Why I Love Research

People are interesting. Hanging out with them, chatting to them about their lives, looking in the direction they're looking, seeing what amuses, engages, bores, annoys, is so much more interesting that any tv show.

It's also enlightening.








I was walking down the street with a 14 year old English girl a week ago. She pointed out a poster on a bus side and explained the message, why it was relevant to the product and described other posters in the series. She's not the target market because it was beer advertising. But I'm paying more attention to bus sides these days.











I spent the day with a 6 foot tall, 17 year old Italian guy on the weekend. He explained his thinking on why countries go to war, compared the drinking restrictions in Europe and the States and picked out the movie - Nacho Libre - which was funny and brilliant and not what I would have steered him into at all.

When research is conducted with people they're labelled 'respondents'. Respondents don't have to say anything though, they can throw you a look or beam proudly at their possessions or family. The message is clear.

They can also come to life when I'm looking at quantitative data. I don't know why I can look at numbers and see a soap opera but it's always been the case. Colleagues crack jokes about it and that's fine.

What's amazing to me is the number of Account Planners who scoff at research, who denigrate researchers just because we're nerds and pontificate about brands when they don't know the first thing about how people live their lives. It's a puzzle.

Here's a great article about the changing world of advertising, exposing the way most advertising decisions get made. The author calls for more 'consultation' with 'the consumer'. I say, if you aren't doing that these days your advertising expenditure will be wasted, deservedly so.

You can tell the ads that are inspired by research. They touch you with their boldness and storyline. Not many of those around though.