B2B Players Undaunted by H20

Last week's BIG Conference on the Welsh border once again provided b2b researchers from the UK and abroad with a memorable couple of days, from papers on the ethnography of financial advisers and business research as quantum physics, to tennis ankle deep in water.

The Thursday sessions, which began with pharmaceutical branding and the delights of research in China (DRNO www.mrweb.com/drno/news5518.htm ), continued with a discussion of 'Fly on the Wall' observation of financial advisers and two papers on employee research.

Synovate's David Skelsey described a novel way of researching the IFA market, which fortunately he took time to explain up front to those of us not over-familiar with the joys of 'polarisation' and 'depolarisation' or quite certain about the definition of a 'multi-tied' adviser. The paper centred around the difficulty for consumers in understanding not only the financial products available to them, but also the precise role and the degree of impartiality of their adviser.

Asked to research a new menu intended to clarify and simplify the setup for the benefit of consumers, Synovate opted for a complicated process of recruiting real clients and IFAs for a first meeting held in a viewing facility and observed by clients. Whilst it wasn't at all established that this was a sufficiently realistic or normal scenario on which to make judgements, the level of detail and the ability to observe firsthand certainly provided some insights for the client, and did away with various other elements of bias including respondents' reluctance to admit they hadn't understood things, and the inevitable failure of memory to record accurately what explanations were given and documents shown.

In the Q&A session that followed, IFF Research's Tim Britton happened to mention that the menus in question had been developed by his own company in consultation with the FSA, and he therefore hoped the feedback had been positive. Small world sometimes, b2b.

In the next paper, consultant Peter Goudge asked why, 'now that we are so insightful... insight has not yet been made relevant to employees and HR functions?' He threw down the gauntlet to researchers to innovate in the area, and to clients in particular to back up the claim that people were their most important asset, and prove it was more than lip service. An excellent use of a Dilbert cartoon, with the pointy-eared boss realising his mistake in repeatedly saying people were the most important asset, illustrated nicely. ('It turns out I was wrong. Money is our most valuable asset; employees are ninth' - just behind carbon paper).

Among his key points, Goudge said people managers could learn from other functions including knowledge managers, that they need to bring data together in order to use it properly: 'have we integrated all the systems with data about employees?' - from HR, finance, and line managers for example?

The session concluded with a talk by June Lawrence of Maritz, supported by Danielle Lee of O2, nicely following on from the previous paper as an example of how employee research had been sharpened up with the introduction of more topical questions, more detailed analysis and so on. Lawrence had stepped in last minute to replace an absent colleague and managed admirably, but I am never very much enamoured of the flow of combined client-agency papers, to be honest, and this was no exception. The transition between the two speakers is never particularly slick, and in this case the client portion consisted mostly of a longish promotional video for the revivified O2 brand. Sadly, the video contained about one second of Arsenal footage - next time, let's devote all 3 minutes to a top ten of goals by Henry and Bergkamp, with shirt sponsorship prominently on display if required - just as much to do with b2b research and far more entertaining.

The finish was much better - Lawrence came back with some charts and stats illustrating performance improvement as a result of the research, which as much as anything else at the Conference addressed the theme of 'Business Research Means Business'. They included the finding that new employees took a long time - two to five years - to start hitting their performance targets: following action resulting from the research, the likelihood of their making these targets in the first two years has trebled. Results also linked employee engagement with customers' likelihood to recommend O2 - just the sort of thing to help Peter Goudge on his crusade to get the benefits of staff research recognised.

Lee then got one of the biggest laughs of the day in the Q&A session, when asked about the level of employee suspicion - were they comfortable talking critically about their job, managers and co-workers or did they suspect that confidentiality might be breached? The answer: the great majority have been reassured by O2's careful handling, but she confessed that there will always be some who aren't - in extreme cases, staff have worn gloves when completing their questionnaires for fear of being incriminated by fingerprints!


After the usual excellent lunch the Conference reassembled for papers on 'Connecting with New and Different Businesses', which included Nicky Perrott's talk on 'Squid and Shrimps - the Lessons from Quantum Physics'. Despite being the hottest title on the agenda, this was off limits to your correspondent who had some articles to submit and a workshop to prepare, so you'll have to ask Nicky for a copy of the paper: see www.explorandum.co.uk - or wait a few days for a possible write-up on DRNO.


The workshops followed, including one on finding b2b information online, by Trevor Wilkinson of Purple MR and Nick Thomas of MrWeb (yes, me) - we'll await the verdict of participants because all Conference sessions are scored by all those present, but the workshops are always fun and useful and giving one was no different in this respect. Useful to me because participants suggested sites of their own as well as talking through our own list of online treasure troves.


And the tennis? BIG's core of determined players turn out rain or shine, and this year they were put to the test, with the skies opening. This is Wales after all. It was more like water polo at times, with serves skidding flat through puddles and the balls roughly doubling their weight after a couple of points. ENI's Damon Thomas however proved that he is the best player there whatever the conditions, with an epic final victory over Trevor Wilkinson - another trophy for the Federer of b2b. All eight of us who took part were soaked through within minutes, but all dried out as the sun appeared towards the end, and stayed on for a knock-up.

In the evening, the Conference dinner was followed by a horse racing evening, with pre-recorded races shown and betting based on a collection of names made up by the Conference committee, including such favourites as 'BIG News', 'Mystery Shopper' and 'Uncle Trevor' (which finished 6th out of 8 despite heavy backing by his co-workshop presenter). All proceeds to the MRBA charity, as were those from the auction earlier, which concluded with someone paying a couple of hundred pounds to see Tom Jones in concert. Ah, the things we do for BIG.

As ever, a wonderful day and heartily recommended to all b2b researchers - see www.bigconference.org and book it in next year's diary!

Nick Thomas

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