Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Re:think Reflections: Part 3


“I would in essence start a business consultancy with market research as differentiation.”
– Kathy McGettrick, VP, Market Development, S&D, IBM – talking about the future research firm


When I first launched Research Narrative in 2011, I built it around three fundamental beliefs that I often still espouse to anyone close enough to listen.
  • Research is storytelling. In today’s world, it has to be.
  • The research firm I want to run must be known for strategy and wisdom; we must be a trusted adviser whether we’re working with a showrunner, a CEO, or a fellow researcher. 
  • Research service today is research mixology – it requires selecting and packaging innovative methods into a strategic research plan, and remaining nimble enough to introduce new innovations. Although I personally have methodology specialties, my business can’t afford to be limited to them.

I was pleased to discover that this year’s Re:think conference actually kicked off by perpetuating these beliefs. In particular, the opening session panel on “Embracing Change Before it Embraces You” reinforced these pillars, with panelists cleverly articulating many of the principles upon which I’ve built Research Narrative. Two ideas espoused by the panel especially caught my attention: curtailing naked research and embracing the research alchemist.
        Not what we mean by naked research.

No more naked research, please.
One of my favorite panelists, Kathy McGettrick of IBM, broached the idea that the world has moved away from “naked research” - research results relayed without context. And she’s exactly right; naked research is an artifact of a bygone research era. Today’s research needs to find meaning, and tie back to the business questions, challenges, or objectives at stake. In fact, such was the key learning of our RAABT forum: if you’re not involving key stakeholders, and putting research in their context, you’re falling short of the business impact you could (and should) have. I said it in Part 2 and I’ll say it again here: research is a means to an end. It is not, in and of itself, the end.

The future researcher is an insights alchemist, storyteller, and consultant.
In with the generalist, out with the specialist. The session’s panelists pointed out that the researcher of today – and indeed tomorrow – is an expert alchemist. (Credit again goes to Kathy for genius application of the word “alchemy”.)  As researchers, we now must bring tools together, bring information together, and ultimately concoct the exact right blend to find the business meaning in that mix. Then we must convey that, taking ownership and telling a (research) story to key stakeholders. Or, as a panelist later in the morning explained, “we need to make them smart.”

Mind you, without methodology specialists, generalists have no tools to which we can apply our research alchemy talents. Someone has to create those innovative tools and specialized methods. But in this brave new world of storytelling, business strategy, and insights alchemy, being a generalist is itself a specialty. One on which I'd bet my business.

-Kerry

Re:think Reflections: Part 2

This week at Re:think, I had the good fortune to present (along with David Rabjohns of MotiveQuest and the “home sick but attending in spirit” Phil Herr of Millward Brown) the findings from our ARF Forum – Research as a Business Tool. (“RAABT” as we call it.)

Our 18-month research initiative set out to answer the question, “Why does some research have a remarkable business impact, and other research fail to achieve its intended impact, or have no impact at all?”

The difference between impactful and not impactful boils down to two key characteristics:
  1. Understanding of the business context
  2. Effective communication
I’m going to focus on the 2nd item here, because it’s one that happens to have been broached many times in my career, and the theme surfaced repeatedly at this year’s conference.

I once received some amusingly misguided advice from my college adviser, who curiously suggested that I not take a communications research class because, as he implied, it was beneath me. (Fast forward two decades to the irony that I own a company specializing in media research, and blog about it.)

Fortunately for me, I was lucky that my first manager after I graduated from college disagreed with the sentiment that communication was a soft skill unworthy of the attention of an esteemed statistician. Indeed, he sent me packing to an AMA seminar on communication styles, noting that anyone working in client service needed to know that discipline. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

In today’s day and age, researchers need to be effective communicators. Certainly, we also need innovative methodologists, and skilled analysts. But all of that work is only as useful as we’re able to communicate it to the end-users of the information.

I noticed two things that struck my attention this year at Re:think.

  • Many researchers still spend way too much time talking about process, and way too little time discussing insights and action steps.
  • Even more lack basic presentation skills.
In work, and in life, we deal with people all day. And some of them don’t communicate the way we do. Effective communicators pay attention to how others communicate, and adjust their own styles.

Researchers, unfortunately, often aren’t so good at this. A trend I noticed this week: presentations that largely amounted to a staged reading of bullets on a slide, sometimes complemented by charts populated with 12 pt font data that couldn’t be seen past the 2nd row. As I joked with a fellow conference attendee, it begs for a drinking game. (Drink once for a slide with only text, drink twice for a slide with all data and no discernible takeaways.) Had I actually played this game, my colleagues would have been dragging me out of the room in a blistering state of inebriation, within about half an hour of my arriving at the conference.

Fellow researchers, the potential for alcoholism aside, we need to do better. When we don’t communicate well, the people we’re talking to don’t listen.

But what really surprised me at this year’s conference was how many presenters lacked even the basic fundamentals. In one session, five different people took turns presenting. As each walked up to the podium, I was listening for two introductory pieces of information.

  1. Tell me who you are.
  2. Tell me why you’re standing up there. (i.e. What are the objectives that you were trying to understand in your research? Why should I care?)
Of five senior research executives, only one of them did both of these things. Four them didn’t state their objectives, and dove right into results (of what?). All five had several text-only slides. One actually had entire paragraphs on their slides.

In another session, I looked at my watch 25 minutes into the 30 minute session. At this point, the presenter was still discussing the research process (again, more bullets on a slide). I had yet to learn anything salient about what the research had accomplished, or what that meant for our industry. And in fact, I never did. I literally walked away with no understanding of what the presenter had learned from his research, and how his company (or clients) had turned the results into action steps.

Impactful research requires impactful communication. We have to know our audience; we have to communicate to them how they want to be communicated to. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, market researchers are the voice of the consumer. And if these last few days are an indication, we need to embrace communication skills as much as we embrace analytical skills if that voice is to be heard.

The RAABT forum will be working on action steps for implementing learning and training for researchers in areas of business and communication, based on our own research findings. In the meantime, I offer some practical tools that I’ve personally found to be useful in communicating research.

  • If you’re going to give a live presentation, use the tools of “live”. Nothing sends people nose to mobile device to check email quite like a presentation that amounts to text slides and data dumps. A presentation is not a report, it’s a story. Prepare for that. Use visuals, be dynamic, and don’t make people read. If we wanted to read your results, we wouldn’t be there in person. And if you start reading your own slides, we reserve the right to walk out.
  • Have a point of view. The traditional view of researchers is that we must be impartial third-parties. And indeed, in designing research and analyzing results, impartiality is critical. After that, it’s time to have an opinion. Research is a means to an end, it’s not the end itself. If you can’t tell someone what the results mean, what end-users can do with it, and what action steps might (note that I didn’t say “will” – there are boundaries) unfold from the results, then it’s not research, it’s just data. That is likely to be misinterpreted. Which in turn gives non-researchers the impression that our function is not all that valuable. And that benefits none of us.
  • Tee things up, and then get to the headline. The Achilles Heel of researchers is that we often like to show people all the cool work we’re doing. “Look at all this amazing analysis, I’m so valuable!” It’s our job to be the wizard behind the curtain, and then it’s our job to make it look like magic. My general rule is this: show just enough data and analysis to inspire trust in your process and demonstrate that you didn’t make the results up, and then cut to what you learned and what the story is. Have a headline, and don’t bury the lead on page 22. Which brings me to….
  • Tell a story. Have a beginning, a middle, and an end. “Here’s what we did, and then here’s what we did next” is not a story, it’s a process. The best presentation I saw at Re:think led with the headline, “Mobile use isn’t actually mobile.” (Those of us in media already knew that, but it was still a great headline.) Then it went into what they meant by that, how people actually use mobile devices, and what that could mean for advertising strategy on mobile devices. I put my phone down, took notes, and walked away with a clear understanding of the implications of the research for my own business. That is the sign of a good presentation.
  • Don’t be afraid to be entertaining.  Research itself can be dry, but that doesn’t mean the delivery has to be. Tell war stories, give examples, tell jokes. During our RAABT presentation, David used a picture of a boxer after a knockout to demonstrate the concept of “impact.” He had the room enraptured within the first minute. Make it fun for the room to learn what you have to tell them.
  • Pay attention to how others communicate. Effective research requires gaining buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders, and there is an art to doing this. I work with some people who are so busy, they defer to trusting my judgment and just want to be told the answer without frivolous exposition. Others are more receptive when they’re led to the well, but not actually handed the water; they want to be given the insights and then discuss possible outcomes. And then there are those who solicit your opinion and genuinely want to know what you think - but won’t actually follow through on it unless they come up with them idea themselves. I once had a colleague who would constantly ask my advice, and never act on it. And then one day, I answered his question with my own question. Normally, I find this behavior obnoxious, but damn if it didn’t work. He almost immediately got to my POV in his answer, and when he came up with the conclusion, he acted on it. Manipulative as this approach may sound, it made us more effective as a team. I equate it to teaching – sometimes your job is to provide the answer, and sometimes it’s to teach others how to get to the answer themselves.
For more information on our Research as a Business Tool forum or to read our report, email me at kerry@researchnarrative.com.


-Kerry

Re:think Reflections: Part 1


Earlier this year, I had what I jokingly refer to as an 18-point technology meltdown. In truth, there were probably more like 6 points, but hyperbole makes for a more entertaining story. Basically what it boils down to is this: I use a lot of devices, and they all broke at once. And that doesn’t even get into the software and email server failures that accompanied the hardware breakdowns.

There was a point at which my emails to a client suddenly started bouncing back, and a customer service agent for our email hosting company said to me, “I don’t have time to help you on this.”

If you’re one of my 700+ Facebook friends (we’re all close, of course), you saw my choice words for that particular occasion. (And you heard from me again when I boarded the very Delta flight on which I’m writing this invective, and discovered that I had paid an additional fee for “extra legroom” at a seat that does not, in fact, have any extra legroom.)

Apparently I’m not alone in my state of aggravation toward product quality, customer service, and corporations that abuse my goodwill. In fact, there is a name for the anger we feel as consumers in today’s political and corporate climate. We are the “global enraged.”

Trust in politics and corporations has been declining since the mid-60s, according to J. Walker Smith, Executive Chairman of The Futures Company and keynote speaker at the 2013 Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:think conference. As of 2012, a global average of 28% (and over half of the middle class) is really enraged, disenchanted with the full range of today’s business and political environment. I’m merely part of the 90% who feel a lot of anger toward some element of that climate.

Go ahead. Crack a pencil. You'll feel better.
Worldwide, we are one pissed off set of consumers.

I take an odd solace in knowing that I’m not only not alone, I’m part of a cultural zeitgeist, a worldwide uprising that brought about riots in Egypt, and camped out protesters at Occupy Wall Street. It’s a global phenomenon that is so profound it almost promises change. Maybe there’s hope.

Nevertheless, as a consumer insights professional, it’s my also job to curtail this escalating outrage. A fellow researcher at Re:think said it best -- she referred to our seats at the executive table as “the voice of the consumer.” So I suggest the following to my colleagues and comrades in the research industry: if consumers’ voices aren’t being heard, then we ourselves need to be louder. We are part of the problem.

Being louder and being heard are easier said than done, of course. It’s not easy to tell a CEO that by boosting margins they might be feeding long-term consumer backlash, and it takes a bullet proof vest and a helmet to tell a network executive that their pet project is totally misaligned with the audience of their TV network. (There is, mind you, a nuance to doing exactly that, which I address in Part 2.)

But here’s the gentle reality check: we have to, that voice is what makes our profession relevant and necessary. If we’re not using our voices, we’re not representing the consumer. And being the voice of the consumer, that’s the very commitment we made when we chose this line of work.

-Kerry

Editorial addendum: At the conclusion of my writing this blog, Delta comped our entire row free drinks as an apology for the bait and switch on the leg room seats. It’s probably the most expensive drink any of us ever purchased, but I give credit to the flight attendant – we all feel a bit less enraged now. 

Monday, March 4, 2013

I Just Couldn’t Let it Go: The Media Reaction to the Oscars


"That was random.”

If you’ve ever observed a comedy series focus group, you've heard this phase – over and over. If it’s from a guy, the phrase is usually a compliment. The arbitrary nature of a moment that comes out of left field is precisely a source of humor for many men. But for a woman, “random” is almost invariably a rejection. Random humor, to women, is often seen as lazy, lacking purpose, and not relevant to them.

It’s not that men and women identify different things as being “random,” it’s that randomness itself has rather different interpretations. And indeed, men and women often voice disparate interpretations of the same programming content.

I was reminded of this circumstance last week, when I read the media reactions to the Oscars. I’m not exactly the target audience for Animation Domination, and thus I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” of Seth MacFarlane. But I do tend to like irreverent humor, and I have tremendous respect for how hard it is to sing, dance, act, host, write, and crack jokes at a professional level at all, nevermind all in one show. For that reason, I enjoyed the sensibility and performance of this year’s Oscar host. I found him to be immensely talented, and highly entertaining. I daresay I was inspired to step up my game, what with my not yet having three shows on network TV, a hit movie, a Grammy-nominated album, and enough time leftover to write and host the Oscars. 

And yet, if you missed the actual awards show and read only the media coverage afterward, you might have thought MacFarlane killed a puppy with his bare hands during the telecast. Female journalists were particularly harsh, painting the host as the Devil, calling him a misogynist, a racist, an Anti-Semite, a guy who condones rape and domestic violence.

In the context of communication, one’s choice of words and the intent of those words matter immensely. The words we carefully choose to convey something very specific, we don’t want them distorted. And what we mean by those words, we don’t want that misinterpreted. A journalist, of all people, should know that. And yet, much of the media coverage following the Oscars seemed to ignore both the words and intent of MacFarlane’s jokes, escalating into a fury of outrage that had one outlet up in arms for actress introductions such as, “The lovely _________”. (Editorial note: if I spent all day getting ready for a black tie event, I think I’d be more offended if someone didn’t think I looked lovely. Also, since when is “lovely” considered merely a physical trait, and not also a personality trait?)

We don’t all have to like MacFarlane’s sense of humor or penchant for the music of yesteryear; taste is subjective. It is entirely reasonable to have been bored by all the musical numbers, if musical numbers aren’t your thing. It is entirely reasonable to suggest that it’s societally destructive, nevermind in poor taste, to joke about “seeing the boobs” of an actress during her portrayal of a rape victim. It is entirely reasonable to think we’re 30 years past the “all black guys look alike” joke. It’s entirely reasonable to think the entire production team should have just skipped over the nine year-old when writing jokes, because, you know, she’s nine.

But it is not reasonable to take that frustration, rewrite the jokes, and use your edited version in a character attack. It is not reasonable to perpetuate that Salma Hayek was a victim of misogyny, when Javier Bardem was the butt of the same joke. It is not reasonable to say that MacFarlane “sexualized” a minor, when he made no reference to sex or physique in the joke, and went out of his way to anchor the punchline at age 25. As I told one of my own friends, if your brain interpreted “9+16 = 25 = Clooney is screwing a minor,” that is your own curiously disheartening filter. But it is not the actual joke. Writers and publications that I like – nearly all fell victim to this filter. Even CNN described the theme of the awards ceremony as, and I quote, “A defensive anxiety about the ascendant power of women.”

Did they not see the stunning performances by the likes of Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Hudson? (I’d add Adele to the list, were it not for the sound issues that prevented me from actually hearing her.) Did they miss the part where MacFarlane announced that “the next presenter needs no introduction,” and then smiled as he raced off stage, making room for Meryl Streep? Are they not aware that this year’s Oscar producers are also the producers of the show Smash, a celebratory vehicle for the wonderfully talented Anjelica Huston, Debra Messing, Megan Hilty, and Katharine McPhee? This is not a team that smacks of defensiveness or anxiety when it comes to women.

Perhaps worse, a lot of these articles are just as irresponsible as the behavior they condemn. They take the point of view that Seth MacFarlane’s jokes, easily misunderstood by feeble and young minds, promote hatred. But doesn’t misunderstanding MacFarlane, and calling him racist, sexist, or Anti-Semitic do the very same? The other night, I heard a 23 year-old woman refer to MacFarlane as a “racist misogynist,” based entirely on his mocking of Latinas and of “women and minorities.” She had no idea that Javier Bardem was also part of the Salma Hayek/Penelope Cruz joke, or that MacFarlane also took shots at white men like Tommy Lee Jones, George Clooney, Mel Gibson, and even Abe Lincoln. She was clearly reacting to what she read, not what she reasoned. These journalistic misrepresentations – they too shape young minds, and not for the better.

They also rewrite history. A writer at Salon went as far as to claim, A great host is entertaining and generous, exuding charm and authority. A great comic is funny. Last evening, Seth MacFarlane host of the 85th annual Oscars, was none of those things.” 

That might be the author’s opinion, but a categorical truth it is not. On many objective measures, MacFarlane sailed through his hosting duties with an effortless ease of a seasoned pro. He not only cracked jokes, he sang, he danced, he found the camera, he hit his cues, he aced his lines. Most new hosts fumble with lines (see also: most presenters), wrestle with nervous ticks, appear uncomfortable when they have to go off script, and don’t know what to do with their hands. I caught MacFarlane exhibiting none of these shortcomings, and I’m not only a tough critic of these things, I’m a paid critic of these things.

Readers’ comments on nearly all of the outraged articles also seem to suggest that the audience completely disagreed with the media’s response. Men and women alike believed the host to be entertaining, funny, and full of charm. Comments in support of MacFarlane received hundreds of “likes”; comments attacking him were mostly met with virtual eye rolling.

Mind you, I understand why so many female journalists were peeved, I really do. There’s an insidious bias that continues to favor men in Hollywood, and in many workplaces. Men still dominate senior management and government, meetings with a “boys’ club” vibe are still rampant, interaction styles that are more masculine in nature are still favored, and it remains necessary to have “Women In (Insert Profession Here)” groups; I’m in two of them and am about to join a third. As a successful woman who has fought through this, yes, I get it. It’s easy to feel anger when you hear yet another guy make a comment about women “and their innate inability never let anything go,” even when in context he might well be making fun of the vapidity of the statement itself. Some guys won’t take it that way, and they’ll continue to perpetuate the myth that standing our ground constitutes nagging, dwelling, or some other negative word that is not perseverance. Which, of course, is exactly what it would be if a guy stood his ground.

But that doesn’t excuse any of us from acting with professional responsibility and decorum – we have to rise above the irritation. Watching the Oscars and presuming that Seth MacFarlane is sexist, racist, or Anti-Semitic, is much the same as hearing a woman describe a comedy as “random” and then inferring that she loves it. Maybe it’s true, but more likely, it isn’t. After all, the members of Peter Griffin’s family who aren’t voiced by MacFarlane himself are voiced entirely by Jewish actors.

If we’re going to understand what people are talking about, then we have to take some time to learn how others communicate. To those of us who pursue careers in media, it’s a professional necessity. We don’t just get to talk, write, and react. We need to listen, absorb, and consider. We need to take a deep breath and not just assume the worst, even if we’re conditioned to doing so. Indeed, in this world of tweets and status updates, we only jeopardize ourselves when we get lazy and demonstrate a lack of willingness to think critically before we react and hit “post.”

As for Seth MacFarlane, well, he knew that he’d be misinterpreted and raked over the coals. He made his entire opening about it. And in doing so, he made the media play right into his joke. Love him or hate him, it’s the sign of a rather brilliant communicator. Instead of eviscerating him, maybe we should be taking notes.

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Communication is in fact a central subject of an upcoming panel on which I’ll be speaking, at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think conference in New York. The panel is part of the ARF’s “Research as a Business Tool” forum, a multi-phase initiative to understand what makes research successful (or not) in propelling positive business outcomes. One of the key drivers was, you guessed it – communication. For more information, visit the conference website: http://www.thearf.org/rethink-2013.php.