Verbatim is in the running to be named best Marketing & Advertising Blog by the good folks at BostInnovation, thanks to your nominations. We’re up against some stiff competition.
Each week, we work hard to bring you new research, consumer insights best practices, social media observations, and hopefully some laughs.
All we need is your votes – it’s easy! Just head over to the BostInno Insider Awards, and select Verbatim from under the Marketing & Advertising: Company blog category.MORE…
As mobile devices are embraced by a wider audience of consumers, a new mobile class has emerged.
The freedom and control that connected consumers get from their smartphones and tablets carries new sets of challenges and opportunities for brands and retailers trying to keep in step with consumers’ needs and expectations and for market researchers …MORE…
In the field of marketing research, there is a simmering debate between those who believe neuroscience-based tools will make self-reporting obsolete, and those who have kept faith with humans’ ability to consciously understand and explain their own actions. But I say: Why choose?MORE…
When having a face-to-face conversation with someone, we’ve been conditioned to maintain eye contact or to ask relevant questions to demonstrate that we’re really engaged—this is called “active listening.” While having a conversation online may add a layer of complexity, active listening online is still possible.MORE…
2012 is right around the corner, and this is the time when the market research industry is rife with prognostications about where we’re all headed.
We asked a few Communispacers about what they thought the biggest trends and opportunities for 2012 would be, and while they all protested oracle-status, what emerged is nonetheless an interesting look at the big picture of market research.MORE…
One of the common questions I hear from clients is whether or not research results from our private, branded, online communities are valid: Are the findings biased? Can we generalize what we learn from community members to other groups? Are the differences observed significant?MORE…
In 2012, according to Greenbook Research Industry Trends’ Fall 2011 Report, Market Research Online Communities (or MROCs) will see “massive” adoption by research buyers. As traditional sources of insight (focus groups, consumer panels) suffer problems with recruiting, attrition, decreased relevance, and respondent fatigue, more brands are turning to market research online communities to build more intimate relationship with consumers.
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Last week, Patagonia took out this full-page ad in The New York Times:
The message was delivered in the wake of a CBS 60 Minutes segment which revealed that a staggering 25% of American children live in poverty, a national recession, unprecedented consensus about environmental peril, and raging political division.MORE…
The “gamification of market research” is a hot topic these days. Contests, badges, clues, and prizes are filling (or dare I say “littering”) the online research landscape, so the thoughtful and nuanced presentation by Peter Harrison at the recent ESOMAR 3D conference came as a refreshing frenzy-buster.
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In our latest webinar today I presented some examples of how consumer and shopper insights are driving growth for retailers and brands such as Walmart, GlaxoSmithKline and Kraft. These organizations are realizing the power of insights to build better relationships with retail partners, build new knowledge of the shopper’s mindset and attitudes, and improve in-store marketing communications.
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The term co-creation is so hot right now. I think it really caught on when Vitamin Water and Mountain Dew had their Facebook fans develop new flavors for the beverage behemoths. However, new product developers are tasked with more than coming up with new flavors, packaging and names for line extensions.MORE…
Some fiction writers wring their hands about it, retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble celebrate it, but nobody denies it: Memoirs are hot. As a percentage of books and in absolute numbers, more memoirs than ever are being published and sold.
Beyond the lurid allure of reading about abusive clergy, transgendered parents, extreme poverty, extreme wealth, or celebrity eating disorders, I think readers flock to even quiet, non-sensational memoir for one fundamental reason: MORE…
With the extreme adoption rates of Smartphones and the growing number of tablet owners, marketers and market researchers are faced with the challenge of connecting to a new brand of consumer. Understanding how these consumers think, act and consume information is critical to fostering successful interactions.MORE…
Is it me or is it pretty transparent and predictable when retail sales will hit the calendar?
As a consumer I’ve been trained to ‘hold out’ on making a purchase until I know I can expect a sale. As a marketer, I’m disappointed when I see trite, overused attempts at making a “standard” sales event somehow interesting or fun.MORE…
Here at Communispace, we’ve been working really hard to bring companies like Qantas Frequent Flyer, Frucor, Taste Living, and ANZ National Bank (NZ) unique and sometimes surprising or unexpected insights about their customers. Listening to and gaining trust with customers is so critical for companies today, as it informs every aspect of the business.MORE…
This year we set out to do something different. We wanted to develop an entirely new brand experience that would allow Communispace’s sales force, employees, clients, and agency partners to tell the Communispace story – easily and effectively.
Communispace is a unique offering. If you’ve worked with us, you understand what we do. But that very uniqueness makes it a difficult story for many to retell. There are all kinds of situations where this might apply. For example, an agency partner may be including a Communispace community as a part of a recommendation to their client—and we’re not there to explain. Or maybe an existing client is planning on sharing a big insight with a larger internal team—who isn’t aware of the community or the activities within it. Without the right tools, that story can easily be a complex one to tell.MORE…
Truth and fantasy are battling for your customers hearts …
… and it’s a battle that’s happening in advertising and marketing departments everywhere.MORE…
At its best, commercial and corporate ethnography provides insights into the particulars of daily life. What are peoples’ rituals, their frustrations, their habits, the disrupters to habits? These are the insights that can drive the success and minimize the adoption problems associated with new products and services.
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Last week we launched our newest research paper, Tech Fast Forward: Plug in to See the Brighter Side of Life. Conducted in partnership with Ogilvy Chicago, our premise was that “tech fast forward” kids and their parents—those consumers who tend to adopt and use more sophisticated technology than the average person—could serve as a leading indicator of where all Americans are eventually headed as a society; a crystal ball to reveal—or at least give us a hint about—how our values, aspirations, and behaviours are evolving. MORE…
In the last week, I think I’ve seen at least 20 new articles on “How To Use Twitter” or “The Pitfalls of Technology” in light of the latest Weinergate scandal. The Huffington Post suggests that politicians (and others) just cancel their accounts and today’s New York Times gives some obvious advice, such as not DMing anything we wouldn’t want public.
Here’s my take: it’s not about the technology. It’s about us.MORE…
When Communispace first started building private online communities, using social media for market research was far from an inevitability. The connections that social tools have demonstrated the power to forge—bridging a digital chasm to link people from all corners of the globe and all mindsets—and the power they give people to create and share, have since become instrumental in businesses’ understanding of their customers … and their prospective customers.MORE…
If you have been gauging the value of your online community by the size of its membership, or trying to grow your community in the hope of increasing the number insights, then you might want to reconsider your strategy and the assumptions that are driving it.MORE…
With a little back-of-the-envelope math, companies spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 13x more on advertising than they do on market research. If we broadly defined market research as “listening” and advertising as “talking” we could say companies spend 13x more talking than they do listening. MORE…
When a company’s goal is insight and co-creation with customers, active participation is a crucial measure of not only the quality, but the cost-effectiveness, of its investment in social media.
That’s why in 2007, Communispace analyzed participation data from 66 of our private, recruited online communities. In the course of that research, we found that our average monthly participation and contribution rates were significantly higher, and our average monthly “lurker” rate significantly lower …MORE…
Julie Wittes Schlack explores the intersection of neuroscience and market research, shedding light on how feelings affect product and brand involvement.
Take a look at this:
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The transformation companies experience when incorporating the voice of the customer can be as transformative as the effects of email and the Web. The ROI and business impact of customer insights and next-generation market research can, therefore, be enormous.
Yesterday, Communispace’s Vice President of Business Strategy, Bill Alberti, presented a whirlwind tour of eight case studies of Communispace communities, all packed neatly into a digestible, sharable 30-minute webinette.MORE…
As you may recall, fellow blogger Amanda Fraga recently let you inside the world of a Community Manager (or CM) here at Communispace (complete with some pretty awesome 80s references). Now it’s my turn to invite you inside a day in the life of an Associate Community Manager (or ACM), like myself. Like Amanda, I think it may be helpful to outline my role in layman’s terms, but this time we’re moving to one of my favorite decades: the 90s.MORE…
Communispace Senior Researcher Mike Jennings introduces our new research on corporate social media marketing, which compares engagement on public, branded websites with participation in private, branded online communities.
I’m getting old. I started working at Communispace in 2006, which feels like a lifetime, in social media years. Back then I had a MySpace page, Facebook was for college students and apparently people were looking for me on Classmates. MORE…
A few weeks ago fellow blogger, Nora Tickell, introduced a series of posts about how Communispace works (and how explaining what it is that we do here can sometimes leave the listener with a blank stare of confusion) and what goes on behind the scenes. So here goes: a day in the life of a Communispace Community Manager, in layman’s ‘80s terms. Why? Why not – it’s only the best decade ever.MORE…
This month, Fast Company published their list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, as well as their top ten most innovative companies by industry. If you work at one of the awesome organizations on the list, congratulations. We were thrilled and excited to see a number of Communispace clients recognized as innovation leaders. Here’s a small selection from our customers that made the list:MORE…
Today I’m pleased to join dozens, maybe even hundreds, of other Next Generation Market Research (NGMR) bloggers in a simultaneous post of our individual predictions about what will and won’t matter most to the market research industry in the next couple of years. So with no further ado:
What matters (or will, very soon)MORE…
The potentially biased responses of members in private online communities can be a concern for businesses hoping to use these platforms for insight and co-creation. In my role as Director of Research, I am frequently asked to explain the ins and outs of what makes online communities tick and how to best use them to explore research questions. It occurred to me that, although I usually do this for our clients, others out there might have similar questionsMORE…
Online retail is an industry in nearly constant flux, and 2011 will be a year of disruption. The rise of group-buying sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, flash-sales merchants Gilt Group and Jetsetter and location-based services like shopkick easily attest to that.
From dynamic personalization to location-based tie-ins to mobile and social integration, technology providers are racing to compete for retailers’ budgets, and there is no shortage of “this is the marketers’ Holy Grail” talk. MORE…
It seems like once a month I’m invited to a hip, new social network, poised as the anti-Facebook. Out of curiosity, I tend to join (ironically, about half the time, logging in through Facebook Connect). Each one of these networks has its own niche. There’s Ping for music, Path for photos and Quora for questions. But what additional value does each of these networks bring? When will the fragmentation become so great that the market begins to reject the idea of new social networks?MORE…
“If you build it, they will come,” says the voice from the cornfield. While the voice might be right when it comes to building a baseball field in Iowa, the directive doesn’t hold up when it comes to creating a community.
It seems everyone is trying to build some type of community – online or off – for their company or their cause. After all, the idea of community is a compelling one: it brings people together and gets them working toward a common goal. But it’s not as simple as carving out a space and getting people to come. They might show up, but they’re not likely to engage.MORE…
Okay. I admit it. I went a little overboard in December. And it looks like I am not the only one. Online holiday shopping reached an all-time high and sales for apparel and high-end restaurants, food stores and other retailers were also up year after year. So I guess I am in good company.MORE…
Yesterday morning, Communispacers congregated in our largest meeting space to welcome our 300th employee (an addition to our U.K. team). We were joined remotely by team members from around the world. One month ago, I stood in the same place alongside new recruits, an open-armed welcome being my first impression of my new company.
I’m a big believer in first impressions. When working with a new hire, I always try to uncover them early. Once you’re fully embedded, it’s easy to accept those things which earlier seemed quirky, ineffective or just flat out stupid. For that reason fresh new reactions – even when threatening to the status quo – are invaluable.MORE…
With apologies to Sam Walton, the customer isn’t boss. Think of the relationship you have with your boss. Is that the relationship you want with your customer? I hope not.*
If you could create the ideal relationship with your customer, it probably would look more like the relationships you have with your best friend, your husband, wife, mother or father. It would be a relationship built on mutual understanding, respect and empathy — not one set in the context of annual reviews and the ever-present threat of being fired.MORE…
For the past several years, the IdeaSpace team has partnered with Bain & Company, a global business consulting firm, to generate qualitative fodder for their Retail Holiday Newsletters. Using the perspectives shared by members in the IdeaSpace communities (Men’s Space, Women’s Space and Our Space), Bain is able bring to life consumers’ feelings and attitudes toward holiday shopping year to year, and provide a colorful dimension to holiday spending stats.
We wanted to share this year’s first installment, which is sent to all of Bain’s retail clients. Happy retail-reading!MORE…
My role requires me to spend a good deal of time thinking about what I don’t know, which is more fun than it may sound. I investigate new tools which have the potential to be used with our communities to uncover members’ insights in new ways. This exposes me to a world of innovative developers, apps and ideas that are constantly changing to keep up with the increasingly technology-centric consumer, which I think is pretty damn cool.
Learning to think about problems and potential solutions in entirely new ways has been both exciting and humbling. Our innovative process has made me more and more aware of what I don’t know—converting “unknown unknowns” into “known unknowns.”MORE…
Social Co-creation is a big buzzword now; it’s sort of crowdsourcing, evolved. Using customers to help you throughout the new product (or service) development process is an exciting opportunity that’s been made vastly easier by social technologies.
Most of the case studies in this area talk a lot about idea sites or e-suggestion boxes. What these platforms do is allow for companies to publicly collect ideas from their customers or employees through a community-like environment. The companies that have done a good job with this have a process for vetting these ideas and building on the good ones to help them innovate. Doug Williams, an analyst with Forrester, recently wrote a great case study on Ford’s ideas site, “Your Ideas.”MORE…
As our CEO, Diane Hessan, is fond of saying, “If you like our client list, you should see our non-client list.” With names on our roster such as Kraft Foods, Bank of America, Microsoft and about 100 more great brands, our clients are only a handful of the companies who would benefit from having their customers at their fingertips. Consider the following companies who are our non-clients:
Yesterday I held another webinette (it’s a mini-webinar in case you’re wondering). For this session, I focused on three great case stories from our amazing clients – Godiva, InterContinental Hotels Group/Chase Card Services and ConAgra Foods – that showcased the power of using private online communities for insight. All these stories have one important thing in common: they used their most important customers to help them grow their business.
You can listen to the recording of the webinette below. In it, I give some very specific examples of how we were able to use the community to be really creative with how we learned from customers and the details around how it actually works. I hope it’s helpful for you. Let me know, will you?MORE…
I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”MORE…
A story surfaced today on TechCrunch.com claiming that a Facebook employee boasted the company “has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents outlining their social strategy.” Besides being way uncool to yammer on about at a cocktail party, it poses an interesting question: Would you even want to know your competitors’ plans?MORE…
Tell a traditional market-research audience that you propose to talk with the same group of 300–500 “respondents” on a weekly, even daily, basis over the course of many months, and half the group will react in horror, voicing legitimate concerns about bias, practice effect, and unblinded studies and posing the inevitable question: “Is it qual or is it quant?”MORE…
One of the best parts of my job is that I get to spend significant time with Communispace clients. My goal is to meet with at least 50 clients in the course of a year, and when I see them, I often ask these questions: What have you learned since we last met? What is changing in your field? What did you used to think was true that no longer is?
The answers are always fascinating—and recently, we synthesized comments from 100 insights professionals about their “New Normal.” The result is a list of 8 New Rules for Listening to Customers. As follow-up, we’ve gotten reactions from another 200 people, and we are currently getting additional responses from attendees at the recent ARF Re:think Conference in NYC where I’ll be presenting these to a large audience for the first time.MORE…
