MRS Conference Review – Encouraging Trust (and Spotting Liars)
March 27 2006
The Friday morning sessions at MRS Conference furnished a reminder of why we enjoy market research, writes DRNO's correspondent Phyllis Vangelder. They began with a well-balanced debate on client-agency relations and continued with an erudite, but fun look at non-verbal communications.
'Pitch, Performance and Profit', Part Two, focused on what makes or breaks working relationships. Tom Peck, Head of Business Strategy and Intelligence, McDonalds, set out his needs from an agency very clearly. His two key points, not new, but well-put, were:
- understand who is the real internal audience for the implications of the research and how to improve information/insight so that it drives deeply into the heart of the client organisation.
- Research is only useful if it influences a brand's behaviour and/or actions; to do this research needs to be action/directive, not passive/descriptive. Thus research must be tailored to the audience that is going to use it. It is imperative that research fits into the client-side structure.
At McDonalds the MR function is not marketing, but business strategy - sales, ROI, profit. It is used for evidence-based decision-making. The higher you go in the organisation, the more succinct the information has to be. Tom Peck has to straddle the needs of his internal clients at every level and he wants agencies to help him in taking data and insight into the system through the organisation. This sometimes meant two debriefs, one for the research analysts and one for top management. As he put it: 'Give me information that I can use to tell my boss what to do... Brain-suck me throughout the research'.
Virginia Monk, Director, Network Research & Marketing, putting the agency side, echoed Tom Peck in stressing the need for communication, understanding and involvement. She added honesty and trust as fundamental needs in the client/agency relationship. Among her ten messages to clients was a request that they should champion the consumer viewpoint and involve the end-users and stakeholders throughout the project life. She also made a plea for the extension of this project life. Agency and client could together build up knowledge banks, keeping the relationship alive and learning from the experience.
Danny Wain, Director of Learning and Development, Research International, gave a superb, lively paper pulling together learnings from both client and agency. Some of his wise points were:
- Cherish our human capital. Nurture, challenge and stimulate the talent we have;
- Encourage the diversity we recruit, maximising the contribution of each person in the team;
- Ensure seniors see themselves as models and mentors.
And, he added, 'Pull the plug on PowerPoint. Stop hiding behind the slide show that has no power or point'. Perhaps his most important point was that as an industry we should stop beating ourselves up. Our slogan should be 'We love market research'.
Body language
Adrian Furnham, Professor of Psychology at UCL, gave a fascinating Keynote Address on Body Language, dispelling some of the myths and presenting some useful insights into the non-verbal behaviour of liars.
Non-verbal communication has several functions -
inter alia supporting and replacing language; expressing emotions and interpersonal attitudes; conveying information about people in ceremony and ritual; in propaganda, political meetings and demonstrations; and in the arts.
Professor Furnham's account of the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of liars was interesting, not only for the insights it gave on politicians, but, in our industry, the all-important problem of faking responses in questionnaires and resultant response bias.
He discussed several methods for catching lairs, including lie scales, ipsative measures and Stroop-type techniques.
Emotional states are picked up non-verbally, and we know from group discussions that interpreting body language makes us able to understand people better.
Body language is culturally determined. It is not all-powerful, neither is it symbolic, but being able to interpret it does make you a better communicator.
Back to Brighton
In spite of the coldness of the Barbican and the difficulty of negotiating the geography of the place, there was a buzz at the Conference, particularly when delegates got together in the Hub. However, we understand that it's 'Goodbye to the Barbican' and next year, for the 50th Anniversary of the Conference, we are 'Back to Brighton'.
The MRS is online at
www.mrs.org.uk
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
