IIeX EU 15: Day One Delivers Inspiration for Business of Market Research and Implicit Technology
Day one of the Insight Innovation Exchange in Europe was a welcome blend of granular market research tactics, high-level inspiration, and valuable insight into the business-side of market research.
Greenbook has organized one of market research’s most enjoyable conferences in hosting the event (#IIeXEU15 on Twitter) here in Amsterdam, drawing a good mix of research and insights professionals.
In one of the first sessions of the morning, Kristin Luck explained the branding and growth strategies she’s used to help grow and sell three companies including Decipher, which was acquired by FocusVision in November.
Luck said growth hacking is the middle ground between product, distribution, and marketing with a process that includes:
- understanding a company’s engine of growth
- having a firm commitment to a vision without being bogged down by ego
- implementing a process to build, measure, learn and then pivot or iterate
- avoiding vanity metrics
- instilling a clear organizational understanding of your company’s brand promise
By using these practices at Decipher, Luck led a team that transitioned that company from being a utilitarian, commodity-based brand to being an aspirational brand looked to for inspiration and thought leadership by clients. Luck listed Eric Ries’s “The Lean Startup” as her “bible” and repeatedly emphasized the importance of knowing whether your organization’s engine growth is a sticky, viral, or paid engine, as popularized by Ries.
In slides, Luck shared her insight into what growth hacking is and isn’t, saying it isn’t just for start-ups, isn’t haphazard, and isn’t siloed. She said growth hacking should be lightweight, iterative, creative and collaborative, and based on a cycle of making, testing, learning and then improving.
She also stressed the importance of dedicating time and resources to “working on the company,” noting that she would block out time each day to improve OTX, a company she helped found and sell. Along with that dedication also comes the need to work collaboratively with others and to drop perfectionism.
“I used to be a control freak proofing every piece of copy,” Luck said. “But at some point you have to let go and let someone else do it.”
Luck’s approach led to impressive growth statistics for Decipher, including two times annual revenue growth for seven years; 60% increase in brand awareness, and 70% increase in website traffic, leading to a site that is a “lead-generation” machine.
In an hour-long workshop session, Sentient Decision Science’s Dr. Aaron Reid instructed an engaged audience of research and insights professionals on how to design and analyze studies of the Consumer non-conscious. During the session he demonstrated the automated implicit research product Sentient Prime®, which gives brand managers and market researchers quick, easy access to running implicit research studies online. Sentient has recently launched Sentient Prime® as a software-as-a-service product. Market researchers can register for free access to the tool at try.sentientprime.com during IIeXEU15.
Dr. Reid first defined what implicit research is: a specialized set of indirect research tools that can reveal System 1 processing by measuring unintentional and uncontrollable responses to stimuli.
“Implicit research techniques must not be direct, deliberate, controllable self assessments,” Reid said, referencing the work of Nosek, Hawkins and Frazier.
Working with an audience of about 50 market research professionals, most of whom had either conducted an implicit research study or said they were familiar with the approach, Dr. Reid walked through how Sentient Prime® offers a truly implicit research method on any device with the ability to measure up to 26 unique emotions.
“This gives brand managers insight as to where and how the brand should message according to emotion,” Dr. Reid said.
Workshop participants took part in a study to measure emotional connections to Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi. Dr. Reid set up the study in minutes during the workshop, had participants respond to the study, and then reported on the results in almost real time during the workshop.
Participants were then able to set up their own implicit research studies in minutes using the online interface to measure emotional response to brands, packaging choices, or ad concepts. Slides of Dr. Reid’s presentation are available for download here.
Another session that stood out during the day was Eric Salama‘s “We’ve Got Five Years.” CEO of Kantar Group, Salam shared what he sees as the challenges and opportunities that confront market research over the next five years, including the need to do multiple things at once to meet customer demand, embracing mobile design for surveys, and shifting the role of market research.
“We need to think of market research as being in the action part,” Salama said, “Not just the understanding part.”
In his session “Who’s Up NXT? Observing Trends with the Z Generation,” Author Joeri Van den Bergh shared insights into what drives the younger generation including five characteristics:
- Pursuit of happiness
- Desire for a better world
- Being digital natives with binge tendencies
- Not taking themselves too seriously
Van den Bergh’s research into Gen Y revealed an intense use of emojis in communication, prompting brands like Taco Bell to come up with an emoji for taco.
And congratulations to market research gamification company Insights Meta for winning the Data Insight Visualization Award (DIVA) for their work using interactive visualization libraries to show gamer segments as a way to promote their report on the “free-to-play economy.”
IIeXEU15 continues today. Sentient will continue to offer demos of Sentient Prime® at booth 3 and participants can even register online to reserve a time. You can also access Sentient Prime® online for free during IIeXEU15 here.
