2015 Review: the buzzwords

The Oxford English Dictionary didn’t even choose a word of the year for 2015 – instead opting for the Face with Tears of Joy emoji.

But marketers and market researchers are a more traditional bunch and their selection of buzzwords for 2015 covered most of the ones Research-live has had its in-box filled up with over the past year. From storytelling to authenticity, engagement to agile, our panel refreshes our memories of the words of 2015.

“Instant gratification…we now gain instant feedback from our devices, because we’re constantly plugged in and turned on. Social media gives us instant ability to upload videos, photos and status updates. We respond in near real-time to emails and tweets. We have the ability to make things happen without having to wait. Because our devices are ubiquitous, our connectedness is constant. There’s very little patience required. We even expect business growth (and research findings) – a phenomenon long considered to be gradual – to now happen overnight.” John Murphy, semiotician, Simpson Carpenter

“Wearables. I love my shiny new smartwatch. I think of it as a Pandora’s box that will give rise to a future where our wearables will spy on us and all forms of monitoring will become the norm.” Joe Staton, strategic innovation director, GfK

“Automation has been a feature of 2015. Almost all human-driven processes in market research that are repeatable are being replaced by automation and APIs.Polymath researchers is another. There are so many new techniques that require different skills to use and exploit them that researchers are having to become polymaths. Jon Puleston, vice-president of innovation at Lightspeed GMI

“Programmatic. Automated ad buying is essential in an increasingly complex and fast digital world. However, programmatic is still in its infancy and has shown itself to be currently, very flawed.” Richard Wareing, CEO and co-founder, ResearchExchange.com

“The buzzword for 2015 was mobile. As an industry we’re transfixed on how to make our surveys ‘mobile optimised’ – fitting the survey mechanism to the technology rather than building with mobile truly in mind. As I mentioned in a blog for research-live earlier this year, ‘Surveys and the Swipe’, research agencies need to stop talking about the importance of mobile, and start making real progress in developing new approaches that use commonly used mobile actions such as the pinch and the swipe. Andrew Wiseman, managing director, ICM Limited

“Cross device – consumer accessibility is more complex than ever. Understanding behaviour and appropriately applying the right insight connections, in the right place at the right time, poses both opportunity and challenge. Path to purchase is a vortex with cross-device behaviour.” Christian Dubreuil, managing director, Northern Europe, Research Now

“Human. This year it has been great to see both agencies and clients talk about the need to remember the human side of what we do. Market research is founded on unpicking human character, but this has perhaps become a little lost as research and respondents have become more and more commoditised.” Rhiannon Price, head of qualitative research, Northstar Research Partners

“Silos – in that there are too many of them in the measurement sense.” Andy Brown, CEO, Kantar Media

“It would have to be advanced analytics (even though its two words). We’ve always done analytics as part of our jobs but the fragmentation of the insight process is making this more of a discrete and hubbed activity.” David Day, president and global CEO, Lightspeed GMI

Tomorrow will be the round-up of the best campaigns for 2015.