KS:  As a qualitative researcher who has been using Revelation since its inception in 2006, I consider Revelation’s core equity to be the one-on-one interview. Revelation|NEXT is clearly about group interaction. Help us understand what led Revelation to go in that direction, and why now.

Being born of a more ethnographic approach, Revelation indeed started out as a tool focused on enabling researchers to dig deeper into individual experiences, but we also recognized the value of group interaction. We always felt that it can be very powerful at times to have participants engage with each other, build community and increase learning from shared experiences, and we were always searching for the right way to make this happen in an elegant way. With NEXT, I believe we have really hit the mark in blending one-on-one depth with group interaction. In fact, with push notifications integrated into the mobile apps, it takes group interaction to a new level as in the moment engagement is now in the participants’ pockets.

KS:  How would you summarize what Revelation|NEXT is and what it does?

At its core, Revelation|NEXT is a mobile and web platform for capturing and understanding customer stories. It gives researchers the tools in both technology and methodology to capture behaviors, emotions and context, as well as helpful media and text visualization tools. Revelation | NEXT supports diaries, mini-documentaries, projectives, retail adventures, Pinterest-style visual sharing, and is used for all parts of the innovation cycle. It’s all encapsulated in an elegant and simple social interface.

KS:  Today, consumers expect fluid experiences across their devices (computers, tablets, phones), and Revelation|NEXT makes that possible. How does that impact the way researchers design a study in Revelation?  

When consumers can answer via both mobile and web, there are a couple of areas of impact. First, researchers need to think through which activities make the most sense on the web. When in the moment understanding is the goal, mobile is the clear winner.  When deep thinking and expression is the need, web is the better way to go. Second, you have more options for participant-to-participant engagement. How do you want people to build on each other? What activities are shared? When do you want people to be private? When do you want them to share? It’s an exciting time because we are still learning and discovering new possibilities.

KS:  What can be done now, or done better, with Revelation|NEXT versus the prior version? And why does that matter?

There are quite a few things that NEXT improves on over the prior version of Revelation. First, the mobile capabilities are hugely expanded and improved. We’ve brought the feel and function of a social app to qualitative research. Video can be streamed in both directions.  Participants can engage, comment on and/or like each other’s posts right on their phones via a social feed. Push notifications let people know when something has happened. We’ve also provided offline capabilities in case participants lose signal. On the web, we’ve brought Pinterest-style visual sharing that makes Revelation|NEXT feel much closer to a social app than a research app.

KS:  Please tell us about your plans to offer Revelation|NEXT in other languages.

Revelation|NEXT will be available in the majority of the 20 languages we support by early June, with a few more to come after that.

KS:  Finally, online qual has come a long way since the 1990′s. Considering that, finish this sentence with something from outside of the research industry:  The launch of Revelation|NEXT is like________.

The launch of Facebook.  Not because we presume NEXT is gong to have that kind of huge impact, but because Facebook successfully synthesized a number of key elements from previous social sites in new ways to create something unique and addictive. It blended the individual spaces of MySpace, the viral strategy of Plaxo and added its own twists – a simple feed design and an underlying algorithm. Whether you love or hate Facebook, the result was something very special. In designing Revelation NEXT, we were very thoughtful about building on our core capabilities and taking things from the social web that we hope will engage and inspire.

KS:  Thanks for sharing with us Steve!  For those interested in learning more, go to www.revelationglobal.com. 

Teens can be one of the least reliable when it comes to conducting any kind of qualitative research and online qualitative is no exception.  Hours can be wasted trying to track them down to complete a series of activities in a quality fashion.  The key to all of this is bringing the activities to them.

One thing we do know is that teens are online – all of them, all the time.  They’ve also never known a pre-internet (and smartphone) world, so communicating online is as natural for them as talking.  But just knowing they’re online isn’t enough.  We need to understand how they communicate, where they communicate and what motivates them to communicate beyond the normal monetary incentives.  It’s as equally important to recognize their limitations.

No surprises

Without giving away too much about the research, teens and their parents should be given an overview of the activities and what’s required at the recruiting stage.  This prevents people from over promising when they’ve got too many additional commitments through school, sports or other activities.  It also allows them to plan if you need to see them in action with their friends or family.  Research projects fall down the list of priorities when real life competes.

Social activities: a great way to share and connect

Teens with similar interests are eager to connect with each other and comfortable in online forums.  They are used to conversations that are presented as threaded.  That said, satisfying a research goal isn’t going to be their primary motivator.  They will want to present themselves, see what others have to offer and how they stack up against their peers.  Consider making all activities, that aren’t sensitive in nature, social – but only let them see what others are saying after they post about themselves.  This can easily be accomplished with online blogs and discussion boards.  If you tell them they will be able to browse through other posts, videos and comments after they complete their activity they will be more motivated to complete.

Why won’t they finish the last three activities???

One frustration I hear about constantly is the loss of interest from teen participants.  Halfway through the project, response rates dwindle and no amount of money seems to be able to change that.  While discussing how to approach this, one researcher suggested launching all activities (or most activities) at one time – allowing them to chose the ones they want to complete and in what order they’d like to do it.  They’re told upfront that they must finish three-quarters of the exercises in order to receive their incentives.  This puts them in control.  She indicated that more often than not, all respondents ultimately end up completing all the activities.  This idea seems to make sense if you are flexible with how you can structure your research.

A teen and their phone – The love story

It’s no secret a mobile phone is a teens best friend.  From texting, tweeting, organizing friends and sharing media, phones provide a way for teens to reach out to their inner circle and to the masses.  Current platform technologies allow us to reach into their worlds with similar ease.  Not only does mobile allow you to capture ‘in the moment’ insights but it removes barriers to getting information form them in the form of text, video and pictures.  Whether they are sitting in their room at night, on a break at school or out with their friends – we can reach them and they can reach us.  Don’t be afraid to ask them to get creative with these tools – use them in conjunction with other technologies and most importantly – make it fun!

Using sequencing as an incentive

People like immediate gratification – especially teens.  You can build a reward system into your research through sequencing.  Consider locking special games, polls or privileged information behind an activity you really need them to complete.  Response rates shoot way up when a perceived reward is available immediately.

At the end of the day – Kids will be kids

Teens are more independently minded and have greater purchasing power than ever before, but alas they are still kids.  They live in a world where their attention is being competed for by any number of outside sources – so patience and perseverance is key.  Hopefully some of the suggestions we list above can make this road a bit less bumpy for you.

New technology brings note-taking to the next level

No one welcomes the moment during in-person research when you turn to the stack of folded, sticky flip chart pages filled with your not-so-lovely handwriting and start strategizing about how to fit them into your luggage.  Even worse, when you get back to the office, you need to begin the painful process of transcribing the drawings, notes, lists and feedback into a separate document to send out to the research team.

It has always concerned me that valuable insights get lost in this process.  I worry my circles around parts of concepts won’t translate well to a text document.  Or that the vitality of the discussion and the passion around certain ideas is represented better by the voracity of underlinings or x-marks on the original flip chart pages.

During a recent San Francisco QRCA chapter meeting, I encountered a way of taking notes during focus groups, interviews, concept evaluation or ideation sessions that offered a solution to these concerns (smarttech.com).

Tragon, a workspace and facility in the South Bay of San Francisco, has added SMART Boards to their discussion rooms, allowing moderators and facilitators to project any image (concept, attribute list, prototype etc.) onto a white board, take notes on the projected image with electronic markers and save the image with the notes included.  This saved image can then be directly emailed to the collaboration/research team.

As Steve Willis, Senior Sensory and Consumer Insights Manager at Tragon, says:

“You used to have to take pictures of your notes in the board or use huge sticky notes to take them with you.  Now all you have to do is write on the board and send that document to yourself.”  He cautions that “some people tend to be afraid of them because it’s a technology that many people haven’t seen” but “it’s great for collaboration and the team here uses the SMART Boards almost everyday.” 

SMART Board technology allows multiple interactive displays to support collaboration by enabling teams to amalgamate information from different sources and work together on multiple files, at the same time. The company’s usage instructions explain more about how the process works.

While SMART Boards are being used in a number of educational settings, I would love to see more qualitative research facilities install this system!  Ask your favorite facilities if they have heard of SMART Boards and if not, spread the word.

On January 21^st, ActiveGroup (the US-based company that provides videostreaming to the market research industry) introduced a new tool described as the first mobile app built for qualitative researchers to allow the capture of video, audio and images from the field and enable easy sharing with clients and colleagues.  Currently, the app is available for the iPad, with work underway for mobile phones.

I had the chance to interview David Nelems, president and founder of ActiveGroup,
and to see a demo of Capture.  As a result, I’m going to be upgrading my iPad to the newer version with the built-in camera to take advantage of this new tool (and am thinking the iPad Mini to be less intrusive).  Capture may replace my Flip Video camera and LiveScribe pen as two of my digital field tools; I wonder if I will want to keep using my iPhone (once that app becomes available) or if I will like working with the iPad?  Time will tell!

Here’s the interview:

KS:  What was the inspiration for developing Capture?

My wife Janelle, who has been a qualitative research consultant for 18 years, was my inspiration.  I saw her struggle with the technology when doing research in non-traditional locations.  She could capture video but then it was too hard to share that video with anyone else.  Moving the content from the camera to the computer, then editing that video down so you could email a 3 minute video clip (if the email did not reject the attachment).  Or trying to get FTP access to upload a long video.  It was all so cumbersome and frustrating.  When she had technical issues, she would always ask me for help.  After I got involved I thought, “There has to be an easier way!”  That easier way is Capture.

KS:  How would you summarize what Capture is and what it does?

It is a tool that allows professional researchers to capture video, audio and images and easily upload and share that content in an integrated system with interested viewers.  Never before has the experience of watching your customer in the field been so easy to Capture and so easy to share.  It allows you to tell a rich story.

KS:  Most mobile app developers in the market research space have focused on the consumer.  ActiveGroup led with an app designed for the qualitative researcher.  What led you to launch in that order?

I have a full service marketing research background.  My father started his MR company back in 1972 and I grew up in the industry.  When I looked at the apps available for research, specifically qualitative, they were all based from the consumer point of view.  Obviously that is important and a consumer-based app is something we are working on.  But I felt there were not any tools for the professional qualitative researcher.  While self-directed interviews and DIY is fine for some projects, there still needs to be a focus on professional researchers that can conduct research.  People that know the questions to ask, that can read the non-verbal clues and subtle signs that a respondent is giving off.  To probe and clarify.  To find the answer.  While I am a proponent of more research being done whether it is through professionals or something like Survey Monkey, the more a company knows about their client the better it is.  However I don’t like the idea of my wife and her colleagues being replaced by “QualMonkey.”  Hence Capture.  An app designed for professional qualitative researchers to allow them to do their job more efficiently in a more mobile world.

KS:  What are some of the ways you see Capture being used and by whom?

Any type of professional researcher can use Capture:

• With a doctor at their office
• In a mall or restaurant
• Shop-a-longs
• Drive-a-longs
• Ethnography at a respondent’s home
• Interviewing in developing markets
• In-depth telephone interviews (you can record a telephone audio track)
• Photos from the field of anything related to the project
• At meetings and conventions
• Wherever you need to conduct research 

KS:  Tell me about your plans to bring Capture to mobile phones.

The iPhone version is in development now.  Because of the smaller screen size, certain elements of the user interface have to be scaled down and simplified.  We have known this for awhile.  We also wanted to release the iPad version first, get feedback from users and see what improvements we can pull into the phone version.  I’m excited to see how Capture will evolve based on what we learn from users.  There will also be an Android version eventually.

KS:  What do you suggest for researchers who want to learn more about Capture?

Go to our website.  We have a lot of resources from short how-to video tutorials, to FAQs and quick start documents.  I also love doing demos. Let me know if you want one via a screen share.  Our demo process is really slick.  It’s all real time, no smoke and mirrors, no static screen shots.  You see the whole process in real time.

KS:  David, thanks for building a tool to help out qual researchers as managing all those video files can really be cumbersome.  I’m looking forward to giving Capture a try and will definitely share an update with you and our readers.  And those of you reading who try out Capture, please share your feedback too!

Rocky and rough or sunshine ahead? Consumer social media commentary helps assess the landscape.

Social media research is an ideal technique for understanding a product or service landscape through the consumer lens.  If you’re asking, “what are existing or potential competitors doing today, and how is it being received?” there is often ample evidence in the social media space.  This type of research is usually very informal, but is perfect for scenarios that don’t involve high financial risk and give guidance for areas to further investigate with other forms of research.

How to assess the landscape via social media:

Step 1.  Establish a framework to work against.  For example’s sake, let’s say I decide to use this ATL framework from Michele Levy in Inc’s How To Conduct Competitive Research, with these italicized builds:

• Elevator pitch (Brief answer to the question “Who is this company?”)  Who do their consumers say they are?
• Mission (If it exists.)  What do consumers say they’re in the space for?
• Products/services offered (with pricing)  What do consumers think about the products and services, along with their pricing?
• Strengths (What is the competitor good at?)  What do consumers say they’re good at?
• Weaknesses (Where does the competitor fall short?)  What do consumers say their unmet needs and pain points are?
• Key brand differentiators (What are the messaging, product/service offerings, etc., that set the competitor apart from their competition?)  And, what do consumers say sets the product/service apart from competitors?

Step 2.  Social media commentary that demonstrates the consumer point of view on each of the above areas are “tagged” as such, by exporting commentary into Excel, re-posting onto a private Tumblr blog, or any other way of gathering and grouping comments and “coding” with the corresponding area.  So, a comment about x competitor that says, “I love this brand because it doesn’t peel or crack over time!” might be “tagged” as a strength for competitor x.  Explore relevant consumer social media channels and repeat this tagging process.  I’ll pause here to say that aggregation platforms that provide historical data offer a significant advantage here because all of the verbatims are in one place and the researcher doesn’t necessarily have to scour the web (although, it’s still often necessary as not all relevant social media channels are always scraped by aggregation platforms and often there’s some great insights in non-verbal videos or images.)

Step 3.  Group comments for each ATL framework area together visually and re-read.  Ask yourself:

• What knowledge gaps exist?
• What are the outliers and why are they there?
• Where might more information need to be gathered from?  Go do it.

Step 4.  Put a report together for your team that outlines your findings.

Yes, it really can be that simple.  Of course, there are lots of other things that can be considered to make this much more formal but if your team is looking to do a quick and dirty directional take from social media commentary, this can be extremely helpful.  Clients have utilized such reports to inform new white space territory and new targets, for example. •

What are the ways that you’re using social media research to aid in assessing the landscape? 

In this era of over-sharing, curated storytelling is imperative.  While many of us own and use smartphones as cameras, it’s a challenge to remember to do something with the pictures and videos that we capture with these devices.

Many of us love to capture pictures and videos on our phones, and more often than not, we try to publish the most irresistible moments in our social galleries. (There’s an undeniable sense of accomplishment when I can share my stories and memories—perhaps you can relate.)

This is no different for our market research projects. If anything, it’s even more important to share key pictures and videos from our projects to help tell the story across clients’ reports and presentations.

Whether we want to make an album, an elaborate scrapbook, float it all in the Cloud on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or deliver an outstanding report or presentation that really gets to the heart of the story with consumers and clients—most DIY options can be overwhelming, expensive, and for some, it can feel like a chore.

It is time to rethink the way we share mobile pictures and videos—and consume other mobile media—and look for tech-savvy time-savers.

Recently, I was excited to run across a bunch of new, free iPhone apps with robust movie-making and storytelling capabilities: Qwiki, Givit, Magisto, Viddy and Splice. These tools allow anyone with an iPhone to turn pictures and videos into a brief movie that you can share in minutes!

Again, I got that research-geek thrill to uncover how these tools could potentially benefit all areas of market research:

• Introductions/Warm-up
• Homework
• “On-demand” Movie/Video Collage Activity
• Reporting
• Presentations

Our participants are able to capture so many timely moments for us on a variety of mobile devices (smartphones, iPads, digital cameras, you name it!). It’s really up to us to deliver a system that organizes and focuses all of this data.

Qwiki is my favorite app of the bunch, as it automates the picture/video selection process into a one-click movie. The app works by automatically stitching together media from the iPhone camera roll and creates a 30-second to one-minute mashup from a certain day or album.

Song selection for the Qwiki occurs from the phone’s music library or from “soundtracks” preloaded in the app. Perfectionists and those of us with additional interest can easily play around with media configurations and change the audio track, which gives us an even deeper look into the mood of the visuals.

To give you a feel for the output, here’s a sample Qwiki video collage (pics and videos) of advertising around Chicago:

Indeed, video collages and movie mashups can bring impressive creativity and flexibility to qualitative research:

• Introductions/Warm-up: participants share a brief video collage or slideshow of their family, interests, typical day
• Homework or “On-demand” Movie/Video Collage Activity: participants create video collages and movie mash-up from experiences captured on their phones
• Reporting: Integrate a video collage (that we’ve created) of participants’ key pictures and videos for a quick debrief/recap
• Presentations: Show a similar video collage to get the discussion started, bringing the project to life!

The seamlessness of such videos add richness and energy to our stories in all of the ways above, as well as any others that we can dream up.

The days of our Creative Departments and contracting with a video editor are by no means “over.” These apps lack the ability to output a professionally designed highlight reel with exact precision, multiple formats, or perfect image resolution, and its related audio effects and capabilities are limited, at best.

Still, these new apps are remarkably efficient, and we’ve certainly found another cool solution to elevate our perceptions of the smarts in our smartphones! Telling a great story is even easier as we ramp up our use of video collages—and make them faster, better, cheaper with today’s mobile capabilities. ◙

What are your suggestions and feedback around these new apps? How are you integrating videos into your current market research efforts? Post a comment to share what you think!

Last year I added mobile qualitative to more studies than I ever had before. As the technology platforms for mobile qual have improved, it’s been easier to include this additional data collection in studies and show clients the added value of richer and immediate in-context perspective.

Leveraging mobile qual for added retail/in-store perspective has certainly been a big trend. But on a less expected note, below are some of the more memorable places that mobile qual took me in 2012.

To the bathroom.  Oh yes, that’s right. When asked to explore women’s leg care and shaving routines, mobile qual was a great fit for bathroom tours that provided enlightening contextual understanding. Women shared picture-rich overviews of their leg care products and completed projectives about personal rituals while in the bathroom setting, revealing emotional, personal stories.

To pay at the pump.  Want to know what it’s REALLY like to use a loyalty card at the gas pump? Just ask consumers to tell you immediately after the experience. Without a moderator around to bias them, consumers were both complimentary and not so complimentary about their experiences. Sometimes when the card didn’t work as expected, the participant would call me on their phone, which gave me an unexpected opportunity to probe further right in the moment. Note: If you do at-pump mobile, please make sure participants get back into their cars before using their phones, per the safety instructions on most gas pumps.

To grab some fast food.    One great thing about mobile is the ability to capture experiences that are extremely hard to be a part of in person. For just over 2 weeks, 100 consumers showed me their fast food dinners with pictures and detailed explanations about the occasions. Imagine trying to do this work any other way . . . . would you really be able to observe someone’s post-workout dinner at 10:30pm on Wednesday through any other practical and effective approaches?

It was a fun 2012 expanding my use of mobile. I hope this inspires where mobile might take you in 2013. Cheers to the new year and new insights!

EDITOR’S NOTE: this blog post is a departure from our usual coverage related to using technology in qualitative research as the editor (me) addresses a cultural topic of high interest:  how Americans celebrate the Super Bowl and the role of technology.

I’ve always been a Super Bowl fan, regardless of the teams, as an ex-P&G brand manager who at first cared more about the commercials than the game.  Two years ago, I wrote my first ever blog post (“7 Learnings from the Super Bowl XLV Mobile Ethnography”) based on a mobile research study with 235 consumers while watching the Super Bowl game.  Using their iPhone entries, participants shared where they were watching the game, on what, with whom, what they were eating and drinking, and which commercials they liked or didn’t like.

This year, I closely watched the Super Bowl game at a party and was glued to the TV until the very end, even through the post-game interviews (despite the blackout and the late hour).  What a great game, on both sides!  As a Raven’s fan, I was absolutely thrilled when Baltimore won! And when my 15-year-old son asked me if he could skip school so we could attend the Raven’s celebratory parade in Baltimore, I said “Of course,” with a carpe diem attitude.

Here are my Top 10 highlights from our day of celebration, which we shared with 200,000 diehard Raven’s fans who skipped school and work to participate in the parade or join in the festivities at the stadium:

10.  More people than I’ve ever seen focused on the same passion

M&T Stadium closed its gates at a record-setting 80,000 (they were expecting 30,000, and maximum capacity is 71,000).  People were everywhere!  In seats, on the field, standing in the aisles, stairwells, concession areas, you name it.

9. Tiny, ubiquitous technology

Gone are the days of clunky equipment and camcorders.  Two out of three fans around me had a smartphone (most commonly) or digital camera recording this rare experience.  I only saw two iPads being used.  And in 41 degrees, it quickly became really cold as best operating was without gloves.  It seemed that nearly all recorded for at least the first 5 minutes and then stopped due to the cold; sounds like a new product opportunity.

8. Players recording the fans

This moment was just as big for the players, with many of the players holding phones or cameras to capture the moment from their vantage point.  This Associated Press picture of the Raven’s quarterback and Super Bowl MVP, Joe Flacco, tells it all:

7.  The color purple

I’ve never seen more PURPLE in my entire life!  Jerseys, beads, camouflage pants, jackets, dyed hair, purple wigs, massive face paint, scarves, hats, and even purple suits.  And without an opposing team to add in other colors, a sea of purple washed over the stadium. 

6. Coaches make good cheerleaders too

Coach Harbaugh did a great job of cheering in his Ali-inspired three-peat chant of “Who are we?”  RAVENS, RAVENS, RAVENS!

5. Season highlights

Jumbotron coverage of many highlights, with my favorite being Jacoby Jones’ 108 yard kickoff return for a touchdown during the Super Bowl game.  Truly amazing.

4. The broader concept of TEAM

Coach Harbaugh focused his message on the “team” including the fans and all of us at the celebratory event, not just the paid team members and staff.  During the parade, Ed Reed reinforced this concept by jumping off the Super Bowl float to let the people of Baltimore touch the Lombardi Trophy.   And later at the stadium, the entire crowd sang, “ We are the champions!”

3.  Engage the audience

Many examples, but a crowd favorite was Ed Reed, with his young son on his shoulders, leading the packed stadium in singing his version of Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets to Paradise” with several “Whoa, Whoa, Whoas.”

2. Passing of the baton

Retiring legend and future Hall of Famer Ray Lewis did his signature dance one more time, followed by his “passing on” the dance to first Ed Reed, and then Jacoby Jones, who added his who own special twist.  Definitely fun to watch:  click here to enjoy!

1. A mom/son ‘real-time’ bonding moment

Without the ability to tweet, text, email, call, or go online in the packed stadium, my teenaged son and I truly embraced this exhilarating moment.  We screamed, chanted, cheered, applauded like crazy, and even sang quite often.  Thanks Ravens for sharing this incredible moment with your fans, and for giving this mom and her son a lifetime memory.

At a recent Puget Sound Research Forum event, attendees were expecting to learn about the future of advertising research. However, they were also inspired to improve their own professional futures. On January 17th, Judy Mahtaban of Millward Brown, David Martin of Amazon, and Hillary Miller of Wunderman shared their unique views on the increasingly fragmented world of advertising and how to best influence and measure it. They also provided compelling personal advice on how researchers can be more effective.

David Martin, Marketing Research Manager at Amazon, oversees audience and advertising research for Amazon’s own advertising business. Martin and his team focus on “scale, personalization, and innovation.” To illustrate scale, Martin shared that Amazon and its sister sites were recently ranked the 6th most visited of all U.S. web properties. (September 2012 results reported by comScore.) This makes Amazon a coveted medium for advertisers to place their message in front of viewers. Just as shoppers on Amazon receive product recommendations based on their browsing and purchasing habits, they are also shown equally personalized ads. Amazon then measures both short and long-term purchases that may have been influenced by those ads. Through innovation, Martin and his team are able to display and track the performance of ads on any devices in the Amazon Kindle ecosystem. They are also prepared to do so for any new devices that Amazon may dream up in the coming years.

Hillary Miller, Vice President and Global Strategic Services Director at Wunderman, believes that behavioral and social data can contribute to consumer insights but are not replacements for deeper primary research. As her company develops marketing campaigns, they first establish a strategy based on a clear measurable action that they want consumers to take. This approach is so central to Wunderman that they use it as a rallying cry for the agency: “We Create Action.”

Judy Mahtaban, Vice President of Client Development at Millward Brown, believes we are in a new era of fragmented eyeballs and distracted consumers and this makes research collection increasingly difficult. Her team integrates large sets of aggregated behavioral data with primary research to best understand the success of their clients’ advertising efforts. Partly due to distracted consumers, especially those on mobile devices, Millward Brown’s brand equity surveys that used to take 20 minutes are now being done in 5. Mahtaban clarified that it is critical for researchers to share insights early in the advertising creation process and not just be called in to measure advertising results after the fact.

While the audience was receptive to these ideas, they were more energized by the panelists’ recommendations on how to be better researchers, marketers, and presenters. Miller feels that her team at Wunderman has to have top-notch storytelling skills in order to crystallize large amounts of data for their clients. She creates suspense at the start of her presentations and then builds to one main point. Wunderman calls this “the one simple statement.” Mahtaban works to ensure she understands the client’s central business question and uses her slide titles to tell the main story of her presentation in a compelling way. The moderator of the panel, Laurie Gelb, recommended building at least some element of drama, mystery, or comedy into every presentation.

When hiring, Miller looks for people who are curious, can distill research into succinct ideas, and can persuade through writing, speaking, and presentation decks. At Amazon, Martin hires researchers with excellent project management skills, strong quant skills, storytelling drive, and the organizational skills to “tee up the research on a silver platter or silver spreadsheet.”

The most important insights I took away from this presentation:

• Start with a strong headline and create suspense.
• Distill and integrate facts and perspectives from multiple sources.
• Crystallize the findings into one simple statement: be curious, organized, and engaging.

When writing a discussion guide, it’s wonderful to be able to tap into resources that already exist in order to craft a well-rounded discussion. A treasure trove of creative activities to elicit people’s thoughts and feelings beyond a surface level already exist. These activities are readily available to moderators of all experience levels, so it’s a big research-geek thrill when inspiration sparks for a projective activity with a new angle!

Our online qual team enjoys passing around new links for information or sheer entertainment. Twitter searches, Pinterest, and social publishers like Mashable, BuzzFeed and Reddit are some of our current sources for inspiration.

In fact, when I came across the “What I Really Do” storyboard meme in 2012, one of the Top Memes for 2012, with all of its visual glory and bite-size insights, I was very excited!

Memes have long run rampant in social media, so I apologize if you already know or create your own memes. Perhaps you’ve even enjoyed a good meme before and didn’t know that it stems from a larger style set.

By definition, a meme is basically a visual element—picture or video—with cultural significance that goes viral. It gets passed across the internet from one user to another, usually for entertainment value.

The sharing fad around the “What I Really Do” meme (one example shown below — click here to see more) which you may have seen last year, surreptitiously inspired me to transfer the basic visual layout of the meme to adapt it for use in online qualitative research.

This meme consists of a six-frame comic montage, which initially shares a first-person perspective of other people’s thoughts that relate to the protagonist author and his or her occupation. The last two frames focus this autobiographical narrative into a couple of self-aware confessions about “What I think I do” and “What I really do.”

The visuals are compelling confessions, especially when the author spends time to find just the right pictures. I’ve found that the honesty in each frame is refreshingly poignant and sure, and the story connects and builds to exude just the right magic that we qualitative researchers like to capture.

This “What I Really Do” meme works well for research in its multi-frame storyboard layout. It’s fun when participants identify the meme and are excited to put their own spin on it. In short, this fun, new projective gives us a multi-angle lens into consumers’ lives.

For a lighter exercise, I also like this twist on the meme (about this popular Broadway show, for example):

Participants individually select the image(s) for each of the three buckets. The formats are flexible and thought-provoking for both the 6- and 3-frame layouts; it’s easy to change out the “What” to a “Where” or “How,” pairing it with a relevant action such as, “Where I Vacationed” or “What I Cleaned,” and even ask about group perceptions—just change the “I” to “We” (like “What We Watched” or “What We Played”) by referring to friends, family or other connections in the instructions.

The stories and depictions that people generate through these activities can be entertaining and insightful for all parties. Early results suggest these activities would float well across a variety of category discussions.

What are your suggestions and feedback around this projective inspired by a meme? Post a comment to share what you think! Also, what creative sources inspire you and your research?