MRS Conference: Misgivings and Misnomers

The 'Innovation Interview' session was neither about innovation nor was it an interview, reports DRNO's Teresa Lynch. It was a jolly romp through the neuroses and misconceptions of the market research industry when it comes to getting its message over to the board and trying to influence decision making.

Hosted by John Kearon of BrainJuicer, the panel consisted of Alex Batchelor of BrainJuicer and The Marketing Society; and Rory Sutherland of the IPA and Ogilvy One.

Kearon started by asking the audience the worse thing they could imagine a client saying about their deliverables. Some great ideas here: 'No insight', 'We've learnt nothing new', 'Thank you but leave the interpretation to us' were all offered up as real comments addressed to hapless researchers. My personal favourite: a female member of the audience who had been condescended to as 'The research laydeeee'.

Batchelor and Sutherland were here to tell us that the real situation was much worse than this and that boards paid no attention to market research at all. Batchelor said that in his whole career he had only met one CEO who asked him a question about the research. Sutherland said that companies were currently paying $33 billion per annum on an industry which is 'batting no better than the average pub argument'.

The debate was lively and absorbing with lots of reference to major themes of the conference such as emotional buying behaviour and storytelling.

Sutherland's theory that as a profession we were suffering from 'Stockholm syndrome' and empathising with our abusers (clients) prompted a resident of Stockholm in the audience to make himself known.

Sutherland also quoted Goodhart's Law, which states that any metric which becomes a target immediately loses its value as a metric. That - or Heisenberg's Principle - might be a good maxim at present for the Royal Mail.

On one thing however the panel was certain: 'Humans make better decisions subjectively than businesses make objectively'. But, one wondered, did they have the cold, hard data to back that up?

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