Socialfresh.com has a very useful overview of the current leaders in the space and how brands are using them to engage with consumers. The article can be found here, and the intro there is a neat summary of the current state of this innovative new media channel:

Location based social networks are  the current darling of social media. Foursquare is leading the way with what seems like a new Fourtune 500 endorsement each week. It is unclear where all these tools will lead us. Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, and even MyTown are getting a lot of attention and a lot of businesses, big and small, are experimenting.

Innovators in global MR should be watching this space with interest, because these companies hold part of the solution of how to move our industry forward as an integral part of consumer insight driven strategies.

Leonard F. Murphy

Office: 866-545-3216

Direct:  770-985-4904

Skype: lennymurphyrhr

Cell:    678-232-7691

lmurphy@brandscan360.com

Further evidence of the shift occurring to “pull” vs. “push” marketing and the integration of insight gathering into the core marketing strategy. Inherent in this switch is the idea of engaging consumers in the feedback and innovation process, functions traditionally considered to be more research specific applications. Frank Cooper III, chief consumer engagement officer for PepsiCo’s US beverage arm, states this new approach clearly:

Stimulating online and offline conversations with, and between, brand advocates can help encourage positive word of mouth, a currency that is always at a premium in the FMCG sector.

PepsiCo estimates that 90% of shoppers place the most trust in recommendations from sources like friends and family, while 70% have a similar confidence in user-generated reviews on the web.

This philosophy is being put to practical use through MROCs, social media monitoring, and other approaches that are reshaping the world of global MR. My bet is that these advances will continue to redefine the industry in the years to come at a much faster pace than any of us suspect!

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i0b91721cf0fef6b558e8c12e1335aa21?imw=Y

I’ve gone on record for a while now that i think the research industry needs a major overhaul at almost all levels, with the biggest one being how we engage with respondents. If we want to truly understand what motivates consumers, then we need to get into their heads and hearts and adapt the science of research design and technique to allow us greater insight, not just data points. This is one of the great promises of new online techniques based on social media.

Ron says it best in his article:

While consumers can give you direct feedback on what message they received from an ad (what they remembered about it, whether they liked it, etc.), they simply cannot tell you—much less as a response to one question—whether your new ad (or new brand strategy, packaging, logo or tagline) will make them more likely to buy your product.

Some marketers understand this. The best way to approach the issue is to ask consumers how they perceive brands, what emotional value those brands hold for them, whether they understood the intended message of the advertising and what perceptual impact a prospective logo or tagline carries. The value, in other words, lies in the interpretation of consumers’ responses far more than from the raw responses themselves.

MR prides itself on helping companies innovate; can we do the same for ourselves?

I highly suggest that you do yourself a favor and download this webinar. A copy of the presentation slides is now available for download here, in addition to a copy of the audio file, which can be accessed here. A list of the questions asked during Wednesday’s presentation, as well as answers from the panelists, will be available via their website shortly.

Should you have any questions for the presenters, they can be reached directly at the contacts provided below:

• Jim Longo, Vice President of Client Development & Marketing, Itracks: jlongo@itracks.com or follow Jim on Twitter @LongoMR

• Dr. Rob Kozinets, Professor of Marketing, Schulich School of Business at York University: rkozinets@gmail.com or rkozinets@schulich.yorku.ca or follow Rob on Twitter @Kozinets or via his Brandthroposophy Social Media blog at http://kozinets.net

• Jonathan Spier, Chief Executive Officer, NetBase: jspier@netbase.com or follow Jonathan via the NetBase blog at http://netbase.com/blog

• Ed Erickson, Principal, Erickson Research: ed@ericksonresearch.com or 312.276.5140

• Julie Wittes Schlack, Senior Vice President of Innovation & Design, Communispace: jwschlack@communispace.com

• Matt Foley, Managing Partner, PluggedIN Co.: mfoley@pluggedinco.com or follow Matt on Twitter @mattpluggedin

As BP & P&G are finding out, in today’s 24/7 converged communications world, social media is not simply a way for brands to engage with consumers, but even more importantly, a channel for consumers to engage with brands. In this environment, consumer influencers can have a profound impact on brand perception incredibly quickly.

This underscores the importance of including a comprehensive plan for social media monitoring into brand tracking, as well as CRM, initiatives. The real value comes when you combine the real-time rich data of SM with other measures to create a holistic view of brand perception.

An interesting new study from McKinsey on growth trends in emerging markets might have implications for MR as well.

Overall, 64% of the panel argued the rising number of consumers and changing preferences in areas like Asia Pacific and the Middle East will have an impact on their profitability in the next five years.

A further 63% forecast that new technology, such as online tools that “empower consumers and communities”, would play an equally important role.

It seems to me that emerging markets will have a natural leg-up on adoption of technologies that have been a bit slower to take hold in the U.S., such as mobile, MROCs, and netnography. It may well be that innovation on these techniques will come from these new markets, with the rest of us following suit later. A good example would be SMS and mobile convergence in Asia Pac and Europe; those regions have been heavy drivers of development of those technologies for many years, but the adoption in the U.S. has been relatively recent.

As we look at the new shape of global markets, will real growth in new MR techniques come from emerging markets? Could be….

John Ellett has written a great article on Texas CEO magazine about the qualities that make up leadership in the marketing function. What struck me is that so often in the MR industry it appears that many of the leaders of MR organizations do not evidence these qualities. Many of the leaders in MR are researchers, not marketers, and the skill sets and personal characteristics necessary for success in those two backgrounds are very different. As an industry, we have done a very poor job of marketing ourselves, and no wonder; it just doesn’t come naturally to many of us attracted to MR!

I won’t list all of John’s eight core qualities, but one bears repeating here:

Both-brained: Most great marketing leaders are both left-brained and right-brained, analytical and creative. They bring science and financial sense to the discipline as well as art and intuition. This allows them to be both rigorous about ROI and passionate about your brand.

If the MR industry has any hope of navigating the transformative period we are in successfully, we’ll need more people like this to make it happen. If we are not attracting them naturally, smart companies will have to go outside of the industry to find them, and build a culture that will keep them. I would posit that one of the central challenges the industry faces is to find new leaders to help us reinvent the industry. Companies that want to be here five to ten years from now better start looking for these folks now.

Robert Moran at the Future of Insights blog continues to sound the clarion call on the evolution of global MR. In this post he discusses the ARF’s first Research Transformation super-council meeting detailed by Joel Rubinson on his blog. The topic of transforming the MR industry to meet the evolving needs of clients is occupying a major conversation space within the industry right now, and rightfully so. The GreenBook, in cooperation with many others, has been tracking this shift since 2003 via the Research Industry Trends study, and in 2008 we saw this concept begin to show up in our results in a significant way. Since then it has only increased in significance, as our 2009 and Q1 2010 studies show.

Robert and I are pretty much aligned in our view of where the industry is going, and he says it best: “What appears to be emerging is a new industry based on three skills (traditional MR, listening and foresight) and held together by one character trait (curiosity) and one clear focus (strategy). The firms that harness these three skills with curiosity and strategy have nothing to fear.”. One things is certain; the next few years will be very interesting!

As online research comes of age, have we faced up to questions about representivity? Research brought together four industry figures to thrash out the issues.

Indeed they do! This is a great dialogue between several industry thought leaders on the issue of online representativeness. The folks engaged in the discussion were Adrian Sanger: VP of Research at Nielsen, Tim Britton: UK chief executive of online research and polling firm YouGov, Jeffrey Henning: founder of US survey software maker Vovici and a prolific research blogger, and Terry Sweeney: operations VP for Europe at panel provider Research Now.

The conversation touches on topics of online sample quality, respondent engagement, statistical validity of panel samples, and the changing role of research in client organizations. It’s chock full of interesting points, but what stood out is the agreement by all parties that achieving a true random probability sample is virtually impossible, and that all methods now have significant drawbacks. This reality is NOT lost on clients, and as researchers our job is to educate them that although we may not be able to achieve the rigor of classical probability sampling, that is not necessary in order to achieve relevant data and strategic insights.

Tim Britton makes the point very well: “…When a piece of research is commissioned, clients don’t really want to know is it 89% of people that prefer one particular type of toothpaste over 82% that prefer another, it’s about why is this happening. Why are they behaving this way? What is it that people are thinking? The whole point is about understanding what that data is saying to you…”

That is the message we’re all getting: the numbers are important, the method and science are important, but if we don’t ask the right questions and deliver a cohesive narrative on what we learned in the asking, then we have not done our job as an industry.