As a wrap-up of the conference Manfred Mareck of ESOMAR interviewed Tom, discussing the currents trends in mobile research. Check out the podcast online.
Want to find out more about the Mobile Research Conference, check Twitter #mrc2010 or contact Tom De Ruyck.
The ARF Great Mind Awards recognize and celebrate individuals who are making research great today. They are awarded for research innovation, rising stars, outstanding ARF member contributions and lifetime achievement within the industry.
Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting has been nominated for an ARF Great Mind Award in the Innovation Category. Awards will be given out at the end of March during the ARF Annual Convention.
The web is changing our business so fast and fundamentally that some pessimists say we’re witnessing the end of the industry. It’s true that traditional advertising is no longer working, and most advertisers have been left behind by the rapid changes in recent years. And it’s true that’s a serious challenge for the profession. But InSites Consulting provides an answer to that challenge with Steven Van Bellghem’s book, The Conversation Manager.
Next up on the agenda is the book launch in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) on Thursday 18 March 2010. Registrations are still open so make sure to reserve your seat!
Last week, I attended the 22nd Vlerick Alumni Colloquium, entitled “Kiss Me”, in de Handelsbeurs in Ghent. The theme of the colloquium was ‘The Kingdom of Customer Experience’.
It was a fascinating day, filled with inspiring presentations, and of course good food, drinks and a couple of special surprises which made it truly an experience. All of the keynote speakers had a unique and interesting story to tell, but these were my favorites:
The day started with a presentation from Bernd Schmitt, Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School in New York, who presented a theoretical framework on experiential marketing. Using several examples from well-known companies and from his own market research, he showed the audience how to create an experience platform, design a brand experience, structure the customer interface and align the internal experience.
Another inspiring presentation was given by Tom Grymonprez, Commercial Director of STUDIO 100. He talked about the value of meaningful stories, about retelling stories over and over again, and about Studio 100’s 24/7 strategy. In the end, he moved the whole audience by showing a preview of a 3D remake of a classic cartoon that we all know and love, because it takes us back to our own childhood… If you want to know which cartoon I am talking about, you’ll have to wait a bit, because we won’t see it on TV until 2011!
After lunch, Michel Smit, the founder of Cultural Development, presented the story of the first sustainable dance club – Club Watt – in Rotterdam. Not only is the concept behind this club truly inspiring, but I also really liked their ideas on how to make a visit to this club a very unique experience. The Sustainable Dance Floor is the first dance floor that captures the energy of dancing. The energy produced by movement is converted into electricity that is used to make the dance floor react to the dancer in an interactive way and to power the music and lighting of the club. A big battery is projected on the wall, allowing the clubbers to really see the amount of energy they are producing. This way, the dancers are literally “dancing for a better future”.
The day ended with a presentation from Jean-Paul Teyssen, the CEO of Carglass. As we all know, Carglass is a true success story when it comes to customer experience. Jean-Paul Teyssen explained the audience how they manage to achieve customer delight, and as a market researcher, it was of course very interesting for me to hear how they measure the experience on all levels, and use those results to improve continuously.
The Big Apple was the place for the 2010 ESOMAR Health Conference. During the breaks the appropriate amounts fresh fruits (not including apples though) and herb teas were served. Obviously in the evenings, NY’s recommended restaurants easily made up for this with copious meals and – for some – more BMI-threatening dishes. Honestly, I was actually a bit shocked by the ‘size’ of some health marketers and researchers alike attending this health conference…
In the introduction Finn Raben, the new quick-witted ESOMAR Director General (male, Irish, and not to be mistaken for a cop – US practical joke) revealed that Health Research now accounts for 12% of the total market research investments. The big chunk of this budget is spent on research among health care professionals. Today’s biggest challenge for pharma and health providers is that care is moving out from the clinical environment into patients’ and consumers’ homes, their PCs, their mobile phones… and health research is bound to move there as well.
Rod Falcon, first and most inspiring keynote (Institute for the Future, USA), anticipates that we will soon be tracking people’s moods and biometrics to better understand their medical condition and needs. Reasonably it will take some more time before we all start measuring our blood pressure daily (although my 81-year old grandfather already does!) and upload it online. However, already today user-generated health information can no longer be ignored by the health industry and its research providers.
We may indeed be a couple of years apart from massively uploading proper biometrical data; we already post huge amounts of health conversations online and we do this at critical moments (e.g. when we experience unusual symptoms, when we receive a new diagnosis, after an attack, after a prescription change…). This content is freely available for us, health researchers, to analyze and better understand health management in this new empowered society where patients demand involvement and want to understand more about their (family members’) disorders, diagnoses, and treatment options.
When scraping, analyzing, or tracking their online conversations about illnesses, HCP relations and product use, pharmaceutical companies (including the research agencies that do this on their behalf) obviously have both legal and ethical obligations to report and act upon irregularities such as drugs’ adverse effects. Mind you, this is by far the most obvious reason for many actors not (yet) to engage in observational research online. Other reasons include ‘no interest in patient research whatsoever’ (how much longer can this be justified?) and ‘having no idea about the current research possibilities’ (the conference was a good step forward closing this knowledge gap).
Merz Pharmaceuticals (and The Third Eye) and UCB Pharma (together with Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert from InSites Consulting) – first movers to engage in ‘social media netnography research’ in the industry, put their best feet forward on stage to overcome the existing knowledge barrier. With a lot of passion and practical examples they explained how they embraced the insights gathered on social media content and put it to practice in their organizations.
Questions received about the ethics of such ‘big brother’ practices were confidently bounced back to the audience by Rudi Van Campenhout (UCB) and the Merz team: ‘Is it maybe more ethical to know that a lot of questions and frustrations are out there about our brands and products and to just shut our eyes to them? Isn’t it more human to start listening (obviously only on freely accessible platforms!) to understand how we can act upon this in the future?’
Clearly some people in the room remained in doubt (because personally they have never engaged in online conversations about their overweight, cholesterol levels, restless leg, cardiac arrhythmia, hair loss, pregnancy, impaired vision… online? Or because regulatory and pharmaco-vigilance seems barriers too difficult to take?). But fact that our Health 2.0 paper – Social Media as the Central Nervous System for Learning about Epilepsy – received one out of two conference nominations for the ESOMAR Health Excellence Award shows that many minds were opened to these new views!
I would like to end with a quote by Rudi Van Campenhout for the sceptics: ‘I mean it if I say that the Web 2.0 journey was not only insightful, but also very fun (…) it also gave me the opportunity to get to know ESOMAR as an organization and I really liked it.’
At the ESOMAR Healthcare Conference at the beginning of this week, InSites Consulting was well represented with two speakers sessions. On Monday Annelies Verhaeghe, Senior R&D Manager and ESOMAR Young Researcher of the Year presented And they lived happily ever after…, her award-winning presentation on analysing user generated content on social media to increase the elderly’s quality of life.
Later that day Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner co-presented Health 2.0 with Rudi Van Campenhout of UCB Pharma. The presentation illustrates how social media content can serve market research and the health care industry by means of a real-life case about epilepsy. A new research paradigm of social media research is developed and outlined. Having scraped over 39.000 unique online conversations, the natural language and sentiment of people towards the disease is demonstrated.
ESOMAR nominated InSites Consulting and UCB Pharma with the ESOMAR Excellence Award – Best Paper 2009/2010. Congratulations to our Health team and let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Award Ceremony.
On the most recent BAQMaR Conference, Tom De Ruyck launched the ’10 challenges’ that our industry will need to overcome in the coming years. That day, interviews with the speakers of the Conference and some of the attendees were conducted. Niels Schillewaert, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting is one of the interviewees. These videos provide first answers to the questions asked. But BAQMaR wants to go further, including all of you into this discussion about the future of our profession. Take a look at the videos!
While writing this blog post, I’m sitting on the train to Belgium. I’m on my way back from Amsterdam, where I attended the kick off of the ‘Givolution’-campaign of Ben & Jerry’s, the legendary ice cream brand.
Although it’s very cloudy and rainy outside, I’m feeling excited. It has been an epic day, and this is how it all started:
Last week I got a call from Kristof De Wulf, one of our Managing Partners, asking me if I could make it to a Ben & Jerry’s event in the Netherlands. Apparently we got invited by the people at Unilever, as an introduction for an upcoming research project we’ll be doing in the coming months. I was about to mention my holiday plans when I heard Kristof say:
Kristof: The event is planned on Monday afternoon and euhm… Mr. Ben & Mr. Jerry will be joining the event in person!
Dado: Like, really BEN & JERRY? The original founders of the brand ??
Kristof: Yes, I know it’s hard to believe!
I immediately postponed my planned holidays. I mean, how much more can you ‘feel’ and ‘experience’ a brand, especially as a market researcher? This had to be the best project kick-off ever!
Ben & Jerry were coming to the Netherlands to set up their campaign called ‘The Givolution’ (www.givolution.nl). The goal: give away 100 free ice creams in the hope that the receivers will give away something else to other people. This way Ben and Jerry hope to establish a true ‘give-away’ chain. And last but not least: they were about to announce that all Ben & Jerry’s flavors will be Fair Trade Certified by the end of 2013.
After two days of nervous excitement I took the train to Amsterdam on Monday morning, without any idea about what was going to happen. I was just going to go with the flow. I arrived in Amsterdam around 11 am. In the morning the press was invited to the Lloyd Hotel, located just near the Central station, where Ben & Jerry would give personal interviews. On my arrival in the hotel, I met one of the brand managers of Ben & Jerry’s, who seemed to be very, I mean very, excited. Let’s face it, meeting the founders of the brand you’re working for is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I looked around in the crowded room and was about to sit down when I suddenly spotted Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in the corner of the room. No glamorous stars but just two ordinary, easy going guys with a big smile on their faces. They truly embody their brand…
During lunchtime I met one of the attending journalists who interviewed Ben and Jerry earlier on in the morning. I asked her how it went and she replied:
“I was really amazed: two super friendly men with an enormous passion for what they do. While we were talking about typical Dutch food they suddenly started brainstorming together on how they could use typical Dutch ingredients in one of their ice creams…”
Just what I hoped to hear…
Half an hour later, right after lunch, we headed to the centre where Ben and Jerry would hop on a wagon that would take them to the many invited fans, who were impatiently waiting. To my pleasant surprise, I was invited to the wagon as well! Suddenly Ben and Jerry were standing almost just next to me! This was clearly going to be a moment to remember J Off we went, destination: Scoopshop, Leideseplein.
When we arrived minutes later at the Scoopshop, hundreds of fans were standing in line in front of the shop, yelling out loud and applauding for their ‘idols’. It was overwhelming, especially when several photographers & cameras were gathering around the wagon. While leaving the wagon Ben and Jerry immediately started shaking hands with their fans. Again, very low profile and with a big smile for everyone.
Shortly afterwards Ben and Jerry were standing behind the counter of the shop, greeting the shop assistants and asking them to tell more about their experiences. In the mean time people of the team were preparing the necessary for the meet and greet with the fans. Everyone had the opportunity to shake hands with them and a professional photographer made sure it was a moment to cherish. A mythical moment for many fans.
While listening to one of the many interviews that Ben and Jerry gave after the meet & greet, I heard a guy, who was standing just behind me, say to his friend: “Ben & Jerry’s is not a brand, it’s an experience”. After this day I can only agree with that man…
Just before Ben and Jerry left the shop, I took a shot and asked someone to take a picture of me and my new heroes. The cherry on the cake
Both from a personal as from a market research point of view this was truly an amazing day. Being able to meet the original founders of what has become a legendary inspiring brand (or should I say experience) is unforgettable.
In the last interview Ben and Jerry were asked to give their advice to beginning entrepreneurs:
1. Start small
2. Be very passionate about what you do
3. Earn money while doing things ‘right’
“We measure success by how much money we made + how we contributed to the community”
The Swedish Market Research Society invited Annelies Verhaeghe at their Swedish Market Research Day on 11 March. Annelies will present her ESOMAR presentation on ‘Getting answers without asking questions’, the evaluation of a TV program based on social media.
For more information about the Swedish Market Research Day, click here or contact Annelies.
Last week I attended the IIR congress ‘Front End of Innovation’ in Amsterdam. As a market researcher with a passion for innovation, and as an employee of a company which fosters innovation in everything we do in order to take research forward, I really looked forward to this event. I was there to be inspired, to hear things I did not know yet and to meet interesting people who shared interest in a common topic: passion for innovation.
I must admit that I returned from this conference with a puzzled mind and mixed feelings. Here are my key take-aways from the congress:
1. Innovation is a serious matter: Probably it was a wrong assumption, but I expected to meet a diverse audience, young at heart and bubbling with energy. Upon my arrival on Monday night, I was surprised about the profile of the attendees: mainly seriously looking men dressed in equally serious suits and ties. Obviously, dresscode should not be a key gauge for ones attitude towards innovation, but I clearly got off on the wrong foot. As a side note, it was interesting to see how dress code was used as a driver for networking: during the breaks, groups of suits and ties and groups with informally dressed people could be observed.
2. Technology comes first: First to speak was Adrian van Hooydonk, Director design from the BMW group. Adrian gave us an exclusive preview of BMW’s new concept car which was developed behind the concept ‘future sustainability and the joy of mobility’. Great car, great design, great technology, all of which was enthusiastically applauded by the audience. Clearly a good kick-off for the congress, men in suits like cars! This was a good example of how future vision can lead to interesting innovations. However, is this the end point? I was pleasantly surprised about one question that was raised by the audience. Concept cars definitely serve a purpose and some elements that were integrated in the concept car will be transferred in the cars we will drive in the future.
Still, this concept car does not break with the rules as it is still a car (4 wheels, a steering wheel, it needs a road, …). What about taking innovation in the car industry one step further by completely rethinking the concept of mobility? Will the concept of a road, 2 lanes, a box on 4 wheels be sustainable in the long run? And what about the joy of mobility? Is mobility really fun in our current world? Interesting food for thought which I reconsidered while driving back from Amsterdam to Ghent on Wednesday… it took me almost 5 hours to drive 220km. Joy of mobility?
3. From pyramids to pancakes: The congress started strongly on Tuesday morning. Josephine Green, Senior Director Trends and Strategy at Philips Design, talked about how to engage with the future differently. During her presentation, Josephine talked about how modern society has changed and how these changes will inevitably impact (i) the way we connect with consumers, (ii) build professional organizations and (iii) go about the innovation process.
In the 20th century, innovation used to be a funnel process that was conducted with a linear mindset: it started with the fuzzy front end where consumer insights and ideas were generated, then it moved to the middle of the funnel where winning ideas were shaped further and ended up by launching the ideas that survived their trip through the innovation funnel. Throughout this process, consumers were mainly passive creatures, who were supplied with new technology and who simply bought the products that met their needs. This approach has been successful for a long time, no doubt about it. Josephine made clear that, in order for this funnel approach to work, organizations require a pyramid structure, with clear hierarchy and sub-divided responsibilities. Leadership within this structure requires planning, budgeting, measuring, evaluating, structuring, controlling. In other words: command and control. This should sound familiar to all of us who have been professionally active in the 20th century.
Things are changing, however. Consumers are increasingly non-passive and did come out of their boxes during the past few years. Innovation has become a circular process – it is happening all the time. Not only we as innovation professionals are involved, but consumers have also taken their role of innovators seriously. In fact, consumers have moved from the back end to the front end of innovation. We have stepped into the century of social innovation, which will demand a very different way of thinking on how we must innovate. We have moved away from the pyramid structure to a flat innovation platform – a pancake – where manufacturers of consumer goods products and consumers are at equal level. As a result, we must reconsider the structured funnel approach of innovation and move towards a circular process that allows strong engagement with the consumer at all times. This is the only way to develop solutions (services and products) WITH consumers instead of FOR consumers. And importantly, also the well established leadership role will have to change. Leadership in the pancake world requires questioning, dreaming, imagining, experimenting, learning, enabling. In other words, we will have to learn to let go and listen to the consumer more intensely.
4. Market research is dead. LONG LIVE MARKET RESEARCH! Apart from the many other interesting speakers – I learned about how sustainability can be a key driver for innovation, how team work and a never-give-up attitude has led to the development of the MP3 technology, that disruptive innovation comes from focusing on the extremes (i.e. people who love your brand and people who hate your brand) rather than looking at the averages, … – there was one provocative statement made on the last congress day that was really eye-opening and divided the audience in 2 groups: “Market research at the early stages of innovation is, at best, useless. At worst, it will be counterproductive”. In other words, you have to develop a vision based on technological capabilities, graft your innovation process on that vision en develop new products against it. No consumers are involved at all.
It should not come as a surprise that I, as a market researcher, strongly disagreed with this statement. In fact, it is directly opposed to the vision of Josephine that was shared earlier on. What about first listening to consumers, understand them inside out, and then develop an innovation vision by using that knowledge. Isn’t this the best approach for developing consumer relevant innovations?
Tom De Ruyck (Senior R&D Manager) was one of the speakers at the Mobile Research Conference in London at the beginning of this week. Tom presented the results of the InSites Ultimate Twitter Study, To tweet or not to tweet, that’s the question!
Niels Schillewaert
The day started with a presentation from 
Another inspiring presentation was given by 
After lunch, 
The day ended with a presentation from 
Also our Young Research of the Year 
legendary ice cream brand.
Half an hour later, right after lunch, we headed to the centre where Ben and Jerry would hop on a wagon that would take them to the many invited fans, who were impatiently waiting. To my pleasant surprise, I was invited to the wagon as well! Suddenly Ben and Jerry were standing almost just next to me! This was clearly going to be a moment to remember J Off we went, destination: 
