the art of conversation

Brand interest vs my interest: exploring shades of corporate symbiosis

We’ve been working with a High St bank and with a large charity. There is an ‘interest dimension’ operating, from those companies felt to act exclusively in their own interests, to the detriment of others (eg debt collectors?) to those who act exclusively in others’ interests (eg a church mission?).

Of course most organisations operate in the middle, acting in their own interests (necessary for survival, of course) and in the interests of key stakeholders, such as consumers. Our theory is that the perceived 'interest balance' of organisations, the extent to which they are seen to value and to act in our (consumers') interests, is increasingly important. Brands must get the symbiotic balance right.

There are perceptual degrees of difference which echo those of biology. In a parasitic relationship, one member of the association benefits while the other is harmed. Then there are different kinds of symbiotic relationships, which ‘lean’ one way or the other. Amensalism is a relationship where one species is inhibited while the other gains. Commensalism is where one benefits and the other is not significantly harmed or helped. Mutualism is the relationship where both parties derive a benefit.

In nature and in the commercial world there are no examples of a species acting in the interests of another species to its own detriment, but the middle area is the key battle ground for hearts and minds. The clear message from our work is that people are happy for an organisation to benefit from their custom as long as (a) the benefit to the organisation is reasonable and visible and (b) they personally benefit at least as much.

Talking is useless. Discuss. Or rather, don't.

Research-Live.com recently reviewed 'Consumer.ology' by one Philip Graves. It's a balanced review, considering the line advanced by Graves (ex client-side researcher) is about as dumb and unoriginal as Rambo 12. The 'argument' is, because what people say does not correspond to what they do (hold the front page of Research, Marc) there's no point talking or even listening to them. Just watch what they do. 

This blinding insight apparently happened after the author finished bombarding some poor sods in Leeds with questions in a focus group. After he turned his tape recorder off they started having a proper conversation and talked about doing something different to what they'd told their interrogator. He used this as evidence that talk was deceptive, rather than that he might be a shit moderator. 

Unhindered by any such doubts, he went on to discover that people do psychoanalysis but still can't get to the bottom of their own thoughts and that our emotions shape our decisions, therefore we cannot identify what we want and don't want. (I can however identify with 100% accuracy one recently published book I will not buy.)

He says it is an illusion that we can ask people what they think and learn from it. I re-read that particular gem a couple of times to check I wasn't mistaken, but that is what it says. There goes journalism, then.

NEUROSCEPTIC

The day after the General Election and the overall winner was the exit polls, which predicted the outcome with uncanny accuracy. Evidence of the enduring value of asking the right people the right question.

But if you’d gone to the annual research industry’s conference, Research2010, you’d have thought that asking people things was an outdated and frankly useless idea.

 As MRS Conferences go, Research2010 was Really Rather Good.  Hats off to co-chairs Simon Lidington and Nick Coates, not least for mentioning Roland Barthes in their introduction (that must have been a bet).

Trending strongly were co-creation, ethnography, online communities … and ‘brain stuff’.  The first three of these approaches build on what people say and are essentially generative or productive approaches.  All good stuff.  You try to learn from people-as-people, holistically.  There are no easy answers, interpretation is everything. 

But using fMRI scanners to show parts of people’s brains light up as they perform various tasks, is trying to replace what people say and is entirely reductive.  It treats people not as people, nor even as consumers, but just as lumps of grey matter. 

Presumably, brain scan advocates would exit poll by wiring up voters’ heads, to overcome the ‘limitations’ of verbal research techniques. Ethnographers would watch people while they queued then went into the private booth to vote. And co-creationists would invite voters to take part in a workshop, do some collage work and write about their experiences on a blog.

Instead, MR rivals GfK NOP / Ipsos MORI talked to people. (17,607 of them, working collaboratively with each other and with the broadcasters). 

The Planning Fallacy

 

 

If a group of people aim to get the same plane, they will arrive at the airport at different times. Some will be early and some will be on time; others will leave it until just before the check-in desk closes. 

This doesn't just happen when catching flights, of course. The completion of the new Wembley Stadium was delayed by over a year, from a March 2006 opening date until May 2007 ready for the FA Cup Final. Even the Sydney Opera house was planned for a 1963 opening, but opened 10 years later.

Why is this? Why do things take longer than we want?

In Kate Fox's 'Watching the English', she calls this 'the Planning Fallacy": people underestimate the time it takes to complete a task. Fox suggests it is because we have an emotional bias that leads us to wish for a goal that in practice is unrealistic. We may want to please someone or be under pressure to meet somebody else's deadline. Or we may not take in (or want to take in) all the external factors (like staff holidays or traffic jams) that may delay our plans.

THE SCIENCE OF CONVERSATION

Conversation is our theme – see our essay, Conversation as the New Model for Qualitative Research, or the shorter Powerpoint version, with pictures, here.

But, are we qualitative researchers ‘conversation experts’, or is what we do a pale imitation of what ‘real’ conversation experts do? There is a growing field called Conversation Analysis (CA), which was the latest subject of the AQR’s excellent In Depth. (This post initiated by a review commissioned by AQR last week).

Why should any of us bother to learn about CA? As Ailean Mills says, we should ask ourselves if our methods actually help or hinder ‘naturally occurring conversation’. For example, the number of questions we typically ask, the discussion guide and the role of the moderator, these may hinder, not help: ‘the moderator… can determine and distort the discourse of a discussion from the very outset …The choice of language, and its structure, will be quickly mimicked by participants’.

The focus in CA is on ‘naturally occurring conversation’ and all the examples quoted come from real-life examples of conversations, such as a doctor’s interaction with a mother in a clinic and a telephone conversation between two friends. Most groups and depths, of course, are far from naturally occurring!

Which raises two key questions:
1.    Should we all be incorporating more ethnographic methods, getting out there and listening to what real people really say (without their realizing we are listening in)? If we did this, though, how long would it take before we learned anything about Pedigree Chum (or any other brand)?
2.    Are only naturally occurring conversations ‘real conversations’? Can an ‘artificially created’ conversation (ie all focus groups and interviews) not contain real conversational elements and therefore valuable insights?