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Market research budgets are down by 10 per cent gloomed a recent report. Yet with every brand having to work harder to capture the interest of the stretched and stressed consumer, they really need the insight to inform brave decisions – whether that’s in innovation, packaging or communication.
Sadly, the one thing that most standard research techniques don’t do is to help inform any kind of mould-breaking action or insight-driven brand communication. The classic four focus group approach has led to the funeral of many a potentially winning idea. In the false environment of the research studio, respondents say what they think is expected of them, not what they believe, and are even less likely to be honest about what they actually do. Some just try way too hard to please the moderator or not to offend each other. Others think they can guess what’s wanted and subvert the research with a cynicism that infects everyone. Even when times were good, this approach was bad – easily leading to an entrenched, stereotypical or lowest common denominator result.
With so much at stake, there’s just no excuse for settling for the mundane. It’s time for the gloves to come off when it comes to designing research programmes – to encourage respondents to get passionate about what they’re discussing rather than being politely passive or pointlessly indignant.
There are plenty of ways to stir up the kind of debate that goes beyond the safe and samey. Lifescope research helps get down into people’s everyday reality. Following them to cafes, bars, supermarkets, the gym changing room; accompanying them on their commute, the school run, or as they navigate your website.  Seeing the reality of the day to day in a real world setting.  And then there’s discovering what hides behind closed doors - burrowing into the guilty secrets of the bathroom and the kitchen cupboards can throw up genuine surprises and provide the grist for more honest discussions.  Often interviewing kids in one room and parents in the other will throw up some delightful contrasts that can then be put into the mix in a round up discussion.  Granted, ethnographic research has been around for a while – but if done with thought (and a degree of cunning) and if really analysed for insight, rather than playing back the status quo, it can be gold-dust.
But there are other techniques for generating sparks: pitting brand advocates against brand rejectors or early adopters against conventionalists to argue for their views; using diary rooms to tease out individual opinions; commissioning video diaries or daily logs. All can provide richer information that’s less likely to be self-censored.
And, of course, there’s the essential strategy of working much harder with respondent recruitment to identify the creative, confident, analytical and articulate, rather than the simply available. If that profile doesn’t sound representative of your customers, that’s because it isn’t intended to be. Qualitative research shouldn’t ever be regarded as a referendum with a short reach. Respondents need to come from the target demographic, but for real insight, they need to be the special sort of people with spark who can approach ideas constructively.
So here’s what we think: if an idea’s worth researching, it’s worth researching effectively and imaginatively. So let’s ditch the humdrum and the formulaic and get some real opinion. That’s our view and we’re sticking to it.

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