Feedback from ESOMAR Congress

[Ray Poynter]

The timing could not be worse, at the height of a global recession, with hundreds of market researchers having been made redundant recently, ESOMAR hosts its annual Congress in the fantastically beautiful and expensive town of Montreux, on the shores of Lac Leman, an hour’s train ride from Geneva, deep in the awe inspiring Swiss Alps. Because the location was less accessible, and because rehearsals and workshops were on the Tuesday, many delegates had to commit to arriving on the Monday and leaving on the Friday, maximising both the time out of the office and the costs. Not surprisingly, numbers were down. But, for all that the Congress showed real signs of some great changes taking place in global market research, changes that I think we will come to see as a renaissance.

The reasons for the renaissance relate to changes in technology, society, and the research of people like Dan Ariely and Martin Lindstrom, the writings of people like Chris Anderson, Dan Tapscott, and Jonah Lehrer (who was a keynote at Congress), and the development of new MR ideas around the globe. It is greatly to the credit of the Congress committee that this year’s event provided such a good platform for highlighting the changes that are happening.

I will write on this topic more fully later, but the key items of this renaissance, IMHO, were:
1. A growing realisation that consumers are not making rational or individual decisions when they choose one product over another. Books such as Mark Earls Herd, Lindstrom’s Buyology, Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, and Lehrer’s Decisive Moment have led a few researchers to challenge the traditional process of asking respondents to use intention scales and attribute batteries to try and understand markets. Mark Earls and John Kearon ran a massively over-subscribed Master Class where they engaged the room and illustrated alternatives to traditional paradigms.

2. A great presentation by Agnes Nairn looked at the ethics surrounding research and children. Agnes pointed out that there is no standard definition of a child, even within Europe. Current definitions range from the UK’s Information Commissioner who has said 12 is the age at which parental permission is needed, through other bodies across Europe have said, 13, 14, 15, and 16 years is the right age. Traditionally, bodies such as ESOMAR have favoured self-regulation, based on the belief that the people who know more about the industry are best placed to organise it. However, self-regulation is self-defeating if it simply pushes business towards unregulated competitors. Interestingly, in the discussion that followed the presentation by Agnes there appeared to be a consensus that this topic requires central regulation/legislation, rather than just self-regulation. For example, it would be better if a body, such as the EU, were to define what we mean by a ‘child’ and define when parental consent is needed. A shift towards legislation rather than self-regulation would show that ESOMAR (and the research industry) are growing up, and recognising that protecting consumers is more important than protecting companies.

3. On Friday morning there was a great presentation about a research project conducted by MESH Planning for Oxfam. However, what made the presentation part of the renaissance was that the research project was presented by Rachel Brown (the client), Fiona Blades (the agency), and a young lady called Monique who was one of the respondents from the project. This was a great example of the growing awareness that the future of research is as a three-way conversion between customer, client, and agency.

4. I was privileged to have been invited to run a Master Class on online research communities. This session was well attended, with many exciting figures from the leading edge, such as three delegates from Communispace, Niels Schillewaert from InSites consulting, and David Stark from TNS Canada. In just over an hour of discussion, the room explored the advantages and potential pitfalls of the fastest growing techniques in market research. The takeaways from the session included: sharing control, being open and transparent, and to embrace change (carefully).

5. One great innovation at this year’s Congress was ‘Research Idol’. A host of people submitted their ideas and six competed, for three minutes each, on Thursday in the semi-final (which unfortunately was at the same time as my Master Class, so I missed seeing the semi-final). The final was held in the main hall on Friday morning, with three contenders. All of whom had been given just a few hours to prepare a three minute presentation on the topic of where research needs to go, without the aid of visual aids. One of the three was Philip de Wulf, who gave a highly competent, engaging, and witty exposition. Philip’s performance was a great example of a ‘normal’ approach, done very well. But the other two presenters opted for an approach that was performance art. Pravin Shekar used his three minutes to give a bravura combination of stand up comedy and motivational session, using his body and the full range of voices as tools in his performance. I was sure Pravin would win until Namita Mediratta took to the stage. Namita gave us three minutes of pure Bolywood, acting the part of first the consumer, then the researcher, and finally the client, using the metaphor of a marriage on the rocks to make her point, adding verse and song as part of the communication. The session brought home two messages to me: a) We can push the boundaries much, much further than most people had assumed, and to a higher standard, and b) this sort of session is not just for wannabees, Philip is a major thinker and led a great Master Class on decision making, Pravin is a widely respected speaker and runs an outsourcing company based in India, and Namita (who, by the way, is client side, working for Unilever Indonesia) not only won the Research Idol competition, but she was also one of the three authors of the paper that won the Congress’s ‘Best Methodological Paper’ award.

Taken together with many of the conversations I heard around the exhibition and in the night spots of Montreux, I feel that the big change that market research needs is really underway. In a few years from now, I think we will see a market research industry, smaller, more focused on conversations, and being judged by both clients and respondents, and collaborating with both clients and respondents. I am sure that the days of the bean counting are coming to an end, more of our work in the future will be thought related, rather than process related.