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February 2007 - Strategy Magazine
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Tipping sacred cows
Who will champion research innovation?

by David Moore
page 56

All industries must go through periods of major upheaval and change if they are to survive. Advertising is no exception. Our profession's fresh young faces have seen more of advertising's sacred cows sacrificed in a few short years than their forebears would have seen in an entire career.

We've seen significant changes in consumer behaviour, in media channels, in technology, in advertising campaigns, in data mining and grassroots marketing, and we know more change will occur before we arrive at a new status quo.

But amidst all of this sweeping change, one part of our industry - marketing research - still does business the same way it has for decades.

The conventional wisdom is that advertising agencies hate research, but most agencies will (grudgingly) acknowledge that research is essential to what we do. Research helps us get to brilliant insights and see consumers differently; it inspires our creative; and it stops weak ideas from getting incubated. Given the pressure today's marketers have to find competitive advantages and prove ROI, we must consider research crucial to the process.

And that's precisely the problem. Considering its pivotal role in shaping our decisions, we spend precious little time evaluating how we do research. We don't examine the questions we're asking, how we're asking them, whether it is realistic to expect people to be able to provide answers, or what norms and metrics we use.

We often just default to doing it the same way we did it last year. We do this for consistency, simplicity and to save time.

There are two problems with this approach. First, we use outdated techniques and methodologies. Historical research techniques are based on assumptions and models, such as "interrupt and repeat," that date back decades.

For example, we consistently turn to norms for comparison but our norms are five to 25 years old and therefore may invite irrelevant comparison. The techniques also assume captive audiences and a limited media environment, and fail to take into account the fragmented, technology driven, consumer-controlled new media environment.

Second, and more alarming, the research techniques advertisers currently use may not be getting to the real heart of the matter, and consequently contributing to faulty conclusions. Most marketing theories assume humans make conscious, rational decisions, that we are aware of, and can evaluate why we do things. But an increasing body of evidence from psychology, neurology, and market research itself demonstrates we are not as rational as we think, and that sub-conscious emotions actually drive our decision-making.

Discussions about the current state of market research are occurring in the U.K, Europe and in the U.S. In fact, the Advertising Research Foundation has made several strong pronouncements on marketing research over the past year and has accused us of continuing "to follow a flawed model of how advertising works," and more pointedly:

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