Theo Downes-LeGuin has sent the following email which I have copied and pasted below.
I returned last night from 3 days at IIR’s "The Market Research Event" (thankfully they no longer render "The" in all-caps). I hope the following observations are useful:
- I’ve been to 5 years of this conference and while I didn’t learn a lot as a researcher this year, it remains a strong marketing venue in my opinion. All of our respective client bases are well-represented at the conference. I believe we should consider continuing sponsorship next year and have other IGs represented (sponsorship usually provides 2-4 delegate passes). But I think we should avoid being an exhibitor. Our money is much better spend obtaining a speaking spot and providing leave-behind schwag at a sponsored meal.
- While client participation remains strong, vendors have discovered that this is a "target rich" environment so it felt to me as if the client/vendor ratio has gone from 50/50 to about 30/70. The primary impact of this on my behavior is that I focused on spending time with current clients and not pestering prospects, who already feel like raw meat left in the lion’s den.
- Presentation subject matter and quality was all over the map, but I noticed that the sessions on internet research, internet panels and especially on proprietary client panels were packing in larger audiences than in the past.
- MRSI co-presented with e-Rewards on some experiments they’ve done around how to identify, trap and clean out underperforming panel respondents. The presentation gave me a bit of heartburn because it’s stuff we’ve been talking about and acting on for years, but in my more generous moments I am just happy that the word is getting out.
- Socratic (Bill McElroy) gave a very good co-presentation with HP on the pros and cons of proprietary panels. Their main point is that affinity with the panel community is the best overall predictor of response rates and response quality in specialty panels. Incentives are effective only as an acknowledgement, not as a compensation for time. In a branded proprietary panel (e.g., Dunkin’ Donuts panel of its customers), such affinity is easy to achieve. In an unbranded panel, the affinity must be built around shared characteristics of the panelist, not the sponsor, which is harder.
- Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, gave an excellent talk that had very little to do with market research though at the end he said that "any company that is dependent on hierarchical distribution of proprietary information will face challenges in the coming decades" (which of course included the entire audience, both vendors and clients). This related nicely to an overview of Adobe’s online research portal, which was very cool but completely lacked any form of Wiki-like information sharing or editing…placing the two talks in juxtaposition made it look as if Adobe had missed an obvious opportunity.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Theo