Back in September I asked my friend and colleague, Theo Downes-LeGuin, to write a blog post that summarized his reaction to the ESOMAR Congress. He wanted to take some time to let it all sink in and has now sent me something. Here it is.
After 2 days at the ESOMAR Congress in September, I must conclude that I am washed up, a change-averse has-been. Yes, there is evidence to the contrary. Though trained in classical survey methods I've spent my career with one foot in qualitative research. I adopted disk-by-mail methods early, before the internet (quaint!). I was an early proponent of online qual despite client resistance. I like to think that I contributed to many of now-standard approaches for maintaining data quality in web panel surveys. And of late I've been working on how we make online experiences more engaging for online insights providers (née respondents).
But over 48 hours in Amsterdam, I was told by enough speakers and delegates that to even think about, let alone discuss, the themes that have occupied me for the past 20 years is to consign myself to the Pleistocene Era. And if you hear something enough, you start to believe it's true. Call it Amsterdam Syndrome.
After a few weeks at home, the syndrome is wearing off. I don't know about you, but I get a bit churlish when lots of people start telling me that we're doomed if we don't do X (where X at the moment could mean abandon surveys, replace representivity with relevance, or gamify everything). The end is nigh, as the wild-eyed man with the sandwich board has been telling us for 50 years, and one of these days he'll be correct. But at the moment, more likely we're simply replacing one orthodoxy with another.
Our new orthodoxy hasn't quite taken shape yet, beyond the assertion that Market Research Must Change In Order to Survive – a statement so obvious and enduring as to be hardly worth repeating, at least no more worth repeating now than it was 20 years ago (yes, there was turmoil and risk of irrelevance then as well). Any researcher worth his or her salt is constantly exploring poking at sacred cows and improving the status quo. Sometimes we have to explore a little harder due to changing environmental factors, and some changes are bigger than others.
But a new orthodoxy will surely will take shape, and it will take its cues from business, not from the sciences. Most of the time business serves MR well as a model, both because our raison d'être is to serve other businesses and because we are ourselves businesses. But the model falls apart a bit when we are trying to judge how we should change in our own practices. Businesses are by definition opportunistic; they share very clear measures of success (growth and profitability); and in the current environment they are very responsive to the immediate environment.
Scientific principles, on the other hand, are really handy when it comes to change management. God knows, science is subject to its own orthodoxies. But in between those conflicts and upheavals, scientific principles and process provide a consensus basis on which design experiments and evaluate outcomes, all in order to decide which changes are worthwhile and which are rubbish. Which I believe is what we are paid to do for our clients…so why wouldn't we do it for ourselves?