Come back real world - we still love you!

Have you ever walked across the exhibition gallery at a market research conference?

It’s a sweet shop of AI, Automation, Digital platforms and short cuts. If you love research, what a time to be alive! Market Research did not always have this reputation for Innovation. There is just one thing… what about the offline world?

The drivers of digital research innovation

There are two powerful factors creating the sweet shop of innovation. Buyers want Faster and Cheaper. And suppliers want profits. Whether it’s the large corporates unlocking nimble, self-serve high NP revenue streams, or start-ups seeking EBITDA multiples for The Buyout, the drivers towards digital innovation are unstoppable.

These forces combined with sheer entrepreneurial talent have created some amazing businesses. Zappi and Street Bees are perhaps the best-known examples of automated digital research platforms that have changed the game. They have allowed research buyers access to systematic insights around 2/3 quicker and 2/3 cheaper. Ad testing, concept testing, digital qual, online ethnography brand tracking have all been revolutionized.

It’s fantastic. The smart buyer knows when depth and flexibility are needed, and when a quick read will do it. They know that keeping a business moving is not always aided by deep, bespoke insight. It’s aided by getting the right answers, now.

Just one thing…

There is just one thing. One important need that this boom hasn’t met. Real world research. The kind that’s needed when you have to get a product into someone’s hands (or nose or mouth!). I’m talking about the kind that will give insight into what it’s like to be a real human wandering down a real street, thinking real thoughts as real rain hits them, as they are really late, really worried about the gas bill they weren’t expecting, and really not paying attention to the flashing bus stop ad for a cheap flight to Ibiza.

The market drivers of research innovation have created a natural gap.

Market Research has never been anything more than an attempt to get as close to the truth as possible. The wonderful driver of research creativity is that truth rests in people’s minds when they are not thinking about research. The second we ask them to look at the flame, it can go out.

Much of traditional research takes place by interrupting people’s lives to expose them to stimulus and asking them questions. This has served us well and will continue to for many years. A massive body of research best practice, science and benchmarking puts lab testing and ‘formal’ research right at the heart of the NPD process. And rightly so.

Behavioural data collected as we swipe around our phones maps our digital existence. There is very little a brand cannot measure or predict about what humans will do online. Famously, we spend 1 day a week online. That’s a vast amount of time looking at screens. But it also means we spend 6 days in 7 not looking at screens, in the real world. Are we doing enough to understand that world?

There is of course a limit to what is possible. Diary Apps, communities and much more research innovation aims to take us into the real world with minimal interruption. But the fact remains, people must stop what they are doing to answer your questions or tasks.

Biometrics is exciting. The link between heart rate, sweat and emotions is fascinating. But it is also messy. My heart rate may be raised by seeing that ad. I also might be walking up an escalator. This is why smart watches have revolutionized our understanding of personal health. But, remains limited when it comes to mental health and emotions.

Neuroscience is brilliant. Blue Yonder uses it often. When done properly ‘System 1’ techniques shine a light into previously dark corners of people’s minds. The problem is again the real world. Whether its head sets or online tasks, neuro has yet to be scaled in a way that can accompany people as they go about their day. Scratch beneath the sales deck and it is very hard to get to anything more profound than whether someone is thinking positive or negative thoughts.

So there remains a gap. A need to understand what people are thinking, feeling and observing in the offline world… without stopping them from doing so.

Is there really a need?

To be clear, I’m not talking about a holy grail. The need is not everyone’s. But there is a significant gap for product and brand owners:

• Do people enjoy notice my fragrance/enjoy my flavour/find my product works in their daily lives?
• Is my product superior outside the lab, in the split second it is relevant to people’s lives?
• How often does my category need arise, and when?
• How often does that need go unmet?
• Do people notice and connect my offline media with online media?

And what about people planning policy, PR campaigns, or treating patients?

• Do people feel safe?
• Are people happy?
• When do people feel most upset with governments?
• Are people behaving with sustainability in mind?
• When does addiction strike?
• When do symptoms take place and are they addressed?

There are many methodologies open to a researcher to answer those questions. But they are flawed. All the moments necessary to answer these questions are exactly that; moments. By the time an app is taken out of a pocket, they may be over. Even the most diligent respondent will not record all moments.

And for the sake of time, let’s just agree that survey’s asking people what they did hours, days or weeks ago, are at best ‘directional’.

Click the Button

This year Blue Yonder was granted the US and European patent for Clickscape. Clickscape is simply a button, connected to an app, connected to a dashboard. It is binary – it can be set up to include any two variables. Simply, click the button to record that a moment has happened and whether it was A or B.

It is market research. Therefore it is flawed. But it is a major step closer to understanding real world moments as they happen, uninterrupted.

A few points of method. It does interrupt moments slightly. But very very slightly. It takes a split second to click. Easily fast enough to record noticeable moments before they are gone. In testing, Clickscape records 15 X more moments than people will record on a diary app.

Impressive stat. Think about that for a real moment. It means that your diary app tasks may be missing up to 15 moments for each one captured.

It means that your knowledge of how many occasions people experience a day could be hugely understated.

It means that patients may be in pain significantly more than they are able to remember when they get their patient diary out at bed time.?

The specific wording of the patent is insightful.

Apparatus and method for obtaining and processing data relating to user interaction and emotions relating to an event, item or condition.

Surely tools existed for this already? No. We were surprised too. 3 years later Clickscape and Alertya (A supporting app for issuing targeted surveys at specific times of day) have been launched as part of the Momentous tool kit from Blue Yonder.

This is the start of a journey. There are many more gaps to fill in the space.

For now, all we want to do is acknowledge to The Real World – yes, we did neglect you a little. Sincerely… we are trying to change and be better. And to say to researchers; there is always a way. We may just need to go into the lab and create it.

To finish, and to give you a sense of what we think can be done when this real world gap is bridged, here are 5 simple use cases for Clickscape. Ask yourself – is there another way of gaining such knowledge, reliably and in the moment it happens? As one of our first collaborators put it ‘these are refrigerator insights. You open the door and a light comes on’.