Posts Tagged ‘Insight’

Side-Lining Semiotics

Published on May 3rd, 2011 by Northstar UK

Why Is Semiotics Still On the Side-lines Of Research?

When semiotics is understood in a commercial rather than academic context, its value for brands seems non-negotiable. Yet, it remains at the edge of the insight playing field, still struggling to shake off its academic typecast and a reputation for being awkward. At Research 2011, semiotics was singled out as a highly undervalued tool – so is this the year for semiotics?

The Right Perspective

Contrary to traditional research practices, semiotics champions an outside-in approach – consumers don’t necessary have all the answers – shock horror! By taking an approach that acknowledges not all commercial insight is born from interacting with the consumer, you can start to see how semiotics comes into its own.

Traditional research goes straight to the consumer – what do people think and want? Whereas semiotics goes straight to culture – what is creating these thoughts and desires in the first place?

It’s often this different line of attack that I believe can be an initial hurdle for the traditional researcher, who is understandably accustomed to going straight to the consumer front line.

So What’s It All About?

It’s all about culture. The complex, intangible bubble of language, art, belief and attitude.  I particularly like this quote to describe the essence of culture, “Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass – you don’t see it, but somehow it does something” Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Commercial semiotics in my mind is about making sense of the fluid, implicit and unspoken nature of culture and systematically structuring it to create a valuable resource for new insights and future trends.

What Does It Actually Involve?

Semiotics word for word is the ‘study of signals’. Signals can be anything that creates or communicates meaning. Commercial semiotics looks for signals in two main areas:

The Brand In Question and Its Overall Category Mapping category signs and symbols

We look at: Products, packaging, colours, graphics, language, tone,  advertising, jingles, communications, stories, archetypes, physical  brand spaces

We ask: Is the brand coherent across all manifestations? Is the brand distinctive within its category?

Popular Culture Identifying dominant and emergent cultural codes

We look at: TV, magazines, newspapers, film, books, music, blogs, social media,  comedy, art & design, people, public spaces, fashion

We ask: Is the brand relevant within this?

After delving into these two areas, the relevant themes are identified and brought together by looking at the key signifiers, attitudes, concepts and narratives that bring these themes to life. We look at how brands, the category and popular culture all interact and relate to each other within these themes. From here, the insight drawn from the themes can be turned into specific ways forward for a brand or concept.

Semiotics can start with a brand and work outwards to wider culture, or start with a concept such as ‘health’ or ‘femininity’ in popular culture and filter down to relevant brands.

So Where Does Semiotics Fit In?

Why is all this fluffy, cultural stuff important you say? Can’t we just do a focus group and ask people what they want? Yes you could, but supplementing the close-up psychological view gleaned from qual with a wider cultural view, can only make a strategy stronger.

In a globalised and digital world where cultural considerations are paramount – it is becoming increasingly valuable to look at the cultural codes which underpin how consumers behave. This is particularly important where global or cross-cultural harmonisation of brands and communications is an issue.

Semiotics allows us to identify pertinent and emergent themes that can be harnessed or progressed by a brand and which directions their competitors are taking. It provides a good starting point to build new perspectives and positions that are relevant or better still, ahead of the curve.

Culture is often one step ahead of consumers so tapping into it means brands have an opportunity to be the leaders, not the followers, and drive consumer imagination rather than lead it.

Chasing Insights; a Question of Causality

Published on Apr 4th, 2011 by Nichola

As researchers, we all love that ‘eureka’ moment; when we catch a glimpse of an underlying truth beyond the reams of data, the endless transcripts and the lengthy debates. Numbers take on meaning and context, isolated opinions start to connect, and we are struck by a shared respondent experience, which looms larger than the enormity of individual differences. We see our sample as united by common beliefs or motivations, borne out of a shared consumer or business landscape. We’ve found a pattern!

Truth be told, it’s not just the researchers who get a kick out of patterns, it’s human nature to search for trends and short cuts, to rationalise, generalise, sort, filter, or do anything at all really to get past the details and minutia that surround us. The idea that our social and physical world can be explained and even predicted is comforting, and indeed we must assume that this is the case if we are ever to feel any sense of control, or confidence in our decisions.

But the psychologists will tell us that our short cuts and generalisations are not always reliable. We often make poor decisions based on our own past experiences, because we group together choices and situations that in fact have little in common. It worked last time, so why shouldn’t it work again? Because the time, the place, the people involved and any number of other details are different.

In our eagerness to see even the truly random as a potential pattern, we can leap to some very unlikely conclusions. In the context of our insight-hungry research industry, we must be wary of this temptation. Under pressure to ‘add value’ and in our search for that holy-grail of an insight, we need to remember that not every trend holds the answer, and that there is such a thing as a random pattern.

Insight or Oversight?

The laws of cause and effect are a common stumbling ground when it comes to connecting the unrelated. Two measurements, behaviours or events may appear to be connected, always occurring at the same time or at the same rate, however, this does not necessarily mean that one is the cause of the other.  For example, there may be a third, hidden variable that links the two occurrences.

A strong positive correlation has been observed between the annual number of nesting storks, and the annual number of babies born in the city of Copenhagen. From this you could infer that there was some truth to the legend that storks bring babies, or if you don’t go in for legend, it could even be the babies bringing the storks. But a little scepticism, or perhaps common sense will quickly reveal that as the population grows, so too does the building construction to accommodate it, thus providing more nesting opportunities for storks who like to make their homes in the rooftops. Though the construction is linked to both the new born babies and the nesting storks, sadly the storks and the babies have no direct causal relationship.

So, before we start shouting our latest wild interpretation from the rooftops, we should consider the possibility that it may be just a red herring, or indeed a nesting stork, posing as a friendly insight.

Research 2011: An Educational Experience For All

Published on Mar 31st, 2011 by Jack

Several members of NSUK attended last week’s Research 2011 Conference. As well as bringing back a bevy of complimentary biro’s and USB sticks etc, we also returned with a plethora of knowledge about the industry we work in. However, after all the key notes, end notes, papers, debates, tweets and questions were said and done, 11 key learning points were brought back to Ebury Street:

Research agencies can be under estimated

Advertising agencies and planners are not aware of the extent of research agencies’ capabilities – particularly in the field of innovation. In a wider context, does this mean that research agencies are under selling themselves to the advertising industry? Or maybe we are just not communicating our skill set(s) in the most effective manner?

Creative and research agencies need to co-operate

Tension exists between creative agencies and research agencies, aggravated by the fact that getting to the heart of what people feel and think is a very complex task. This can be countered when everyone works closely together as one team and towards the same objectives and strategy.

The true acronym for behavioural economics should be GMR…

…‘Good Market Research’. If behavioural economics is using the study of social, cultural and emotional behaviour to understand the economic decisions of consumers, what has the research industry been up to recently? Good market research should provide this as standard.

Insight: A tool to promote fear or a tool to use in decision making?

Insight departments often struggle to ‘sell’ research to their wider teams and in reality insight is often used to scare people into action!  Every brand uses their insight team in a completely different way – it’s important for research agencies to know who will be using the insight and how, so we can design and communicate it with the right audience in mind. The more visual, tangible and confident the insight, the more applicable it is to commercial decision making.

The methodological cross roads

Traditional methods are not always enough – sometimes a new, unique approach is needed. If you can’t find such an approach within your own company, don’t rest on your laurels, buy it in! Furthermore, the future of traditional quantitative methods is undecided – will surveys survive until 2020? The answer to this is in our hands. We can improve the life expectancy of surveys if we improve their design and functionality for clients and respondents alike.

Brand Research: What’s your poison?

From semiotics to quantitative metrics, all methodological fields have an approach to brand research. Our task as researchers is to remove methodological biases and decide which the most appropriate approach is in relation to our objectives.

Online opportunities still exist

The internet age is bringing new opportunities to gather high volume, good quality data. More researchers need to take advantage of new data sources, such as social media, to gain access to (sometimes free) extremely large volumes of information.

Ethnography: Is it all in the mind?

Our thinking and frame of mind is key to approaching ethnography correctly. Before entering into someone else’s world, our minds should be open to absorbing everything yet in-tune with what matters – it’s not just about eyes and ears – it’s about minds too! Using semiotics, quality visuals, unusual spaces and social media can all play a part in contributing to great ethnography.

New ideas are a tricky business

Great ideas do not always ‘make the cut’ due to two key reasons:

  • The best ideas have the most resistance
  • The best ideas are normally a result of an intense trial and error process. People do not like failure – therefore limiting human affinity towards the often error ridden process of trial and error

Co- Creation: So we are all together, now where are we going?

Co-creation is best not as an equal process, but when researchers lead respondents. Perhaps here researchers need to utilise the marketing adage ‘never completely trust the public’.

Neuroscience is a methodology ‘in the ascent’

Techniques that identify patterns of thinking (meta-programs) and unconscious engagement (facial coding) are becoming increasingly valuable methods in helping researchers understand data and decode what drives consumer decisions.

Insight

Published on Apr 18th, 2010 by

An insight is often expressed in a short statement. It should surprise you and reframe your thinking. It’s that ‘ahhh’ moment. Insight ties research together and opens the conclusions up, unlocking opportunity and inspiring action. Insight is the enemy of silos; it is born from the connections. An insight shouldn’t die with the project, it should be widely applicable and all encompassing, but simple and easy to grasp at the same time. True insight is rare, it doesn’t come along very often.