There's Research, Then There's RESEARCH

In a former life I made a living doing research… at the library and with a 2400-baud modem, pre-Internet. (I've written this bit before.)

All these years later and somewhat ironically, I am not a big believer in research when it comes to marketing and advertising (particularly things like consumer focus groups, surveys and the like).

OK, so now I’ve made myself a pariah to a lot of agencies that love to do consumer research on their clients' behalf for the money it brings in and the time it takes, which allows agencies to talk and meet and talk some more about potential strategies without ever implementing a plan.

Why the wait? Once implemented, there’s a chance of failure: the longer you can stall before you place your bet, the longer you can sit at the table and pretend to be a player.

I'm from a direct response background... there's no pretending... trust your instincts, take a stand, move forward, adjust to circumstances... and leave most research to the posers! 

BUT THEN AGAIN...

There is a lot of very clever research going on, particularly among big box stores where there's fierce competition between Wal-Mart and Target and Costco and Sam's Club and... well, the list goes on and on.

You'll love this bit or research -- I did. Listening to the radio (NPR) and an interview with the author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business  a guy by the name of Charles Duhigg.

The interview was excellent and makes me want to buy the book. For example, did you know that Febreeze was a failure until P&G made one change. Get the book to find out what that was -- it has to do with people's habits (of course). And the point was that had P&G actually asked consumers, they would not have told the 'truth' because they don't recognize their own habits.

But here's the research bit. It seems that Target can accurately predict not only if a woman is pregnant but also her due date within two weeks! And they can do this oftentimes before the woman herself knows she's with child.

What? How?

It seems that some smart cookie at Target noticed how a woman's buying habits change when she's pregnant, before the woman knows she's with child. The giveaway? When a woman of child-bearing years (of course) begins to buy unscented body lotions and creams, there's a good chance she's pregnant! Then, when she starts buying Q-tips and cotton balls, Target knows roughly how far along she is and voila they have a due date. Then the coupons start rolling in, appropriate to the trimester.

That's either brilliant or they're all going to one of Dante's special levels of hell.

It seems there's research... then there's RESEARCH! You gotta love it.

 

 

A Success Story and the Need to Be 'Everyman'

The best marketers I know start with an idea, do a minimum of research, trust their instincts and then move ahead… quickly, making necessary changes on the fly.

The idea part is driven by a simple belief that you, the marketer, are just like everyone else. If something appeals to you, it probably appeals to others like you, and that means millions of people. I don’t need to be a woman to understand the desire to look young… so even though I may not use wrinkle cream or would ever try Botox, I came up with the headline “Better than Botox?” for a face cream. We told a simple, believable story about how it worked (we weren’t sure and we said so) and how it was discovered (dumb luck).

Half a billion dollars or more later, the product is still selling. No testing of the ad concept, just a few anecdotal bits of research about the look and feel of the final product. The ad remained essentially the same for six years, and ran unchanged in dozens of countries, even though ‘experts’ in each country would insist that we had to change the ad to fit the market. We refused… and became the #1 skin care cream in France using a literal translation and the exact design of the original ad. (Still, the marketing ‘experts’ at the company that sold the product and made a ton of money won’t admit they were wrong about the need to make the ad ‘French’. I guarantee that if you send them an American-style ad today, they will DEMAND that it has to change to meet the French market. Old, stupid habits die hard!)

Women are women… looking younger is a good thing… the product was the first to hit the market with a then uncommon, but now very common, ingredient. Had we waited to test, we would have risked losing most of the $500 million-plus. And what information could we have gathered that would have changed the ad?