Tag: The MR Business
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Charting a course through the COVID-19 Pandemic
Two interesting pieces of research out this morning about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research results. The first comes from Zappi and an online test of 26 concepts and advertisements across six consumer categories (personal care, food and beverage, home hygiene, Telco, QSR, OTC) in five markets (US, UK, China, Italy and Mexico).…
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The cost of privacy
My email this morning included a message from Hertz describing their new fleet of BMWs. I don’t rent from Hertz anymore and the emails they continue to send are mostly reminders that my driver’s license has expired, which was some while ago. But why the BMW pitch? Perhaps because in 2009 I treated myself to…
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Today is Privacy Day!
Almost 20 years ago some colleagues and I edited a book with the inviting title, Computer Assisted Information Collection. Experts on a wide variety of computer-assisted methods contributed the chapters and I was tasked with writing the last chapter, a look into the future of technology and survey research. At the risk of tooting my own…
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“Is it legal?” is not enough
I just posted a link to this Computerworld article on my Twitter feed, but I think it's so important that I have decided to mention it here as well. The article describes the dangers brands are beginning to face with over aggressive big data and data mining practices. The key point is that it's not…
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That old seat at the table
Attend an MR conference and chances are good that sooner or later a case of consulting envy will break out. Symptoms include repeated use of phrases such as “seat at the table” and “C-level access.” This is not a new phenomenon; it’s been a pretty steady part of the MR inferiority complex for the almost…
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Is research on research the real deal?
David Carr had a piece in last Sunday's New York Times about the difficulty of distinguishing journalism from activism. His first sentence sums up the issue pretty succinctly, "In a refracted media world where information comes from everywhere, the line between two 'isms' — journalism and activism — is becoming difficult to discern." His case…
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Sir Martin on crowdsourcing of ads
The March issue of The Harvard Business Review has in interview with Martin Sorrell. At one point the interviewer asks whether crowdsourced ads and algorithms are the future model of advertising. Sir Martin’s response is interesting: You are tapping into the knowledge and the information of people all over the world. That’s fantastic. And the…
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The death of MR postponed
Twice in the same week I have seen a version of this quote about Big Data: "Data is about 'how many' and 'how much', whereas research is about 'why' – you have to join it all up." First from this very thoughtful ESOMAR paper by Pieter-Paul Verheggen and Wim von Slooten and now from Clive…
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Repealing Reg’s law
While I recognize that it’s not very fashionable to complain about being quoted out of context in this era of “You didn’t build that” I’m going to take a run at it nonetheless. Back on July 12 in a post about the MRMW Conference I noted that we are moving into an era when data…