The Taylor Group Blog

Looking Back To The Future

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:24:00 -0400

I grew up in the "Back to the Future" era. I was promised flying cars and hoverboards and holographic billboards -- all by 2015. You know the line: "Where we're going, we don't need roads." Cue dramatic music and roll credits! I'm a sucker for it all. As 2009 comes to a close, with five years left before we catch up with Robert Zemeckis's vision of 2015, I wondered: How close are we? Well, flying cars are probably out of the question. I can only imagine what their carbon emissions would be, never mind fuel efficiency. Plus, I'm not too keen on the idea of getting in a fender bender a mile up and possibly plummeting to my death when the flying mechanism fails. It would be neat to zoom around the sky, sure, but I think we can safely rule that out. Hoverboards probably aren't happening, either, which may be for the best; everyone knows hoverboards don't work on water anyway. Maybe the "Back to the Future" future was just way off. Then I came across a link to AT&T's 1993 set of ads known as the "You Will" campaign, which is remarkably on target for predicting our technological advances. If you don't remember the spots, take a look here. Pretty close, huh? They got a few details wrong (Fax? Phonebooth? What the heck are those?), but they're remarkably on-the-money for almost everything else: "Borrowed a book from thousands of miles away" -- Amazon Kindle.
"Crossed the country without stopping for directions" -- how did we live without GPS?
"Paid a toll without slowing down" -- ah, the magic of E-ZPass. I'd love to see AT&T revisit this concept. Where will we be 15 to 20 years from now? What gadgets will have fallen the way of the fax machine? What do you predict?

Texting While Driving Is The New Green

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:40:00 -0400

For years, America's green movement was perceived as fringe. But over the last several years, and in particular 2008, the issue took off. Suddenly, it was all over the local and national news. Political candidates of both parties were talking about it. People were trying to find out what they could do to be greener. We were no exception. Here at Taylor, we felt this green groundswell in several ways. To do our part, we instituted an aggressive recycling program and focused on containing energy costs. But we also noticed this change in emphasis in the research we conducted, as clients tried to find ways to identify consumer expectations for companies' green products and green business practices. Earlier this year we established the Green Report Card, a self-funded online study measuring the green brand image of major U.S. corporations. "Green Is The New Black," some said. And now, there seems to be a new green: texting while driving. Texting isn't new, driving isn't new, and texting while driving isn't new. And it doesn't take an advanced mind to realize that typing while operating a motor vehicle probably isn't wise. But all of a sudden the issue is everywhere. Over the weekend and early this week, several polls on the topic were publicly released and pointed to high levels of texting while driving. Today, a two-day distracted driver summit called by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrapped up in Washington. It seems every national newspaper has run a story this week on the issue. And like with the green movement last year, we have noticed the issue turning up more and more often in our work. Clients are interested in the extent and frequency of texting while driving, as well as attitudes people (texters and non-texters) hold toward the practice. They want to know where this issue is heading and what they can do to get out in front of it in the design of their products. According to Liz Halloran at NPR.com, 18 states and Washington, D.C., now have laws that ban sending or receiving text messages while driving. Six states and D.C. prohibit all drivers from talking on handheld cellphones; 21 states and D.C. bar novice drivers from all cellphone use. Look for many more states to get in on the act. Halloran also points out that national legislation could limit funds to states that don't ban the practice. Halloran writes: "The research is in -- and it's been in for a while: The nation's addiction to constant communication has led to a crisis on its roads, where behind-the-wheel texters and cellphone chatters have become the new drunk drivers." This is only the beginning. Stay tuned.

17 Million Unique Reasons to Tweet

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:57:00 -0400

My fiancé runs a video production and web design business out of our home. Needless to say, much of his work -- video editing, site building, e-mailing, networking -- requires an Internet connection. Last year we had Internet service from [insert major cable provider here]. We had our fair share of gripes, including gaps in service, poor connection, a modem that kicked the bucket, and customer service reps with heavily accented speech -- not to mention a whopper of a bill. My fiancé finally got fed up and cancelled service, and we looked into an alternate method for connecting. Well, as luck would have it, method No. 2 is now causing problems. Annoyed and stuck, my fiancé recently hopped on his Twitter account and posted the following: "Does anyone have a reliable and AFFORDABLE Internet provider in NH? I just can't bring myself to pay [cable provider] over $100/month again." Not 10 minutes later, CableProviderSteve (name changed to protect the debatably innocent) tweeted in response, asking how he could help. The moral of the story? On Twitter, people are watching. And not in a creepy, Police, "Every Breath You Take" sort of way (although I suppose that's arguable), but in a "you're a consumer; our company should pay attention to what you think and what you're saying about us" kind of way. People -- lots of people -- are on Twitter, and are paying attention. Companies and service providers are monitoring what we think about them. CableProviderSteve's job is to watch blogosphere alerts for mentions of his company, and then ask how he can help. He gets paid to tweet all day! Of course, his motivation is saving money for his big, corporate-giant company, but Twitter can be used as a force for good as well . . . A few months ago, at the height of both the economic crash and the dead of winter, my friend Amy found herself unemployed. Amy's professional experience centered around nonprofits and event planning, but she wanted to transition into human resources. She connected with a career coach, who told her to look into Twitter. Soon Amy was connecting and tweeting with human resource professionals all over the country, asking for advice, learning inside tips, and building her professional network, 140 characters at a time. She's now a recruiter for a major Boston hospital. People are making connections (and making money) on Twitter. According to SSI's monthly newsletter, more than half of Twitter followers reportedly use it in some marketing, professional, or work-related capacity, and they've got an audience: In April 2009, Twitter traffic jumped 83% from the month before to 17 million unique visitors. Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, which is up an astonishing 700% from a year ago. Just the fact that Peter and I are blogging about Twitter is evidence of the niche it's carved out in our tech-savvy times. Blogging about tweeting -- now that's Web 2.0 in action. Is Twitter a fad? Probably. Is it useful? Definitely. It may go the way of 8-track tapes, virtual reality, and even MySpace before long -- but in the meantime, millions are jumping on the bandwagon. I'd like to close with an excerpt from a cleverly written blog entry by my friend Ian, who highlights the eclectic fusion of Twitter topics: The highlight of Twitter to me is the sidebar that tells of "trending topics." These are things most Twitter-ers are talking about. Lately, the Iran election had been wailing on everything pretty soundly until Michael Jackson wanted to give St. Peter a real test. . . . On today's listing was both of those things, but also Princess Protection Program. What is Princess Protection Program? Princess Protection Program (henceforth known as 3P) is a Disney movie where a princess from a small country that does not really exist nearly gets assassinated. She ends up moving in with some normal teenager in America. Can you say misadventures? She's not used to doing things like washing dishes, so as you can imagine, hilarity is on the menu! She also teaches her new American roomie how to do things like walk with a book on her head and which one is the salad fork. In the end, they both come out better people and the assassin goes to jail. . . . So, let's think about the 3 things we've got on the list. 1. Extreme political instability in a country that is very much our enemy and basically hates us. 2. Death of one of the biggest music icons of all time. 3. 3P. This is why Twitter is awesome. These three things would never come together in any other way except on a website where people belch up 140-character pieces of information the moment they come into their head and display them for the world to see. I would not have it any other way. Would you?

Ubiquity is Everywhere

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:54:00 -0400

Five years of research for the music industry led us here at Taylor increasingly to the conclusion that the primary cause of the industry's woes is ubiquity (of which piracy is a subset). So much "free" music is readily available from so many sources (it's ubiquitous!), that two things happen: (a) more and more consumers say, "Why buy when I can just listen?" and (b) the very ubiquity of music makes it less "dear." People still love music, no question about that, and they still consume tons of music -- maybe more than ever. But because it's so available for free everywhere they turn, they're not buying the music they love. Why should they? They don't have to. Our research bore this out. From 2004 through the first quarter of 2009, more and more consumers listened to music from an ever-wider variety of "free" sources (legal and illegal), and especially those "wide-variety-of-sources" users, over time, purchased less and less music compared with the market as a whole. Because they are music lovers, such consumers continued to purchase more music than other consumers, but their rate of decline in purchasing over time has been significantly greater than that of the average consumer. It turns out the music industry isn't alone in the deleterious effects of ubiquity. Pay TV service (cable, satellite, phone company TV), consumer electronics, movies, and apparel are examples of other afflicted industries. Too much choice gets in the way of the purchase decision for consumers. Here's some evidence of the point in a number of categories: On consumer electronics shopping: "Despite falling prices and the increasingly consolidated retail space, consumers still despise shopping for consumer electronics. . . . The process [is] more complicated than it needs to be. . . . The selection at most stores remains almost mind-boggling, with products and models from a range of companies offering almost too much choice for buyers. Most shoppers . . . walk into the average CE retailer worried that they'll buy the wrong thing or end up paying too much." -- "Shopping for Electronics is a Drag," June 23, 2009 On movie watching: "It's a paradox of abundance. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice." -- Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYU professor of communication and culture On jeans buying: "'I want a pair of regular jeans,' I said. 'Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy?' the sales woman replied. 'Do you want them stone-washed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you want them button fly or zipper fly?' I was stunned. The trouble was that with all these options I was no longer sure WHAT I wanted. Increased choice brings autonomy and control, but as the number of choices continues to grow, so do the negatives. Beyond a certain point the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. Choice no longer liberates; it debilitates." -- Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice On pay TV service: The growing availability of video content online -- both long form and short form, both professionally produced and user-generated (and especially the widespread availability of "free" content (from both legal and illegal sites) -- will surely begin to erode pay TV service offerings, if it hasn't already. And then there's my personal favorite example: hunting. [NOTE: I have never in my life hunted; I just love the book this comes from. It is the essence of scarcity.] It's essential that the "desired animal is uncommon. If it were everywhere there would be no question of not running into it. If it is unnecessary to look for it because it is always at hand, in inexhaustible supply, one does not worry about success in killing it. If the first blow fails, it is all the same; another animal is right at hand to receive a second aggression, and so on indefinitely." -- Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting The point: So much choice available from so many sources reduces sales (and kills the fun if you're a hunter). Consumers say, "Why buy?" Hunters ask, "Why hunt?" Ubiquity of choice in any given category makes the product (or service) less "dear," or more confusing (or both). Scarcity, which of course is the opposite of ubiquity, creates "value" in people's minds. When something of reasonable value is relatively scarce, its perceived value is heightened; when something of value is available everywhere you turn in seemingly unlimited choice, its perceived value is diminished, and at risk of being destroyed. And increasingly, it seems, ubiquity is everywhere.

Im Thinking Thoughts about Twitter (6 hours ago)

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:39:00 -0400

OK, let's make this Praxis thing a little more interesting. Who's willing to bet that five years from now, Twitter will be as popular as it is today? Anyone? Because I'll take the other side of that bet, in a heartbeat. Hell, I'll even give you two years. You should have a huge advantage over me in this little wagering exercise. For one thing, I haven't done exhaustive research into Twitter -- I haven't done any research, for that matter. What's more, I've never even used it (and yes, I've heard that you have to use it before you can truly appreciate its genius). My view on the matter comes from one source and one source only: my gut. And that gut informs me that Twitter is a fad, a fad that before we know it will be going the way of the 8-track tape. There are just too many factors working against it: 1. It's risen too quickly. Twitter was introduced just three years ago, and today it's discussed everywhere. To me, anything or anyone that becomes that popular, that quickly, is bound for an equally rapid decline. 2. The mainstream media are fully on board. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but doesn't it feel like the mainstream media are invested in the popularity of Twitter? Did you see the June 15th cover of TIME magazine? "I've written this week's TIME cover story about how Twitter is changing the way we live -- and showing us the future of innovation." Changing the way we live? The future of innovation? Claims this far-reaching are the kiss of death for any new technology. (By the way, with all due respect to my friends at TIME, here's an interesting quote from the November 1, 1993, issue: "Virtual-reality hype is gradually giving way to virtual-reality reality." Hold on . . . damn . . . I know my VR glasses are around here somewhere . . . ) 3. Twitter serves no useful purpose. Look, there are plenty of people I love, like, admire, and respect. But if reading their random, 140-character-or-fewer thoughts constitutes a "useful purpose," then I absolutely need to get a life. And that says nothing about the people who think their own random, 140-character-or-fewer thoughts are so fascinating that I'd want to read each and every one of them. And on a related note . . . 4. Any product or technology that is so mercilessly the butt of jokes has little hope for long-term success. If you read Doonesbury, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You don't hear people ridiculing Facebook, by the way (which may also be a fad, but which I'm convinced will be around a lot longer than Twitter). 5. Twitter is extremely limited. I'm not just talking about the character limit, but the fact that Twitter does only one thing. Yeah, I hear you: The simplicity of Twitter is one of the things people like. And I'll admit, doing one thing, and doing it really well, is not necessarily bad -- just ask the people who have stock in Google. But after you read this reason, please go back and reread reason No. 3. Actually, I lied a little bit about not having done any research into Twitter. Someone passed along an article on Twitter's retention statistics. Apparently, Twitter has only about a 40% U.S. retention rate (it had been at only 30% for most of the past 12 months). In other words, 60% of people using Twitter don't use it again the following month. Twitter's retention rate is much worse than Facebook's and MySpace's when they were relatively new. So, still eager to lay out a little dinero? If you're a bit skittish, no worries. We don't have to use real money -- we can bet on Second Life. Call me if you're interested -- and don't forget -- to make things easier, just pick up the phone and use voice recognition to dial. Or, if you feel compelled to make this wager in person, just hop on your Segway and head on over. (Where ARE those VR glasses, by the way -- maybe the same place I put the pet rock?)

I Feel Like I Might Have Been Born For This

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:06:00 -0400

I feel like I might have been born for this. I am just now going through a set of tabs from a recently completed quantitative survey, and working in my head on what the story is for the report. Over the past several years I haven't done as much quantitative work as I once did, and that's a bit weird because the fact is that my background is entirely quantitative. I studied and taught quantitative research methods for many years, and my subsequent professional "commercial research" training with Lou Harris was entirely quantitative. But my interest began way before all this. It actually all started when I was 5 or 6 years old. I would roll bunches of marbles on the hardwood floor in the living room of our upstairs apartment, along the narrow four-inch or so channel between the area rug and the wall, and watch the marbles hit the far wall and roll back. I would set aside the top three finishers, grab another bunch, and repeat the process over and over, setting up a series of heats that led ultimately to a champion marble. I would do it for hours at a time, and I get a little adrenaline rush, even now, just thinking about it. Quantitative research, at its core, involves precisely this same process. It's all about counting, sorting, developing a compelling story along the way, and coming to a conclusion. I love this stuff. And I do believe that I might have been born for it. That's not boastful. As the great Dizzy Dean used to say, "If you done it, it ain't braggin'."

Playing Favorites

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:07:00 -0400

We value every project we conduct here at The Taylor Group, but I suspect that everyone has their one or two favorite projects, or favorite clients. Some like our consumer electronics projects because they're facinated with the latest gadgets. Some enjoy our media and entertainment work because they watch the very TV shows we research. Others really get into our pharmaceutical-industry work because . . . well, you get the point. My choice is the research we do for the United States Tennis Association. It has been almost three decades since I learned to play tennis, and I still play, though not that well much of the time, but as regularly as possible. And even though Comcast appears ready to move NFL Network from my Sports Pack to the Digital Classic level of service, I'll still keep the Sports Pack because where else but The Tennis Channel are you going to find 14 hours of tennis a day from Doha or Monte Carlo or Shanghai? And as a fan, it was gratifying to see our work cited in the June issue of Tennis magazine. The article referenced our annual research for the USTA that measures the level of tennis participation and tracks participation changes from year to year nationally. It noted that in 2008 U.S. tennis participation grew to nearly 27 million, the highest number recorded during the last 15 years. That's great news for tennis, and I am already looking forward to what the 2009 study will show.

The More Things Change . . .

Wed, 06 May 2009 16:49:00 -0400

Monday marked the 22nd anniversary of The Taylor Group, which you may know (and if you're a frequent reader of this blog, you probably do know) started as a three-person company working out of Scott Taylor's basement in the spring of 1987. I've been here for about half of that time, and I've seen some changes. Recently we've rekindled a relationship with a company for which we did a lot of work in the late '80s and '90s but lost touch with when some key contacts there moved on to other organizations. And so last week I found myself digging through six large storage boxes full of documents from our pre-internal-server days. What kind of documents, you ask? Seventy-five-page, single-spaced reports. Pamphlets for "new shows for the upcoming television season" -- shows which were on the air for 10 years and have been off for the last five. And my favorite: transparencies of presentations! And how un-green it all was! It was a different time, for sure. But within these antiquated documents, not everything was unfamiliar. The handwriting, for example, is recognizable. Scott's is still the same as it always was; Peter's is still mostly illegible. And there are the familiar comments in the margins of report drafts, with suggestions for deeper analysis or observations for consideration. But what really struck me were some of the findings that hold true even today. For example, from a 1992 report: "It is harder than ever to hold viewers' attention. People have less time, more choices, and shorter attention spans." This was 1992! Before the age of cellphones, PDAs, and (for most people) the Internet. We always think we're getting busier and busier, yet we still find ways to manage our lives -- and, as researchers, we're always searching for innovative ways to help our clients "break through the clutter" as technology changes. Lots can change in two decades, but I guess some things remain constant.

Our Green Report Card

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:30:00 -0400

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a tourist destination. It takes a solid week of sailing from the West Coast to get there, and most vessels avoid it entirely because it's essentially a whirlpool of strong ocean currents. And it's a topic I'd like to avoid even knowing about -- one of those "I wish I could stick my head in the sand" stories that make you feel really guilty for being a human, an American, a consumer, and so on. One of those, "Oops, we really have irreversibly ruined the earth" kind of stories. The Pacific Garbage Patch is an enormous hunk of man-made debris in the North Pacific. This trash swirls in a circulating pattern called the North Pacific Gyre, created from four ocean currents that combine to create a massive swirling vortex. It's estimated that 20% of the trash came from sailing vessels, while 80% came from land-based sources. Scientists estimate the size of "garbage island" to be anywhere from twice that of Texas to twice that of the continental U.S. And just in case knowing a patch of trash is floating in the ocean -- killing wildlife and polluting the water -- wasn't enough to trouble you, there's this lovely piece of news: the decomposing toxic materials (mainly plastics) are slowly working their way back into the food chain. As Thomas Morton writes on the Vice Magazine website:

"Once the plastic confetti gets small enough to fit inside a jellyfish's mouth, it gets sucked in and starts its way up the food chain back to us. As the jellies float out of the debris field, little fish eat them, absorbing all the built-up plastics. Then big fish eat a bunch of little fish, even bigger fish eat a bunch of big fish, and by the time you get to the point where we're hoisting creatures out and eating them, you're looking at entire milk crates' worth of particles built up in their fat. It's the cycle of life reimagined as a dystopian sci-fi cliché. We are eating our own refuse."

So what does this mean for us as consumers, us as researchers, and our clients? It means we should be concerned about where our goods come from, how they're disposed of, and which companies provide the most environmentally friendly products and services. And as the green movement gains ground, more and more companies are starting to pay attention to consumers' concerns about "green-ness." In this light, The Taylor Group has conducted its second wave of the Green Report Card -- our survey on consumer perceptions of corporate greenness. Based on 769 online interviews, this research measures the environmental image of 93 business-to-consumer-based companies in the U.S. Highlights include:

In spite of widespread, and growing, efforts among U.S. corporations to promote their environmental initiatives, companies with a clear, distinct "green" image are the exception rather than the rule.
The top-rated companies include (among others) Google, Discovery Channel, Whole Foods, Apple, and Toyota.
While the highest-rated companies have changed little from the first wave of the study in summer 2008, many industries have seen a slight dip in ratings -- suggesting a halo effect from the economic downturn that has bled into green perceptions.

The research is available for download at nominal cost on our homepage, and we're planning additional survey waves to track companies' images over time. Comments or questions can be directed to Jason Grucel at greenresearch@thetaylorgroup.com or by calling 603.422.7600.

Its the End of the World as We Know ItAnd Ive Got Mail

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:34:00 -0400

Last year I went through a brief period of panic about the world coming to an end. Seriously. I think it was the residual memory of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, combined with the imminent collapse of our financial system, mixed in with election mudslinging and scare tactics. The massive California wildfires (whose effects I witnessed firsthand) and 10-foot-deep snow in New Hampshire may also have had something to do with it. And, what the heck, let's add increased outbreaks of Lyme Disease, Triple E, and Avian Flu to the mix. With the end-of-days obviously approaching (well, in my mind, at least), I decided to go beyond recycling and reusable grocery bags. I did what any left-leaning twenty-something without too much money would do: I put my name on a few conservation group lists. I gave the minimum donation required to join (I think Nature Conservancy was free and Sierra Club was around $25) and sat back contentedly, knowing my staggering contribution would set the world back on a course toward harmony and balance. Fast-forward six months. My knee-jerk environmentalist stint has brought me one thing: a permanent spot on a nonprofit mailing list. You name the cause, I get the mailings: clean air, clean water, endangered species protection, the League of Women Voters, anti-coal, anti-clean coal, tightening emissions standards, and so on, and so on, and so on. Usually these groups send something with their donation-request letters to make me feel like I'm truly valued by them: address labels, a poster-sized world map, etc. Of course, what I'm really getting is more and more paper waste. I signed up for these organizations with the ultimate goal of reducing waste and environmental destruction, not creating more garbage. The mailings also often contain "urgent" surveys that ask me to voice my opinion. But really, I think they're just a mask to make me feel empowered so I'll send a check to the nonprofit group. I don't mean to sound harsh or jaded here, but the surveys often contain questions like, "Do you believe the public should have an active voice in government?" or, "Do you think we are doing enough to preserve our drinking water sources, even though X% of Americans don't have access to clean water?" or, "The Bush Administration moved X number of species off the endangered list, despite decreased populations. Do you think we should do more to save these animals?" You'd have to have a heart of stone to honestly say "no." So what purpose does it serve for me to fill out and return the survey -- especially if I'm not going to send a donation with it? So I've ended up with two questions. First, as an environmentalist, I wonder: Have my efforts to help the earth truly become counterproductive? And as a researcher, I wonder: Do mailings like these give a bad name to companies like us, who conduct legitimate surveys?

Unrelenting? That sounds right.

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:45:00 -0400

Unrelenting is right. We've all heard it: "Don't like the weather in New England? Wait five minutes!" And it's not grossly exaggerated: Both Saturday and Sunday delivered 50-degree, spring-like weather; Monday, we shoveled six inches of wet, heavy snow. The way I feel about this winter is pretty much the way I feel about the economy -- just keep my head down and power through it. We're buried in snow and we're buried in negative news reports -- and I'm just trying to shovel out a path. The other day I was (get ready for a confession of nerdiness) listening to "This American Life" on NPR, which has been doing a handful of really informative programs to explain the giant mess we're in. "TAL" did a show on the mortgage crisis, a follow-up on the credit crisis, and, most recently, a show on the banking industry crisis. They break it down into plain language that anyone can understand, and after listening to these shows, I feel like I have a better sense of what's actually going on. And that's been the key thing for me: finding out what is happening. Not what Bill O'Reilly thinks is happening, not what Jon Stewart thinks is happening, not what Katie Couric thinks is happening. I mean, how long does it take to explain -- in plain language -- what's going on and what the proposed solutions are? If you listen to "This American Life," it takes about an hour. But the 24-hour cable networks have, well, 24 hours to fill, and an unrelenting storm of apocalyptic news is just not what I'm in the mood for. I can't really sit this one out. None of us can. But I'm trying to keep in perspective what I can and can't control. I can't control the Dow. I can't control whether the government nationalizes banks or buys up toxic mortgages. To some extent, I can't even control my employment status. But I can work harder than ever. I can go to the gym and sweat it out. (I take a kickboxing-type class in which the instructor always says, "Bring something to class that you don't want to leave with." I love it.) I can make dinner at home instead of going out, which is probably healthier for me anyway. I've got a great excuse for turning down invitations to things (concerts, movies, restaurants) I didn't really want to do anyway -- I just say I have to conserve. And we all do. But I'm hoping all this will, sooner than later, relent.

Word of the Day

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:13:00 -0400

We don't have a "word of the day" feature on Praxis. But if we did, I'd nominate the following: Unrelenting. 1. Having or exhibiting uncompromising determination; unyielding. 2. Not diminishing in intensity, pace, or effort. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000) While I'm at it, I'd also like to nominate unrelenting as the word of the month . . . and of this winter . . . and, what the hell, of this year so far. Let me explain. I read a story in The Boston Globe last week, the day after yet another "weather system" dumped a foot of snow on Boston (not to mention snow in the south and much of the eastern portion of the country). I began reading, fully expecting standard post-snowstorm pseudo-journalistic fare -- quotes from people unhappy with the snow but chalking it up to "life in New England," the obligatory quote from someone jogging outside in gym shorts, claiming to be beguiled by the "winter wonderland" and wishing winter would last into June (excuse me one second . . . "gag" . . . ), etc., etc. But this piece wasn't like that at all. Everyone featured came across as weary at best, or angry at worst. They all offered some variation of the same theme: I'm sick of this winter. One person called this the "worst ever winter I've been through." There was nary a peep from any purported winter-lovers. Although I haven't looked it up, I'd be willing to bet that statistically, this has not been the "worst ever" winter in New England. I don't think we've gotten as much snow as in other winters, nor do I think it's been the coldest winter, average-temperature-wise. But I'm with the people in the Globe story. It sure feels like the worst winter ever. Why? Well, the cold and snow have been, yes, unrelenting. During most winters, we usually enjoy at least some respite--three of four days in a row of temperatures in the 50s, the occasional freakish 70-degree day. Something to break up the sheer monotony of it all. That hasn't happened this year. This year has been dismally monotonous. Each day, it seems, is either freezing, or snowy, or ice is raining down, or all of the above. Day in, day out. It's been like Chinese water torture, with the water freezing as soon as it hits your forehead. So if you happen to live in the Northeast, I think you'll agree that unrelenting pretty much sums up what this winter's been like. On the other hand, I'm not so provincial as to nominate a word solely on the basis of our own local weather conditions. No -- if there were a national (or even international) word of the day/week/month/year, unrelenting would still get my vote. And I say that on the basis of certain other phenomena, phenomena that have also been unyielding, not diminishing in intensity, pace, or effort . . . I read a story in the newspaper last week, one day after yet another [stock market drop], [corporate layoff announcement], [unfavorable economic report] . . . Drip, drip, drip . . .

Oscar Season

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:55:00 -0400

If you've followed this blog, you may know that we have a monthly movie group and that we conduct research for the movie industry. With the Oscars approaching, I've been trying to get out and see as many movies as possible -- and also hoping that Netflix members begin to return movies faster, so Long Wait becomes Wait, and Wait becomes Shipping Today. (This process can be quite frustrating.) And earlier this week I came across a fascinating article on the industry : Tad Friend's look inside the marketing of movies (which focuses on Lionsgate's intriguing co-president of theatrical marketing, Tim Palen). First, from the article: Modern campaigns have three acts: a year or more before the film débuts, you introduce it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet "leaks" of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer, which appears four months before the release; five weeks before the film opens, you start saturating with a "flight" of thirty-second TV spots; and, at the end, you remind with fifteen-second spots, newspaper ads, and billboards. Studios typically spend about ten million dollars on the "basics" (cutting trailers and designing posters, conducting market research, flying the film's talent to the junket and the première, and the première itself) and thirty million on the media buy. Between seventy and eighty percent of that is spent on television advertising (enough so that viewers should see the ads an average of fifteen times), eight or nine percent on Internet ads, and the remainder on newspaper and outdoor advertising. Good stuff. The article was subtitled "Inside a movie marketer's playbook," which initially caught my attention because of a recent movie-industry study we conducted that examined how consumers use various sources to make movie-going decisions. The study led to the creation of a playbook for our clients to leverage the Internet most effectively as an advertising and informational resource for consumers. I was particularly interested when the article got around to the subject of test screening and how it's used. Again, from Friend's piece: [T]he percentage who thought the film excellent or very good, the so-called "top two boxes," went from sixty-five at the earlier screening to seventy-four--in other words, from worrisome to respectable. (Studios love to see scores in the eighties.) Yet testing is fraught: it rewards comedy, narrative, and familiar stars or plot elements, and often undervalues the new. Executives' testing stories take divergent paths to the same punch line. Either they decided not to tamper with a "Pulp Fiction," despite testing results invariably described as "the lowest scores in the studio's history," or they were confounded when an "Akeelah and the Bee" faltered commercially despite "the highest scores in the studio's history." In both scenarios, the numbers lied. "Testing is a sham," one marketing consultant says. "All you've learned is what people thought of a movie they didn't have to pay for. It does not mean they're going to go pay for it." First, this glosses over the fact that movies can be, and are, tested both qualitatively and quantitatively. While the quantitative side usually consists of a big audience and a short questionnaire, the qualitative research is done by bringing viewers into smaller focus groups. These methodologies should be used together to find out what people think of the film and what could make it better. But Friend is right -- to a degree: in both scenarios, the numbers from the quantitative research lied. But the marketing consultant's conclusion that testing is "a sham" doesn't follow. Numbers lie all the time if they're not interpreted correctly. That's where the art of research comes in. For example, in our advertising testing in particular, there have been many instances where we've tested a half-dozen different creatives and asked respondents to give scores to each one. And sure, we look at the data, and one or two creatives usually stand out as scoring the highest. But sometimes lower-rated pieces that represent a somewhat higher risk also represent the possibility of much higher reward. It's only upon listening to the discussion from a point of understanding what the client is trying to communicate that we can assess what's worth considering. And that's what Friend leaves out.

Screened Out

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:45:00 -0400

When entering the United States as a foreigner, people are assigned by Immigration to one of three categories: 1. The fortunate ones with a permanent residence card, a.k.a. a green card. They can pass Immigration through the U.S. citizen line at the airport. 2. Those who have a visa. Immigration requires you to fill out an I-94, a small form with information on where you live and where you intend to stay. 3. Visitors from countries that have an agreement with the U.S. about a visa waiver. For example, if a Briton intends to stay for a couple of weeks on vacation, he doesn't need a visa. These visitors hop on a plane, and, while on the plane, they fill out the I-94W. The front is similar to the I-94, asking for residence and where you intend to stay. The back, on the other hand, contains a series of straightforward, yes-or-no questions:

A. Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict?

B. Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more; or been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?

C. Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?

D. Are you seeking to work in the U.S.; or have you ever been excluded and deported; or been previously removed from the United States; or procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation?

E. Have you ever detained, retained, or withheld custody of a child from a U.S. citizen granted custody of the child?

F. Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S. or had a U.S. visa canceled? If yes, when? Where?

G. Have you ever asserted immunity from prosecution?

IMPORTANT: If you entered "Yes" to any of the above, please contact the American Embassy BEFORE you travel to the U.S. since you may be refused admission into the United States.

I can assure you this form provides enough material for evening discussions among expats. The questions about mental disorders and terrorist activities are good ice-breakers. Also, hearing on the plane that you should have contacted the American Embassy before hopping on said plane has entertained thousands of tourists. I wonder about the validity of the responses the U.S. Customs and Border Protection get from these questions. If you have some mental disorder, is now the best time to admit that? If you worked for MI6 for 10 years, do you think the immigration officer would like to compare notes with you? In market research, our surveys are slightly more respectful of the respondent's privacy, but then again, we don't have to secure a border. Even so, I often wonder about the value about one specific type of question: Do you or does anyone in your household work in the following industry: [fill in client's industry]? The theoretical purpose seems obvious: 1. If we test pricing for a new product, the client doesn't want the product or price options revealed to competitors. 2. We like to prevent competitors from seeing our methods; especially since copyrighting questions and methods is essentially impossible, it is very hard for us to protect our intellectual property. 3. Last, we might want to avoid respondents who have a professional affinity to those products and measures. Regarding the last goal, in my opinion, people who work in this industry are part of the market. They might make their decisions differently than John Doe, but they are still part of the market -- and if the sampling method is appropriate, then they would be equally represented in the sample as they are in the population. Why would we want to exclude them? Sooner or later the product will be available in the stores anyways. My greater quibble has to do with goals 1 and 2: people who want to understand what their competitors are doing would certainly not stumble over such a question. You can call me a pessimist (I prefer to call myself a realist) when it comes to my evaluation of the human nature, but I have a hard time believing that the people we want to keep out will sheepishly admit their industry. On the contrary -- I think we offer those people our research area on a silver platter with a big sign saying: WATCH OUT! If you work in any of the following four industries, listen now. The following survey is not intended to be seen by you, but if you click "no" four times, we will show you the hottest products and the deepest secrets! Theoretically, we could make it a bit harder by having a long list of industries where only a few result in a termination of the respondent. But I am confident most people we want to keep out would know which industries are pretty safe bets to not be terminated ("education," "government," and "other" seem good choices). We might lose some respondents because they don't want to go through a list of 35 industries, but otherwise it won't do much good. So what can we do? Well, for starters, we might want to consider whether the survey really contains information these people wouldn't already have (if they already have it or could easily find it out, we're trying to solve a nonexistent problem). Maybe all we're doing is telling them things they know already while occupying 10 minutes of their precious time. Sounds like a fair deal to me: you lie to us and we take your time. If there are really previously undisclosed pieces of information in the survey, we might want to choose an open-end approach where we do not disclose beforehand what industries we want to exclude (respondents could still say they work in education or government). By asking respondents what industry they work in, we actually suggest there is some so-far-undisclosed information in the survey. If that is the case, we would attract less attention by not having that screening question in the first place. Removing it would also save a few seconds of all respondents' time and reduce respondent fatigue.

Youve Got to Know Where Youre Going: Conducting Research Internationally

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:03:00 -0400

We in the United States are often accused by those who live beyond our borders of having cultural blinders on -- of being ignorant (perhaps even dismissive) of other people and cultures. As stereotypes go, this is, sadly, a pretty good fit. According to Census Bureau statistics, over 82% of the U.S. population speaks only English, while just 8% can hold a passable conversation in a language other than English. According to the Philadelphia Tribune, only 8% of U.S. college students take courses in a foreign language, while two-thirds of all U.S. high school students graduate without ever having studied a foreign language. Contrast this with the fact that American tourists can typically find their way around Europe without knowing a word of any language other than English, simply by imposing on the English-language abilities of their European hosts. Increasingly, the same can be said for Asia. I've traveled extensively within both Europe and Asia and have been amazed that even in the smallest, most remote hamlets, I've always encountered someone who can converse in my native tongue. Then there's the sad fact that 88% of Americans cannot find the country of Afghanistan -- so much a focus of our collective thoughts and energies for most of this decade -- on a map, while 66% cannot locate either Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Sadder still is that nearly half cannot find the continent of Europe (the "motherland" for the majority of us). So, what does this all have to do with market research? With the globalization of economy, American businesses and their employees are increasingly doing business with people from other cultures. And all too often, these businesses, so singularly focused on their "captive" U.S. market, have little more than the most basic understanding of how to go about this. Typically, they hire locally within the markets into which they are looking to expand, hoping this will make it all that much easier. All too often, though, a wall appears between their U.S. and local employees -- a wall whose foundation lies on the U.S. side's lack of understanding of their local counterparts' language, culture, customs, and business practices. This wall impedes all subsequent efforts at becoming more familiar with this market and the people who comprise it. All too often, the end result is failure and retrenchment. That's where market research, done locally by researchers who are familiar with conducting international research, often becomes critically important to the success of American businesses looking to expand overseas. We've conducted research on six of the seven continents (we're still waiting for that client who's hell bent on breaking into the Antarctic market), in dozens of countries, including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Spain, England, France, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, to name but a few. And we're proud to have on staff a number of researchers who have extensive international research experience and, importantly, are familiar with cultural nuances that come into play when conducting research outside the United States. Why is this important? Well, for example, in Indonesia, time can be somewhat of a relative thing. As such, the standard recruit of 12 for 10 to show becomes more like recruit 25 for 8 to show when conducting focus groups in Jakarta. Focus groups with physicians in New Delhi, India, are seldom conducted in the native Hindi, but instead in the more academically and socially acceptable English. And in China, you should never give a clock as a thank-you gift (e.g., for an interview), as clocks are symbolic of death in many Chinese cultures. While some other U.S.- and Europe-based research firms have built global networks of wholly owned, "local" research organizations, we've instead taken the approach of partnering directly with locals (on occasion, the local branches of these large, international firms). We believe this gives us greater flexibility to choose the local firm we feel has the greatest expertise in the field we're researching. The bottom line is that the American model for conducting business and market research often does not fit beyond our borders. It is critically important that American companies take the time to get to know the people they are hoping to make customers. Market research, conducted locally, with a strong sense of the local culture and sensibilities, can often make the difference between failure and success.