DIY - at your peril

DIY – at your peril

‘A fine example of 21^st Century Windbaggery’ ‘Merely a stable which will accept any hobbyhorse’ Very well known for not knowing what it does’

These are just some examples from a squabble this week in a Royal Society and Charity about direction, a breakdown between members and staff and oh yes, the value of Research.

This Society protested it had consulted members through an annual survey, but they committed the venal sin of doing it themselves – the Research was not conducted independently and thereby raised as many problems as it had planned to settle. There have been allegations of suppressed data, poor expression and particular analysis aimed to give prominence to convenient viewpoints.

I know, I know, that Research tools available on the internet can give the illusion of power and impartiality and appear to ‘magic up’ sound quantitative methods.

But don’t do it yourself – if it were a house you might trust yourself with shelves but you’d be a fool to go down the DIY route with complex electrics or  an extension – and even then, your work would be independently assessed to ensure compliance.

So whatever Research you are contemplating, outsource to a Research Agency you can trust - don’t do it yourself.

Jonathan Brill

Events: Independent Research Contributes to Profits

Jonathan Brill, CEO of Adroit-e Research, suggests Organisers need to maintain their event healthcare.

Can you increase your operating profit from events during these turbulent times?  Yes! The larger exhibition companies certainly do and they readily acknowledge the contribution of very accurate Event research.

Reed Exhibitions’ sales from events increased in the first 6 months of 2010 were up £29m on the same six months in 2009 with profits overall up 4% on a hefty turnover.

For MIPIM, the world’s premier real estate market place, Reed Midem engage an independent agency Adroit-e Research, who for the past 9 years, have conducted painstaking At Show Research and analysis.

At every event, a comprehensive interview is conducted with 700+ attendees and exhibitors from every continent involved. The core of the research is concerned with discovering the perceptions and attitudes of all involved in the market place.

It’s the equivalent of taking the temperature of a patient. An accurate reading suggests the next course of action. Taking the right action, based on highly accurate information is the key to good health, be it personal or corporate health.

So why would you take a patient’s health with a faulty thermometer which gives highly questionable readings – you wouldn’t – if you were a doctor you’d be struck off. So why do some events, either ignore research or conduct research without due process?
Here are 2 nonsense statements, ridiculous in your personal life but only too true as metaphors in events organization.




‘Yes doctor I took my own temperature and though I can’t make out some of the calibrations, I’m sure I’m fine.’


‘No I don’t know what my temperature is, but I know the drugs I need.’



Successful events companies can increase profits, perhaps even with diminishing attendances, if they know accurately what people want, what their satisfaction levels are at any particular point in time, how people are reacting to external forces beyond their control, and  how the real micro-economy of the event translates into business performance.

Engaging a reputable 3rd party research agency to work with visitors and attendees is a necessary element towards maintaining a healthy event.

Jonathan Brill 

Retail Trends

Researching trends at Mapic last week Adroit-e encountered issues in Shopping Mall and Retailer developments which could impact heavily on the UK High St. Briefly, consensus seemed to have been reached on twin areas of investment for Global brands. The first was in Flagship stores, which augurs will for all towns and cities recognised as major shopping destinations. The second was internet development, where tantalising yet user friendly, heavy trading websites were a sine qua non for all major brands.

So where does that leave the UK High St? Will, for example, an upcoming youth clothes brand consider opening a small specialist store in say, St Albans, or will they concentrate building 10 flagships in key destinations and rely on the internet to cope with the rest of sales. If the impact of that tactic is to raise the premium on properties in the choice city centres and retail Malls, equally and oppositely will it have a negative impact outside these select retail centres? This week’s gloomy news for Thomas Cook and the decreasing Lloyds branch outlets, together with the increasing numbers of competing charity shops increases the pressure. Is the change a sign of the times and inevitable? How are the Planners to respond?

More from Adroit-e when we consider these issues in a global context at Mipim 2012

Jonathan Brill 

Yes – Research has its limitations

Accurate, up-to-date information obtained by dispassionate marketing research can be of enormous value to a company in gaining and/or maintaining its competitive edge.

However, there are a number of reasons why, in reality, these potential benefits may not be realised:

Budgetary constraints – gathering and processing data can be very expensive

Time constraints – organisations are often forced to balance the need to build up as detailed a picture as possible regarding customer needs etc. against the desire to make decisions as quickly as possible,

Reliability of the data – the value of any research findings depend critically on the accuracy of the data collected.  Data quality can be compromised by following the wrong routes.

Accuracy of the data – what is a sound sample? Don’t proceed if you doubt the validity of the research

Market Research may not be free from bias. The research design may lead to skewed results.  

Jonathan Brill 
      

Why should small businesses place more value on research?

When did the last advice from a marketing consultant stress the value of underpinning your marketing campaign with sound dispassionate research?

Do they assume SME owners don’t ‘get’ metrics?

Name a large company that owes its success to ‘not doing research’

If you are thinking about research just don’t expect to get the answers you want.

One company ain’t speaking to us after we discovered that their ‘big idea’ for expansion went down like a cup of cold porridge with potential consumers.

Another company discovered that their USP ‘33% cheaper then the High St.’ was not perceived to sell cheaper goods and in fact a large percentage of customers thought they were more expensive.

Jonathan Brill 

Edinburgh Festivals research

On the 4^th 5^th and 6^th of August Adroit-e spent (part) of their summer holidays conducting a research exercise at the Edinburgh Festivals. Our face-to-face intercept research, covered in the Scotsman newspaper, interviewed 392 respondents and uncovered:

• A strong ‘ staycation’ element to the Festivals as over 75% of respondents were from the UK
• The financial importance of the Festivals to the city, with over 25% of respondents having a budget in excess of £50
• The strong bond between visitors and locals, with 92% of residents saying they ‘loved the festivals
• An overall average approval rating of 83%

Click here to see the article

The following fab link suggests the drummer is at the wrong gig.

Double Rubbish!

The facts show that clad in gold lurex, a band at a low grade gig in the US delivers a reasonable take on a rock classic. The drummer produces a huge over the top performace while his guitarist colleagues remain stolid; OK but uninspiring.

If Adroit-e were to deliver recommendations in an Insight Report when presented with this set of circumstances we would opine:

’To move the band forward to greater financial prosperity, Adroit-e disputes the findings and recommends the drummer should stay and the guitarists should leave. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the live Music scene is growing rapidly both as a means to promote download sales of established bands ant to promote unsigned bands. The drummer is the core component  and needs more striking and accomplished musicians to devleop a group with a key differentiator in the live music segment.

The curent finding, suggesting the drummer moves and replaced by a skin basher more akin to the stale performances of the guitarists, is in Adroit-e’s view, unlikely to lead to an increase in gigs or in volume of download sales. The 11m+ hits on the  video clip are surely to watch the drummer – but the new band could lose the lurex jackets.’

Patron Saint of Research

Country Music is famed for its philosophers with Willie Nelson as the Plato figure  -  Ranking alongside Socrates is Sinatra (Nancy).

‘These Boots are made for Walking’ is a clear exhortation for businesses in the summer doldrums to get out there and make things happen.

She is even more profound when she sings, You been ‘sameing’ when you should a’been a’changing - listen up banks still doleing out  advice from the ‘Ministry of the bleedin’ obvious’ alongside no loans - despite the brand makeovers you ain’t changing  you are sameing.

But the sublime insight comes from ‘you’ve been lying when you should a’been a truthin’. She invents a verb ‘to truth’ - Fabulous - Are you truthin’ in your advertising  - are your claims backed up by rigorous dispassionate advice  from independent research agencies – or like many, are you relying on inherehently, skewed information of the dross variety. 

Vote for Nancy Sinatra as the Patron Saint of Truthful Research!

Stratford Report

After completing our unique Phase 2 development Adroit-e Research captures data from the towns local people, we then went on to capture the elusive youths view.

Here are just a few highlights of what the research produced:

-Hardly any of the young participants had ever shopped in the City Centre for clothes; they perceived the experience to be aimed at a different market.

-A larger percentage had shopped at the Maybird but generally disliked the ‘experience’considering it had failed to meet the social side of ‘shopping’.

-The main competitors to Stratford for young people were Leamington for a social shopping experience, and online shopping for particular items – Birmingham and London were frequented for days out, shopping and browsing.

These few points show why Stratford may need to give more consideration to young people’s needs and wants. If any decisions are made to tackle the issues raised in the report, then an accurate segmentation of the youth market should underpin all planning and action – a ‘one size fits all’ solution is unlikely to succeed. Overall the Stratford Town Research has given a very insightful view of what the younger generation perceives of Stratford.

Adroit-e would especially like to thank all of our sponsors and all of those that took part in the research.

www.adroit-e.co.uk

Adroit-e at the County Devon Show

Last week's Devon County Show was a fantastic success – the true quality of the Show has been captured by Adroit-e Research. Working closely with the organisers and marketing team, a robust sample of visitors and exhibitors were interviewed and happily provided their viewpoints.

Already the organizers have received an accurate analysed top line report, and are awaiting a full report to be delivered for consideration at their next Board meeting.

We would be delighted to provide a quote for your 2011 event or happily chat with you about your 2012 plans.

Please contact

Jonathan Brill
Director 

Enterprise House

5 Roundwood Lane

Harpenden

Herts AL5 3BW

T:             + 44 1582 463479      

E: Jonathan@adroit-e.co.uk

W: www.adroit-e.co.uk

Customer-Centric

‘The only budget guaranteed to increase year on year in my company is the Research Budget – how else could we fulfill our customer - centric mission’Deputy Chairman, Central England Bus company

How else indeed – but how many of you actually follow through your mission, which predictably promises to put customers needs and wants at the centre of your strategic decision making.   As the old Scottish drinking toast puts it ‘Damn few - and they’re all Deid’. Here’s some other aspects to the Deputy Chairman’s customer focused activities.

‘We encourage our customers to complain – how else can we know where we are screwing up.

Customers want clean buses – so dirt is unacceptable to us – specialist cleaners come on to the bus during journeys to demonstrate our commitment.

Research reveals that the next most important aspect of our service after punctuality that customers want is ‘friendliness’ – we carry this through to our HR section ensuring that they choose people people – we can always build the skills element on top of that.

Our Research checks our follow through on all this and ensures customers understand our commitment to them. Like every other business we have our failure and research helps us decide what to do next.

Please take this blog when you next travel by train, visit an airport or attend the doctor’s surgery.

I’d be happy to help them increase their commitment to research with the clients, customers, and patients.

Inaccurate Information that No One Wants

A Research trend that flickered briefly is thankfully in retreat - 

Goodbye Do it Yourself Research – so utterly noughties - artificially buoyed up by limited technologies, shed loads of stupid research has been a plague of the last decade – lousy design, pathetic data collection, misleading data.

‘Why go to the bother of all that palaver’ - as Scott Adams said

The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to make it up. No point in doing fake surveys!

So apart from resolving to stay off the electric soup, don’t make it up!

Make it a New Year’s Resolution to underpin your development with sound research.

If you would like to learn more about conducting effective research, please do not hesitate to give me a ring at 01582 463479. Alternatively, you can email me at Jonathan@adroit-e.co.uk with your thoughts.

As Adroit-e starts its 35th research project for Reed Midem, Jonathan Brill reflects on the training programme needed to ensure sound intercept research.

The accuracy and speed of retrieval that can be achieved by intercept research is astonishing. Technology improvements account for the improved speed of delivery of reports – but the skills of delivery of the interviewer is the key to converting the results of a research project from ‘quite accurate’ to ‘very accurate’.  The core technique of intercept research is its random nature – respondents are not self selecting. Busy people are very important respondents  - far too many completions are derived from people with time on their hands. Interviewers need to be trained to deal with rejection, but not be brushed off too lightly.

I like to centre Adroit-e training around the three C’s:

Context – why the questionnaire is being undertaken and what the purpose of the research is

Content – what each question means and its nuances

Conversation - how to adopt a conversational technique with respondents – this should ensure truthful instinctive responses and dispenses wit the faux formality of an officious interview

The ubiquity of hand held mini computers( phones) enhances the informal nature of our interview interviewers and interviewees are in their comfort zone.

But there’s the rub – behind this apparently informal interview remains the relentless pursuit of the accuracy quantitative research can provide. Combine the two elements and you have a very powerful research medium – slacken the pursuit of accuracy with pointless small talk, or make the interview overly formal and you will damage the really quite sensitive intercept research tool.

For further information, please visit our website at www.adroit-e.co.uk/monitor/ or call us at 01582 463479.

Jonathan Brill

  

Does your university website reflect its brand properly to overseas students?

On the one hand, Heather Christie’s argues,

“International students bring in money, innovation and good diplomatic connections -- 3 things that the UK need right now”

On the other hand for one student, “in one tutorial, out of 18 students only 2 spoke English as their first language making discussions a nightmare”

Adroit-e Research, by working with students at your university, can determine independently the extent to which the perceptions and attitudes of current students from overseas can be reliably presented to prospective overseas students.

League tables and course content are naturally major features in determining choice. However, the differentiator could well be an accurate summary of how overseas students at the university feel they are being treated. For further information, please visit the Adroit-e Research website at www.adroit-e.co.uk or phone us at 01582 463479.

Very Accurate Research

First we had Location, Location, Location, the mantra of estate agents – then Education, Education, Education became part of the Blairite promise. Now if public sector projects are to succeed, we are convinced that securing funds from the public purse will require Evidence, Evidence, Evidence. That is where Adroit-e Research secures its edge, crossing the bridge from quite accurate data to very accurate data.

The benefits of working with Adroit-e Research as discovered for instance by Birmingham City College include, working with students to discover the best routes to understand the perceptions and attitudes of their key stakeholders. 

For further information, please visit the Adroit-e Research website at www.adroit-e.co.uk or phone us at 01582 463479.

Cinderella Sector No Longer

As the FE sector awaits further clarification on the coalition government's plans, it is clear that evidence of individual institution's brand will need to be forthcoming. Adroit-e Research can help in providing accurate profiling of the perceptions and attitudes of key stakeholders about the institution. We are highly experienced in primary, secondary and tertiary education research.

Our unique training and mobile applications are particularly effective in providing accurate and speedy results.

For further information, please visit the Adroit-e Research website at www.adroit-e.co.uk or phone us at 01582 463479.

Jonathan Brill

The Poor Quality of the Local Press

The controversy surrounding local planning applications are often blown out of proportion by the local press. Now, often, mere vehicles for advertising local reporting can give special pleading and undue space in its columns. The Adroit-e Research way of dealing with this is to ensure that if we are to rely on collecting a representative sample, it reflects accurately the local population. We ensure, too, that the right to give views is ensured but that the right to contribute to the same view many times, for instance through multiply completions of an online poll, is prevented. This way, the evidence from the local community can be relied on as accurate. Too often, the provision of an online poll of a local press where people contribute their views many times cannot be regarded as accurate.

For further information, please visit the Adroit-e Research Ltd website at www.adroit-e.co.uk or phone us at 01582 463479.

Paying for Local Research, A New Model?

While value of accurate local research surrounding the planning application is rarely questioned, it can be perceived as quite expensive. One innovative approach we are currently working with goes like this: A developer wants to build a fairly substantial number of dwellings in a north eastern village. Residents’ perceptions will be gathered comprehensively through door to door research -- a complex operation. As a group of local residents determined to understand views of their community, they have no money. However, the developer has placed sufficient funds in escrow to pay for the research and we, as the research company, have agreed to make no contact with the developer. Thus, the client research relationship retains its integrity and our unique brand of speedy and very accurate research can continue with full propriety.

Simples!

Jonathan Brill

10 Tips When Thinking About Research

1. Survey Survey Survey 

2. Always outsource your problems to an agency you can trust 

3. Go Digital 

4. Avoid Stupid Research: many research exercises are pointless tick-box exercises 

5. Avoid Boring Research: where no-one cares about the results 

6. Always conduct Acute research: the insights could be transformational 
7. Start thinking from the end - Analysis: what do you want to discover? 

8. Questionnaire Design: make sure questions will provide answers you want 

9. Explore alternative means of data collection: if possible dismiss analogue 

10. Implementation of Findings: don't use same research company 

11. Inverse synergy - One size doesn't fit all 

Adroit-e Research Ltd

The Localism and Centralism Bill

There are 2 elements of the Localism and Centralism Bill that will require INDEPENDENT agencies are engaged to provide evidence to ensure that the views of local residents are presented in a legal, honest and truthful way.

• Return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils.

• Give residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue and the power to veto excessive council tax increases.

Recently, Adroit-e has had experience of having to intervene when highly skewed results were presented as ‘the views of residents’ – they were in fact wholly unreliable.

Our approaches are digitally based, but involve a human interface. Normally we do not encourage online polling as the results are based on self selection which does not always produce robust data – some approaches too allow respondents the opportunity to fill in the questionnaire many times thus producing gross inaccuracies.

Attention to detail is crucial and we can cope with the most complex of briefs.

‘At last someone who understands what I’m on about’ (Chair local residents association 050710).