Do your prospects know who you are, but forget you when it matters most? In the insights industry, awareness alone isn’t enough. What really counts is being remembered at the right time: when buying decisions are made.

In part two of her Marketing Applied series on Greenbook’s Grow your insights business channel, Iosetta Santini unpacks the concept of mental availability: why pairing it with brand awareness is like the ketchup to your mustard, and how you can build it into your marketing. From distinct branding to customer-focused messaging and being part of industry events, discover the steps to ensure your company stays top-of-mind.

Read the full article: Marketing Applied Part Two: What You Need to Know About Mental Availability.

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At AURA Insight’s Generational Insights: Exploring the Changing Consumer Landscape, our very own Colonel Mustard Lucy Davison and NED Danny Russell took the stage to debate whether it’s time to retire generational cohort labelling. After an in-depth discussion with fiery evidence from both sides, the audience of clients voted: generational cohorts are bad for research.

As insights professionals, we must always re-evaluate the way we understand consumers. This debate was not about winning, but all about questioning, learning, and finding better ways to make sense of the world.

Catch up on why we, Keen as Mustard, wanted to challenge the status quo on generational cohorts in this blog.

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Why generational cohorts are bad research – and even worse marketing.

Not so long ago, segmentations and targeting were tragically simplistic – resulting in sweeping stereotypes applied to large groups of people, like those classic ads assuming all women strive to please their husbands with spotless homes and by looking beautiful.

But marketing and insights has changed – thank goodness. We now use sophisticated methods to understand people’s nuanced attitudes and behaviours, we try very hard to reach and include diverse audiences and to understand them. We all have DE&I policies and do our best to overcome biases, not to discriminate, generalise or stereotype.

However, the concept of generational cohorts takes the opposite approach. Taking one single variable (birth year) to make sweeping generalisations about people is akin to basing your marketing strategy on astrology (birth month). However, no marketing professional would propose targeting Leos and Capricorns; the concept is ridiculous. Yet we actively encourage clients to think in terms of generational cohorts.

Attributing shared values or traits to entire generations risks reinforcing simplistic narratives that obscure the diversity within large populations. Consider this: in the U.S. alone, there are 72 million millennials¹ – the equivalent of the 19^th largest country in the world. Generational cohorts aren’t just inaccurate – they are massively reductive, undermining the complexity of human behaviour and promoting biases.

We all have our own examples of individuals who do not fit these stereotypes – but the arbitrary cut off dates are ridiculous. According to the concept of generational cohorts someone born in 1964 has more in common with another ‘Boomer’ born in 1945 than a close colleague born in 1965.

But just don’t take our word for it.

The scepticism around generational cohorts led 150 social scientists to sign an open letter to Pew Research – written by Philip N. Cohen from University of Maryland – asking them to stop using these classifications.  They argued it imposes “qualities on diverse populations without basis, resulting in the current widespread problem of crude stereotyping”². In 2023, Forbes reported that Pew would shift its focus to comparative research into age groups over different time³ (e.g. examining 20-year-olds in 1980 vs 2000 vs 2020).

We are not suggesting that we should not do research into different age groups, but supporting the view that they are different, diverse and changing – not that a set of attributes and behaviours is cast in stone at birth. The logical conclusion of that idea is that researchers could just pack up and go home –we already know all we need to know about people because of the cohort they are born into.

It perpetuates ‘cohortism’.

‘Cohortism’, a term we coined in the debate, is the sibling of ageism. A 2024 study by The Adaptavist Group surveyed 4,000 knowledge workers across the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, and Germany. 40% said using cohorts is a slippery slope towards colleague exclusion, while 45% reported that it fosters harmful stereotypes⁴.

What worse: it’s untrue!

The largest study into age cohorts we could find, (by Valuegraphics) cited by Forbes and involving 750,000 people in 180 countries – showed that generational cohorts have no more in common with each other than any other single demographic factor, like race, education, and income⁵. Similarly, a study by BBH Labs, illustrated that generational cohorts have an average cohesion index of only +1.3. In contrast, other groupings – like ‘daily nut eaters’ and ‘Orangina drinkers’ – scored significantly higher, with cohesion indexes of +3.8 and +4.5, respectively.

It’s actively harmful

According to the Centre for Ageing Better (2020), one in three people in the UK reports experiencing age discrimination.   The Equality and Human Rights Commission states people of all ages say they experience it more than any other form of discrimination⁶.

So, as insights professionals, this prompts the question: Why are we supporting generational cohorts by producing endless studies into different groups and how they supposedly think and feel?

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1 https://www.bbh-labs.com/puncturing-the-paradox-group-cohesion-and-the-generational-myth

2 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSecsM1JavYMlNI-XlKDYngFKsEFBGFs_imv7R5KO8e15NYeCg/viewform

3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheilacallaham/2023/05/28/pew-research-center-new-stance-on-generational-labels-with-a-caveat/

4 https://www.pcma.org/its-time-to-ditch-tired-generational-stereotypes/

5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheilacallaham/2022/05/15/generational-labels-why-its-time-to-put-them-to-rest/

6 https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/22776/html/#:~:text=One%20in%20three%20people%20in,any%20other%20form%20of%20discrimination.

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Our industry has leaned a little too heavily on storytelling to communicate customer insights to stakeholders and decision-makers. Now, there is nothing wrong with storytelling. It is a fantastic tool in many ways, but it lacks dimension. In insights, researchers typically use storytelling to report findings, deliver them, and move on. The customer‘s voice doesn’t infiltrate the organisation’s decision-making, and insights often go unused. Point and case, the 2023 UK Customer Satisfaction Index shows that customer satisfaction has been the lowest it’s ever been since 2014. According to Forrester study, while 74% of companies want to be ‘data-drive’, only 29% actually are.

So we need a better way to raise the profile of insights, to get the visceral experiences of customers into the heart of organisations to drive informed decisions.

It’s my view that we are sitting on a treasure trove on exciting, inspiring customer content, but it’s not sparking the actions it should. So, how can we change that? At the Customer Salience Summit, organised by FlexMR, I had the pleasure of diving into this very topic: how our industry can take a page from Hollywood’s playbook to make customer insight famous.

It’s worth noting, that despite Hollywood’s famed glitz and glamour, in 2023, the revenue of the insights industry in the US was US$77 billion – more than double the $33.4 billion from Hollywood’s box office. Yet, somehow, our industry doesn’t have nearly the same level of visibility. The answer? Fame.

So, what would the dudes over in Hollywood do in our shoes? Run a campaign.

A campaign is a constant, intentional effort to control the narrative—keeping the conversation going around your content, the information you’re sharing, and the customer’s relationship with your organization. And there are six things the insights industry can do to build this approach.

The star: There are no movies without a star. When you think of iconic films, the actors come to mind first. So, when presenting your findings, think about who’s the best person to deliver and represent your message. It might not be the researcher who did the work – you need someone inspiring to captivate, sell the story and bring it home. Find your star, whether that means hiring someone, training a current employee, or incentivising your team.

Better titles (and one-liners): We all judge a book by its cover, even when we claim not to. A brilliant title and one-liner stick to your mind (see: Ghostbusters – “who you gonna call?”). In insights, we’re famously bad at this. Is it any wonder our insights don’t stick when decisions are being made? A 2015 study analysed 69,907 news headlines and found five key elements that grab attention: surprise, curiosity, questions, negativity, and — wait for it — numbers! Lucky for us, we’ve got plenty of those, so let’s use them!

Trailers: These are quick engaging videos which get you excited for the films. With insights, they can spark curiosity amongst stakeholders and help convey key points you want to highlight. For instance, a testimonial or interview with a customer can humanise your data and emphasise the importance of customer voices. It’s time for us to start putting faces (or even animations) to the data.

PR: Internal public relations help you maintain control of the ongoing insights narrative. To ensure that we are driving action from insights, we must leverage all channels and carefully curate messages that will resonate with our audiences. Constant sharing of insights, nuggets or snippets, will help elevate the insights team, as well as keeping customer voices in the forefront of decision-makers’ minds.

Targeting: Just like films, different audiences have different needs – identifying and targeting them is crucial to designing your campaign. Each stakeholder audience will use your findings in unique ways, so tailoring your materials to their requirements will help them better integrate the insights into their day-to-day decision-making.

Premiere: The premiere is where all your hard work comes together. Don’t let it be dull – engage your audience by encouraging them to think about and interact with your insights. This is how you bring your findings to life and make them resonate with the people who need to understand their importance and put them to use. As a researcher it’s all too easy to work flat out until the debrief, and then sigh with relief and walk away afterwards. Remember, for everyone else, the premiere is only the beginning.

Implementing this fame model will not only boost traffic to your platforms or start provoking more strategic questions from your audiences – it will raise your team’s profile and increase awareness within your organisation. You’ll create lasting impressions that bring insights front and centre in your company’s decision-making.

So, why not go Hollywood on your insights? And if all else fails, give us a shout 😉 We’re keen as mustard to help bring fame to your insights.

The post The Fame Formula: Elevating Customer Insights with Hollywood’s Playbook appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.

Decades of experience helping companies grow, tells us that going to industry events is a vitally important way to build awareness and get leads in B2B. As the specialist marketing agency for insights, we get a lot of clients asking us why they should go and how best to make the most of them. We also hear people wondering if it is worth the investment. Here is our step-by-step guide on how to make the most out of events and ensure you return with your inbox stuffed with opportunities – even if you are not on the stage (more on that in another post!).

Before the event

Agree responsibility: each member of the team should know what is expected of them before, during and after the event. You might want a “team leader” to be responsible for keeping the team on track and delivering key learnings and contacts at the end.

Agree your objectives – you are aiming to get contacts, not meetings or immediate sales – though these would be nice, the aim is to meet people, connect and network to raise your awareness and get emails (sales come later). Your objective should be to get to meet and garner the details of as many new people as you can, so you can nurture them for your pipeline, and to build on existing relationships by discussing the event content (not your pitch).

Set individual KPIs so you each have a target of companies or people you will meet.

Block your diary for the time you will be at the event so no other meetings go in. It is a total waste of time and money to be on a call at an event. If you need to be on a call or in a meeting which cannot be missed, send someone else in your place.

Join the event app, look at the attendee list and identify people you really want to meet. You can reach out to them on the app in advance but do not do a generic spammy note (“we do xx, I’d like to talk to you about it”), instead, make it specific to the client and preferably related to the content at the event. “I see you are talking about xxx, this is a topic close to our hearts as we’ve just done a pilot for a new way to do xxx”…and have some great examples of how to make it work. “I’d love to meet to listen to your experience and see how it fits with ours” or something like that. I am always amazed at how many generic and inappropriate emails I get from suppliers just because I attended an event – Keen as Mustard is not a research company and we do not need sample. Do your research, researchers!

Research the agenda (see above) and put in your diary the sessions you will attend in advance – select the sessions by clients you most want to meet or feel you have the most in common with. Divide and conquer, so if there are two of you, do not both go to the same session if you can avoid it.

Flag your attendance on LinkedIn in advance, at least twice, and tag key people such as the event organizers. Say in your post what you are looking forward to (tag the clients presenting) and why.

Use the event meeting system to organize direct 1-2-1 meetings in advance.

During the event

Attend all the sessions you have flagged/arranged to go to (it’s easy to get sucked in and miss them, again, don’t waste your opportunity by having a call instead).

Make notes/take photos during the sessions – key learnings are important (plus anyone sharing their email on slides) – have your camera at the ready to take good photos.

Share key points/learnings on LinkedIn as much as you can during the event, use decent photos and tag the client speaker and the organizers.

Ask a question of the client speaker (you can state your name and company briefly first), e.g. ‘I’m Jane from This Company. I was really interested in what you said about xxx, how do you think AI will impact that?”

If you do not or cannot ask a question (sometimes they are only on the event app but this is worth doing anyway), then go up to the speaker after the session and introduce yourself but specifically talk about the content of their talk, don’t go straight in with your pitch. “Hi, I’m Jane from This Company. Loved your talk. In particular, the bit about xxx which really resonated with me because we find our clients really struggle with that…” or something. Bring in other clients/experience so she knows you know what you are talking about.

If the convo goes well, ask to exchange details. (Events often have a badge ‘Klik’ thing which works well). You can say you have some thought leadership on the topic she was talking about (or a case study), that you’d like to share.

With clients that are not speaking, you need to network and meet as many people as possible. Good ways to do this are in the queue for coffee/lunch/snacks – you can just ask them about the event, what do they think of the content, what have they seen that resonated with them, why? During breaks take the chance to join someone at a table/bench if there is a space and have the above convo with them. If you are sitting next to a new person in the audience, shake their hand when you sit down and introduce yourself. The chances are that a lot of them will be other agencies, but you will definitely meet potential clients this way, just by chance.

Take advantage of all the social networking opportunities – parties, receptions, events etc. In my experience as many business connections are made at these than at the event itself.

After the event

Have a debrief meeting to discuss how it went, evaluate progress on KPIs and share contacts to get them into your database. Share what you learnt with those who were not able to attend.

Follow up with all the contacts you made. This should be a one-on-one email recalling the conversation you had and sharing something – preferably a piece of content that might help continue the conversation. After that it’s over to your sales team to nurture…and I guess you are involved as much or as little as you need to be. (And, if you need help creating content for this, speak to Keen as Mustard!)

Draft some bullet points or write a post about the highlights of the event, which you share on your website and on LI – and tag the appropriate people including all the client sessions you mention or viewed. E.g. What’s the most surprising thing I’ve learnt? What is the session I found most inspiring? What topics were most discussed and why? Any new trends? Any new friends? What can you expect to change in the industry based on what you’ve learnt?

Remember, you are more likely to get on the stage next time (even if you are paying for your slot) if you have built a good relationship with the organisers…so make sure you work with them to ensure each and every event is a success.

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Recent research by the Global Research Business Network found that 41% of people don’t trust market research companies with their data. Although the reason for this is not difficult to rationalise – the commoditization of personal data, qualms about technology and unethical data use – the real question is how to counter the mistrust.

To change people’s perceptions, something must change in the way market research companies communicate, and the key to consumer trust is for a brand to behave like a human. So market research companies must humanise themselves. Here are some things you can do:

Have face

Communication is something that happens between two humans, so you should relish your employees and make sure that they’re in full view. Start with your company website – create an ‘about us’ that reflects not only what you do but also who you are. Employee pages are key to showing people that you have personality. This can be as simple as taking a decent photo and writing a short biography. This shows the world that your company is not made up of cogs and microchips, but of real people with real personalities.

Converse with conviction

Allow your personality to trickle through to other platforms such as social media, media relationships and events. Share photographs of employees being themselves and ensure your leaders express a real personality, rather than read a script. Use humour and encourage employees to get involved. Leave timid corporate communications behind and converse with conviction. Be yourself.

Ensuring that your communication is valuable to your audience helps too. As a market research company with a wealth of knowledge and insight, you’ve got a lot to give, so share it. But when you communicate it, avoid using ‘do not reply’ email addresses, and emails with 3 miles of disclaimer in 5pt font.

Speak out about relevant issues. For example, when the NHS sells its data to insurance companies, have an opinion. Write a blog, tweet and look out for journalists asking for statements on the issue. This would communicate that you’re knowledgeable and concerned about the general public’s data privacy.

Care for your customers

Give your employees on the front line the power and ability to answer your customer’s questions (especially about their data) and sort out any problems. This shows customers that their issues are valued because the employee they are talking to has the power to act upon their problem and is therefore valued by your company. This includes allowing employees to think on their feet – going above and beyond leaves you with a trusting and happy customer.

Escaping from the restraints of corporate communication can be uncomfortable, but the world is changing and people expect companies to be human, like themselves. This comes from within, so think and follow through, and don’t fake it.

If you’re interested in changing the perception of your market research company, please get in touch. We’re a dab hand with communications.

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So, 2013 was the year of the twerk and the selfie. Now 2014 looks set to be a pivotal, self-celebratory moment of a different kind. Economists predict a brighter financial situation and as the economy is set to prosper, so should your agency.

It’s no longer possible to opt out of social media. You might not see it as a way of delivering clients but you’d be wrong; in the latest GRIT report, LinkedIn was named as the second most influential source of information, and Twitter ranks 18th, higher than Research-Live. Furthermore, 24% of research buyers consume information through blogs, and 37% through the email delivery of blog subscriptions. With the plethora of social media communications, what can your agency do to stand out? Here are a few tips from Mustard:

1. Your agency isn’t what you say about it, it’s what Google says about it. Look at how your company is doing on Google Trends. This will tell you how much you have been Googled through time and related search terms. You can also see how you are faring against competitors. Good looks like a positive correlation – anything else means that there’s work to be done.

To improve the visibility of your company on Google, the first thing to do is to define your keywords – the related search terms from Google Trends can help you out here, so can Google’s Keyword planner and of course always have a list of the business’ services at hand. Say you’re a qualitative research agency, ‘qualitative research’ would be up there (genius). Make sure these are reflected in your website copy and content.

2. Make your website a content hub. When you’ve decided on those keywords, you need to create content that includes them in the title (and in the URL to match). Don’t leave your readers guessing what the blog post is about but do take into consideration that the longest titles are not always the best. For example, the Daily Mail’s stinker of a headline: ‘Children shouted “Moobs!” at me in the street, but now I model in catwalk fashion shows’: Bullied teenager lost 9 stone in 18 months and now wants to encourage others’

Take time to produce a flow of interesting blogs (bearing in mind that you are writing for your readers and not just a search engine).

3. Don’t forget to use external platforms. External platforms, such as Twitter and Google+ increase the reach of your internal content and the traffic to your (wonderful, content rich) site. Take it a little bit further by creating a content plan, and establishing a tone of voice and themes: it is also important to be a curator of valuable information over social media – don’t just share your own content. Spend 15 minutes a day finding inspiration and useful articles to share, and use your existing snappy and eye-catching statistics with relevant hashtags to gain followers.

Another useful external platform is Slideshare, which allows you to share interesting findings with the rest of the World. Edelmen Insights does this brilliantly (check out their channel here) and have had over 360,000 views on their presentations over the last 6 months.

Hopefully this puts you on the right tracks for 2014! If you’re interested in increasing your profile you might also be interested in Lucy Davison’s post on using market research to get coverage in the media.

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This post was originally written for NewMR – for a series on Threats and Opportunities in Market Research, promoting The Festival of NewMR  (Monday 2nd December to Friday 6th December).

As we race at alarming speed into the future, accessorised with new technologies, swathed in big data and seduced by social media, it is important to step back and reflect on the bigger picture. Sometimes on a day to day level it’s easy to forget that we are living through one of the greatest revolutions the world has seen – the digital revolution. The result of that revolution has been an unprecedented change in the way we communicate. Yet how much has the market research industry really kept up? In the 12 years I’ve spent in research I have seen the ways the World consumes information change radically – now we are used to Tweets, infographics, Instagram, vine and Facebook. And it has become the norm for newspapers and other media to present complex, data-rich stories in visually exciting ways. But during that time I have seen very little change in the way research information is shared. Most market research is still communicated via long PowerPoint presentations and reports.

Two years ago at an ESOMAR Congress, Lorna Walters from Reckitt Benckiser presented her audience with a 278 slide ‘summary’ she had been sent by a research agency. She pointed out that she could run a marathon faster than read the summary. You could hear the shock waves reverberate around the room; yet this is not an unusual situation.

The problem is more fundamental than simply changing to Prezi or sticking some pretty pictures or vox pops in to alleviate to boredom; researchers must become much better all-round communicators. We must learn to understand context, tell stories; package and sell ideas. I have been running a workshop on communicating insights for the past couple of years. We use an example of a real (anonymous) dreadful presentation and ask participants to work on it to improve it. We give teams as much of the context as we can and lots of data. We tell them to work from the data to build the story, create a powerful opening and make clear recommendations. Every single time we have done this exercise, using the same data set, the teams have come up with a different story, different ‘hook’ and different recommendations. So which is right? The ‘right’ answer is the one that is presented in the most compelling, motivating and memorable way – the one that the client or stakeholder listens to and the one that engenders action or reaction. This requires a different mind-set for a lot of researchers, but they are skills that can be taught.

For research to meet the challenges of the new media age, we need to radically rethink how we communicate and deliver our product. We must develop and integrate skills in story-telling and use professional design expertise to change how we get our message across. Or someone else will be doing it for us.

You can see the original post here.

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If The Apprentice was the face of market research, then it would definitely need some of Dr Leah’s TLC. Or possibly something a little more drastic. Regular viewers will know that research has been battered and bruised by Lord Sugar’s hot and cold attitude, candidates’ terrible techniques and forgone conclusions: the industry is portrayed very poorly on the show. But what can we learn from the way the contestants use market research?

Know and listen to your customer

In order to improve a brand, you should listen to the group that know it the best: its customers. They probably have an idea in their mind about what you can do to improve it. While this is impossible in The Apprentice as the brands are made-up for the purpose of the show, it is clear that you need to talk to somebody who would buy your product.

Episode 9 saw teams Evolve and Endeavour set the mammoth task of creating ready meals. Evolve went for the yuppie market, creating Oh My Pow!. Endeavour wanted to create a ready meal for children: team member Miles was behind his gruesome Dracula dinners, championing it as the choice for children, while project manager Alex preferred his Around The World meals, with a character called Popty Ping (Welsh for ‘microwave’) teaching children about geography.

Stage one of Endeavour’s market research saw Myles and Alex pitching their ideas to mothers. Interestingly, they liked the idea of the educational, around-the world food, and while one mother said that her children would love Myles’ gruesome dinners, she also noted that they have that sort of thing at Halloween. So from that feedback, obviously they went for… Myles’ gruesome dinners. The problem here was that they didn’t listen closely enough to the answers their market research gave them.

In stage two of Endeavour’s market research, they targeted children who absolutely adored the Bat’s Blood pasta. But do those children buy ready meals? No. The supermarket-shopping, money-wielding, child-caring grown-ups do, and they hated the idea. They were put off by the food because they didn’t think it looked healthy, and it had a great huge skull on the packet, just like a bottle of bleach.

The Bat’s Blood ready meals weren’t popular, then, so Endeavour lost the competition. Poor Alex got fired too, brainwashed by Myles’ “My kids would love this” vibe. If only he’d stood back and asked, “But would your wife buy Bat’s Blood?” Chaps: next time, you need to know your market – and listen to what it’s telling you.

Converse with your customer

Even by the final stage of the show, the contestants still didn’t really ‘get’ market research. Luisa, baking entrepreneur, did well to assess her market by approaching a fellow baking shop owner. But instead of talking with her, she talked at her – allowing the interviewee just four words in edge ways. Thus, she was unable to gain any insight whatsoever.

A meaningful conversation is crucial to meaningful data – and the longer the conversation, the better.

Your research is only as good as the questions you ask

Episode 8 sparked a great deal of disdain within the market research industry because the failure of the task was blamed on the market research.

Set with the task of creating a dating website, candidates were faced with the choice of marketing to twenty-something professionals, or the 50-plus demographic. Team Evolve opted for the latter. Alas, they knew nothing of these alien grey-haired beings – so they turned to research.

Carried out by the candidates, the market research was doomed from the start. They gave their 50-plus audience the choice of a ‘cheeky’ dating website or a ‘traditional’ website. I know what I would choose: cheeky has disastrous connotations. No-one wants to find a partner on a cheeky dating sight. So, essentially, the only option for the five group participants was a traditional, boring website – and so ‘Friendship and Flowers’ was born.

There is a lesson to be learned here: if you need information, you should get someone who knows what they’re doing to facilitate your research. The answers you get will only be as good as the questions you ask.

Don’t show your audience your back-of-a-fag-packet idea

Episode 3 saw candidates design a piece of multi-usage furniture to pitch to big department and catalogue stores.

In order to get feedback on their design, Endeavour’s market research team asked a handful of blokes on their lunch hour about their folding chair-come-table. The product was illustrated by the presentation of doodles on scraps of paper – I’ve produced similar things myself in lecture theatres.

As a result, the feedback was extremely negative – with comments such as “not convinced” and “puzzled and confused” thrown around. The team chose to ignore this feedback yet won the task by 3,042 sales.

Is that another failure for market research? No. All it proves is that if you want honest feedback on your product, you need to present it to your audience in a fitting way: find an appropriate platform to showcase the design.

Asking a handful of people for their opinion isn’t market research

The best example to illustrate this point comes from last year’s Apprentice when Melody concluded that “no-one in Paris drives” because four commuters in a Metro station didn’t. So the standout product which she disliked – an award-winning booster seat backpack – was avoided. A decent pitch on the opposite team with that product secured a record €214,000 order.

Misguided market research and a foregone conclusion lost Melody’s team the task. The lesson to be learnt here is to ask a representative sample of people: if Melody hadn’t chosen to ask a tiny handful of commuters, she would have found a different answer.

So what should The Apprentice do differently next time?
To repair the damage done to market research by Lord Sugar’s hopeless hopefuls, change is needed. Maybe next time around, The Apprentice should come with its own purpose-built insight community.

The community could include loyal viewers of the programme, who could be subdivided into different consumer groups according to age, income or other demographics, in order to provide relevant groups to respond to different tasks. These group of people would be at the candidate’s fingertips; opinions could be extracted quickly, with minimal effort.

Such a platform would allow various types of questions to be asked, designs to be showcased and qualitative conversations to be had.

None of which will be any help, though, if we have another crop of candidates with cloth ears, incapable of listening to consumers.

This article was originally published on Research-Live.

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Every different industry and market has a trade media.  These publications hold a mirror up to the industries they cover – the good, the bad and the downright ugly. But I have lost track of the time our PR clients have in the past dismissed their trade media as unworthy of attention or effort.  They always brief us to aim for bigger prizes – coverage in Nationals or international business media.  This is short-sighted at best and can be damaging.

Why? Trade journalists are the conduit to the bigger prizes – they have a great deal of influence with other media who will come to them for stories and to find out what and who is important in their industry.  A lot of senior journalists start out working for trade publications; get in with the right reporter now and you can find your stories covered much more widely in future. Within the research industry at least, the trade media is read by research clients so is a direct route to profile-raising and new business.  And the trade media gives you access to the zeitgeist; the new thinking and current topics that show what is going on in your industry – even if you disagree with it you cannot afford to ignore it!

So, looking after the trade media is rule number one in business-to-business media relations.  For these journalists, it is important to build and nurture good on-going relationships.  In order to do this, you need an idea of what these journalists want and how to keep them happy. Here are a few pointers to help researchers win the love of the trade media.

1. Understand what a journalist’s life is like

In a world of online daily news, most trade journalists face daily deadlines, are writing 1000s of words of copy in a very short space of time and making snap decisions about stories, images, quotes and headlines. It goes without saying that you have to be really fast and responsive to build a good relationship and make sure you keep them happy. Don’t waste time. If you need to buy yourself some extra thinking time, then call them back in ten minutes not two hours.

2. Keep it simple

Given point 1 above you must provide clear, straightforward information; avoid jargon; keep it simple.  Think about the two or three key points you want to get across. Provide short sound bites/quotes.  And provide exclusives – trade journalists won’t run a story that has already appeared in the national press, however, the nationals will run something even if it has appeared in the trade media.

3. Do your homework

Make sure you have read the latest issues of the publication you are talking to. You will look very stupid bringing up something as ‘new’ if they covered it last week. Don’t forget why you are talking to the press. There’s no point doing an interview if there is nothing in it for you so think about this first.

4. Build relationships

Get in touch; don’t wait for a big story to break before you make initial contact with your key publications. Find out who is covering your sector or topic and target them. Break the ice and establish an on-going relationship. Journalists are lazy and if they have a good, longstanding relationship with someone they will turn to them for opinions and quotes and in turn they are more likely to listen if you approach them with a story.

5. Sugar the pill

Make your good news interesting. You only get one shot at telling your story so tell it well. A headline on a press release that says “local furniture store creates 50 new jobs” is more likely to get attention than “local furniture store opens new branch.” Think about how to position your news to your advantage.

6. Don’t waste time writing features

If you have an idea or a piece of research that you think a journalist will be interested in, then write a synopsis. It should be concise, contain all the key facts and definitely not be a sales document.  Never write an article and then email it over expecting a magazine to publish it. They won’t; unless you pay for advertorial. If you send a synopsis the journalist can then work out how they want to use it, where it might go, who else they might talk to and if you or someone else should write it.

 7. The role of the press release

A press release is used to communicate news. Is your ‘news’ really news? Think about this from the journalist’s perspective first.  A press release is not a sales document; it is a useful tool for journalists. It should include: a headline that grabs attention; the key facts – what, where, why, how and when; a good strong quote that sounds like a real person speaking, not like it was lifted from a business management book.   It should be a page and a half of text at most.  Avoid jargon and write clearly – if you read it out to your mother/daughter/your barista, would they understand it?  If your press release doesn’t have a good title, it will not be read. Except in rare circumstances, do not expect your press release to be ‘published’, a decent publication will take excerpts or rewrite it including their own comment and references.

8. Avoid wire services and never spam the media.

By now you should have an idea of how specific and tailored your relationships with journalists should be. Treat them with respect.  Above all, journalists don’t read the commercial wire services like Market Wire and PR Web so don’t waste your money on them. These paid for services pay subscriptions to online publications to reproduce your press release. If you see ‘coverage’ on a site that is a reproduction of a press release then this has been sponsored. It is not true coverage; it will not be read by journalists and it will not improve your search rankings. Genuine news agencies, (such as the Press Association, Thomson Reuters or United Press International), should be handled in the same way as the National media – of which more in a future article.

This article was originally written for Quirk’s.

The post Trade journalists; what they want, what they really, really want appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.

‘Webinar’ – the word is a portmanteau of web and seminar and encompasses all online workshops and conferences. According to RSM’s survey of research professionals, they are used by 30% of those in the research industry to stay up-to-date with everything research – they’re more popular than Twitter.

On Friday 28^th June, Mustard’s very own Simon Dunn hosted a #NewMR webinar on infographics.

Infotactics’ purpose is to introduce the infographic, and to take the market research professional through the process of developing one. Participants are taken through the why, what and how of the infographic by Dunn, who brilliantly describes the infographic as ‘a poster boy for findings‘.

Watch Infotactics here:

A successful affair, the webinar was watched by 175 people from around the globe – many tweets were tweeted – and many insights taken away.

The post Simon Dunn on Infographics: An infotactics webinar appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.