the future of p8 p16 - brand innovationsa topic brand builders cannot afford to ignore. our analysis...

The Paradox of the Researcher

/ LABReport /Sep. 2017

Extract More Value out of Social Brand Equity Tracking

What’s in a Name? Testing Your Brand’s Verbal Assets

A New Age for Research

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p8

p16

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The Future of

Editors

Benjamin Noyes

Charlotte Zhang

Jacquelien Brussee

Graphic Design

Nick Huang

Staff Writers

Sophie Pottier

Melyssa Koh

Allison Rose

Chris Wallbridge

Media Contact

[email protected]

LABReport Team

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Dear Reader,

It is our great pleasure to announce the release of our September LABReport, our quarterly publication dedicated to branding in China and beyond. In each issue we bring together thought leaders from around the company to share perspectives on a topic brand builders cannot afford to ignore. Our analysis combines five lenses in line with our specialties: research, strategy, naming, design, and digital.

For decades, market research has been an indispensable tool for marketers around the world. From focus group, accompany shopping, ethnography, semiotics, to the recent use of neural science and AR technologies, research methodologies have been constantly evolving. With the rapid advancement of science and

technology within the recent years, it is especially crucial for researchers to reflect and challenge themselves in order to find newer and more efficient approaches to stay ahead in today’s ever-changing consumer market.

From the rethinking of research methodologies, to forecasting into a new age for research, this LABReport reflects and explores the realities and potentials of market research.

What does it mean to be a researcher of today and the future? Read on to find out.

Words from the LABReport Team

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labbrand.com 3The Paradox of the Researcher

In the occidental mind, it has long been accepted that imagination would induce you into error and falseness (may philosophers pardon this synthesis of Pascal’s work). In marketing, it is also long known that consumers aren’t all rational and that they are also strongly driven by emotions. Studying emotions when it comes to market research is regularly limited to liking / disliking and to understanding to which realms of the imagination an emotion refers to.

For example, in automotive, an “aggressive” design will be differently liked or disliked depending on the profiles, countries, cultures, etc. Behind liking lies the question of which field of evocations this “aggressiveness” will refer to. If philosophers can spare a second reference, the issue was pinned down decades ago when opposing reason to imagination: reason should – in theory, allow an objective knowledge, but most of the time, we give away to our imagination and our judgement as consumers also has a prism based on values (such as good or bad, for example).

We do not trust imagination, but that’s how we think most of the time.

The Paradox of the Researcher

Sophie Pottier Senior Research Manager, Paris

http://www.labbrand.com





How can brands take advantage of this prism and be privy to the deeply non-verbal emotions that guide our choices? This article seeks to shed a light on a methodology developed at Labbrand, by looking at methodologies, client examples and implications on price tag – and recognise that we shouldn’t fear reason nor imagination.

What does this mean when discussing brands? Take, for example, a skincare cream:

One could look at ingredients behind a skincare cream to see if the formula is really “clean”, but when it writes “Paraben free” in the front of the pack, we tend to imagine a healthy environment. The logic being that if it is healthy, it should be safe, and if it is safe, it will not be dangerous. In other words, we applied to this mention of “Paraben free” a strong benefit of harmlessness, which is then extrapolated to the whole product (this example is slightly over exaggerated, but that is the idea).

In market research, we work at understanding how an emotion drives a very tangible and rational benefit. Our job is to make people talk, about everything: skincare, automotive, banks, perfumes, video games, travels, food, second hand markets… Behind all that talking, the goal is to grasp the deep emotions that orient people’s choices when they buy a product, from the smallest object to the biggest; from the cheapest to the most expensive.

Because, emotions are deeply non-verbal. There are 4 fundamental emotions in life (joy, sadness, fear and anger) and a myriad of other emotions which fill our lives. But how to describe fear without using the word “fear”? How can one explain why he or she likes the colour yellow so much? That person will probably use an example of a situation where he/she gets the feeling of fear, explain how he/she feels, using synonyms, etc. The same goes for a colour or a piece of music. One can try to convey the feeling of the feeling, but cannot convey the feeling itself.

But why are we focusing so much on emotions and the fact that market researchers are all about making people talk?

Diving Deeper: The Researcher’s Paradox






The Inception Methodology

Using alternative routes to get to a core idea, the researcher will prefer using the interviewee’s imagination to turn this colour yellow into a person, a landscape, and then asking them to describe the vision they have in mind. From there, the researcher explores, asks how they feel in this landscape or in front on that person, etc., digging into every element like a Dom Cobb exploring someone’s subconscious. It is not about planting an idea but navigating to explore and understand. We ask people to describe, but we do not ask them why (why is the person dressed that way? Why is the hair tied that way?), as they wouldn’t be able to answer precisely. Pragmatic questions usually get flat and pragmatic answers, and projective exercises have proved their efficiency.

The emotion triggered by a colour, a texture or a scent will usually refer in a very stable way to a concrete benefit. We decode these benefits by going deep into the exploration of these emotions, using projective exercises. We take these to another level, getting people to talk about what they perceive as though in a wide-awake dream – almost hypnotised (let’s not be afraid of words). And it gave amazing results.

How could a Chinese person from Chengdu to whom we submitted a scent invent the same story as an American from New York to whom we gave the same scent? And why, in the end, they forecasted the same kind of benefit for that product?

It appears to be an incredible stability in fields of evocations/ imagination and sometimes even at a cross-cultural level (of course with local variations), and that once you know how to decode them, once you learn that language, they open fascinating possibilities.






Putting It into Action: Going Beyond Liking/ Disliking

This methodology allowed us to go beyond the tricky question of liking. As said earlier, to explain liking or disliking, you need to understand what realm of imagination the person refers to and understand which benefits are underlying. It would be wrong to restrain liking to the only notion of preference, disregarding that of coherence.

A big project for a renowned international beauty brand led us to highlight how scents were linked to a certain idea of performance, and that sometimes a scent that wasn’t particularly attractive in terms of liking (preference) could actually rank quite high in terms of expected performance. It might seem quite simple to say, but it is far from being so!

Given a woody scent, if by exploring the evocations of raw nature, you associate woods and rocks with a benefit of regeneration to that product, you will probably imagine a wooden pack, not particularly girly. If that same woody scent came as bright pink in a flowery packaging, you would probably not project the same regeneration benefit.

Both Aesop and Yves Rocher carry products that have woody scents, but with different packagings, they project different benefits.






The Implications of Understanding Emotional Promises

Working Backwards: Starting with an Emotion

We believe that, beyond an optimum price to quality ratio, what allows an offer to distinguish itself and to create value is the strength of its emotional promise. It is this strength that can largely explain the gap between price and value for a product. For example, certain brands can sell a skincare cream at over € 400 or € 500, far above the cost of its actual components, and their customers may find that completely normal. Because, beyond the actual ingredients/ R&D/ manufacturing process, the brand (through its signs, communications, story-telling, etc.) delivers a much higher valued promise to its customers than the actual formula of the cream. The same goes for cars, clothes, furniture…

The Grail lies in the emotions the brand activates, which resonate deeply in the consumers’ mind (some consciously, some unconsciously). This idea might or might not be simple to admit.

In this quest, understanding peoples’ emotions and making clear to which benefits they refer will allow a brand to clearly distinguish itself, be attractive and create value. It is a powerful tool for brands to master, as the whole mix acts to rationalise or confirm an initial emotion triggered in the consumer’s mind.

To use the same metaphor as the example given above, instead of creating a random smell and then building a story around it, you could be writing your own story and then create your own custom, precise scent, depending on how and what you want to say.





labbrand.com 8Extract More Value out of Social Brand Equity Tracking

Besides sales revenue, positive word of mouth and brand associations are usually testaments of a strong brand well-liked by the consumers. Traditionally, brands have been conducting periodic customer satisfaction surveys or brand equity surveys to gather consumers’ feedback on the brand. What if, brands do not have to depend on surveysto hear customers’ feedback?

Extract More Value out of Social Brand Equity Tracking

Melyssa Koh Brand Strategy Director, Singapore






Social Listening –A New Way to Hear the Consumers

New media behavior has changed the way consumers search, shop, consume and communicate. Consumers are openly sharing their experience with the brand, without being prompted, in the digital space, 24/7. Other consumers are regarding this word-of-mouth sharing as more authentic and reliable than those from the brands, turning what used to be passive consumers into active influencers. As such, brands are increasingly placing more emphasis on driving positive conversation around the brand and turning to social listening for real-time monitoring. Social listening is the process of searching the web and social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors and other topics of interest.

United Airlines’ passenger removal incident that happened in April earlier this year is a great example of the impact of voices in the social media space. Within 48 hours, United Airlines’ saga generated 2.9 million mentions and its social sentiment plummeted by 160%. Other than monitoring online discussion for immediate crisis management, brands are also able to monitor and assess mid to long term brand equity performance in the digital space.

But what actually is “social brand equity”, and how can brands leverage it to lead their category?

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz






What is Social Brand Equity? Social Listening + Social Metrics

With the increased spending in digital marketing, it makes perfect sense for brands to take into account their brand performance in the social space when it comes to brand equity assessment. Social Brand Equity, sometimes referred to as Social Media Brand Equity, is a measure of brand equity value that your brand has accumulated over time in the internet social space and it changes over time depending on the interactions and experiences with the brand. (Image 1)

“A brand's powerderived from the goodwill and brandrecognition thatit has earned over time.”

Image 1






Looking solely at commonly tracked social media metrics like number of fans and number of shares can give you a faux indication of the ROI from your ad-hoc digital marketing efforts. With social listening, unprompted discussions on the brand, competitors and/or other topics of interest could be crawled, giving you access to huge pool of data for qualitative analysis of the possible reasons behind the numbers.

Integrating social listening and commonly known social media metrics, Social Brand Equity tracking provides a more comprehensive and integrated evaluation of the brand in the digital space. (Image 2)

Social Media Metrics Social Listening Analysis

Platforms

Sentiment

1KTotal Mentions

1KTotal Mentions

What are being talked about?

Which aspects of the brand are they talking about?

What are the responses?

What caught their attention?

What types of activities and initiatives getmore traction?

What are the plat-forms that worked well?

Where are the socially active conversation coming from?

Insights behind why all these happened

HOW WHERE WHYWHO WHAT1KTotal Mentions

1KTotal Mentions

What are the platforms that worked well?

Where are the socially active conversation coming from?

Image 2






Not Just a Survey: Brand Management Beyond the Annual KPIs

Applying SBET: Making the Most out of Social Tools

With Social Brand Equity tracking, you can extract more value beyond the numbers and metrics. Due to the nature of the research method being different from that of a traditional brand equity assessment, social listening allows for deep-dive qualitative analysis of any big-picture statistical findings. This makes Social Brand Equity tracking not only a brand equity evaluation tool that tracks annual brand KPI changes, but also a brand management tool that would reveal the cause and effect, empowering the brand with insights for future brand implementations. (Image 3)

We are going to share 3 usage scenarios on how a brand can extract more value out from the social listening intelligence.

Image 3






A brand needs a foundation for what drives brand perceptions.

A brand needs detailed “real-time” insight directly from its audience to make an informed and actionable brand strategy.

With traditional brand equity surveys, you get assessment of the brand images that your brand is more closely related to, the associations compared to competitors and how it changes from the last assessment. That is where it ends. There is a gap in terms of knowing what have led to the current brand perceptions and therefore does not empower the brand team to make informed decision for future improvement. With social listening, word cloud is able to give an overview of the key associations of the brand, as well as deep dive analysis into the mentions that contributed to a particular brand association.

Case example: A Travel Luggage Brand in China market

1. Importance Ranking of Product-related Attributes

Like traditional brand equity surveys, Social Brand Equity Tracking can also give insights on decision-making drivers with discussion volume as a proxy. With the assumption that people discuss more about the attributes that they have a stronger relevance and preference for, we are able to breakdown the importance of each attribute. Social listening allows you to take the analysis 1 step further to deeper analysis to exact discussion on any specific attributes, allowing you to make actionable changes to aspects of the brand that would bring the greatest impact to the brand.






2. Deep-dive Analysis into Discussion about Design

Instead of taking social media metric changes at face value, analyze the reasons behind the numbers. Trace back to where and the reasons to the changes. If fluctuation for your brand is not drastic over time to give any indication, look at your competitors. Analyze the types of content that drove traffic and engagement and which channels were working better for them.

From the example (Image 5), it revealed that generic travel destination posts are not appealing to consumers as compared to context-specific contest which not only reflects a closer relevance to consumers’ life but also engages them in 2-way communication.

A brand seeks to continuously evaluate and iterate upon different channels and campaigns.

Analysis of the discussion revolving around design revealed that most netizens could not pinpoint distinctive design characteristics for brands with the exception for Rimowa and Samsonite’s Cosmo model (Image 4). This insight could lead to product design implication for Brand A to develop distinctive, tangible design differences that consumers could distinguish.

Image 4

Image 5






Analysis into the content could also teach you on the language that you should be using when communicating with consumers on social media spaces. Besides having context relevant campaigns, Competitor B also attempted to build stronger relevance with the consumers by speaking their language – internet lingo widely used in social media communication.

Extracts from Competitor B’s social media posts - use of internet lingo that netizens are familiar with

Conclusion

A research or brand performance tracking is only useful if it empowers and leads to actionable decisions that build the brand and business over time. Metrics and KPIs would give an indication of the brand in specific aspect, but one should note that these metrics should not be viewed in isolation. Analysis should be done from various angles to have an integrated and comprehensive evaluation of the brand.

Your brand faces questions not just about volume and sentiment, but also about brand fit, cultural context, and relation with competitors – to paint a complete picture of your brand.

Start evaluating your Social Brand Equity in the right way today.





labbrand.com 16What’s in a Name? Testing Your Brand’s Verbal Asset

What’s in a name? For brands, this question poses an exciting yet daunting challenge. Brand names represent key attributes of your brand, and all future value of a brand will be built on this verbal asset.

What’s in a Name? Testing Your Brand’s Verbal Asset

Allison Rose and Chris Wallbridge Brand Naming Consultant and Business Director, Research






/ Marvelous Brand Naming Pillars /

Let’s take a look at someone who has used the brand name to great effect. The famed comic and entertainment brand MARVEL selected the name 漫威 [màn wēi] for its Chinese name after rigorous testing. The name emphasizes comics with the character 漫 [màn] and embodies the power of its superheroes with the character 威 [wēi]. The Chinese name’s mighty tonality successfully connects rational brand offerings with subconscious audience appeal.

Now imagine that you’re the one responsible for making the decision about your brand’s biggest asset. Where do you start?

Your brand team surely knows the brand’s target positioning and messaging better than anyone, so asking them to articulate core qualities the name should possess is a great place to begin. But as many branding gurus have said, your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what your consumers say it is. Therefore, you are going to want to test whether the name your brand team prefers also attracts your target consumers.

But not every brand does, surprisingly! The importance of a consumer test in any market may seem obvious, but some brands, in their urgency to get to market, do not spare the time and budget to evaluate names with consumers. Just look at Mr. Muscle’s infamous entry into China with a name that sounds identical to “Mr. Chicken” ( 肌肉先生 [jī ròu xiān sheng]). If only they had checked this with consumers beforehand.






Classic Name Testing Methods

Face-to-Face with Consumers via Qualitative Research

Testing your brand or product name before launching can uncover local consumers’ expectations of brand personality and industry, preventing unanticipated surprises and helping you build localized strategies based on the name’s strengths. To ensure positive brand equity is built with target consumers, the verbal assets need to be evaluated on a deep level.

This is where qualitative market research comes in, and where focus groups are heavily utilized as an efficient and illuminating way to do your due diligence. Consumers love to share their opinions, and as researchers, we know that the data we collect is at its best when consumers feel their voices are really impacting a brand. Focus groups offer a chance for you to sit back and listen: what associations does each name hold in the minds of consumers, and are those associations aligned with the brand values?

Some of our brand name creation clients are also new to China, so an added bonus of face-to-face qualitative research is the opportunity to hear and learn directly from Chinese consumers.

/ A Repositioning Story /

When Linkedin entered the Chinese market, they aimed to outperform local online business platforms in a highly competitive market. As a foreign brand, this meant LinkedIn faced the classic market entry challenge: how to create a name within a distinct and rapidly changing cultural context? Their solution was to frontload research. In their qualitative focus group testing, a name came to the fore with potential to carve out new space in the market. Upon further probing, researchers discovered that this name, 领英 [lǐng yīng], appealed strongly to consumers because it differed from competitor brands, which typically welcomed all job seekers. This name, meaning “a leading professional network of elites,” distinguished LinkedIn as an exclusive platform with international vision and authority.






Hard Numbers with Quantitative Research

To put hard numbers behind verbal identity evaluation, another route is quantitative research.

As everything from product development to marketing strategies are increasingly data-driven, why accept less from name testing? Quant builds a robust dataset, answering precise questions to assess risks and support positive assumptions, and helping brand owners come to a final, data-backed decision.

/ Backed by Data /

Though the name 领英 [lǐng yīng] stood out for LinkedIn in qualitative testing, the name was risky – it differed from the brand’s global positioning of “connecting everyone” – hence the brand team needed assurance. A rigorous quantitative study revealed that 领英 [lǐng yīng]

performed well on a large scale, giving the brand peace of mind as they repositioned the brand for market entry.

/ Know Your Consumer, Know Their Name Preference /

As another US client prepared to launch their first product in China, they held very little data on the personal care category they were entering into. Once we had created a shortlist of brand names, we conducted a quantitative evaluation, but also included consumer behavior, attitudes, and shopper habits modules. This meant we could 1) ensure that any name chosen for the brand wouldn’t alienate a certain type of consumer (as we link name preference data with consumer profiling data), and 2) provide a rich bank of category intelligence to support business planning.

The quantitative research process is objective, and it offers the opportunity to compare criteria directly across names. In addition to comparing names within 1 project, we can also build a database of benchmarks; using performance metrics that more effectively highlight the strongest names for all clients.






Innovations in Naming Research

Getting Beyond the Numbers – Timed Response, Integration of Video

Innovative survey design methods are leveraged to get a stronger read of hard-to-measure associations. For example, to get a more instinctive read of consumers’ subconscious reactions, a ‘timed response’ can be used when measuring a brand name’s associations. The quicker the association is selected, the stronger that value’s link to the name is.

At Labbrand we are constantly exploring new technologies to ensure that the critical ‘why’ is included in our quantitative research, providing the consumer insights that lay behind the mere numbers. Another technique to do this is by capturing live webcam feedback of respondents, which allows for more elaborative responses; as participants verbalize not only their explanations, but also the brand and product names themselves, this data collection method may also provoke a more insightful set of responses. In the future, this could even lend itself to incorporating facial coding as part of a quantitative name evaluation.






Co-Creation to Include Consumer Views Early on

Linguistic Test for International and China Launches

In recent years, brands are looking to consumers as collaborators in product and service innovation, engaging openly with them to inject fresh thinking.

/ Consumers Know Best /

When a German chocolate brand sought to expand in China, we assembled an online community of energetic consumers. They discussed the brand’s strongest selling points – its rich hazelnut flavor– and then assessed the initial Chinese name proposals wehad developed. The consumers then built on the initial proposals, adapting them and inventing creative names of their own. These consumer insights inspired additional names that built up the brand’s rich story.

As technology allows companies to interact with consumers at all stages of their innovation journey, the opportunities for creative naming research methods continue to grow with it.

In addition to innovative new testing methods and time-honored techniques, at Labbrand we learned early on an often-overlooked rule of thumb: a brand name should always be checked against ‘red flags’ in the local market – something that Mr. Muscle’s “Mr. Chicken” failed to do.

Labbrand’s industry-leading linguistic test technology, The Brand Checker, brings together a specialized global network of native speakers of over 40 languages. Their feedback provides insights on pronunciation, industry connotations, and ‘red flags.’

In China, where over 9 in 10 people identify with a single ethnic group, some brands see the country as a huge, homogenous untapped market. However, when 1 in 3 people speak a language other than Standard Mandarin as their first language, the linguistic test is especially vital.

/ Happy Booking in Shanghai /

When a major multinational online travel agency tested Chinese names, The Brand Checker examined the name 悦订 [yuè dìng], meaning “happy booking.” However, the analysis revealed that for speakers of Shanghainese, the name sounded identical to the contraceptive hormone 毓婷 [yù tíng], saving the brand from a sensitive misstep in a crucial market.

Whether launching your brand to China’s hundreds of millions of speakers of different dialects, or preparing a product for multiple global entries, a linguistic test is a straightforward and essential step to help you select the best names across all markets.






In Conclusion“Research gives confidence that your brand’s biggest asset will succeed”

Brand naming is a multi-faceted process that balances opinions of clients, agency naming experts, and consumers. While communication strategies can be localized to each market and adapted over time, a brand’s name rarely changes. So take the time to ponder, create, and debate what’s in your name, and then communicate with your consumers before asking them to buy your products. Your brand equity will continue to grow over time, and testing your brand name is your ticket to connecting with your audience in every market.





labbrand.com 23A New Age for Research

But not everybody has realized. Read more to find out how the research and consumer insights industry must evolve to retain relevance in a rapidly changing world, and some of the ways this has already been achieved.

Sorry to start this way, but, do you remember the gruesome ‘boiling frog’ parable? If you threw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it would quickly jump out; however, if you place a frog inside a pot of cold water and gradually heat to boiling, the frog won’t notice the changing environment and be gradually cooked to death. A disturbing way to begin an article but do read on and all will become clear…

A New Age for Research

Chris Wallbridge Business Director, Research






I’ve seen mixed reports about whether the science of this holds up, but I still like it as a metaphor, even if it is more than a little morbid. It is a powerful story for warning against the dangers of gradual change. When immersed in our own bubble continuously; our routines; processes; expectations of others as well as expectations of oneself; we can struggle to see the whole picture and the risks as well as the opportunities at play. Entire organizations and sectors don’t realize what is happening before it is too late, and they lack the agility to respond.

I think many researchers would agree we as an industry have historically seen parallels with this; we’ve been, as a sector, the metaphorical boiling frog, seemingly oblivious to the extent of the imminent danger. The world changed; technology threw upside-down the dynamics between consumers and brands; yet agencies, their suppliers, and their clients have all at times struggled to respond and evolve themselves, and adapt to the new status quo. Instead we fell back on tried and tested methods and processes, rather than take the risk of failure through trying something new.

Yet, at ESOMAR Congress 70th edition in September, it was clear to me something had changed. The theme was ‘VISIONARY’, revealing the future. But I would go further than this; it was more about action and what has already been achieved. Many within the industry have already got on and adapted; moving away from talking about game-changing methodologies, to actually having taken the risk, invested, changed, and demonstrated the proven rewards with rock-solid case studies.

Only a few years back I can remember many speakers at conferences waxing lyrical about big data, with hypothetical examples of its potential application, only for little of it to actually come to fruition with the market research industry involved. There used to be more ‘what if’ and less ‘we did’. But this year, the tone was different.

“Without doubt, some within the industry have already escaped the boiling pot and many others are clamoring to change.”






The sentiment was reiterated by various clients; unless you can clearly demonstrate the business effects a research initiative will take, then just don’t bother. Whilst not a new sentiment, never before has it been screamed so loudly and clearly from the industry’s highest podium for all to hear. This is only going to increase in the future; brands are increasingly dealing with complex global changes in society, technology, and even geo-political threat, adapting to an increasingly uncertain landscape. In today’s world, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a monthly brand tracker asking the same old questions isn’t going to be particularly enlightening, given the scale of challenges clients are being asked to deal with.

Researchers that don’t update approaches, burying their heads in the sand, won’t last forever. Including a realistic and considered portrayal of new forces that shape us as people first and then the consumer-brand ecosystem requires a respect and appreciation for cultural, human insights. This is incredibly important for us at Labbrand; as the leading China-originated brand consultancy it is essential, regardless of objectives and method, that this cuts across the design of the project, and how we approach the analysis and the conclusions we draw.

Historically, clients would see this value immediately for qualitative pieces, but less so for quantitative. However, increasingly we are seeing the recognition that it doesn’t matter which research vehicle is being used; questions and subject matter must be grounded in the realities and cultural context of the market, otherwise your data lacks validity. That’s why we take the same approach to quantitative surveying as we would for qualitative focus groups; all questionnaires are bespoke following an insight review, and we build custom metrics. You wouldn’t ask the same questions in every focus group for every client, so why would it make sense for quantitative research?

Smart Clients Make Tough Choices with Ease

To a packed crowd of seasoned delegates, on the 70th anniversary of the most important global conference in the research industry, he said that the research methodology on which the most money is spent, has never led to a critical decision being taken in business. As a result, Diageo eliminated their brand trackers. This isn’t the future of how things will be, this is already happening; clients are looking much more carefully at their research programmes and eliminating whatever isn’t pulling its weight for the business. And it isn’t just a question of budgets which are under pressure for many organizations, but of time and clarity. If a research method isn’t yielding clear business insight, then why cloud one’s judgement at all by including it in the mix? More data doesn’t equal better decisions, we know this.

“Never has a critical decision been taken because of a (traditional) brand tracker”proclaimed Andrew Geoghegan, Global Head of ConsumerPlanning at Diageo on the first full day of ESOMAR Congress.






Goodbye Data Scientist, Long Live the Data Narrator

The future for our industry is, for most of us, going to be much less about data execution and collection, and much more focused on data narration. For market researchers at least, there will be less chatter about data science, and more buzz around data narration; using evidence, no matter how sophisticated, to tell a story that changes a mindset, rather than using approaches to develop sophisticated evidence. Although the latter will of course still have its place, automation is going to supercharge it; there simply won’t be the need for as many of us to be involved in manual processes (no matter how complex and smart they are). Initially this is primarily for quantitative research that will continue to cut timespans for results down from weeks and days, to days and even hours.

The best of the industry will flourish as we move to becoming true storytellers and facilitators. It is an area of focus for the Labbrand team, and we’ve been proud to develop a reputation for running highly creative, energetic innovation sprints, held over 2-3 days. There is so much satisfaction derived starting from zero, and ending 3 days later with viable concepts that could go to market or an entirely new design. This truly brings internal client teams, from across disciplines and even markets, together and at the end of the sprint you can see that the process has made a real difference to how they will work together in the future.

We need to get away from research approaches and mindsets that have long since expired in terms of their relevancy, and get back to research reflecting the world around us. That’s why we ran our Digital Lifestyles project, presented at ESOMAR Congress 2017, that looks at a method with purely digitally-related measures for much more relevant segmentation for a digital age.

You don’t get wisdom via information alone, we know this. Actually, as alluded to above, too much information is a hindrance; “if I had more time, I would have written you a shorter report” so the saying goes. Ironically, sometimes a value has been placed on ‘more is more’ in research. Look how long the report we produced is for you, there’s so much detail in here you can use! Except we know no one ever looks in the Appendix unless there has been a serious crisis...

In today’s age of information overload, answers are available for anyone to access with the touch of a button. This is something that could be seen as a threat; does this make everybody a researcher, of some sorts? Certainly, we need to clearly articulate the high standards and ethics involved with top-quality research execution, and this will breed a confidence in the insights we bring to the table alongside the myriad of other business intelligence sources at a Board member’s disposal. In the future, our voice will only be heard as loud as it should be if we become master marketers, as well as researchers, when we communicate.






Wake Up and Smell the… Ever Detoriating Data Quality Coffee

The Race to Adapt and Change Already Began

The best stories still need solid evidence of course. It would astonish industry outsiders, yet depressingly not surprise us researchers, that most surveys are still taken on desktop not mobile. The proportion of people that agree to take part in a survey continues its decades-long decline. Agencies still write 25, or 30+, minute questionnaires with ugly, inaccessible question formats designed only for desktop. Then when the data comes back, they actually believe its validity!

We’ve all had that tricky question from clients; ‘who actually takes these surveys?’ Increasingly, we must move to mobile first survey design. As time goes on, badly designed long surveys meant only for desktop will lose credibility; and more and more clients understand this, and the seriousness of it. Gamification and video integration certainly can improve the experience itself, however we need to start looking at the method too. Virtual reality is now an accepted, proven approach and we must seriously consider how it can start to replace other methods that now start to feel slightly archaic.

The industry is going to come under pressure like never before, and we envisage a surge in the pace of change and disruption over the next 12-24 months. It is time (and already overdue) to shift ways of working and ways of thinking to:

• Reflect in our work the new realities, dramatic change, and technological revolutions around the world; we need more culturally meaningful stories relevant to the context against which we live our lives;

• Do more, with less, and quicker, which can be facilitated by growing our talents in storytelling; moving to data narration, helping clients navigate and adapt to increasing change;

• Ensure our design and execution is more authentic; involving looking at the questions we ask, how we ask them, and whether we indeed ask them at all, in today’s digital first world.

It’s easier to say rather than do… however the price of inaction will hit businesses where it hurts; the bottom line. And anyway, doesn’t this all sound much more exciting than a traditional brand tracker?





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Labbrand is the leading China-originated global brand consultancy. We lead branding journeys and facilitate implementations to light up companies and products with the power of your brand.

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