Socially acceptable

As a market researcher, wouldn’t it be wonderful if your sample group would spontaneously identify itself and offer up masses of data to provide extraordinary detail about its needs? Then, to make things even better, it would create its own environment to discuss pertinent issues and give a succinct, real time evaluation of those issues in a way that is easily accessible to all who require it.

Now don’t you think that this sounds suspiciously like Facebook? Or Bebo? Or indeed any other social network or blogging community you care to pick? It certainly does to those in the market research space. These firms are frantically trying to come up with ways to exploit this rich seam of commercial information that is potentially of huge importance to setting their clients’ apart in a challenging business environment. That it costs next to nothing is a bit of a boon too.

In fact, it’s hard to see what’s not to like about using social media as a market research tool. The top 50 social networks’ combined unique audience was up 31% year on year between November 2007 and November 2008, according to Nielsen Online data revealed in February 2009. Facebook itself enjoyed a significant rise of 86%, booming from 8.67m to 16.14m unique visitors.

In 2008, Gartner predicted that in two years more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies would be involved in social media in some way. This is despite the fact that Forrester Research recently found that 75% of marketers surveyed had budgeted less than $100,000 for their total social media activity, including - but by no means limited to - research. However, 53% of respondents claimed they were looking to expand that expenditure, even in tough economic times.

Oliver Lucas, head of brand planning and insight at fashion retailer New Look (see case study), explains why he thinks social media works for him: “Market research’s traditional response mechanism means that you are limited by the questions you can ask. Social media allows your respondents to come to you at any time and have a conversation, an exchange of ideas.”

Anna Rafferty, digital marketing director at publisher Penguin Group, also likes using social media. She reveals: “We can get really personal in an industry that is already based on the intimacy of books. And we can do it every day. Some things work best online because they’re never really finished and so the dialogue is ongoing.”

On the side of the providers, Simon Chadwick, CEO of social media based research agency Peanut Labs, values the values of nimbleness and self-policing in the environment. “It solves the problem of how to get people online to do research. The old model of incentivising encouraged too much fraud or professional respondents. We are getting a cleaner, less tainted sample that provides surveys rapidly,” he claims.

Lee Manning, director at brand agency Added Value UK, adds: “Social media manages to counterbalance the problems traditional methods threw up, such as how to get effective information from a room full of strangers. Social media provides a comfortable environment for people to interact and also removes the issue of requiring total recall. You get much closer to the moments of truth.”

Fast, efficient probing - is there anything social media can’t give to market research? And does this mean that the old ways are just that - old, outmoded, destined for the dustbin?

“It’s always tempting when new technology comes along,” says Maritz Automotive research director, Charles Kirk, of the rush to favour social media over traditional methodologies. “I’m always interested in examining other media, but then taking a view of the whole. Using social media still has its basis in any other research skill - knowing who or what you are looking at, where and why. Then, as to the methodology, it’s what best fits.”

Simon Podd, head of sales at Bebo UK, admits his platform isn’t about to become a research tool to the detriment of all other methodologies, but can see some benefits. He explains: “We wouldn’t consider social networks to be platforms for carrying out traditional market research campaigns but there are interesting insights into user opinion that can be gained. On Bebo, users share their opinions by leaving comments and participate in polls, something they actively do as part of our engagement marketing campaigns run on Bebo by well-known brands.”

Maritz’ Kirk agrees that social media adds an extra dimension to information about your brand or product. He says that “web scraping” (scanning all social media material) allows him to see what others are saying about client companies and their services and even what they are failing to talk about. If, for example, a client is failing to appear in relevant blogs, this can be a sign of problems. But Kirk also advocates caution as to who you are listening to: “You need to put your findings into the context of who is saying what. Comments need to be weighted by relevance and fit.”

So if social media is not replacing traditional methodologies, how is it being integrated into the overall mix? Listening certainly seems to come high on the agenda. Penguin books (see case study) is using its Spinebreakers social network to get the inside track on new titles from teenagers. It’s a notoriously difficult demographic for researchers to get a handle on.

“It’s great for getting hold of people that are otherwise hard to contact,” Kirk agrees, adding: “It also helps as an early warning system where you listen to what people are saying about your brand.”

Social media’s usefulness is not just down to the passive ability of the consumer to provide information for brand use via facebook profiles or MySpace fan pages, but a more proactive dialogue between brand and respondent. Many cite the use of blogs, comments forms, forums and rating systems as crucial to getting the consumer engaged with the brand while providing valuable feedback on all aspects of brand behaviour.

This can extend all the way from a product review to co-creation and innovation. It may be a truth universally accepted that the consumer doesn’t know what he or she wants, but via social media and a conversation with friends and fans, they can provide a brand owner with a pretty clear idea.

Peanut Labs’ Chadwick thinks social media will deepen market research understanding still further in the future: “There’s much more to learn. Technical innovation at the margins will throw up all sorts of interesting questions around online semiotics and ethnography - areas that social media is made for. Research hasn’t really changed much in the last 50-60 years and now, social media has helped to make it altogether more holistic. This can only be a good thing.”

Socail media’s research strengths

Less expensive
Wider sample groups
Real time results
Ongoing Dialogue
Cleaner samples
Wider reach to niche groups
Comfortable environment
Pool of data readily available

Social media: words of caution

Limited to the web savvy demographic
Snapshot of the world at one moment - must be taken in context
Cheaper is not necessarily the most rigorous or most effective tool
Concerns over the welcome for brands in an intimate environment
Cannot stand alone
Will still require expert analysis - data cannot stand alone for anything but the most basic application

Case Study - Booking a space for teens, Penguin Group

In a bid to canvass the notoriously difficult teen market, Penguin Group linked up with youth marketing agency, Livity, to create Spinebreakers.com, a community where teens can share information about upcoming titles, get involved in generating reviews and give feedback on forthcoming titles that they feel Penguin should be commissioning.

While Spinebreakers.com is an online community, it is an example of how research-driven projects cannot exist solely within the virtual space. Anna Rafferty, digital marketing director for Penguin Group, explains: “The creation of the network itself was very iterative and research-based. We created networks of offline focus groups who had a say in choosing everything from the name to the design. In conjunction with mentoring from Livity, we then created a three tier system run entirely by the target teen market.”

This three-tier system involves a core London-based team of eight teens between 13 and 18 years-old who make editorial decisions about what is on the site and the direction it takes. This is followed up deputy editors around 60 or 70-strong based all around the UK who have back end web access and can contribute to site content.

Rafferty explains that this is the crucial “research” element of the site: “The final tier is open to all and every item on the site involves a call to action so we can find out what the community wants of its publisher.”

Spinebreaker’s merit in the notoriously closed publishing environment is to open it up to a disenfranchised demographic and provide extra information for Penguin’s stakeholders.

“We had a point recently where we had the option to buy a teen book that had been tremendously successful in the States. However we felt it was too dark and serious for our market, but at the last moment fed it out to Spinebreakers to test the water,” says Rafferty. “They came back unanimously begging us to go ahead and buy it in for the UK market. It will be published in two months. For us, it also solves the endlessly tricky job of trying to sell in an otherwise untested work to booksellers.”

The time element also comes into play with the teen market, where a fad one day is ‘over’ the next. Rafferty concedes: “Research wasn’t necessarily the purpose of Spinebreakers however this just happens to be a fabulous side effect. By engaging them with little bits and pieces all the time, the community doesn’t move on and leave us behind.”

Case study: New Look

Some call it disposable; others say it’s “on-trend” but one thing is clear - today’s high-street fashion lives or dies by its fast turnaround. Hanging around for six weeks for the result of a survey is not an option.

“Feedback just can’t take that long in this business,” states Oliver Lucas, head of brand planning and insight for high-street fashion retailer New Look. “We need to be able to consult our customers all the time.”

A year ago the retailer set up the My Look networking site which allows a select group of New Look customers to interact, comment and propose ideas for the brand. “First and foremost it’s an environment where the customer is empowered and can freely express opinion. We would like to think that through this they have the opportunity to shape the brand,” Lucas explains.

Counter to the idea that the mass appeal of social networks provides a broad and diverse sample, necessary to scale research to larger numbers, Lucas points out that the My Look community is restricted: “For the users to feel engaged and valued we keep the numbers tight - no more than 5,000. It’s like a walled garden for our friends. We’re turning away four for every one that we accept.”

The ‘trusted friends’ network’s reward for its insight and co-creational potential is the feeling of exclusivity the club’s membership brings, with access to sneek peeks at the latest collection, invitations to store events and competitions among others.

While the community is proving to be a revelation in terms of fast, on-trend insight from the core customer base, Lucas insists that it is not the be all and end all of the retailer’s insight resource.

“It’s part of the mix and it has replaced some of the more time-consuming elements of traditional research. But, it does have its limitations,” he warns. “We have to bear in mind that the audience is more likely to feel warmth towards the brand. If you’re looking to survey the basic brand health checks then it’s not that accurate. In those cases, we’d use a brand tracker for example.”

New Look is treating social media as an evolutionary as well as revolutionary tool “It’s the next level in terms of getting people to respond to surveys,” Lucas says. The conversation is continuing and is making itself felt across the whole organisation: “Some users are so good they’re like consultants. I’d be happy putting them on the payroll!”