An interesting thing happened at this year’s UK Market Research Society Conference: attendees inducted someone into the Hall of Fame who had been dead for over 100 years. They decided to induct Charles Dickens as the grandfather of market research. Yes, that’s right, that Charles Dickens! Why? Because, they argued, he was a keen social observer, a meticulous data gatherer, an integrator of information and a wonderful story teller who tapped our emotions in order to bring us to understanding of his basic social insights.
But, more than that, Charles Dickens made an impact. He wasn’t just telling stories for the sake of telling stories – he was telling them so as to impact the conscience of the British public as to the grueling lives of the poor, the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. He gathered his data, integrated it, sorted it and then told us the story in such an emotional way that it still has impact to this very day.
When did your last research project have such an impact?!
It’s not beyond us, you know. We can impact (and have done so) if we want to. Take AIDS in Uganda, for example. Uganda has had a lower infection rate than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa for decades. Why? Because a research study – a story really well told – convinced WHO to sell condoms in small roadside stores rather than give them away in villages, thus imbuing them with value and caché. Or, on a more prosaic level, the success of tampons in Italy after a research company insisted that the CEO of a tampon company (which shall be nameless) actually visit the country and immerse himself in its female culture.
Research has the power to have a very high impact! So why does it persist in under-performing? And why does it have such low self-esteem? Jim Collins regards researchers as the unsung heroes of Good to Great and Built to Last companies! Why unsung? What is that we need to do to consistently deliver impact and become “sung”?
–Simon Chadwick
