Not Panels, It's Engagement!

A new one from our friend -

....take advantage of the opportunities it presents; to gather and share more data; to link clients with better information; to connect them with others and a potential to expand insight.

(WWGD, Collins Business, 2009)

Well said.


I thought that this was very insightful and also very powerful in terms of capturing the latest opportunities

I wrote an e-mail this morning about how we can use the latest shifts in technical and philosophical (AKA Digital) movements to stretch research. And I hit upon a great quote from Jeff Jarvis that really stretched me and hit home. It isn't a new concept by any means but never heard anyone be so clear:

"Our fixation should not be with our clients. It should be with and on the people our clients want to engage, sell and interact with". Said it all about engagement I think.

In most markets advertising and marketing is changing and the dynamics are altering markets - for example Google offering software in return for ad services. And Microsoft also playing in this space.

But how is Research different?

a) In most markets you take advantage of increasing search efficiency to use keywords to deliver clicks that will drive more leads. In research this would mean that you would build panels for example by leveraging keywords like 'surveys' and so on - yet these are precisely the kind of people that we don't want too much of as they are likely to be more of the 'professional respondent' type - so efficiency isn't as high!

b) In many markets, some dynamics are moving to lower cost or 'free' in the name of efficiency. This is often supported by advertising models eg airlines. But in research this is difficult because of the wall between research and marketing

And that is what makes this industry so fascinating

Every industry uses the internet in its own image.

Some use it to sell more products
Some use it to streamline service
Some use it to extract more and more information so that they can sell to advertisers

Research uses the internet in its own image: to gather more information as a platform for insight. And that information is rightly becoming more and more qualitative (read conversational) these days. But is that the sum total of our image? Should we not be using the internet for other opportunities across the end to end spectrum of our world? I think that the answer is not so clear now but relatively inevitable. And this is what keeps me going each day.

You?

PS I have been away from the Blog for a while. No reasonIt isn't laziness, just that not all of the rules of the game have changed!!!

I hear internet / on-line called a methodology a great deal. I think that in today's world this is somewhat misleading and actually misses the bulk of the opportunities. I think that another M word is more appropriate: Martini

Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere

But that's not the sum total. We must break with the method word because it always was slightly misleading and now it is doesn't synchronise to what the internet will actually do

I am a very keen student of the 'C' Space - in my eyes this is about how we transform and integrate to practice the principles of web 2.0 to research 2.0. This is a current mission for me to synchronise to the future as I have said many times in this Blog.

What frustrates me in much of the industry is the focus on One 'C' - the Community. This is important but we miss a trick as an industry if we only move around Communities.

I will be exploring this area more in the Blog in the weeks to come and challenging myself with some of the concepts.

The transaction costs of creating a mixed group of people have collapsed in recent times. When you consider that groups are how we identify ourselves, how we add insights, how we propose to win business, how we party, how we meet our future spouse, how we work and so on this has simply enormous consequences. Ok, big picture. But let's go even bigger - yes just liek Virgin Galactic if you like (no sponsorship paid for that mention).

What is it that holds groups together? Fundamentally it is trust, right? Trust in each other, trust in the cause, trust in the transaction, trust in the relationship etc etc. And clearly the nature of trust is changing too and being expressed in new ways. For example, I have heard it said many times that eBay's vital currency is trust, that Pierre Omidyar its founder basically believed that people are good. I am sure that Wikipedia is maybe based around a similar narrative. Well, I know it is.

So the point is, when we talk about 'panels' there is often an inherent distrust of the panelists, the data quality and so on. And whilst the magnitude and direction of this distrust has changed over time, it is still there in some way in some quarters. So why it is good enough for eBay and not for 'panels'.

That gap is profoundly interesting....