NORTHERN PLANNER

Marcus Brown is a kind, generous man and I have to publicly thank him for these, equally brilliant, things.

Firstly, he’s done this painting.

Secondly, he’s found Monkey on You Tube. And if you’re of a certain age, you’ll appreciate Twiki from Buck Rogers too (personally I prefered Colonel Deering and those jumpsuits, though Princess Adala was pretty good too).

Thank you Marcus, and chin up.

I heard something interesting on the radio that really caught my imagination. It was about an artist trying to do some work based on the beauty of not knowing everything. I didn’t catch it all, but it reminded about why I like doing what I do, and where I want to go with it.

The conversation centred around science taking us to the very edge of knowledge – the bit where humans have to just accept that nature’s has too much unfathomable grandeur for us to comprehend.

Our physicists can explain what happened to our universe as far back as start of everything, The Big Bang. But when they go further to to that infinitely dense, impossibly small piece of nothing more than space-time (we think), that preceded it they get stuck.

Just like we think that black holes may spew out somewhere else – but we don’t know where and we can’t prove it.

Or the way we’re not sure if we’ll ever go much further understanding how the brain works, since it may well operate through quantum mechanics – something we can’t really get our heads around.

But they keep trying.

I love the way some scientists are forever curious and never stop believing they can go a bit further, push the boundary a little bit more. it reminds me whay I like doing what I do. Even though it’s pretty insignificant next to the stuff scientists get up to.

You see there’s always something new to learn, a new idea to stumble over. Culture always changes, things move on, you can never, ever know it all.

There’s no excuse in our trade for sitting back and going, "That’s it, we’ve cracked it". That’s why I have an instinctive fear of brand models and such.

It makes me wonder where my end is, when will I reach the point I can’t go any further in my work? With any luck it won’t stop at being fairly competent. Only one way to find out I suppose……..and that’s what I want to do. Push right out to the edges and find what’s there. Where will I be?

So I got to see the Howies shop on Thursday. After getting lost on the way to The Breakfast Club (I’ve been there half a dozen times, there really is no excuse), a kindly individual guided me to Carnaby Street.

I like Howies. I like what they stand for as well as the clothes themselves. And it makes life easy to mostly buy their stuff, and just replace things when they wear out. There’s no need to worry about the tyranny of choice every morning when I dress, or when I shop.

So I was looking forward to seing it. It wasn’t a shop really, more Howies in the flesh. You see so many brands that have pretty good ads, but fail miserably at the most important stage – the actual experience. This isn’t one of those cases.

It shows that working on retail can be a joy if you let it. There’s so much room for ideas.

Carnaby Street has a rule that all shops must keep the lights on at night, which is a bit silly when you consider the wasted energy. So they’ve put a light switch outside, that way you can see the shop if you like, but there’s no energy wasted if you don’t.

And any company that has this view on tea is okay in my book.

I met Adrian again, which was a pleasure. He mentioned how their brand is really precious, which is why it makes more sense to sell direct than put it in someone else’s hands.

I also talked to David. He’s a brilliant illustrator (see tea picture) but it’s struggle to get enough work – which is why he’s working in the shop too. Makes me thankful I do something I like AND it pays a living wage. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.

Autumn means the prospect of getting up in the dark. You could argue it makes dragging yourself out of bed a little harder.

Until you consider you’ll be admiring a beautiful sunrise in twenty minutes or so.

…..as you can discover here.

I really wanted to write some stuff today, but the day from Hades put a stop to that. I wanted to post about:

My visit to the Howies shop

My first visit to the swimming pool for two weeks AND a spot of going back to being a suit today – both showing the danger of not keeping your hand in

Reflections on how I’m useless at sulking, and a lot better at being sunny, so I’m going to some very happy, optimistic things around here for a bit.

And more about what it’s like for a planner living where I do, I keep forgetting what this blog was supposed to be about.

Why am I telling you all this? Why don’t I just post it all next week?

I have no idea.

But in the meantime, official congratulations to Will and his job at Lowe.

Following on from some thoughts on how to select one, here’s some pointers on your respective roles.

When it comes to quant, there’s a big difference between ‘full service’ and ‘field and tab’.

Full service is doing pretty much everything from your initial brief to the their final presentation of findings and analysis.

A word about ‘analysis’. If they’re going to present stuff to you and the client, make sure both of you are very aware of where analysis ends and thoughts on how to APPLY that analysis start.

If they present well, they’ll have the client in the palm of their hand, right at that moment, they have the knowledge and the authority, you’re the charlatan. If they make any recommendations on what to do next, it’s very likely to stick. So I’d be very clear about where you want them to stop – and if they’re going to do some recommending, make sure you’re aware of what they are going to say, and hopefully have a hand in it.

I got caught out by a very good researcher who wasn’t used to working with planners. First project he went too far with his recommendations – and lost us the client. Why do we need to pay you when we can just go to researcher direct? Was the reasoning. Their campaign bombed. I take no pleasure from this, it’s just that the research guy concluded that the objective should be brand awareness. That was natural assumption since not enough people went for the brand as a matter of course. He hadn’t appreciated that emotional ‘image’ advertising wouldn’t work since people were after evidential assurances in a market with little trust betwen consumer and brand.

That goes for a quant agency are qual.

Field and tab is the service where you write the questionnaire and analyse the raw data. It’s labour intensive and while it’s cheaper, I really wouldn’t try and write the questions. Leave it to the experts. But if you’ve had lots of practice analysing data, the saving is one thing, it might make makes sense for ‘craft’ purposes too. It’s more work, but can be well worth it.

Analysis is not an exact science. It’s interpretation – and that relies on what you look for, and your background knowledge. You may find something the research agency will not. So, if they’re doing the analysis and report, I would still ask for the raw data and go over it with a fine tooth-comb. Not only could you find out something they’ve missed, you don’t know where the project may go……and something may suddenly become relevant. You won’t get that chance if you just get the summary. Look harder.

Here’s an example of looking a little bit deeper. I pitched for Stanley Tools many moons ago. We won through a bit more rigour. Nothing else.

They’d spent a fortune on an in-depth qual/quant study that was used primarily for NPD. They’d used the summary to highlight where the tools available were falling down – like staple guns needing too much force on the trigger sacrificing accuracy. But they didn’t have a clue about what the communications objective should be. The answer was in all the data they hadn’t even looked at. And the other agencies didn’t bother looking.

In case you’re interested, the trade pro’s thought the gear was for amateurs, they didn’t know it was all developed in tandem with professionals, to solve professional problems. And since since the pro’s influenced the DIY market – without getting them to re-appraise the brand first, a DIY campaign would be doomed. So we talked to the pro’s in places the amateur could see.

And further down the line, we had to encourage growth in the single female DIY market. Back to the data. Those same numbers showed that women felt very empowered doing it for themselves, more than blokes, not least since their experience/prejudice of male ‘experts’ was all talk and no trousers. And they never finished on time. The campaign sort if wrote itself.

Anyway. As far as quant is concerned, expect them to:

Guide on methodology, sample size, stimulus material. Expect them to DO the questionnaire, fieldwork and admin, along with data processing.

Decide if you want them to do the analysis and report.

YOU need to supply the research objectives and timing. Decide the sample size and target. Make sure the things the client want to find out are included. You will supply the stimulus material. And it’s up to you if you do the analysis and report. But make sure THEY analyse. YOU recommend.

With qualitative, we’ll just cover groups for now.

THEY guide on number and composition of groups, stimulus and any projective techniques.

They DO the recruitment and all the admin. They do the fieldwork.

These days, they do the group moderation and analysis and debrief. And the same goes here for what’s analysis and what’s recommendation.

YOU make sure they know the objectives, timings, you decide the final structure and number of groups. You make sure they know what your hypothesis is, what the current knowledge is (and that means YOU NEED A HYPOTHESIS!). You organise stimulus – and deliver it on time.

Two big points on qual:

The right stimulus can make or break the group. Work hard on getting it right. More on this in a later post.

These days, it’s less common, it’s even more to think about, but it’s really worth shouldering more responsibility and to do some of your own groups, seriously – if you can, you should. You can’t get a proper feel for emotions and reactions unless you’re in there with them. This matters more if you’re getting feedback on strategy ideas, or creative work, rather than gathering new information.

No one should know how the ideas are meant to work better than you, so no one should be able to use feedback better. And welcome negative feedback. It will be the start of being to make it better, in terms of more effective.

I didn’t do this once and saw a campaign die behind a viewing facility. It was work about people liking different things – each execution had a different person with a different quirk. They said they hated it since they didn’t like what that person did. But he didn’t probe about how we could make individualism work………and it was crucial since they said they’re selection criteria was highly personal. I know you know the solution’s simple, but many (our client included) take respondent quotes very literally.

And finally, coming back to quant, if you are analysing the data, here are some pointers.

1. Mark up a questionnaire with the ‘total’ results’. It will give a broad picture of topline findings, and and idea of where to probe first.
2. Go though each table and ‘read accross’ from the ‘Total’ figure – watch for anything that stands out as wildly different. Like men’s results being different to woman, Hello magazine readers different to non-readers.
3. After you’ve looked at few, look for any patterns beginning to emerge. You’ll soon see different ‘trends’ coming out, Why is that? What are the connections? What are the contradictions?
4. In short – read the data, analyse it into information – the patterns.

   

5.    What story does that begin to tell you?