kitchener
Seems like a strange title for a blog on our own website! A bit like you don’t have to be mad to work with us but it helps!! Oh and the image is decidedly for Movember!

I have recently returned from attending the ESOMAR qualitative conference in a rain washed Venice last week and I was struck by the fact that at global conferences like this we would expect to see clients and agencies standing side by side presenting great stories about the work they have done together and the insights generated and lessons learned. Don’t get me wrong, we definitely got that with some really good work shared by DBB; L’Oreal and Land Rover and it is genuinely inspiring and gut wrenching in equal measure to see great work done by other agencies.

Consumer research is certainly going through something of a revelation, if not quite a revolution according to delegates. We asked ourselves as an industry the same old questions about whether qualitative research is facing extinction in the face of online communities; mobile ethnography and the like and once again, agreed that it is just another iteration and channel for conducting the kind of work we have probably always done.
However more interesting was the debate around how we can bring about change of the kind we seem to be committed to promoting by being creative marketing people? This is where we really need clients who are brave and willing and able to commit budget and resource to try something different, something new which may not even work, but then again if it did, what new insights to behold? We talked about the way major corporations are now starting to allocate budget for consumer insight – 70% to market information and tracking; 20% to new ideas and 10% that is truly experimental research.

At The Buzzz all of our work is ‘ad hoc’ project based work. Every brief is different. Every client has a need unlike any other. Every project has a need for an innovative way to uncover the required truths – BUT not every client is willing to ‘risk’ trying something new, however sound the thinking or relevant the approach may be. So we are putting out a rallying call for clients to be brave and try something new in 2015; open up your minds to do one thing differently and work with us to realise a really great project – one that might just elevate the status of the insight team in your organisation and who knows might be a great paper to present at ESOMAR next year – Paris I believe is the venue for next year. See you there?