubts research can decide whether or not a campaign will be successful. “If researching advertising concepts worked as well as its proponents say, then every ad would work its socks off – and they don’t,” he says.
Where there’s a weak marketing department, you’ll find an over-reliance on research, says Toby Talbot, ECD at DDB.
“They can’t make decisions themselves and lean on market research companies to make them for them. Research is essential and a wonderful tool. It’s interesting – talk to any creative person in New Zealand and one of the things they love about being here is that clients don’t use research as some kind of crutch. By and large it’s used sparingly and in an intelligent way.”
Attitudes to research have moved on from getting in a bunch of housewives to choose the best ad, says Talbot. He cites client Cadbury as one of the new breed. “They’re very wedded to qualitative and quantitative research but ultimately respect the creative process and understand that research isn’t the answer in total.”
It’s a process of taking on board the points that are relative and ignoring those that aren’t, he says. “The best marketers are able to actually go through research and ignore things that may be a bum steer and take on board the ones that are salient.”
Research versus creativity; the debate goes on. The best and most effective market research is conducted when there’s collaboration between all stakeholders – a recurring theme at the recent conference of the Market Research Society of NZ, says president Horst Feldhaeuser.
“But to get to this point requires willingness and trust, with all stakeholders being open to sharing information and strategies.”
Delegates also discussed the possibilities new media and social communities present for researchers. “Basically it is changing the way we do things. Social media can now be used as a means of gathering information and as a platform for people to become more than just a respondent – have an active input into what’s going on.”
It’s an area where researchers and agencies can work more closely together, says Feldhaeuser. “We need to decide what we are going to do with all this information.”
“Using social networks is a very new area and we’re all learning about the best ways to actually tap into them,” says Justin Boyes. “But it’s something we’re going to see developing over the next year or two.”
Already businesses are using online ‘community’ panels to engage at a deeper level with their immediate customer base. “It’s the fastest growing area in the research world,” says Hall. These in-house, organisational-aimed panels, merge research, PR and marketing by encouraging customers to dialogue with them.
“It’s really turning the tables on the ‘we ask the questions, you answer’ method,” says Hall. “In the community-panel world customers are asking questions as well. They’re engaging and deciding what they want to talk about and they become an insider group of people who care about the brand and are keen to share their opinions and ideas.
“It’s an incredibly rich source of information which researchers can then interpret and advise on what next needs to be done. You need to get into that space.”

The contextualists
Many people believe that a researcher’s role – qualitative or quantitative – is to drill deeper and deeper into a market, as if that’s where the meaning of greatest value is ... like gold or oil.
“With marketers already so focused – to the point of obsession – with their own worlds, we find that the greatest contribution we can make is to put their views into context,” says Phoenix Research director Jeanette McKee.
“This is rather like taking them up to look at the view from the top of Mt Eden. We try to inspire our clients with a panorama perspective.”
The clients Phoenix (www.phoenix.co.nz) works best with, she says, are “like-minded learners”. “The team at DraftFCB are a remarkable example. As strategists, they have that all-too rare quality of having the patience to take time for the deeper engagement with research that results in invaluable learning for the long term.”
Phoenix has contributed to the agency’s success with award-winning campaigns like Depression. There is a Way Through it (John Kirwan) and Like Minds Like Mine, and It’s Not OK (the campaign against family violence).
“Our prime focus is on change,” says McKee. “We seek to evolve our client base aligned to the big winds of economic, social and technological change. We are less FMCG and more – but not exclusively – services-driven with a strong foray into social marketing.”

© Copyright AdMedia magazine October 2009

All material appearing is copyright and cannot be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher.

Please contact the copyright officer: Ph 0-9-845 5114, Email copyright@mediaweb.co.nz.

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Research : Question time

Focus groups, the telephone and (shudder) creative testing are still core business, but the emergence of the online panel is a key new factor helping keep the research sector afloat in 2009. Patricia Moore reports.