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opinion

Bad Call! What’s your worst consumer product prediction?

Daniel S.
3.18.2013
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For my high school graduation gift my brother Steven, who had just returned from Japan, bought me a minidisc player. It was so futuristic! The minidisc was far superior to its older brother, the compact disc. It was smaller, durable …MORE…

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Dehyping Emerging Market Research: Communities, Social Media Analytics, Mobile, and Gamification [Video]

6.22.2012
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Julie W.S.

Yesterday afternoon, GreenBook’s Leonard Murphy and I sat down with some colleagues to discuss “what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s just talk” in the world of emerging market research tools and techniques. It was the very first Communispace UNwebinar, meaning that instead of a forty-slide Powerpoint deck and predetermined talk track, we polled the audience about their thoughts on emerging consumer insights techniques and used field data to kickstart an open conversation. The result was a lively – and at times – provocative discussion that explored new market research methods from online communities and social media analytics to mobile and gamification.MORE…

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Content consumption—not just content creation—is critical to business innovation

Shruti S.
6.7.2012
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You can’t force innovation. Doing so is like sticking a Post-It note on your monitor that says “Be Innovative!” It just doesn’t work (I may have tried…). It also leads to a very common trap: attempting to push the innovation frontier at the wrong stage.

Innovating at the delivery juncture in the research stream is becoming just as imperative as innovating at the onset.

The origination and ideation steps in market research often receive the most affection. What tools to use and research techniques to employ matter. How we excavate information to find gems of understanding about consumer behavior matters. Methodology matters. Accordingly, how to curate insightful dialogue occupies the brunt of how we spend our time, money, and mindshare.MORE…

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Giving Consumers a C-Level Seat in the Boardroom

5.22.2012
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Amanda F.

First Best Buy. Then Yahoo! And now, JP Morgan.

Each day, a new CEO/Chairman being fired/let go/resigning (choose one) from their post. At first I was sure the person who was programming the elevator Captivate! was playing some sort of joke. Nope. And I won’t comment or insert my personal opinion on whether their allegations were simple oversights or terrible ethical decisions. There is, however, one thing I feel like I can ascertain (without ever being one myself), regardless of whether you are a good or bad CEO – it’s a tough (insert explicative word of choice here) job.MORE…

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Using emotions to plan and advance your learning agenda

David F.
5.9.2012
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Emotions are the central organizing process of our thinking and behavior. What makes this process so messy – so frustratingly and beautifully messy! – is that it is driven less by immediate response to discrete stimuli and more by the ever-changing and ever-unstable tone and tenor of our relationships. What that means for brands is that affinity and loyalty is the result of how we feel about being in a relationship with (i.e. consumers of) those brands. The smart brands are figuring this out and driving the movement toward customer-centricity and conversational marketing.

This insight isn’t wholly new. In 1740, the philosopher David Hume asserted in his Treatise on Human Nature that “Reason is, and ought to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”MORE…

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Micro Center wants to know how they can get more of my game-related purchases

5.2.2012
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Chris O.

Today, I received an email from Micro Center asking for my help: they want to understand how they can win more of my video game purchases. If I still had time to play computer games (besides the occasionally Civilization IV bender) I’d probably be more useful. But, I figured, let’s see what we can do.

I like Micro Center.

I like that it’s the closest I can get to Akihabara without having to fly to Japan. I like that when I was helping my brother build a PC for his video-editing business, there were people there who were excited to help us build a monster of a machine – and who were truly knowledgeable about the pros and cons of faster dual-core versus slower quad-core processors. MORE…

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Disclaimer: Based on a true story

Stephanie B.
4.13.2012
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Stories surround us, from coworkers recapping a weekend away, to smells and tastes, to memories we acquire throughout our life. As humans we inherently wear the hat of storyteller and we weave our experiences into truth and fiction; depending on who you are, that title also comes with varying degrees of embellishment. For better or for worse we are all liars.

“Scientists have discovered that the memories we use to form our own life stories are boldly fictionalized.” — Jonathan GotschallMORE…

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Follow the (Thought) Leader

3.14.2012
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Julie W.S.

“Thought leader” is a moniker that’s applied all too loosely these days (e.g. “Ryan Seacrest is a thought leader in the Text-to-Vote space.”) But sometimes it’s applied to someone like Leonard Murphy, who is the real deal.

I first heard Lenny speak at the exceptionally well-designed Market Research in the Mobile World conference that he co-sponsored with the Merlien Institute and led last summer in Atlanta. He was like Katie Couric or Charlie Rose at their best, able to ask a really penetrating question—more than once if necessary—while maintaining a cordial and safe environment for discussion.MORE…

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