InSites Blog

Media Marketing (Belgian Marketing and Communication magazine) is searching for the most innovative companies in Belgium. Yesterday they announced their nominees and InSites Consulting is one of them!

The MM Marcom Innovation Ranking composes a top 10 of the most innovative companies and initiatives. These are the 9 other nominees (in alphabetical order) next to InSites: Alfacam, Bananas, Boondoggle, Brandialog, Deepblue, Good Deal (SBS), Kinepolis, mortierbrigade, Netlog.

Don’t miss the magazine’s September issue on September 15, where they will publish the number one. We’ll of course keep you posted on the final ranking.

The Rotterdam branch of InSites Consulting is conquering space with a September move to larger premises. The change of address is the result of our rapid growth in the Netherlands. The new office has capacity for over twenty staff and includes space to hold events for 100 attendees.

Space for work and events
Since opening in August 2008, InSites Consulting’s Rotterdam office has expanded from two to ten members of staff. The new site will let the team breathe again, since it creates room for over twenty people and provides an ideal location for our seminars and workshops.

On the opening night on 9 September we invite contacts across the industry to celebrate the move. The Director General of ESOMAR, Finn Raben is one of the confirmed speakers to welcome the attendees. (More information on http://www.insites.eu/newoffice)

“Since opening in Rotterdam, we’ve been running just to keep up with demand for research and consultancy” says Kristof De Wulf, Managing Partner. “The new office will give us space to work efficiently and gives us the capacity to continue recruiting in future”.

On a mission to teach
The features of the new office are intended to benefit the entire Netherlands research community, Ramon Pardo, Research Director points out. “An important part of our mission is to help researchers learn new approaches and practices they can use in their work. Our events are a vital aspect of that work, and the new office, with its large auditorium, will allow us to hold bigger and better events”.

The new office is just off the main A20 highway, giving easy access from the rest of the Netherlands.

New address:
InSites Consulting
Barbizonlaan 45
2908ME Capelle a/d IJssel
The Netherlands

This month the QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) rewarded the 2010 QRCA Global Scholarship to Sophie Van Neck, Senior Research Consultant at InSites Consulting. The scholarship is a great opportunity for Sophie.

With this scholarship Sophie gets the opportunity to attend the QRCA International Annual Conference.

“This will be one of the most exciting experiences of the year and it will be a perfect start of going to international conferences. I’m really looking forward to meeting the QRCA members at the QRCA Annual Conference in Philadelphia in October.” says Sophie.

Find out more about the scholarship online or contact Sophie Van Neck.

MTV Networks and InSites Consulting have looked into the coolness of brands and the impact on the purchasing decisions and brand loyalty among young people for several years now. These cool brands are awarded annually at the Cool Brands Award (initiative of MTV Networks).

Over the past years it has been demonstrated that young people buy twice as many cool brands as non-cool brands and that there is a strong positive correlation between brand loyalty and coolness. For the fifth edition of the Cool Brand Awards, we went a step further. The Coolness study was expanded with two new parameters: emotion and conversation.

The emotion that a particular brand evokes among young people is directly related to the purchase intent. Thus, young people will choose brands that make them happy or give them a good feeling. These brands linger in their memory. The happier a brand makes young people, the more tempted they will be to buy this brand again.

The second parameter focused on is conversation. It turns out that up to 2.4 brand names are cited per conversation between young people. Clichés are seemingly confirmed here, as women talk significantly more than men about chocolate and salty snacks during these conversations, while more men than women talk about mobile phones, mobile phone operators, beer and spirits. The brands that both men and women most frequently discussed during these conversations are Proximus, Nivea and Red Bull – three brands that were running advertising campaigns at the time of the study.

Brands that want to score with the young target group better make sure that their brand is part of the conversations between young people. The coolness of the brand is the decisive factor here as the cooler the brand, the greater the chance that young people will discuss it. Coolness also increases brand loyalty and has a positive impact on the purchase of the brand.

Contrary to popular belief, young people do not solely communicate by way of social media. In fact, 86% of their communication takes place via face-to-face conversations and only 9% takes place online. The importance of these conversations is demonstrated by the fact that a change of opinion takes place in 60% of these cases.

These are the results of the Cool Brand Awards – 2010 edition

• Coolest Mobile (Smart) Phone: iPhone/Apple
• Coolest Mobile Phone Operator: Generation MTV
• Coolest Beer Brand: Jupiler
• Coolest Spirits Brand: Bacardi Mojito
• Coolest Soft Drinks: Coca-Cola
• Coolest Energy Drink: Red Bull
• Coolest Chewing Gum Brand: Mentos
• Coolest Chocolate Brand: M&M′s
• Coolest Mints Brand: Tic Tac
• Coolest Bank: Mine (BNP Paribas Fortis)
• Coolest Female Beauty Care Brand: Nivea
• Coolest Male Beauty Care Brand: Axe
• Coolest Male Razor Brand: Gillette Fusion
• Coolest Female Razor Brand: Gillette Venus
• Coolest Salty Snacks Brand: Lay′s
• Overall Coolest Brand: Coca-Cola

Joeri Van den Bergh (Youth Expert and Managing Partner at InSites Consulting) was awarded Coolest Research Expert at this 2010 edition, a special edition Award for his contribution to the MTV Cool Research. Congratulations Joeri!

Over the month of April 2010, Flemish parents and Flemish children were questioned about the playing frequency within the overall leisure activities of 8-12 year olds, and about the purchase and use of toys. Karrewiet of Ketnet, Radio 2 and the Toy Museum endeavored to find answers to these questions in cooperation with InSites Consulting.

We will share some 2010 playing trends with you:

• Flemish 8-12 year olds spend more than 3 hours per day behind a screen. This is not surprising, since approximately 30% have a game console in their own room, 25% an own television and 20% a computer.
• Game consoles and particularly Nintendo DS are the most popular toys. Online games are also seeing strong growth.
• Digital play is therefore most popular, though classics such as LEGO (mainly popular among boys) and handicrafts (mainly popular among girls) are also a mainstay. Our children are not passive, for cycling and trampolining are also very popular.
• 25% of children usually play alone. One in three children feel their parents should make more time to play with them.
• Traditional games such as tag and football rule at the playground. If children could choose, they would like to have a trampoline at school. The new craze for trading games such as Bakugan is banned in half of Flemish schools.
• Annually, parents spend on average € 245.00 per child on toys and are primarily guided in their choice by ‘the joy of the child ‘. Their own best memories are of LEGO.
• Parents mainly want their children to move and be creative. Learning to cooperate is the most important to them when their child plays with others. The competitive spirit – which clearly exists among children – is not at all emphasized by parents. Parents generally prefer playing UNO, Monopoly or a puzzle with their children.

Toys that 8-12 year olds play with most often

1. Nintendo DS/Dsi/DsiXL
2. Bicycles/tricycles/scooters
3. Computer/PC games
4. Painting and drawing
5. Nintendo Wii
6. Trampoline
7. LEGO
8. Online games/surfing
9. Balls
10. Sony PlayStation
11. Roller skates, inline skating, skateboard
12. UNO
13. Miniature figures and animals
14. Monopoly
15. Swimming pool

In this book Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) gives his personal story of life. The book gives you a good view on what Tony learned from his entrepreneurship and what he feels is important to become a successful company. The 3 main focus points according to Tony are Customer Experience, Culture and Employee development/training.

In terms of social media and conversation management Tony tells his people: be real and use your best judgment. The way Steven Van Belleghem (author of The Conversation Manager) is spreading his conversation management philosophy also has similarities with Tony: be passionate and use personal stories.

The book, Delivering Happiness is an easy read and goes from selling lemonade and self made newspapers as a kid to selling Zappos to Amazon for 900 million dollars. In between these, Tony sold his company LinkExchange to Microsoft for 265 million dollars. Successful you could say, but the path to success was not an easy one. You might think that the selling of LinkExchange and having that much money is the only reason why Zappos could be so successful, but that’s not the case.

Let me try to summarize the story for you.

The road to Zappos maries Amazon

After selling LinkExchange to Microsoft Tony had a lot of money in the bank, together with some others he started Venture Frogs and invested in a lot of companies (more than 27 to be correct). The idea was that they would invest once and then be an advisor to the companies if they needed the advice. One of the companies was Zappos, originally named shoesite.com.

While running Venture Frogs, Tony had a lot of time and started playing poker to kill time. In the book Tony makes a comparison between running a business and poker. A very interesting comparison on evaluating market opportunities, marketing & branding, strategy … My favorites among the list are:

• Table selection is the most important decision you can make, and it is okay to switch tables if you discover it’s too hard to win at your table.
• Remember that it’s a long-term game. You will win or lose individual hands or sessions, but it’s what happens in the long term that matters.
• Stick to your principles
• Hope is not a good plan
• Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for advice.
• You’ve got to love the game. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it!
• Share what you’ve learned with others.

When investing in companies and playing poker became a bit boring, Tony started to go to raves and organize parties. Here he got inspired about how important the feeling of a tribe is. Later this would be the base for the focus on company culture. In the meanwhile, Venture Frogs became an incubator and some of the companies they funded in where moving in the building Tony was living in. The .com crisis has been very hard for start-ups and of all the companies VF invested in, only Zappos was left. Tony tried to get funding for Zappos for the future, but as they were not profitable they could get no funding. The main focus in the next two tough years was becoming profitable.

To keep the company going Tony started investing personal cash in the company. At a certain point he only had some properties but ran out of cash. In order to become profitable, Zappos has changed their business model with success. At the start of Zappos they only worked with brands who could work in a drop ship model. This means people buy on Zappos.com, the order goes to the brand and they ship to the customer. This resulted in only specific brands being offered on Zappos.com. And not the brands the customers really wanted. In order to change this they had to have a brick-and-mortar shop, start a warehouse AND find 2 million dollars to pay the inventory.

And so they did. They changed their business model. Finding 2 million dollars was the most difficult thing to do! Tony believed that Zappos had a future and decided to sell everything he had, except his loft, to get the money. The switch worked, sales went up but they still were not profitable.

The next thing they did was moving closer to the UPS distribution center to be able to ship faster. They partnered with eLogistics in Kentucky. But eLogistics oversold their capabilities and Zappos ran into operational problems. In the meanwhile they also ran out of cash … Tony, while climbing the Kilimanjaro, decided to sell his loft. And even that was not an easy sell at that time. He lost 40% on the value doing this.

Zappos had cash and was saved, for now.

eLogistics became a big problem and at that time Tony and co realized that running their own warehouse was core to their business. This switch boosted the sales again and at that time the BHAG of 1 billion dollar turnover was set for the future, together with the focus on customer experience. But still, not profitable meaning no investments. The future of Zappos depended on the go or no go of Wells Fargo to give Zappos a loan.

June 2003, that day, it happened … they had a go and Zappos was saved and became the success we all know. They moved to Las Vegas and focused on culture, customer service and employee development. Although in 2008 they had to lay off 8% of the staff, the company was later sold to Amazon for 900+ million dollars.

Later this week I’ll share some more insights on Delivering Happiness, talk to you soon!

Compared to the first two quarters in 2009, InSites Consulting has grown spectacularly with over 50% during the first half of 2010 as a result of opening new offices in the Netherlands, UK and Switzerland. A Paris office is scheduled to be opened by the end of 2010.

In order to further support our growth objectives, we have recruited 4 very experienced and complementary profiles. The new arrivals bring a wide and deep marketing and research experience from their previous experiences at a range of global multinationals in Europe.

Lisa Ohlin has joined the UK team as Research Director. She reflects the strongly international outlook of InSites Consulting – a true European, having lived in five countries, she speaks six languages. Lisa has an impressive track spending more than 12 years in FMCG, both in Food & Drink and Home & Personal Care. At Unilever she spent eight years in various European Marketing and Innovation roles and recently she was Global Head of Insight at Cadbury.

Ashley Smith brings experience of innovative research methods thanks to many years spent in the electronics and durables sector at Philips, where he was Director Consumer & Marketing Intelligence. His expertise includes value proposition creation, innovation and brand management, and he has been involved in customer advocacy initiatives. As a Research Director, Ashley will be involved in taking innovation research forward at the Belgian office.

Emiel van Wegen joins the Dutch office as Research Director, bringing nine years of research experience spent at Synovate. Emiel’s background fits perfectly with InSites Consulting’s knowledge of using the web for consumer insight, marketing and innovation research. During his time at Synovate, he was involved with managing its online panel and online research tools, while his time at Fortis and GMI gave him experience of online market research and product development.

Isabelle Stevens joins the Belgian office of InSites Consulting as Research Manager. She reinforces the unique link InSites Consulting has always kept between academic rigour and practical experience. Holding a PhD in Communication Sciences, she is not only involved in marketing communication courses at the University of Ghent and teaching applied social statistics, but she has also managed research projects for NATO and the world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Bush InBev.

Kristof De Wulf, Managing Partner and in charge of sales management:

“We are extremely delighted to welcome heavy weight profiles such as Lisa, Ashley, Emiel and Isabelle. They will be instrumental in helping us achieve our objective of staying ahead of the game and of connecting more strongly with senior marketing management. All of them are very eager to take our organisation forward and to support us in obtaining our ambitious growth plan.”

This year, InSites Consulting has also been awarded with 4 important awards from AMA, ARF, AMMA and SPSS and is nominated for another three (ESOMAR and MOA).

As every year the AMA Marketing Research Council honors 4 individuals with the Marketing Research Emerging Leader Award. And this year Tom De Ruyck, Senior R&D Manager at InSites Consulting is one of the award winners. A great honor for Tom of course! The shortlist of winners also includes Tom Anderson (Anderson Analytics), Nick Harrington (Procter & Gamble) and Kristin Luck (Decipher).

Award criteria:

• Demonstrate commitment to the industry and advancement of Marketing Research
• Are passionate leaders who have a high potential for collaboration and succes.
• Are under 40 years of age at time of nomination (the award is also referred to as the 4 under 40)

The 4 Award winners are invited at the 2010 AMA Marketing Research Conference in Atlanta to share insight, inspiration and lessons learned on the road to success with the attendees. More information on the conference will be available at the AMA website.

Congratulations Tom!

The answer to the question above could be found (albeit between the lines) at the Research Inspiration Run, a joint event by BAQMaR and Febelmar. Below, you will find the 6 core competences of the market researcher of the future, like I experienced them at this fine event.

The market researcher of the future is lightning-fast. That is what the format of the Research Inspiration Run taught me. 10 presentations, 10 slides, 5 minutes. Zoefff, and it’s over!

The market researcher of the future is relevant. Jo Caudron, coining the term “relevance marketing” put the marketer back with his feet on the ground: don’t go tossing messages towards your consumer, but be there with a message when consumers have a need. Proxies for relevance can be location (Foursquare, Gowalla, Feest.je anyone?) and time of the day for instance. Maybe the researcher of tomorrow needs to focus his researching efforts on finding the sweet spots of relevance, and provide marketers with possibilities to become more relevant towards their consumers. And maybe the market researcher of the future will as such become more relevant himself? Because, in the words of Bart Baesens, data mining models should do more than only perform well in the statistical sense… They should be relevant! They should focus on giving valuable insights once again, something to guide decisions. Market researchers should focus on finding “the one number that needs to go up”, dixit Gerd Callewaert. When there is no correlation between metrics like for instance ad recall and actual purchase, who gives a damn?

The market researcher of the future is a careful data cruncher. As Dirk Milbou said, data is the new oil… And we need Light Sweet Crude oil in order to get the engine running! When simple models generally perform well, the largest increase in performance comes from data quality. On the other hand, when data is oil, privacy is its currency. In an era of free flowing information, privacy is an issue that will always be at the back of the people’s minds… And thus it should be at the front of the market researchers’ mind!

The market researcher of the future is in touch with the new generation. There is a lost generation of marketers, like Nicole Berx said, who urgently need to get in touch with all new marketing tools that are available. Benoît Vancauwenberghe & Steffen Vander Mynsbrugge understood this, and took it quite literally. They promoted the idea that sometimes, you have to give a bunch of youngsters the opportunity to reinvent your profession. In their case, that’s advertising, but why not market research too? Personally, I’m convinced that there are youngsters out there that are skilled enough to run market research projects in a whole new fashion. Let’s get in touch with them!

The market researcher of the future provides experiences. Experience marketing is not only applicable to coffee, like Joke Van Der Heyden illustrated. Also market researchers need to give their consumers, (the marketer) an experience, in order to get their message across. Percentages won’t do, stories will. Furthermore, when we ask questions to our participants, why can’t we find ways to gift-wrap it like an experience? There must be better ways to ask questions than 5-point likert scales, people!

Last but not least, the market researcher of the future is a visionary. Someone who dares to predict what is coming, who looks at what is coming tomorrow to be inspired in his work today, as Timothy Desmet put it. Someone who can fearlessly state that he knows what the digital natives are up to, like Brice Blévennec. In the end, it comes down to one thing for the market researcher of the future: he’ll have to find an answer to the question that Niels Schillewaert answered for himself:

What would I do if I would run the market research industry?

Consumers are increasingly conscious of the information they place on social networking sites. 81% indicate that they think twice before posting something, while 79% have become more selective in choosing and accepting ‘friends’. 74% give thought to which pictures they place online and which ones they do not.

In spite of the more cautious attitude, 87% indicate that their online identity strongly corresponds to their offline identity. 13% of consumers however admit to using a different persona online than who they are in reality. The study by InSites Consulting also shows that 23% of users feel they can more easily express their emotions via social media than in real life.

“Our study clearly shows that consumers are becoming more mature in their use of social media. Users can be themselves, though do so in a conscious manner. A form of online etiquette will increasingly be developed in an organic way by consumers themselves.” notes Steven Van Belleghem, Managing Partner.

These are conclusions of our Social Media Around the World Study among 2,800 internet users in 14 countries.