Not Panels, It's Engagement!

It is true that in our world perception is very often more important than reality. In fact perception IS reality. Ever been to LA? Well yes then you know what that means.

There are two aspects to this that I find interesting right now:

a) how do we actually know how consumers and respondents comprehend our surveys? Of course any good researcher will tell you that there is an art and a skill to successful qre writing. Of course that is true. However like any art and skill it needs to update! For example, in Hong Kong recently I have witnessed that open ended questions have poor undetailed answers on-line. That goes against the wisdom! Well it is down to design of the qre. We think we know what people are doing. We think we understand the process of self-completion but we do not. Well not enough anyway. Cognitive Testing has thrown me some amazing insights into the power of perception - how the same question can be answered two different ways on-line based on perception. Now this has always been true, it is just that the on-line curve is newer and less explored!

b) what makes someone join our panel? Do we really know why people join? I am forever asking myself how do I recruit more people? What do they want? What will make it more efficient? Do they perceive that we are trying to sell them something? Do they need extra reassurance perceiving this all as a scam. It is NOT!

How do I deal with the perception issue. Guess! Engage, understand. Try and try again...

Today I met an old colleague. Naturally it was on-line. We worked together for over two years and had many good times. We really had a sense of building something back then. I remember when he told me that he was leaving - he was quite nervous. Looking back it was a good move for him - a project where he could create his own panel for an actual community of residents to solicit feedback and test new ideas.

How great! Moving the on-line panel into the social sphere. He has just won an Award as well for the work. This is true democracy in action....a representative community panel where new ideas can be tested and feedback sought for the improvement of everyone's lives.

Just a thought. Panels. Engagement. Democracy. Well done my friend.

I read this article today which really interested me. It is about the future of the internet and I agree with most of its conclusions. What really makes me jump though is this notion of the 'Flat World'. This is nothing but an apology or iteration of business as usual I think.

True, I am very excited by an inter-connected world where the internet surrounds us and binds us together. The Virtual world becoming more real than the real world itself. However this will not happen on a flat plain!

- access to the technology (like food) will be available only to those who have entitlement. Read anything by Hopi Sen to uncover this great concept of 'entitlement'
- the dominant spatial geographies will drive the technology and create a core and a periphery (most likely US, China, North Asia and India at the core).

It is clear however that global expansion is a given. This will create opportunities not just to expand the on-line research message (and the engagement paradigm) but also access to new types of data and insights through greater connectivity (wireless, smart machines and so on)

I am excited (and yes, a little nervous). We will have to work hard to keep up with this!

'Ethnogagement' - the fusion of engagement and ethnography is a real undiscovered gem of the on-line panel. My feelings on this were cemented after reading the first chapter of 'Juicing the Orange' by Fallon and Senn. I quote:

"Be relentless in your interrogation of the target market until you find this proprietary advantage."

And how do we actually do that? Well of course the Focus Group / In-depth is and always has been a key ally. Yet now we can go further. If we want to understand people and how they interact with our brand / product / service then we must observe them in their world. Ethnographic techniques do exactly that. The panel leads to two distinct advantages over the traditional method of doing this:

- it is ongoing, so we can observe at different points in time and in truly different environments
- we can use new technologies such as SMS and digital cameras, phone cameras to capture richness and flavour closer to the point of transaction / moment of truth and capture the participants own world, not a world with the researcher in it

I see this as having a big influence for idea generation or creating genuine 'Blue Oceans'. What do you say? Engage with people in what they are passionate about - they will provide you the answers to move your marketing forward. Your brain and their brain is a powerful concoction, better than using the respondents ears and hands.

Juicing the Orange - www.juicingtheorange.com

Ok, yes, so we can use a kind of Fan Club or Viral Engagement, leveraging our existing panelists to do recruitment. That just seems like a fancy way of saying that we have a turbo-charged referral program. Another concept which seems to be used increasingly these days is to tap into groups who have large permission (engaged) lists to help build our panels - so called vertical communities. Why is this happening?

- these potential participants are very engaged and have a vested interest to see their organisation or community flourish
- the permission lists are normally free to use for the panel builder so recruitment is very efficient (maybe free research offered or such like in return for so many Double Opt-Ins)

So current examples are charities, sports organisations and other communities found on-line (or offline). Pick your community and benefit the panelist and the panel organisation. Is that win-win? Once on the panel these participants are driven to engage and complete surveys since they want to deliver impressive rewards for their commune! Neat.

Currently I am upgrading the panels to have a greater engagement with panelists. This has to be the way to go since we must accept that we operate in a competitive environment for respondents (or survey / research participants) . It is meant to be fun and it needs to be beneficial in a variety of ways to panelists. Well here are some of my ideas:

-Why do we have such an issue with response rates? Well the answer of course is poor panel management (or the lack of it) where e-mails go out of date and are undeliverable and signed up panelists are lost in the clutter of so many other time intensive tasks! Questionnaires too long; points not enough; not enough surveys; surveys don't work or too boring; can I unsubscribe? You get the idea! Well what I am playing with is actually rewarding for consecutive survey completions. The more surveys I complete as a panelists consecutively the more points (bonus) I earn. I believe that permission is about anticipation, relevance and personalised. Well that leads to anticipation. Send me my survey now. I will do it!

- Stop Interrupting me! Amazing how most panels still use interruption for recruitment even though our core arguments revolve around permission! Let's use permission and engagement here too. If we are distant from direct marketing then let's do it....Creating a fan club from existing panelists. Use interested (and capable) panelists to be sneezers and recruit many other panelists. You know those people who are connected, websites, blogs, discussions - you get the idea. It is just plain efficient and actually gives better panelists with better response rates

Yes, I have seen the light. Finally I hear you say. Now using SMS for surveys is quite sexy I guess as is SMS use to remind survey participants about a task or project which you would like them to undertake. I have witnessed great results with this, especially amongst teenagers.

Can we go further...? How about getting closer to the marketing (and sales) action? Participants SMS us their satisfaction scores or product usage as they leave the store.

I have come across a really great company who can make it happen in an incredible way! The applications of this are many and varied - but it is the ability to combine this with webnography type digital camera stills or phone camera stills that really has me excited! Marketing used to be about the meta-narrative, the one way voice and that has changed. Everyone knows that! Yet research has also been one directional in many ways (which is quite ironic as it should be one industry which has always had conversations), yet now everyone is a researcher! We all provide feedback and don't hesitate to do so. We can all provide diagnostics and evidence to support our case.

Marketing and Research had a story. Now, we are all story tellers.....We are all expert researchers!

And to deliver this engagement for marketing effectiveness - well that is where the panel quality has to be in high order. You just cannot have participants (not respondents!) lapsing through poor service, rewards or bad management.

A note here - it is easy to talk a great game on panel management quality - sampling, recruitment, rewards, purging - geez I hear them every day from every corner of our research world. This market is now becoming so mature that we even have Network Effects starting - you know they all sound the same make the same claims and use the same paradigms! Beware of this - The word Panel means many things to many people. It is not that some people lie or cheat the system just that their core definition is not consistent with yours (or mine). This drives me crazy. The ESOMAR guidelines perhaps helped a little but in reality as far as panels go they left as many holes as they filled in:

Is it a Managed Panel? Yes of course it is managed! And there you go. Presto! We have a managed panel! I want to see us take this discourse further - validation of the panel, evidence on response rates, exposing outsourcing, exact sampling technique - is it really balanced? Most people don't even know whatthat means, especially when they don't have a research background (hence my point below about Researchers being the custodians of panels).

When you get a quality panel with quality people managing it, well that is when you create the platform for engagement.

......And those stories create a picture which leads to better insights and a more efficient business. It is just plain smart.

This is just one way in which I see the panel platform leading to engagement for better business insights. What about qualitative? Well there again I see a change in the similar direction.

Qualitative research has been about discrete, one off projects with Discussion Guides and Reports. This has served us well for many a year and that will not change. However we can now do things that we have always wanted to do.

- Pinpoint targeting of respondents who can give better ideas
- Ongoing dialogue in a real-time anonymous (at first) environment where all are encouraged to contribute
- Ability to go deeper than before due to the re-contact ability of the panel
- Moderator becomes a Customer Group Host
- Combining qualitative insight and verbatim with panel profiling for a 360 degree view - I believe that they call this cohesion

So if there is reverse marketing (Conversation) then this is reverse research. Sprinkle on top some Webnography to understand and get closer to the customer's world and you have real engagement - by digital camera, phone camera - even a blog!

Now we are all telling stories - not just those doing the marketing!

The most obvious manifestation of this is in New Product Development Research. I mean yes sure it is faster on-line with other benefits such as honesty, the ability to do complex designs and visual stimulus, quality of virtual prototypes and so on. What really interests me though is taking NPD research into a whole new area using the panel - a way that is engaging and founded upon engagement!

It is true that consumers don't know what they want. Remember the Walkman? Yes that bombed in research. However I don't accept that consumers are useless in the NPD process sitting there reacting only to what they are exposed to. What about applying a framework?

- what are the crises in the current way of doing things?
- what could be remarkable for this product or service?
- what is always true about this sector or category?

This is the first step framework to NPD research when using the panel. But then let's have ongoing engagement to learn, re-learn and develop prototypes. Recruit early adopters or creatives from the panel. Involve them in the process. Create walking ambassadors or yes the Fan Club. Now we go from static NPD research to dynamic and engaging NPD research.

Which process to you think will provide better and a greater quantity of ideas?

When we talk about engagement you must read Seth Godin - Small is the New Big. I learnt so many good tactics to help engage with my panel participants, but also it reaffirmed my long held belief in the power of dialogue to provide better insights for marketers. What about his idea of the Megaphone for example - where we can create a Fan Club of people willing to go viral about a brand. I am going to set one of these up! Watch this space.....

Everyone seems so caught up in on-line panels these days, like they are the only thing that matters. Of course we know why because it is relatively inexpensive to create a basic panel - but the truth is that a panel has little intrinsic value in its own right! We must not forget that. It is what we do with the panel that matters and this is where a more holistic view or discourse is especially useful.

Whilst the technology providers have given welcome insights and ideas to the 'new' paradigm in research it is research companies who are the custodians of quality as we move forwards - quality of sampling, of management and so on. Remember also that a panel is only 50% of the equation of field quality - the other 50% is the questionnaire itself. Who speaks for the quality of questionnaires!

I tell you two things on this:
1. I see so many people compare on-line results to F2F or CATI and when the results are very different they cry 'oh it is not representative' - I say look at the questionnaire design . Believe me I have seen shockers from many companies
2. Why do we always do things looking backwards in the rear view mirror? Why are we doing web surveys like CATI surveys? I want some Engagement! Some Interaction! Please someone.....

What do you think on that? Do you agree?

I have been working in this field of research for over 7 years now so I think that I have a few observations and experiences that are worth sharing. I started after being inspired by the likes of Seth Godin and Martin Lindstrom (both very good reads actually) and today I am still reading Godin and trying to apply his ideas to my chosen field.

Hence the title above: 'Not Panels, It's Engagement'!

The more I read and do, the more I am convinced that this is the emphasis that we need to maximise our businesses in this field but also our value to our end-clients and the respondents themselves

My name is Jon Briggs. I have started this Blog as a way of expressing my thoughts and feelings about on-line panels and Interactive Research.