The 12 Year Old Does Insights Research

I am a huge believe in customer insights research but the truth is that not all clients you work with feel the same way or have the budgets to pay for third party research. But that being said there is ALWAYS a way. In the past, planners and the consumer insight obsessed have spent hours scouring the Internet for free white papers, press releases, viewing ratings sites, reading consumer forums and comments etc.

Just the other day, a new source popped it's way into my life brought to me by my 12 year old daughter Cee. I was helping out my brother with a new company he is starting that will be manufacturing authentic high quality horse hide leather jackets. At some point we started to bring her into the conversation and asked her what leather jackets meant to her. She gave some impressions (it's for tough people etc.) and then got bored with us (big surprise there) and skipped off into the computer room. After about twenty minutes she came back and said,

"By the way, I posted your question on Gaia and got over 25 answers already"


Ok so were the answers all that helpful in this particular case? Well probably not but truth be told the Gaia audience is not really the high end vintange leather jacket market. But what I did find interesting (other than the fact that all kids seem to be born marketers) is a new way to use social networks to potentially garner consumer insights and research in the future.

How about you? What are your favorite free consumer insight research sources?

The Blurring Of Fictional & Real

Image via Wikipedia I was followed today on Twitter by Betty Draper. For those of you who don't know, Betty is the wife of Don Draper, a fictional Advertising Creative Director on the show MadMen.

Now, I do not follow any of the MadMen characters on Twitter so I was a little surprised she found me. I went to see her Twitter stream and found this interchange between Betty and a friend of mine Dondy...


What I find so interesting about this is the on-going blurring of the lines between fictional and real that digital is facilitating. Some say content is king, others community, but IMO it is connection that will be reigning supreme.

A while back, I met someone from the social network Bebo who was in town from London for their NA launch, and she told me that one of the most successful parts of their site (and what they consider a key point of differentiation) is their exclusive webisodic videos. The video viewing numbers she gave me were impressive but more importantly than that were the top 15% of fans who were not only joining in on blogs and other UGC but choosing to interact with the characters of the shows as well.

How this will impact content creation going forward and what it could mean for brands ongoing remains to be seen although it will certainly be an interesting trend to watch.

Age & The Invisibility Of The Network

Fred Wilson had a post the other day talking about When You Wake Up Feeling Old.

It used to be that when you no longer recognized faces on the cover of people magazine or listened to the radio and had no clue who the latest "it" band was that the age thing would hit you.

For me, it's been similar to Wilson, in realizing that people in the generation younger than me "understand how the web works at a level I'll never understand."

Those that are brought up with the network truly don't see technology or even go online as it's just always there and pervasively present (the UCaPP world).

Specifically interviewing this week, it's been interesting talking with so many people about their experience with digital, what it means to them.

And it appears as mostly it means nothing at all. Not that it's not important. It's that its simply so core that it just is. Talking about it almost seems stupid.

And yet at the same time, clearly the invisible impact of the network on how they think, and lenses of how they view the world is creating patterns, attitudes and cultural shifts that we are only starting to see and understand.

There is definitely a learning curve here for anyone trying to connect with this generation. The ways of the past are not going to work. Our old rules will no longer apply. Experience design is probably going to see some of the biggest shifts in the coming few years as we attempt to bridge the chasm between what we have traditional known and seen to the new reality. It will close down debates between navigation styles and do we like Flash or not, to task and experience oriented expectations of monstrous proportions.

And probably and most importantly for marketers, brands that say we can't change because that's the way we've always done it or that's what our guidelines say, will become less and less relevant as companies that focus on the
invisibility of the network and understanding how to communicate and connect with the generation that doesn't even think about it, start to dominate the market place.

Creative Perspectives

Its funny how looking at something in a new way gives you a completely different perspective with unexpected consequences. I think that's at the heart of creating innovative strategies. It's why I'm loving Tumblr so much and why I finding myself spending less time reading Techmeme and more time playing around on FFFound.

(image credit: farm2 from Flikr)

The Drill Vs. The Hole: Research vs. Insights Part Deux

Love when examples come so closely after I have a posting about something. I wrote about research departments needing to focus on insights and the whys the other day and here is a perfect example. Don Tapscott. Mark Evans had a post yesterday post talking about Don's 3.5 million dollar research project on Young People and The Web. Mark paraphrases Don's talk which had this research result:

"[young people] don’t see the Web as a great technology as much as a tool to be used - much like we never saw the remote control was nothing more complicated than a tool to change channels."

You gotta wonder how the research was crafted to come out with that completely sophomoric insight. Here's my guess:

do you see the Web as:
a. technology
b. network
c. portal
d. tool to do things

Personally, I would take someone who could be insightful based on a multitude of various research studies any day of the week.

Case and point, Chris Garrett . On Mark's blog he wrote what I thought was a very insightful comment (including the part where he agreed with me ;-)

"from the younger people I have contact with I have to conclude they don’t see technology as the rest of us older folk do. It’s transparent, every day, mundane, and non-compartmentalized. We think “I will get my phone and SMS so-and-so”, they are just doing what they do. They only notice the technology when it’s not there for some reason.

We see the drill, they see the hole in the wall"

update: Mike Dover from New Paradigm Research has clarified Don's research in the comments