Another Successful Conference...

Despite the torrential rain for the duration of the conference delegates managed to enjoy the papers, workshops and social events. There was a high standard of papers and presentations and many compliments have again been received by the conference committee.

Three conference awards were presented this year at the BIG summer party. Alex Johnston from Jigsaw Research was the winner of the best paper, David Smith from Illuminas was the winner of the best presentation and Conrad Persons from Research International was the winner of the best newcomer award.

Jump to a section on this page:	More from Conference 2006:
The International Scene Insights Through Internal Relationships Connecting With New and Different Businesses New Ways of Working Creative Output B2B: It’s had a great past, will it have a great future?	Workshops>> (PDF, 69KB) Quotes from delegates>> (PDF, 63KB) Social Scene>> (PDF, 71KB)

Kathy Hurst, the BIG Conference Chair, formally welcomed everyone to the Conference proceedings and introduced the opening session. As Kathy indicated it would be a session that took many delegates to areas (both of research as well as the world) where they had not been before.

Kathy introduced the keynote speaker for the Conference, Ian Talmage of Bayer Healthcare. The breadth and depth of his career in the Pharmaceutical industry meant that Ian was particularly well-equipped to talk to the subject of building a global brand. Specifically he concentrated on the development of Losec from his time at Astra. In a detailed and fascinating paper Ian took delegates right through all aspects of what became an enormous success.

From the early clinical trials it was apparent that Losec was an asset that had potential value and warranted investment to realise that potential, especially in an extremely competitive marketplace where the lead times to get an idea to market are around a decade, and the vast majority of products fail to break even. The marketing strategy adopted was one of market creation rather than sharing the space occupied by existing brands - not that this precluded Astra from being able to learn lessons from the first of the billion dollar brands: Tagamet and Zantac.

Some of the specific lessons learned from other brands related to the management of brand assets and properties. Considerable effort was expended in distilling the brand promise and creating the visual identity whilst ensuring that it would be deployed consistently. In addition, the campaignability of ideas over time was valued highly, reflecting the fact that many other brands lose their way, some even in the long period prior to launch.

This in turn highlighted the importance of working with internal audiences such as the sales force and, in particular, managing management. This lesson had been learned fairly early on when at one point it had actually been necessary to ignore a directive from senior management banning promotional expenditure. Along with managing the internal audiences and an analysis of the competition - both the corporations and the brands - the other critical factors related to the external audiences. In particular extensive patient flow analysis was undertaken, mapping the potential intervention points for Losec, as well as Influencer/Prescriber Analysis and Customer Segmentation.

The second presentation was delivered by John Wigglesworth of GfK NOP. The paper concerned with cultural differences in the use of satisfaction scales, had been written jointly with colleagues Corinne Moy and Geraldine Frappier. Although the impact of different cultures and the way language is used is hardly a new issue in undertaking global studies, as it becomes increasingly pertinent to identify areas of improvement so the importance of correctly identifying genuine under-performance grows.

John first of all outlined some of the common problems and issues with scales across different countries before recounting details of a review that had been undertaken of over 20 studies. The data taken from each comprised the scores from the top 2 boxes in the varying satisfaction scales used and demonstrated the extent to which responses vary from country to country.

Given this, there is a clear need to eliminate the country effect - yet to acquire the data in order to achieve this would require an enormous multi-country, multi-brand study or series of studies. GfK NOP had therefore concentrated their efforts on a particular study in the technology sector across 40 countries in the EMEA region. In order to be able to introduce normalised scores which eliminated the country effect and allowed a truer picture of performance levels to emerge they drew on a study undertaken for the same client looking at competitor performance across 14 countries.

This showed that average satisfaction scores across the competition showed a high degree of consistency over time. Although he did not shy away from some of the limitations (including the lack of transferability of the calculations to other markets), John went on to demonstrate how the competitor study had enabled them to calculate normalised data and then, using the main study, set appropriate targets at a country level in a way that was clearly welcomed by the client.

The final paper in the session entitled "How green is the dragon?" was given by Charles Michaelis, managing director of Databuild. Drawing on his personal experiences gathered working on a project connected with environmental awareness in industry in China, Charles entertainingly and vividly described the key lessons learned from conducting research in that country.

In particular Databuild had been engaged in connection with an evaluation of the success of the Environmental Management Co-operation Programme (EMCP), a collaboration between the European Commission and the Chinese government in the area of environmental management. The nature of the collaboration itself threw up many challenges due to the differing perspectives and expectations that representatives from the two organisations had.

The research entailed a programme of desk, qualitative and quantitative research and the workshops conducted as part of the initial phase helped considerably to align some of the differing perspectives regarding the ambitions of the project. The subsequent research conducted amongst firms revealed such phenomena as the group interview (as various people in the firm wanted to have their say); the vagueness of appointment times, and the excessive deference shown by younger interpreters and interviewers towards older respondents.

Apart from the less surprising difficulties of translating questionnaires, other problems that were thrown up included the difficulties in translating numbers due to the Chinese tendency to abbreviate tens of thousands (i.e. 4 0s) as opposed to the western convention of shortening numbers using thousands (i.e. 3 0s). The Chinese are also much less used to tendering for work, relying to a far higher degree on networking and the building of personal relationships.

Finally, when it came to the reporting of results it became clear that the Western practice of putting forward recommendations for action could be perceived as implied criticism by the Chinese representatives.

The second session of the day drew together two different types of internal relationships: firstly, the relationships between a company and its 'agents' (IFA's, Account sales-teams, Pharma reps etc.), and secondly, employees and their relationship with their company and market.

The first paper, "Watching the advisor at work: how to be a fly on the wall", was given by Dave Skelsey, Director in Synovate's Corporate and Financial unit. Dave described an innovative and unusual approach to looking at how the sales channel really works in Financial Services. He admitted it was not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one, given all the issues, and one that brought many benefits to the Client, the Advisor Firm and to Synovate themselves. He recommended that it is an approach that could be applied in any business where sensitive one-to-one meetings are part of the channel eg, for Major Customers of Telecoms and IT companies. A key lesson for the audience was that very difficult research problems, can be tackled effectively - but you need both imagination and application.

The second paper was given by Peter Goudge of Peter Goudge and Associates. Since his days on the client side at Midland and NatWest, Peter has always been interested in employee research and feels strongly that not enough employee research is conducted, and when it is, it isn't analysed and used as well as it should be. His paper was entitled "Now we are so insightful, what are we doing about employee insight?" and he argued that we should be applying all the myriad of market research analysis techniques and data-integration and fusion methodology to employee data. The problem is that probably too much employee research is done internally, by HR departments, who are not aware of, or skilled in, the analysis tools that are standard to MR professionals. Perhaps more market researchers should give papers at HR conferences!

The third paper, then, was the exception that proves the rule: O2 and Maritz have together developed a process of employee research that is really delivering value to the O2 organisation. The paper was given by Danielle Lee, Organisational Effectiveness Consultant at O2 and June Lawrence, Senior Research Executive at Maritz Research and was entitled "Couch Potato to fitness freak - making data sweat". Danielle started by telling us how O2 has transformed itself since its separation from BT, four years ago, from a business that initially wasn't seen as having much of a chance even of surviving, to a brand that has just been sold to Telefonica for £18.8 billion. Much of that transformation is due to the management's belief and investment in the company's people. June then took us through the O2 Reflect programme - how Maritz and O2 worked together to take the employee survey from 'Couch Potato' (i.e perfectly collected and reported data, but not utilised very much) to 'Fitness Freak': slimmer questionnaire, integration with other data, focussed insights. The insights and the resulting actions taken have saved O2 millions of pounds, and improved both productivity and customer satisfaction. Truly best practice at work.

In summary all three papers in the session addressed the fundamental issue for B2B research - how to grow the market by adding value and innovation. All the papers ably demonstrated the possibility of doing both, and it is through work such that this that the B2B research market will evolve and thrive.

The third session kicked off with a paper from Ruth Flood, Head of Research at the Design Council. The three papers in this session were looking at business from a slightly different viewpoint. Initially we looked at business attitudes to design in all contexts - from communication through new product development and service design. This was followed by an interesting segmentation study based on an organisation's approach to innovation - a bit of a departure from the usual small, medium, large and regional segmentations we are so used to seeing. Finally a look at how the smallest businesses, namely one-man bands, operate and some tips on how to approach them.

Ruth's paper showed us how the Design Council has used research to find out what UK businesses understand by the word design, and the impact of design in a business context. The Design Council believes that design has a vital role in making businesses more competitive, so wanted to deliver tangible evidence of the benefits derived from using good design as a strategic business tool. The research tried to find links between active use of design and business performance. An interesting fact that emerged was that winners of design awards tend to outperform FTSE companies by 200%. So don't get left behind by being part of the 45% of UK businesses failing to invest anything in design and check out the Value of design fact finder on the Design Council website.

How to produce an effective segmentation of all English businesses based on their use of innovation, was the issue tackled by Stephen Hooker (COI) and Shiona Davies (Continental Research) in the session's second paper. Some audience participation pre-conference and earlier in the day showed that most researchers were time poor innovators, meaning we had ambitions to do better, but needed more time in order to do so! It was heartening to hear that over half of the businesses in the UK innovate in some way - an attitude closely associated with growth and planning. The DTI and SBS continue to use this segmentation to help them with their third party marketing.

The session was brought to a close by Nicky Perrott, who likened the world of business to the mighty ocean. Businesses range from being Giant Squids to shrimps, and Nicky interviewed 20 one person organisations (OPOs or shrimps) to discover how they work. As OPOs tend to be highly specialised, it doesn't make sense to lump them in with SMEs. Nicky examined how OPOs market themselves - often in the local pub - what their buying criteria are and looked at their attitudes to growth - usually negative as it can be risky and uncertain. With some interesting facts about quantum physics thrown in along the way, all in all an entertaining end to the third session.

This session blended the perspectives of the fieldwork provider, represented by Teresa Lynch from Kudos research, the agency practitioner, Alex Johnson from Jigsaw and the client, Ruth Collins, Head of Customer Insight for commercial fuels at Royal Dutch Shell.

Teresa Lynch's paper (co-authored by Rebecca Candy, also from Kudos) must win the prize for most intriguing, sci-fi inspired title of the conference - 'Do interviewers dream of electric respondents?'. In her presentation, Teresa introduced us to that all-too familiar concept of the "white-knuckle project"; the stretching project that asks that little bit more of all concerned, not least the industry's most valuable resource: our interviewing fieldforces. Via a series of case studies and findings from Kudos-sponsored qualitative research amongst B2B interviewers, we were enlightened about the impact of technology, hybrid and multi-media methodologies on interviewer morale and the respondent experience. The positive side of progress brings comfort (more desk-space with flat-screens and compact hardware); more autonomy, ownership of appointments (with smart sample management software); digital recording to enhance data collection of verbatims and web-stimuli, which help to keep respondents engaged. The downsides, however, include uncontrolled autodiallers, system crashes and interestingly a disarming lack of closure when interviewers recruit people to web-surveys. The balanced view is that interviewers are empowered by and enthusiastic about new technology, providing the niceties of project and questionnaire-design have been given adequate thought and we've done our due diligence by 'tightening the bolts' before the rollercoaster sets off.

Alex Johnston from Jigsaw Research gave us an insight into the application of ethnography in B2B research, in a paper co-written with Peter Totman. With its roots in the anthropological observation of tribal cultures, how can ethnography help us to understand what makes businesses tick and what can this add to the researcher's tool box? Alex was quick with the riposte on value-add: 'it probably adds £10-12K to a project'. Joking apart, the discipline offers many tools to enrich understanding of situations, behaviour and motivations, that cannot be readily accessed using traditional techniques. Alex presented a fascinating case study of using ethnography to get a holistic understanding of how data and telecommunication tools are used in British SMEs. By observing the day-to-day routines of businesses, in scenes reminiscent of The Office, we learned that amongst other things, businesses use technology to lie and mislead! Companies can be made to seem bigger or smaller with canny use of multiple emails, phone-extensions and multi-tasking. Texting for business is on the up amongst younger executives and no-one who claims they have a 'wacky' or unique office culture actually does. We were treated to some helpful do's and don'ts on this type of research eg, Do get MD or FD buy-in; and get them to set the scene appropriately. Being introduced as "Alex, who's here to spy on you" is probably not the best approach. Inevitably ethnography brings its recruitment challenges and discomforts for the participant and the observer, not least of which is the boredom and emotional drain of watching UK non-plc go about its daily business, sometimes very slowly. The rewards lie in a deeper understanding and an ability to triangulate the sanitised answers that more traditional techniques can provide to us.

The session was rounded off by Ruth Collins, who set the context to her paper "B2B Customer Insight - what role now for market research?" by introducing us to the diverse world of bulk commercial fuels at Royal Dutch Shell whose B2B needs extend from understanding decision-making in large industrial manufacturers to the whims of Czech truck-drivers. The central theme of Ruth's paper communicated the need for agencies to be smarter about tuning in to today's clients' needs and rhythms: understanding the relative value of research: how this can add more to in-house knowledge/data and the likely ROI it offers to clients. Disconcertingly, a Google-search on "customer insight" serves up a raft of CRM specialists, management consultants and data integrators and only very few market research companies. This underlines that research is in danger of slipping down the value-chain and raises the questions as to whether we've neglected to understand our new competitive landscape. To combat this trend, agencies should be emphasising their USPs such as good questionnaire-design, solid sampling techniques, and ability to handle customer contact data with the utmost sensitivity in fieldwork. To beat the newcomers at their own game, we need to be ready to sell-in the value and impact on the bottom-line of our work more visibly, and create a definitive focus on delivery and end-game versus methods, techniques and the journey.

This session covered how to use creativity in the research process. The first speaker, Conrad Persons from Research International presented his paper, "Creativity in Business: Getting a shot at the big ideas".

Conrad described how companies now want real partners and not just one-dimensional service operators; and that this has affected everyone from small shops to big accounting firms. As a result there has been a major shift in values in business and the key drivers of equity may have less to do with 'hard factors' and more to do with 'softer' ones. Therefore thought leadership and creativity are the new 'must haves' along with experience and expertise.

But creativity isn't merely to be tacked on at the end of the research process: it has to be integrated into each of the processes engaged in: so a process that goes from brief to de-brief. It is not just a complement to research, but potentially a core element. So researchers must scratch their heads and constantly think of how to harness its power.

Researchers mustn't forget that clients are consumers too. Therefore their relationship with media has also changed. So, just as unconventional media cuts through to reach consumers, unconventional deliverables grab clients' attention. Just as important though is how researchers can be creative in insuring that their ideas work their way through client companies.

The second speaker, David Smith from Illuminas presented his paper "I want an insight and I want it on a stick yesterday, preferably significant at the 95% level of confidence", which described the seven principles behind communicating your insights in a way that impacts your client. The seven principles are:

1. Wisdom - to demonstrate owl-like wisdom about the "potency" of your insight.
2. Vision - to make sure that the insight registers on the radar of decision-makers, we need to present our insight in the context of the wider business picture.
3. Talk value - for senior people you need to convert your insight into financial value.
4. Tell a story - telling a story is a powerful way of getting one's message over.
5. Simplicity - The simplest solution is usually the best; so keep your arguments and presentations simple.
6. Take responsibility - it is very important to take personal responsibility for a problem, rather than assume that someone else will be doing something about it. Also important is to embrace conflict and learn how to debate issues in a forthright, rather than timid way.
7. Think Show Business! - there is no harm in learning a few show business tricks to give your performance some sizzle that will help you get over your insight message.

David concluded by stating that if all the above seven principles are followed then you will be able to convey the power of insight to even the most restless and demanding of senior business audiences.

In summary, both papers showed how insight alone is not enough for effective research. Creativity is required throughout the research process and especially so in the way you communicate your insights to your clients.

The final conference session was unusually well-attended as most delegates were understandably keen to hear Phyllis Macfarlane talk about the history and the future of B2B research; an issue of direct relevance to everyone attending Conference. She also tackled the fundamental question of whether B2B is still actually different from B2C research and whether this even matters at a time when the two disciplines have become increasingly blurred.

Phyllis took us through the growth of B2B research from its foundations in industrial, construction, healthcare and agriculture areas to the development of mass business markets encompassing the areas of office equipment, utilities and telecommunications.

A decade by decade history looked at the type of work which was being done, the research companies involved, the major clients, and milestones such as the application of consumer research principles like sampling and structured questionnaires in the 60s, the growth of telephone interviewing in the 70s, the privatisation and deregulation which went on in the 80s as well as the launch of mobile phones and the increase in availability of PCs, the development of B2B qualitative work and, in the 90s the growth of the internet.

In this century we are starting to see more use of the internet for data collection and for qualitative and also more multi-mode research.

The best estimate of the size of the B2B research market is that it accounts for about 10% of the total (or £100-£130m in the UK). Phyllis then went on to look at why it accounts for such a small proportion when within the economy it's worth much more than 10%. The main reasons would seem to be the expense, the complexity, not knowing who to research, a belief amongst clients that they already know about their big customers and anyway they don't want to risk putting market research interviewers in front of them - so they shy away from B2B and stick to consumer research.

There has been a blurring of the boundaries between Consumer and B2B research whose origins Phyllis traced to the privatisation of Telecoms and Utilities companies and sector expertise becoming more important than the audience being researched. There is a feeling however that B2B companies are going to need to move towards customer relationship building in the same way that consumer marketing has done - differentiation will be increasingly associated with the customer relationship rather than the product. However B2B has also brought a lot to the party - sampling and weighting techniques, understanding decision making, desk research and fact based consultancy.

Phyllis passed quickly over the current status of B2B research as many of the issues had been discussed earlier in the conference (recruitment, response rates, decision making, qualitative and on-line) and looked to the future. She concluded that we need to widen our horizons, add more value, and help clients to find solutions. We should be investing and innovating.

There are lots of potential growth areas such as NPD (which needs to be presented better), brands and advertising, ethnography, SMEs to name but a few. What we need to be doing is holistic research, integrating information and offering more insight. We also need to remember what's different about B2B research; the customer diversity, understanding the decision-making process, sampling and sample design, recruitment and interviewing skills. To end with Phyllis's words: "The B2B world is complex; someone has to make sense of it. This is what is going to sort out the men from the boys."

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