Cambiar Consulting

Results from The Cambiar Future of Research Study

by Ian Lewis, Partner

Cambiar recently unveiled findings from “The Cambiar Future of Research Study” at the AMA Research & Strategy Summit in Chicago.  The study looked out to 2020 and heard from 160 corporate researchers who have a wide range of experience, level and industry backgrounds.  We also heard from research company executives, and I will be presenting the integrated results at the CASRO Annual Conference October 19 in Palm Beach, Florida.

What did we learn?

Researchers are expecting major change.  Almost 60% of corporate research VPs expects major transformation by 2020; 70% expect this to be evident by 2015.  One quarter of corporate researchers expects that the leading research company in 2020 does not exist today!  Another one fifth expects that Google or Facebook will be leading the pack.

Corporate researchers will be consultants more than researchers.  Virtually all corporate researchers believe that successful market researchers will have great consulting skills.  This trend is already manifesting: Best Buy, Novartis, Pepsi and Starbucks have all recruited former BCG or McKinsey consultants to leadership positions.

We’ll have global responsibilities.  Researchers believe that growth in MR spending will be driven from outside USA/Europe, and that jobs will have global or international responsibilities.

The future is about listening, measuring emotion, and mining knowledge.   Nine out of ten researchers believe consumer listening will lead to major changes.  Emotion measurement is expected to be part of the standard toolkit, although the jury is still out as to whether neuroscience and biometrics will be commonplace.  Three in four researchers expects that marketing issues will be addressed by mining existing knowledge rather than initiating a project. 

What about today? How are we doing?

Not well. Only 25% of corporate researchers are “very satisfied” with the role of their department.  We asked about barriers to success, and heard some fundamental issues.

What is the top Barrier?  “We are not operating as Thought Partners” (defined by Market Research Executive Board as an ongoing consultant to the business, an informed business partner, opportunity identifier or strategic thought partner).   There is a huge gap today between corporate researchers’ desired role as a Thought Partner (92% want this), and their actual role (37% have a Thought Partner role). Six in ten have an “in the trenches” role; they are brought in too late, treated as order takers, or have business teams that want to control information.

How can we become Thought Partners? Support from the top is a key enabler. Given that many research departments are operating in an “in the trenches” mode today, there is a need to negotiate a “Management Contract” with senior management about how research should engage and operate with the business. [I discuss this in High-Impact Research: The New Strategic Partner. Research World, March 2010].   

The TOP enabler is for research to identify and communicate insights that deliver business impact, going beyond the “What?” and “So What?” to the “Now What?”  This requires a different way of working, with a focus on collaboration, synthesis and storytelling.

What are the training needs? Top of the list are the journey from researcher to consultant; and storytelling and other impactful communication skills.  Additional training needs include synthesis skills, development of rich insights, and learning about new research modalities.

So, what should corporate research leaders do?  Here’s a short “to do” list:

1. Become a great consultant (or risk being replaced by one!)
2. Negotiate a Management Contract to enhance your role
3. Evaluate staff capabilities and implement training for consulting skills, storytelling, synthesis and insights for impact
4. Leverage and integrate new research modalities
5. LEAD!!  A sea change is coming

I would enjoy hearing from you.  Contact me at Ian@consultcambiar.com.

Winds of Change Series

by Ian Lewis, Cambiar Partner

The next few years will see a paradigm shift for market research – to borrow from Andy Grove in “Only the Paranoid Survive” we are approaching a strategic inflection point.

As part of the ARF Research Transformation Super Council, a small group of us envisioned how research will look ten years from now.  The volume of available information will continue to grow exponentially, driving the need and opportunity for synthesis and knowledge creation.  Our fundamental premise is that research in 2021 will represent a continuous and organic flow of knowledge, which Kim Dedeker (Chair of the Americas for Kantar and former head of market research for P&G) named “The River”.  There are 1,000′s of tributaries that feed the river, representing individual information sources.

There will be a fundamental shift in how we approach business decision making and influence of strategy. We will move away from a project orientation toward an ongoing process of knowledge access and utilization. Value creation will be catalyzed from the organic knowledge found in the flow of the river.

Today we answer marketing questions by designing a study.  Tomorrow we first fish the river of information and only then decide if a study is needed – if so, it will be focused by what we learned from fishing the river.  That old 80/20 rule will be flipped – today we answer 80% of questions with a new study, tomorrow it will be 20%.

Corporate leaders will develop fluid, search-able knowledge collection capabilities – an insights-on-demand resource that will not require interruptions to initiate individual studies for most business questions.  These “corporate information rivers” will be private, not public – they will contain digital information (from social media, websites, mobile, etc.) and will also contain proprietary information from market and media research studies, competitive intelligence, customers, sales and other sources.

What will happen structurally to client market research departments? With so much information available, who in the client company will “own” this resource? Truly progressive research departments will take the lead and be rewarded with a bigger role, but less progressive departments will lose relevance and risk being dis-intermediated.

And what will happen to research companies? Will today’s research companies develop or acquire complete capabilities to become a true partner with progressive client departments?  Or will they fail to adapt and lose relevance along with the less progressive clients?  Advanced analytics will flourish, and new entrants will challenge entrenched research companies. Will tomorrow’s leading companies come from an advanced analytics heritage?  Will the leaders be IBM? Google? Facebook? Or will WPP just keep buying more stuff?  Or will it be a company that isn’t even on the radar? (E.g. Autonomy – http://www.autonomy.com/)

Nobody knows exactly how and when this will play out.  But we’re convinced that major change will be evident within five years.  Now is the time to stay on top of how clients and existing research companies are evolving, and to study new entrants, so that you can develop and implement your strategy.

For more, read the March 2011 JAR article “The Shape of Marketing Research in 2021” at http://www.consultcambiar.com/knowledge-center/

Cobbler's Shoes

by Bill Guerin, Partner

Contradictions fascinate me, because if I’m able to hold the associated tension in my logically Newtonian left brain, some resolving flash of insight eventually emerges in my right brain.

We all know the story of the cobbler’s shoeless children and the related irony that sometimes those who we expect would most naturally benefit from a situation go without.  And as I think about our industry (an occupational hazard), I’m struck by some surprising ways in which clients of market research firms may be going without – and I’m also curious as to how they might feel about that.

Let me explain….

I’m currently at 30,000 feet (literally) returning to the US after conducting a 5-week series of consultative sales and account management workshops in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.  In reflecting on these recent experiences – as well as my 5 years sales consulting experience with Cambiar and work with 50+ market research firms and over 1,000 client-facing employees – I’m seriously wondering about a few apparent contradictions with market research firms:

1.   How can we routinely give exquisite advice to our clients on ways to uniquely position their brands in targeted markets, yet so many of us try to be all things to all people, struggle with defining our target markets and lack an original and compelling value proposition?

2.   What do our end clients think about us promoting to them the necessity of collecting, processing and acting on customer feedback, yet so few of us do the same with our clients?

3.   Why do we consult with our clients on optimizing their CRM platforms without doing much of the same in our business?

4.   When we know so well the economics of maintaining an existing customer versus attracting a new one in our client’s business, why do we oftentimes fall short in establishing and executing account strategies to keep and grow our clients?

5.   When we really understand the crucial importance of a strategic plan to lead and drive our client’s business – and help our clients put those plans in place – why do so few of us have similar plans to lead and drive our business?

6.   How can we be in the question-asking business, yet when we get in front of our clients and prospects we often miss opportunities to ask good, consultative questions that uncover their core needs?

7.   How can we guide an advertiser in creating a commercial that elicits a desired emotional and behavioral response, yet so often neglect to connect emotionally with our clients and prospects?

8.  When we create disciplined processes for our clients to take new products from initial concept to successful launch, why are so many of our own product development efforts fragmented and unsuccessful?

9.   When we regularly work with our clients to understand their drivers of performance and help them establish KPIs to monitor and manage their business, why do so few of us have a similar dashboard to run our own business?

These are just a few of the many contradictions I often see.  Please understand, my intent here isn’t to whine, bash, generalize or self-flagellate, but to provoke some creative thinking and dialogue around what might be possible if we consumed more of our own medicine – the advice “Physician, heal thyself” comes to mind here.

Or if we return to our friendly neighborhood cobbler, to have a thriving shoe business, perhaps we should first consider making delighted customers of our own children.

I suspect others have thoughts and perspectives to share – would love to hear them.

Contact me at bill@consultcambiar.com