Editor’s note: Lucy Davison is managing director at Keen as Mustard, a London-based marketing agency.
When my agency surveyed companies in marketing research and insights earlier this year we found that the biggest marketing problems respondents cited were a lack of awareness, differentiation and clear communication around their offerings. Undoubtedly all three of these things are intimately connected. Clear differentiation leads to good communication around the offer, which would lead to increased awareness. But the big-ticket item that shocked me most about marketing in MR was the absence of true results measurement. What we saw was a big, fat lack of ROI right in the middle of an industry that measures and understands research results.
On the one hand marketing researchers spend their lives trying to make sense of the world by measuring it and on the other they ignore measures relating to their own businesses.
This paradox reminded me a lot of the lessons brands have been learning from big data.
Human flaws
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of big data are greatly exaggerated. It’s not that big data has failed (although we all enjoy reports of Target sending coupons for baby items to the home of a teenager who had not yet told her family of her pregnancy). Big data is not at fault. It is the flawed (or malevolent) human programmer, interpreter or AI teacher producing the problem.
Big data is no longer big news, perhaps because everyone was led to believe they’d get more from it – the source of answers to all our business questions. Remember how big data was going to make survey research obsolete? Many companies are finding it’s not the panacea we might have thought. Big data is hard to store and analyze and you still need brilliant (human) thinking to get frameworks to understand and interpret it. What is more, when you’re collecting huge quantities of data points the source of any given data point is obscured. And this amalgamation of data results in the data standing for something, rather than being the thing itself. The data you have are simply a substitute for what you really want to understand.
Whether you are looking at the overall impact of big data or the lack of diverse ROI measures in the MR industry, the truth is, without getting at motivations and emotions, data is just that: lots and lots of information.
Qualitative researchers have been a still, small voice of calm in this world, pointing out that it’s all very well knowing what people are doing and how, and even when or where they are doing it, but you still need the intimacy of qualitative research to understand why.
MR’s marketing problems
At my company we are frequently contacted by research and insight companies who still seem to think that the Internet is the panacea for marketing. Like with big data, all they need to do is dial up the numbers – hits, clicks, links, Web visits, likes, you name it – and hey presto! lots of happy clients will be lining up to give them projects.
The problem is that creating growth is not ticked off by one or even two big quantitative proxy measures. If the answer to marketing ROI was that simple I’d be a very rich woman. Instead, we encourage clients to use a range of measures and do some genuine awareness benchmarking. This acts as a good start but more importantly the MR industry needs to step away from big data, not be seduced by numbers and ask, “Why?”
Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter recently addressed this issue. In effect, he said that marketers should focus on creating demand for their brand and services:
“You had a crunch on the advertising market as advertisers discovered the Internet. But I think that is a false economy or false direction for them because basically nothing sells a product better than a beautiful page in a magazine. It creates demand for that product. The Internet helps you buy that product. They’re different functions.”
Creating demand needs to be built into your DNA. Whether it’s a beautiful page in a magazine, a piece of thought leadership or a blog post, it needs to be about your brand, its values, beliefs and a clear point-of-view. It needs to answer the all-important “why” about your business. Without that a click is just an irritating noise made by a beetle.