Editor’s note: Jim Berridge is SVP marketing performance at Phoenix Marketing International, New York.
Greenwich, London is a fascinating place. People have lived and plied their various trades in the area for more than a 1,000 years, it features a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Old Royal Navy College and was the birthplace of Greenwich Mean Time – the basis of our international time zones and vital navigational tool for sailors of old. But nestled in such important history, one only has to look across the river Thames to see modernity in the towering skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the heart of London’s financial district. It felt like a fitting setting for the first Quirk’s Event in the U.K. – the traditional and directional guidance provided by research juxtaposed with leading-edge data and insight.
I’ve always felt that a good data and insight conference can be important to more than just researchers. As someone who has spent almost a decade in ad and brand research, I have attended numerous conferences covering every aspect of the research and marketing mix, and always found the insights unearthed at research events to be unique.
So, why are so few marketers attending these industry events? It could be the disconnect between client-side insight teams, marketers and the C-suite, as was detailed in Finn Raben, ESOMAR, and BV Pradeep of Unilever in the presentation How to Demonstrate the Value of Investing in Insight. I think that certainly plays a part along with a perception that all a market research conference is going to do is explore the minutiae of methodology – dozens of dry presentations with nothing but statistical formulas on a screen in giant Helvetica. That could have been the case many years ago, but anyone that has been to a research conference in the last few years knows that impact is king when it comes to presentation content.
As an ad and brand specialist, I had the opportunity to attend The Quirk’s Event in London and was able to catch up with some leading-edge thinking in the area. Andrew Geoghegan, Global Head of Consumer Planning at Diageo, presented a study that explored positive gender portrayal in advertising. It was an important and inspirational piece of work, and not only did it provide the moral and ethical reasons for better representation both in the content and production of advertising but it also demonstrated how diversity can massively impact the growth of a brand.
Another stand-out presentation was from Geraint Jones, global marketing director of strategic consultancy firm CLEAR M&C Saatchi, who presented the details of their landmark study The Experience Gap, claiming that between £220 and £360 million is lost each year due to the gap between a brand promise and a consumer’s experience. Additionally, Simon Shaw, director at Trinity McQueen, shared a new study that looked into the use of nudge tactics in digital marketing, specifically in the leisure industry, showing that consumers are becoming wise to some behavioral science tactics. These sessions combined to show that we now operate in a more savvy consumer environment than we once did; authenticity, representation and the ability to meet the expectation of a brand promise matter enormously to the public.
For any marketer or brand manager, the insight provided by presentations such as these are gold. They demonstrate that a market research conference doesn’t just echo marketing trends but is at the forefront of discovering these trends in the first place.
These presentations and this kind of data should be part of discussions across the business spectrum. So, client-side researchers, my challenge to you is to get your marketers to expand their conference calendar to include more research events. There is an opportunity here to provide your broader teams with insight they will surely appreciate. This will help engage them in the almost limitless possibilities of research, potentially improving the lines of communication between you and your marketing teams, improving budgets and hopefully giving you the room to do some really innovative work for your brand. It’s not a magic bullet but it is a great first step.