When I started at Quirk’s Marketing Research Review in 1988 as managing editor, I had no idea I’d still be here 23 years later. Heck, back then, taking my first full-time job as a newly-minted University of Minnesota journalism school graduate, I had no idea where I’d be 23 months later. I was just glad to have an editorial gig, and one at a magazine to boot, since magazine editing was my area of specialization during j-school. That it was right in my backyard here in the Twin Cities was icing on the cake.
Marketing research? Didn’t know a thing about it. (And, as I always quip, some would say I still don’t.) My new boss? Tom Quirk seemed like a decent guy. Very friendly, a sports nut like me, knew my late father (he had died when I was 14) as they had both worked in the local agrimarketing circles in the 1970s. My new workplace? As a freelance arts writer since my high school days, I’d seen my share of funky office setups when meeting with editors at various local publications (there ain’t a lot of money in writing about the arts!). Quirk’s HQ circa 1988 was no different. We were in a squat brown “office” building, next to a municipal liquor store and across the freeway from the airport. The walls in many of the rooms sported a faux dried-grass wallpaper from some previous tenant that wouldn’t have been out of place in a tiki bar. The chairs and desks were from a mish-mash of eras, some of a more recent time, some that looked like they could have been immortalized in an Edward Hopper painting.
I would come to find that the low-cost/no-cost furnishings were a perfect embodiment of Tom’s lack of pretense and a clear expression of where his priorities were for the magazine. He cared more about substance than style. He wasn’t interested in the trappings of being a publisher, of attempting to impress with some grandiose, ego-driven undertaking. He was an entrepreneur who had an idea for a business-to-business publication, one that focused on helping readers get the most out of their marketing research projects.
He impressed on me at the outset the need to keep the editorial content as substantive and real-world as possible, to give readers useful information they could apply in their day-to-day work. As he discusses elsewhere in this issue, during his years in marketing before starting the magazine, he encountered the situation too many times where people would receive research data from him and his team and say “This is great. What do we do with it?” His goal with each issue of the magazine was to answer that question.
Looking back on my early years with the magazine, I still can’t believe that I was able to find enough material to fill issue after issue after issue. Marketing research, after all, is something that most companies don’t want to talk about and they forbid their supplier partners from doing the same. What saved me, and what sustains the magazine even today, is the collegial spirit that pervades this business. As I have written about many times here, researchers are keen to share their ideas, their experiences and their hard-won lessons, with the aim - stated or otherwise - of improving the stature and impact of marketing research.
Never use the word fascinating
When I tell people I edit a magazine for the marketing research industry, they don’t exactly draw closer with excitement. Most folks aren’t even clear what marketing research is, and those who feel like they know what it is would never use the word fascinating to describe it. (I’m always amazed at how they don’t seem to hear the research part, focusing instead on the word marketing. “So like, direct mail and that kind of stuff?” No, not exactly.)
But I think marketing research is fascinating - likely another reason why I’ve stayed here as long as I have. (Had the magazine’s focus been on industrial coatings or grommets and fasteners, my tenure might have more brief.) After all, much of marketing research is devoted to figuring out what makes consumers tick or what makes a successful ad or a new product launch. And we human beings aren’t easy to understand, so the industry is constantly coming up with new ways to gather information on our consumption habits, which makes my job all the more interesting.
It’s also a great fit for me, personality-wise, because I’m a fan of the underdog, of those who toil in obscurity while others claim the spotlight. This industry needs champions and we’ve been happy to function as one. After all, what part of the marketing machine gets less respect and consideration than research? It’s dismissed when its findings conflict with internal beliefs. It’s ignored when they confirm them. And it’s the first item to be cut when budgets need slashing.
Plus, that whole “no respect” thing also resonates with those of us here in the Midwest (aka flyover country). Like many of my fellow Midwesterners, I’ve got a bit of chip on my shoulder regarding my home region’s place in the grand scheme of things. I long ago grew tired of the coastal chauvinism that holds that nothing of import happens here in the business world, even though we’re the birthplace of iconic brands like 3M, Target, Best Buy, Medtronic, General Mills and Pillsbury.
Add it all together and 23 years in the same job doesn’t seem so unlikely.
Reshaped all of our lives
Much has changed in the industry since the first issue of Quirk’s came out in late 1986. Landline phones, once a given in every household, are increasingly the exception rather than the rule. The Web and mobile computing technologies have reshaped all of our lives and research along with them.
We’ve changed as well, expanding our publishing schedule from the initial eight issues to 12, adding an outstanding Web site, a fortnightly e-newsletter and apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android.
What hasn’t changed is our commitment to maintaining Tom’s vision. For my part, I’m gratified that he entrusted me with guiding the editorial content of the magazine and I’m proud to have played a role in making his dream an enduring reality.
What initially seemed on that late-summer day in 1988 like a welcome first step on the path to bigger and better things became proof that sometimes you don’t have to go very far to find exactly what you’re looking for.