MRS Conference: the Bazaar and the Ridiculous

The annual conference of the UK's MRS (Market Research Society) kicked off yesterday, filling a slightly smaller fraction of hotel than last year, but otherwise in good spirits, thanks partly to the help of Alan Partridge creator Armando Iannucci. DRNO's Features Editor Teresa Lynch watched the opening session.

Conference co-chair Simon Lidington opened with one of the few references of the day to the recent recession by saying that Research 2010 had been subject to a bit of unaccustomed belt tightening. This seemed to apply mainly to the amount of space taken in The Park Plaza Riverside in comparison to previous years. This was the only pragmatic comment in an opening address that was more philosophical in nature as Nick Coates (fellow co-chair) ranged from Roland Barthes to E. S. Raymond, talking of 'the death of the author' as an opportunity to market researchers to engage in a more readerly interaction with respondents, and transition data gathering from a reductive to a productive process.

Coates likened this new interactive model of market research to the Linux development debate with the conflicting images of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and hoped that researchers would behave more like tour guides showing clients the wonders they had discovered rather than sending postcards home.

Lidington and Coates were apprehensive that they would be referred to again this year as 'Ant and Dec' but they needn't have worried - Keynote speaker Armando Iannucci said they reminded him more of Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan.

Mark Brenner explained in his introduction to the creator of Alan Partridge and The Thick Of It that the organizers had taken particular pains to select a trailer for Iannucci's recent film 'In the Loop' which had none of the writer's trademark swearing. Iannucci immediately confounded these good intentions by repeating the contents of a tweet which had contained some good Anglo Saxon advice on how to deal with Rupert Murdoch.

Brenner proved an excellent interviewer and Iannucci an excellent subject; covering topics from the priesthood to the media's current interest in 'leader's wives'. Iannucci also predicted, since he couldn't see how social media was making any money, the death of the Internet and a return to folk stories and oral history. A Partridge-worthy prognosis, and a provocative piece of futurology considering the topics of many of the sessions to follow.

More Conference write-ups are published today, and tomorrow:

Seeing Smoke, Missing Fire in advertising research
Better Ways of Listening - hard-to-reach respondents and sensitive topics.

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