B2B Conference Impresses Again

The BIG Conference, the UK's flagship b2b research event, is in full flow in Chepstow, Wales. Particular highlights of the first day were a paper on research's contribution to the spread of broadband, a highly acclaimed workshop on using presentation technology and the announcement of a new Conference president, Phyllis Macfarlane

The announcement, Dipan Mehta's excellent workshop and the Conference's social side will be covered on Monday - the following is a discussion of some of the more memorable papers.

Kate Pitts set the tone with a keynote address based on her work as a Futurist for Royal Mail, the main revelation being the rapid extension of tagging technology to track products throughout their lifestyle and its contribution to an ever-increasing flood of data available to companies. This will mean that researchers' role becomes less and less one of data gathering, more one of data location and most of all one of interpretation. We had better brush up our data mining skills, says Pitts. Early adopters of the tags, which can be as small as a piece of glitter, include the UK's Marks and Spencer and the world's biggest retailer WalMart, who in a recent trial generated 8 terrabytes of data in one day in this fashion. Anybody want to glance through those tables looking for highlights?

The pre-lunch paper was heralded by its presenter Francesca Brosan of Omobono as 'nice and short, because you all want your food', but to be honest most of those present could have watched it for longer despite the lure of the excellent restaurant. Reaction to the papers is always mixed, with BIG regulars happy to express their opinions despite the cosy nature of the Conference and the likelihood of a speaker grabbing / spilling a coffee behind them as they discuss his or her efforts - however DRNO's reporter didn't hear a bad word about this slot.

Brosan is principal of a consultancy called Omobono [don't ask] but also active in the b2b group with the IPA, the UK's advertising institute. Given a shoestring budget to promote broadband takeup in the East of England [relatively speaking - half a million pounds to cover nearly 5 million people isn't a lot] Brosan started with research to identify the scale of the task and came up with some potentially depressing conclusions - not only was broadband take-up in the region, which includes East Anglia, Cambs, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, well behind most other parts of the UK, but there was little or no demand for it and suppliers were not even particularly keen to win business there given the lack of major conurbations, their key initial target.

Research, however, also suggested the solution - Omobono created demand through a manufactured 'campaign' among residents ['DemandBroadband.com'] complete with placard carrying activists and t-shirts, rapidly passing targets for interested communities and online registrations and ending with a list of areas of good potential which in turn could be used to demonstrate to suppliers the worth of getting involved. Brosan described this as 'creating demand to pull through supply' rather than 'advertising something which didn't exist'. One of the key realisations from the research was that events organised specifically to promote broadband to small businesses would not work - companies in the region were inundated and fed up with invitations to events - and 'piggybacking' on existing, proven happenings was a much better strategy. So - enlightening, different, and most of all upbeat - a non-researcher extolling the virtues of MR as a practical tool in a high-profile, high-tech environment. More of the same please!

Professor David Smith can always be relied on for an entertaining talk and his take on Innovation, for the interesting afternoon session, was a frantic, unapologetic scramble through 65 slides (in 25 minutes?) covering everything from Tourangeau, Rips and Rasinski's seminal book 'The Psychology of Survey Response' ['it's a very good read, actually'] to 'the reason Dylan put down the acoustic guitar and picked up the electric'. Please note, that's Bob Dylan, not the rabbit in the Magic Roundabout, the latter being one of the few cultural icons not cited in Dr Smith's epic. Apparently he has written a book on this - although whether any of it would now be unfamiliar / is not included in the wonderful handout supplied, is doubtful.

Details of the presentations talk by TNS/NFO Dubai's Dipen Mehta, the surprisingly well-attended tennis tournament (are researchers getting fitter?), the social side and the change of leadership will appear in Monday's DRNO.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.