Joining the Hunch Bunch

Last night we got the call from Trinity Catholic High School, “Due to the pending inclement weather, the school will be closed on Thursday, January 4th.” I shook my head at this decision -- the first flakes had yet fall and school is already cancelled? This gut reaction was based on the number of times the decision to close school was made the night before a “winter event” only to find clear roads the following day; as I stare out my kitchen window this morning, it turns out it was the right call. Predictions – sometimes they are on the money and sometimes they miss the mark but there’s no denying that we rely on them to help plan tomorrow’s social activities, this year’s communications plan, or the next three year’s product development pipeline.

I’ve seen a lot of predictions on LinkedIn since January 2nd. Most of them are written by people who have a vested interest in what they are predicting. For example, research firms developing offerings around artificial intelligence predict that 2018 will be the year AI displaces traditional primary research methods for consumer understanding. Those selling video streaming services promise that this will be the year that focus groups will be put to pasture alongside random digit dialing and mall intercepts. At Vertigo Partners, we don’t build technology or sell “products” and therefore have no stake in the game when it comes to predicting how the market research industry will change based on the disruptive flavor of the year. What we do see, though, are key trends that our clients are excited about which are driving our business forward.

The rise of show and tell

As a fiction writer, my editors frequently point out scenes that could be improved with some simple advice; show me, don’t tell me. It’s much more interesting for a reader to experience the action through vivid description vs. hear about it in dialogue or another form of exposition. The same holds true for qualitative research; the more we can get consumers to show us behavior vs. tell us about it, the more we learn.

For example, seeing a senior citizen struggle to replace batteries in a hearing aid goes farther than having them tell us that it is (sometimes), a challenging activity. Few people want to admit to having difficulty with anything and actually seeing the struggle is invaluable for identifying truths as well as uncover what, specifically, someone is having trouble with. That said, only focusing on the showing is not without its limitations. Oftentimes seeing behavior leads to more questions and therefore “telling” should not be discounted.

Imagine for a minute that you are back in Kindergarten and, instead of “Show and Tell” day, it is “Show” day. You and your classmates have been asked to bring in items near and dear to your hearts and just show them to each other without any discussion as to why these items were chosen. That sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it? While seeing behavior can be enlightening, the ability to probe into that behavior is necessary to put it in context. This is why Vertigo Partners will combine multiple qualitative methods to meet a client’s objectives.

For example, we often combine “Selfnography” (having consumers document specific behaviors or attitudes with their mobile phones using video, pictures, and text) and in-depth interviewing via webcam to probe into the behaviors we’ve observed. This blending of two approaches has changed the way we approach shopper insights, ethnography, and product development. While we’ve seen many predictions that mobile tools will replace the convention of asking consumers questions, we at Vertigo Partners find that the two working in partnership are greater than the sum of each part.

The decline of the large qualitative agency

More and more of our clients are coming to us with research needs that don’t fit into neat buckets and the solutions we are asked to come up with must be bespoke. On top of that, our clients require us to be more and more agile with objectives, constraints, and timelines often changing between project kickoff and fieldwork. The larger qualitative agencies struggle with this largely due to the way roles are structured organizationally with separate people responsible for sales, project management, and execution. This organizational structure can run counter to the need for agility.

Consider this situation: A sales person (who isn’t a researcher but is an excellent business developer) sells in a very traditional qualitative approach (i.e. a series of in-home interviews in two markets because this is what has worked well in the past). The project is then given to a project manager who sets everything up (drafts a screener, gets it approved, and manages all logistics). The moderator, who may or may not have been part of the sales process, works with the client to collaborate on a guide and get a clear understanding of what deliverables are required at the end of the research. Now, the curveball; the client’s travel budget is frozen and can no longer go into market but still wants to watch discussions unfold in real time, though the budget cannot be increased to accommodate a live stream. The salesperson freaks because the margin he/she is incented on is now in jeopardy of decreasing, the PM is nervous because recruiting costs have been incurred and decides to put the brakes on recruitment until a solution has been identified, and the moderator starts to sweat because he/she has schedule conflicts should the project be pushed out. Everything comes to a screeching halt while these three disparate groups of people identify a solution.

Lest you think this is a piece of fiction, I can assure you it’s not. I lived through the above example many times over when working for a large consultancy and it is anything but pleasant. The key to agility is not subscribing a limited set of methods or adopting any one view of the world. Smaller firms like ours are succeeding because we don’t sell products or subscribe to proprietary frameworks (and associated products) handcuffing our clients to our view of the world. Additionally, it’s not uncommon for smaller firms to be staffed by very senior people who are involved in selling, project management, and execution. As a result, compared to the larger players, smaller firms can propose the right solutions based on a client’s objectives, make adjustments quickly when curveballs are thrown, and not bog our clients down with internal hurdles.

The repositioning of ‘moderator’

Traditionally, the role of moderator was synonymous with the term qualitative researcher but this is increasingly becoming outdated. A moderator, by definition, is someone who leads a group conversation whether that be real-time or threaded in an online forum (or similar). If I look at all the projects we did in 2017, the minority required any moderation whatsoever.

So what did we do to keep busy? The team at Vertigo Partners spent a lot of time observing behavior and reading responses to online/mobile tasks. We excavated for deeper insights by having follow-up conversations with consumers and brought their experiences to life through storytelling via visual presentations and videos. In these ways, we acted more as journalists and documentary style filmmakers than traditional moderators (or even researchers).

As such, we see the term moderator going away as it becomes less and less descriptive of what we do; those who cling to it will be those who likely will find their businesses shrinking. In its place, we prefer the more general term storyteller as we believe that those who talk to consumers for a living must be able to transform those conversations to memorable stories that inspire clients to act.  

It all comes down to this

A few years ago, while attending The Market Research Event, I was approached by a guy who told me I’d be obsolete in a few years. A.I. would replace the need to ask consumers questions and his firm would marry the benefits of quantitative research (scale and reliability) to those of qualitative research (depth and explanation). Well, I’m still here and business is growing at a record pace. Why? Because we are open to bringing disparate methods together in service of our clients, we do so with agility, and we think of ourselves not as moderators, but as people who can uncover, share, and bring commercial meaning to the stories consumers share with us.