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Meredith’s Silver Bullet: Leading with Market Knowledge and Innovation. Women are Talking. We are Listening.By Britta C. Ware, Meredith Corporation and Manila S. Austin, Ph.D., Communispace CorporationBackground

At the January 2009 ARF Industry Leader Forum, Kim Dedeker challenged our industry to bring back the human element in market research. She argued that listening—genuinely hearing and heeding consumer voices—is no longer a core competency and that we have come to over-rely on metrics, measurement, and evaluation. This approach is hurting market research in a number of ways. Our focus on measuring diverts our understanding away from the human experience that underlies our statistics; and as a result we are not getting the kinds of insights needed to produce actionable results, bottom or top line. In today’s world, staying relevant is the key to competitive advantage. Yet, one-sided efforts to reach consumers—direct mail, telephone calls, email spam—turn off rather than engage people. Moreover, consumer skepticism (coupled with the power to screen or block unwanted messages) has prompted people to reject our attempts. This rejection is evident in the falling participation rates that have frustrated market research for years.
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An Ounce of Prevention:
What the Twittering Motrin Moms Taught MarketersBy Julie Wittes Schlack, Michael Jennings, and Katrina Lerman

Social media mavens were recently titillated (or should I say “twitillated”) by a group of irate, Twittering moms who quickly and voluminously voiced their displeasure with an ad posted on Motrin’s website.  The video referred to “wearing your baby” in slings and other baby carriers as being “in fashion,” and suggested that Motrin might help with the back and neck pain caused by carrying children in this manner.

The response was immediate and vociferous. A number of “motrinmoms” tweeted and posted a handful of YouTube videos expressing their view that Johnson & Johnson was patronizing at best, irresponsible at worst.  The brand responded quickly, pulling the ad and posting an apology on the Motrin site.

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Searching for Consumer Insight in Online Social MediaBy Julie Wittes Schlack and Michael JenningsAs the social networking phenomenon grows exponentially in terms of usage, variety, and publicity, marketers are scrambling to understand how to make the best possible use of it.  While targeted online advertising is one obvious application, more companies are becoming interested in gaining insight, or a deep understanding of their customers, by engaging in conversations with them online. In this recent research, we conducted a study that compared three online strategies for obtaining consumer insight. 
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Research & Innovation

Leaving our comfort zone:
21st Century Market Research

Advances in social media, the empowerment of everyday consumers, and the need for more actionable insights fuel a mandate for market research to do more, faster. These developments create great opportunity for researchers to exercise strategic leadership, to inspire and innovate by bringing the voice of the customer to life, to apply new insights to complex business problems, and to produce creative, timely and actionable recommendations to drive business results.

But the use of social media-driven research also fuels the quality debate that’s been raging for years, creating worries about declining response rates, questionable respondents, sample size, and projectability. Market researchers need to consider and address these legitimate concerns, while also recognizing the ways in which online, social, community-based research can actually strengthen validity and enhance quality.
 
To take that leap, it’s helpful to think in terms of tradeoffs, to understand what researchers are risking—and gaining—by shifting their focus and methods.

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