The Hobbit: An Unexpected Lesson

The implication is that more advanced techniques deliver improved outcomes: improved decision-making in client businesses, better products, services and customer experiences. But is this is always the case? And how much of our creative thinking, as an industry, is actually applied to figuring out ways to improve the experience of our customers – the end users of research? Would your average marketer, product manager or senior decision-maker say that the insight business gives good customer experience?

It was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D HFR (that’s high frame rate) that got me thinking about this.

The movie business is enjoying a love affair with 3D. As a ‘technique’ it’s a gift. It’s got good marketing spin. It’s new (second or third-time round). It’s harder to rip-off and make available cheap or free via downloads. You can charge more for it than 2D. You can retro-fit old properties and re-release them. A total win-win. And as a film geek, I can get excited about the reduced motion blur that HFR delivers for panning across landscapes and in action sequences, even if it makes more mundane sequences appear televisual.

But what about the experience of the average cinema-goer?

The jury on 3D is still out among the film-going public, judging by the fierce debate online: for every Life of Pi there’s a Texas Chainsaw. And HFR seems to have been more of a miss than a hit. Fundamentally, regardless of how many dimensions it shows in, and how fast the frame rate, the product is the same. You buy your ticket and popcorn, sit back in your chair and are drawn into the big-screen, surround-sound experience in rough proportion to the quality of the film rather than the technology that’s delivered it.

Which brings me back to our industry.

Research techniques are a gift. They give good marketing spin. They’re new and exciting. They’re harder to rip off. You can charge more for them. You can probably even retro fit old data to them and re-release it. As insight geeks, we might be able to get excited about the techniques that are used to collect or analyse our data. But what about the experience of your average research user?

Regardless of the techniques used in the research, my guess is the experience of the average marketer, product manager or senior decision-maker is very similar. Fundamentally, it’ll come down to some degree of involvement in the set-up and design of the research, but mainly it’s the experience of having a bunch of insights presented to them for an hour or two in a room in the office they work in. Whatever the technique, it’s still a bunch of people in a room with a projector and some charts. The extent to which they feel truly engaged with the insights is roughly proportional to how well the story is told and sold by the person who’s presenting it.

Techniques have changed and developed but the customer experience hasn’t all that much. We’re an industry that is prepared to risk on methodology but which can be risk averse on communication and delivery.

To extend the analogy, the research-user experience needs to move beyond cinema. It needs to move into publishing, storytelling, theatre, events, interactive experiences, games and quests. Like cinema, customer insights struggle to compete: users of business information are overwhelmed with content from inside and outside of their organisation. This information may vary in quality. The techniques used to gather and compile it might range from basic to sophisticated.

But one thing’s for sure: what will make it stand out is the way in which it’s delivered. Ultimately what counts is the customer’s experience.

Jeremy Rix is founder and chief listener at Oko. He’s online at www.engageoko.com. Rix is presenting a workshop to co-create the future of research at MRS Annual Conference on 19 March. More details at www.mrsannualconference.com.