Research ‘must learn to listen and tell stories'
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US-- The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) wants to transform research by promoting listening techniques and storytelling skills to communicate findings.
The ARF's chief research officer Joel Rubinson told Research that the foundation's new “super-council” for research transformation aims to to re-examine the “mission, vision and scoping” of research functions and help develop the tools and competencies they need to embrace.
Techniques for passively ‘listening' to consumer activity, and the application of storytelling skills to communicating research results, are expected to be two of the council's main focuses.
“Each research buyer will have their own strategy for how they embrace this new toolkit, but we'll enhance that process by helping to set an agenda and create acceptability based on testing results and shared learning,” said Rubinson.
The council, which includes Microsoft's Stephen Kim and Barack Obama's pollster Joel Benenson, plans to come up with a “common foundation” for the future role of research early next year. It is hoped this will help raise funds for the ARF's innovation war chest, with clients having so far proven reluctant to commit resources without more specific ideas of the way forward.
Rubinson cited Google's new Flu Trends tool – which predicts outbreaks by tracking flu-related terms in web searches – as an example of the power of listening. The tool shows “how a research function can mine passively observable behavioural data that comes about as a by-product of people living their lives,” he said.
Author: Robert Bain
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ARF forms council for research ‘transformation'
