Do we really need Research in Brand Communication?

Being part of the Advertising industry for over five years, I have come across various instances when we have gone to the consumer to ask her about what she needs, or she likes or would buy; frankly we go back to her asking the same question but because of the sheer size of our population, we are lucky, we don’t come across asking the same question to the same audience over and over again.

Operating in the business for so long and more importantly by just having lived in an Indian household for all our lives, we all have a perspective of the consumer, whether she is the housewife to whom we are selling detergent or the teen going we are selling the shampoo to, be it the father of two who we would want to sell the small car or the mechanic he goes to, to fix his car and get advise on which lubricant, tyre or battery to use. Do we really need to go out and find out more? Don’t we already know a lot about each of the above?

On the face of it, I feel we really don’t need any research. There are various reasons I say this…

General Knowledge: Like I have said above, most of the things we find out of research are not new news; they are either known by each of us or have been well documented over past researches.

Cover their A#*: A lot of times I believe research is used as a tool by the brand team to safeguard their positions, this need to safeguard comes from the lack of conviction in taking decisions that are straight from the gut. Once decisions are taken and a campaign is rolled out, the result is either positive or otherwise, incase it is the latter, research findings are used as a tool for passing on the onus of the decision.

Unnecessary Complications: Most often, the truth is extremely simple and exists right in front of us, but in our quest for the ‘so called’ ultimate truth, we end up complicating matters beyond comprehension. For e.g. hair oil has a simple purpose and is a tonic for the hair, but research brings in layers to beautiful hair like, if you have beautiful hair, you will be able to style them well, if you style them well people around you will notice you, if they notice you it will lead you to be successful, hence the final research recommendation is, by using a particular hair oil, you will be successful, how do we expect a consumer to comprehend this the way we have layered it, for her, its just a hair oil ad and the girl and the situation in the ad as appealing to her, so she tried it.

Lack of Truth: I sincerely believe, one can’t expect a consumer to speak her mind in front of an unknown person, be it groups, interviews or even questionnaires. The consumer may speak about a few things that she doesn’t like or like, but these are all motivated by the ulterior motive of appearing smart and intelligent in front of any audience. While there are newer methods like Ethnography that derive learnings by observing the consumer in her natural environment but we still need to be sensitive to the fact that if she knows that someone is observing, she will not be real, the actions/reactions will still be calculated

Having said all of the above, I also have a few thoughts on how research plays an important role in developing effective communication.

Spring Board: Research findings very often act as a tool to initiate the thinking on any plan. Verbatim by the consumer or reactions to situations could trigger fresh ideas that are firmly rooted in the consumer insight. These ideas could be in any respect, be it product, creative idea or the medium used, but it is a fire initiated by that one spark. Lalaitaji’s “Surf khareedne mein hee samajhdaari hai” I feel must have come from one such interaction with the consumer, where the discussion would have started from the choice of detergents to the final benefit of using a detergent that could offer what a housewife always wanted, hence it makes Surf the obvious choice.

Meet the Consumers: Interactions with consumers provides confidence in the mind of the brand custodian of the fact that he/she knows the consumer well. This confidence helps the brand custodian to think boldly and from the gut, without this confidence, innovations would have never happened.

Dynamic is in: The world changes everyday, there is a new innovation somewhere in the world every minute, how can the consumer and her demands remain the same? The consumer has become extremely dynamic along with the surrounding environment; research helps to keep us updated with the new trends and drivers, had it not been for this dynamism, a Surf Washomatic would’ve never been launched. Beyond the products, the medium, the language, the expectations all are evolving, keeping pace with these changes is paramount or we would end up marketing the wrong products and also gather the impression of being outdated.

While I believe there is merit in all of the above points, we need to come to some conclusion. So I believe that while research is important, it’s the methodology that needs to be appropriate.

Testing concepts and creative ideas with consumers in groups is futile, but knowing more about the needs, wants of the new age consumer through observation methods like ethnography is important. So while in the prior, the brand custodian has to go by the gut, learning of the latter will help him/her take those decisions with confidence.

Reality Advertising

That sounds a bit odd, but its true. I came across an ad by "THINK! Road Safety" they have come out with a campaign that showcases casual videos that have not been enacted or shot with the intention of making an ad film. These are real incidents that got captured by the way and they have been signed off with a message.

Our perceptions of Reality TV is all about entertainment, but this is a form where it has been taken beyond entertainment and used to make some constructive use of the fact that they are real.

Today one of the reasons that advertising communication doesn't work effectively is because the consumer thinks, every advertiser will obviously talk only about the best of their products or if they are giving out a public service message, there is always a feeling of "this is not for real" hence dropping the believability of the message many notches, this new innovative campaign has aced on breaking that barrier and made it look like it cant get more real than this.

Have a look at the ad and I would look forward to your comments.

Make things better ! ! !

I took a job in an Advertising Agency because I just loved the field, though the first, second and maybe most of the initial times when I fell in love with advertising, I was thinking of being part of the Creative team, then after graduating, I realized I'm probably more suited for the Account Management, or Client Servicing as many call it. Work has been fun in the past 4 years in advertising but I still feel we can have it better than this...

One of the many issues that the industry is facing today is lack of talent, today it seems that when a student from one of the top universities graduates, he / she doesn't look upon advertising as the most promising career option. There could be multiple reasons for this, will try and cover the primary.
Monies
This industry can't claim to be one of the better pay masters, there are many reasons for not being able to pay their employees, some say it was the international buyouts, a few others think its just the business that's slack.
Stature
Every person after acquiring fancy degrees wants to be in a position where he has the capacity to take decisions, if not be the final decision maker at least be able to drive a decision (with valid arguments, of course) in the direction that makes sense to him. Advertising professionals if I may say are most often (not always) looked upon as suppliers of ads (note, not strategy, just creative ads)

Then there are other issues that the industry faces like, effectiveness of advertising, emerging mediums taking over traditional mediums and hence keeping pace, demanding clients, competition from smaller players doing the job for lesser and a few more...

I believe there is a solution to all these problems, its just about building focus. We are in the profession of ideas, while we may be popularly termed as a service industry, I feel we are also part of the manufacturing industry, manufacturing of ideas. Even our product has to be effective, functionally viable and has to go through the rigors of some severe tests. So if there are a set of principals that benefit the manufacturing industry, they should work of us as well. Let me take the example of Motorola's Six Sigma, what they did was just list down the processes involved in manufacturing and concentrated on making each process robust. This by making the person performing that process more perfect at what he does. So they figured that if a person performs the same function over and over again, he becomes perfect at it.

We may not be exactly the same as manufacturing but we are close. While manufacturing is extremely objective to judge, ideas are slightly subjective. Whether an ideas is good or bad may depend upon the person judging it, but still there are a few things we can do to make us a true ideas industry.

Execution of ideas is most often the most logical next step to coming up with ideas, we invest a lot of our energies in executing our ideas. While I believe we could very well just out source this particular function, why does the idea thinker have to sit and make sure that the 'ts' are crossed and the 'is' dotted? Leave that to the professionals who are good at doing that, we should concentrate on making our ideas better and more robust. We need to adapt to the model closer to a business consulting firm, these are the people who purely give their recommendation, its upto the client to implement these recommendations and because these consulting firms hire none other than the best, the client buys into every theory.

By separating the function of execution, we will make ourselves more focussed and hence would not need as many people, this will allow us to remunerate better, inturn be able to get better talent, better talent means the clients would respect the advertising person's views.

Now doesn't seem to have solved all the problems we spoke about in the start...