Research needs to be better at marketing itself, conference hears

Speaking on a panel session, Monique Drummond, founder at Relish, said that the market research industry needed to be more vocal about the role it plays in advertising campaigns to get more recognition.

“The big challenge is that many of us have a false modesty about what we do, and we don’t get a seat at the table,” she said.

“At the end of the day, the ads are written up in Marketing Week, they are written up in Campaign, and there is never any mention of the role the customer voice had in helping to shape them. Some of the nuggets you get from talking to people are integrated into scripts, and are invaluable.”

She said that market research could be invisible partly because researchers do not talk about what they do and the expertise they offer.

“Until we are truly seen as consultants with that valuable strategic input, we won’t get a seat at the table,” Drummond said.

“There’s a real wake-up call and a learning about the shape of where we need to be heading in the future.”

Drummond also said that staff at research agencies needed to know that “profit is good” and is “not a dirty word”, and therefore employees should have a greater understanding of business performance.

“We wouldn’t have a business if we weren’t focused on profit, but it can’t just be the management team who are focused on profit – you need to distil that down to the team so they all feel a sense of contribution towards that.”

Drummond also said that she was concerned that the current balance of hybrid working in many organisations was making it difficult to train younger and new entries into the industry.

“I really am concerned about the people coming into the business who are learning nothing through osmosis, and who will not set up a Teams call to ask how they sign off an email when they start. They are floundering,” she said.

“At the same time, they are reluctant to come in because no-one else seems to be in the office, so when they do go in it’s just a few people there. The needle is beginning to move back, and I hope it never moves back to what it was pre-Covid, as a lot of positives have come out of it. But I do think we need to shift it back to more of a sense of community and common purpose.”

Drummond added: “Work-life balance is very much about an individual’s need. I really don’t like this sense of ‘work-life balance’, as the implication is work is bad, life is great and you’re making me do more of what is not good. That is something that has increased since Covid, and I think it is appalling that people see work as the negative part of their life.”

Also speaking on the panel, Caroline Whitehill, co-founder at Acacia Avenue, said there needs to be more confidence in how the market research industry projects itself.

“We are not good enough at marketing ourselves – finding ways through confidentially and not being falsely modest, as we don’t need to be.”

Whitehill also felt businesses should be more transparent about their performance to engage staff and make them buy in to the company’s future.

“I think it is about bringing people in and being really transparent,” she explained. “We review our figures every week with the whole team, so they understand the commercial side of what we are trying to do. But they also like it, feel it and that’s what brings them together, makes them want to work hard and that’s what makes them want to come into the office.”

Whitehill said there was a need to balance the business model and a company’s people “without making them at odds with one another”, adding: “What can we do to bring our people into the business more, so they feel it and want to own it?”

Also appearing on the panel, Mark Ursell, chief executive officer at Qumind, argued that the language used in market research is alienating and complex.

“It is complex language that alienates a bit. When we speak to our clients, as long we have a C-Suite sponsor who understands insight, then we’re in a strong position. If you don’t have that [sponsor] at C-Suite level, then it is very hard for our clients to work inside an organisation.

“I think we have to change the language and move on from this market research language that is not really marketing language. If we can do that, I think have a much better chance of being at that table.

“We need to change our thinking about the way we are communicating with clients and the language we are using in market research.”