Conference Review: Green Future for MR

In our third and final article reviewing the Golden Jubilee MRS Conference in Brighton, Phyllis Vangelder reviews papers looking forward at the future of research, and the future of the planet.

Research Futures

It is, unbelievably, 23 years since Wendy Gordon and Virginia Valentine first presented semiotics to a bemused and sceptical MRS Conference. In spite of receiving numerous awards and being absorbed into creative thinking and practice, Ginny remains concerned that semiotics hasn't really fulfilled its true potential. In her paper, 'Semiotics, what now, my love', which received nominations for awards in several categories, she put forward a new model which recognised the fact that the guiding dynamics were coming from a tiny community of experts but suggested a critical mass of competent practice not dependent on mastering all the theory. Each theoretical principle could be incorporated in a model of thinking. Ginny suggested a starter pack of techniques corresponding to the six elements of meaning in semiotics, enabling semiotics to be made into a transparent process whereby researchers could look for patterns or codes across any given body of communication and then connect each code as a whole to cultural patterns. This is a paper that merits close reading.

In the same session John Kearon, BrainJuicer, argued that a large diverse crowd, buying and selling shares in 'ideas' was as accurate and possibly more discerning than classic monadic concept testing. This approach which enables a crowd to be wise is complemented in the work of Mark Earls, Herd Consulting, whose paper 'In me 'ead son', in the second Research Futures session on Friday, reviewed some research initiatives within the emergent herd model. However, Mark believes that the best hope for re-aligning marketing research to the realities of the 21st Century lies with the ideas in marketing researcher's own heads: we are shaped by ideas that are embedded.

John Habershon, Momentum Research, focused on non-verbal communication, analysing two Dove campaigns and respondents' facial expressions as they watched them to highlight the crucial difference between how we experience emotions and how we report them.

The second Research Futures session looked at various approaches to delve into the mind of the consumer – the deeper you go the more you come up with. David Penn, Conquest Research, argued that the consumer's mind is not a blank page on which we can write whatever we like. The next 50 years will witness a new enlightenment which draws from neuroscience and the East. If emotions guide our decision-making and our interpretation of meaning we need a different way of looking at our relationship with brands. Engagement is a new paradigm in which the relationship between consumer and brand is primarily emotional. Because our brain can work implicitly via emotional markers to activate unconscious emotional associations, it is likely that most brand meaning is co-created and most of that meaning is metaphorical.

Simon Vangelder, TwoMinds Research, in his paper 'I don't like it, but I don't know why' drew on theories from psychology and the neurosciences to stress the importance of the unconscious mind or implicit memory in our decision-making – we do not, by and large, make considered rational buying decisions. More importantly, the phenomenon described as 'aversion behaviour' has a direct bearing on our buying behaviour and brand choices. Simon demonstrated a commercially proven approach to accessing consumers' unconscious associations and implicit memory in the decision-making process. Tools based on the principles of response latency have been successfully used to obtain a picture of consumer inertia in a wide range of categories.


The Planet and Us

Market Research has always been concerned with social marketing and intangible products and current issues such as well-being, happiness and environmental concerns were a strong feature of this Conference. It is the first Conference to be carbon-neutral, which means that the amount of carbon it uses will be calculated and offset in the form of an investment in renewable energy. So it was very appropriate to have Jonathon Porritt, Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and co-founder of Forum for the Future, the UK's leading sustainable development charity, as a key speaker. Although he was not all 'doom and gloom' about the future of the planet, he stressed that climate change is unequivocally happening, with the resultant need for everyone to be involved in green issues. Politicians are genuinely trying to get their act together and the UK's Climate Change Bill will make it a global leader in this area. Porritt suggested that sustainability is the biggest business issue for the 21st Century and will be the next source of competitive advantage. It has already resulted in a serious process of change, digging deeply into the corporate psyche. Jonathan was dissonant about the market research questions being asked on this issue. He believed that past data have not teased out unarticulated anxiety about the subject. This is an issue where emotional buttons have to be hit before behaviour changes.

An earlier session, led by key speaker, Richard Reeves, co-founder, Intelligence Agency, and a so-called 'happiness specialist', focused on happiness and ethics, areas, like sustainability, now closely linked to politics. Reeves presented data to illustrate subjective well-being and showed that it is possible to measure people's sense of happiness across countries and languages, although great care has to be taken with cross-cultural comparisons. Dr Sheila Keegan's paper on the pursuit of happiness in Bhutan was an interesting link between happiness and sustainability. Bhutan has achieved international attention with its policy of Gross National Happiness. 'Can the UK learn from Bhutan and can we direct our research skills to helping well-being?' asked Sheila.

Papers by Corrine Moy and Chris Davis, GfK NOP 'The dawn of the ethical brand' in this session and two papers in the 'Choice and identity' session: Nick Southgate's (Planet Grey London) 'Research in an age of superfluity' and Dr Theresa Loo's (BWG Hong Kong) 'Researching subsistence markets: insights from rural China', echoed the theme of the disconnect between wealth and happiness, examined by both Richard and Sheila. One of the values of an eclectically-positioned Conference such as this is that we see links between quite disparate papers, and indeed this ability to see connections and factor in the variables is one of the researcher's most important skills.

Problems of comparability were also highlighted in the media environment in Sam Smith's (BBC) paper 'Convergence? Try Frag-vergence' (i.e. convergence + fragmentation = frag-vergence). We have to decide, for instance, what is, and what is not TV when programmes can also be accessed by the web or mobile phone. Technology, as in so many areas today, can be part of the solution. Perhaps this is the greatest difference between 1957 and 2007. Technology unthought of 50 years ago is now available to harness to our skills.

These are just some of the papers which contributed to an immensely interesting and enjoyable Conference, one which brought together older and younger researchers (for many it was their first Conference; one delegate, at least, had attended the first in 1957). If this Conference is anything to go by, they can learn a good deal from each other.


Our thanks to Phyllis Vangelder for once again making us feel like we were there [your regular editor was there, but with the twin distractions of the chocolate fountain and the table football did not get to see more than one and a half papers]. We hope other readers enjoyed it too – your feedback welcome – drno@mrweb.com .

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