Market Research Deathwatch

Searching for Black Swans

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:25:00 +0000

I love this quote from Vinod Khosla, speaking about why he only invests in technologies that have a 90% chance of failure.

I never compute returns. If you start forecasting cash flows, you lose innovation, you lose instinct. You leverage yourself down to mediocrity.

Are you betting on black swans? If not, how are you going to find them?

An open letter to Internet users

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 15:54:00 +0000

A war for control of the Internet is under way. Governments & corporations want to lock it down and extort you for accessing things that are currently free (or very cheap). The way to stop this is simple: YOU need to understand what's at stake and say NO! Tell your government they can't censor it! Tell your ISP they can't turn it into a toll road! Tell the website and app makers that your data is not for sale and walled gardens are not cool! Tell media producers to shove their antiquated notions about distribution and copyright up their asses! These organizations serve you, not the other way around. Read more...

Panels have an image problem

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 01:39:00 +0000

Why does almost every survey panel use the exact same banner image? It's so kitsch, so camp, so cliché -- it's insulting. How could any reasonable person conclude this is a good idea?

It's just bad, bad, lazy web design. If your website or survey pages have this crap on them, fire the manager in charge and hand the reigns over to the youngest creative person you have.

Seriously, this screams "I'm not even trying!" It's shag carpet for your website.

Big Data is a big opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Alastair Croll's Mashable post on Big Data ends on a note market researchers should find exciting:

The important question isn’t who owns the data. Ultimately, we all do. A better question is, who owns the means of analysis? Because that’s how, as [Stewart] Brand suggests, you get the right information in the right place. The digital divide isn’t about who owns data — it’s about who can put that data to work.

Everyone is jumping on the Big Data bandwagon... everyone except market researchers. I hear the odd whisper, but overall MR's response has been lukewarm at best. Why? This might be the best thing to come along for MR since the question mark; embrace it with open arms.

What's wrong with this picture?

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:51:00 +0000

Here is what you get when you paste the results of a Google search for 'survey panel' or 'take surveys' into Wordle:

Draw your own conclusions.

Renovation ≠ Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:24:00 +0000

...both are important, but they are not the same thing.

It will be a long, long time before we can retire the current MR fleet, so a fresh coat of paint and more comfortable seats are both needed and welcome, but painting a racing stripe down the middle of our WWII-era DC-3 won't make it fly five times faster on solar energy.

Much (most?) of what passes for innovation in our industry these days is renovation posing as something more. This innofaking is creating a false belief that all we need is a light cosmetic update and thus distracting from the fundamental changes needed to move MR forward.

Be wary of anyone claiming to be an innovator. If their plan boils down to letting participants play with social features but relies on points or other rewards to attract users, they are renovating. If they tell you they are building an online community whose primary purpose is to take surveys, they are renovating. The less disruptive their idea is, the more likely it is they are renovating.

Let them renovate, appreciate the work they are doing, but don't be fooled into thinking they are solving the problem of gathering quantitative data in a world increasingly resistant to taking surveys.

Natural selection

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:37:00 +0000

I was amused by Tamara Barber's Big Idea (spoiler alert: she announced the death of MR). I was even more amused by the conversation in the comments. It struck me that I was witnessing natural selection at work.

You can still purchase music on vinyl, but in practical terms the format is dead. Surveys and focus groups will live long into the distant future, but they will be used MUCH MUCH MUCH more sparingly. Most of what we think of as MR today will be replaced by technology: a data feed and data visualization with a layer of smart viewer apps on top, to be used by client-side analysts.

(Not) sorry to say this folks, but those on the supplier side of MR are switchboard operators, unable to imagine any other way of connecting calls. A few will survive to fill niches and service the evaporating puddle of clients tied to the old school by inertia... most will have to adapt or find a different line of work.

The opportunity is immense. The Web contains mountains of data, too vast to describe, waiting for tools that can distill it into meaningful (i.e. actionable) insights and simple visualizations. Academics and traditional tech companies are already making good progress with extracting MR-like information from social and search data. There are still many dots to be connected; those who get into the game now have a chance to grab a piece of the pie. Those who invent the market insight technology of tomorrow will also have an opportunity to capitalize on their thought leadership through professional services (think IBM).

The irony is that we view technology as a subservient commodity, but the next wave of web technology will turn us into a commodity. Some will profit from the change, most will not.

To survive we need to become technology companies, yet what I hear over and over from the MR C-suite is "we are not a technology company." Keep thinking like that and soon you won't be a company, period.

Participation is not engagement

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:27:00 +0000

I love this incredibly pithy post by Simon Mainwaring. His social media commandments for brands are spot on:

Participation is not engagement. Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community...

1. Stop treating your friends and fans as customers and re-frame them as human beings looking for a decent relationship and meaning in their lives.

2. Accept the fact that people don’t owe your brand any loyalty or deference simply because you’re a household name. Trust has to be re-earned and maintained.

3. Take the time to listen to what your community (and the community of your competitors) are saying. More often than not, when they ask you a question they are really telling you something.

4. Slow down and take the long view. As we all know, lasting relationships can’t be rushed .

5. Tell us a little about yourself. Not what your brand makes, but what you care about and how they affects what you make. People buy the ‘Why’ before the ‘What.’

6. Embrace your inner amateur. You may have been a market leader in your category before but those days are over. And they’re unlikely to return as technology changes too quickly.

7. Be grateful (rather than annoyed) that these social platforms, tools and technology exist and that they can drive your business further and faster at lower cost than ever before.

8. When something works for you or another brand, ask yourself why? Then don’t copy it but think about what you can do that’s unique to you and better.

9. Find the human in the technology. The currency marketers trade in has not changed even if the methods have. Emotion is what we exchange.

10. Mean it. If the growing demand for transparency, authenticity and accountability has only made your brand more guarded, cynical and duplicitous, walk away from social media. The same dynamics that can fuel your success can destroy your brand image and customer base just as quickly.

Amen! It can't be said any better than that.

Where's the beef?

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:09:00 +0000

In my last post I wrote about the need to come up with a better value proposition for MR participants. We are not the only ones facing this problem. Check out this TechCrunch piece on how location-based services are struggling with the same thing...

...they’re not giving us any good reason to use them. Look at their web sites. Gowalla proclaims, “Discover the extraordinary in the world around you.” Foursquare says, “Unlock your city.” To which I say: “Oh, come on“ — and it seems I speak for approximately 96% (formerly 95%) of the population. I have no interest in enlisting in a virtual scavenger hunt, or unlocking merit badges — what is this, the Cub Scouts? ...If they want to reach the majority who don’t care about making it to Mayor, they need to abandon their pretense of fun, stop pussyfooting around with silly slogans, and make their value proposition stark, simple, and profoundly unsexy: “Check in and get coupons.”

And we can't talk about value propositions without a shout-out to one of the best there ever was.

Movin' on up

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 10:11:00 +0000

If you don't know you're living in the ghetto, how can you ever hope to get out?

That is a question you should be asking yourself right now because MR is ghetto as it gets on the Internet. We're living next door to sharks pushing payday loans and just a few blocks from fake Canadian pharmacies selling discounted boner pills and Nigerian spammers who want to make lucky Westerners rich.

There are two kinds of for-profit websites: 1) sites that provide a valuable service and monetize their traffic through advertising, e-commerce or subscription fees, and 2) sites that hustle, scam, or otherwise exploit naive web users by luring them in with promises of cash, prizes, porn, or other rewards. We are in the second group.

This is why only 1% of the online population will take a survey. This is why we can't get deep access to social data. We stampede the online trailer park over to our websites by announcing free BBQ and beer, hoping that once they realize they've been duped a few will still take our survey, join our panel, or register for our community... please, can someone explain to me how we concluded this was a good idea? The tragedy is we made it work; badly, but well enough to convince our management and clients that everything is copacetic.

We were already a large and mature industry when the lure of cheaper-faster-more brought us to the Internet. Driven by a heady mix of profits and inertia we jumped for joy as suppliers lined up around the block to sell us potential respondents for fractions of a penny a piece. Instead of adapting to our new environment we restricted ourselves to the sliver of the Internet that was willing to work on our terms, then we focused our brightest minds on defending the validity of the data.

The online research respondent universe is 98% online hobos, 1% hackers trying to game our reward systems, and 1% survey geeks. None of us can admit this publicly, but deep down we all know it's true.

Some of these problems are solved by social listening in all its various forms and names, but a new problem emerges: we are restricted to public data and thus know little or nothing about the people we are listening to. We are grasping at farts in a football stadium.

The time has come to admit that online MR is a pig and no amount of Flash, HTML5, or social media lipstick is going to fly this piggy to an East Side de-luxe apartment in the sky. I'm not saying we don't need better technology, we do, but updating our web tech is just the first step in a thousand mile journey and we would be foolish to think animated survey pages or licensing a social platform even begins to address the real problem...

Participants get no value out of online MR. None. Zilch. Cash is the wrong currency when you want someone to give you their honest opinion or access to their personal data. There is no good reason any normal person (test this by asking 5 of your family members) would take the time to complete a 10 minute questionnaire, let along a much longer one. We can make surveys a little more palatable by making them prettier, shorter, mobile, social and more relevant... but until we deliver some sort of real value to participants we are confined to the shrinking puddle of web rubes and survey geeks. Given the demand to move more research online, the 1%-spray-and-pray approach will not be a viable option for much longer.

A winning strategy for online MR must be supported by three pillars.

Great technology
Delivering genuine value to participants
Fostering participant trust by cultivating meaningful relationships

It is only by delivering value and establishing user trust that we can hope to access real people and their data for research purposes. Think Google. Think Facebook. Think LinkedIn. Think Hunch. These companies have vast amounts of detailed user data and enough credibility to command their users' attention. Even when privacy concerns come up it blows over quickly and very few users leave because they want and need what they get from these sites. That's the model we need to emulate... or partner with.

Too Many Cooks

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 04:12:00 +0000

...they're everywhere you turn. Endlessly they push and claw to get at the pot.

Each claims they alone know the recipe; none of them prepared to serve a plate and stand behind the finished product.

The research director thinks it needs more salt. The panel people are having second thoughts about the dark roux. IT is warning that the whole kitchen will go up in flames if you don't lower the heat.

The truth is most of the people stirring the next-gen-social-media-research-3.0 stew don't have a fucking clue about cooking. They are in the kitchen because the kitchen is where the action is, and they need a piece of the action to stay relevant and get ahead. Some are talking fast and praying no one calls their bluff; others fly under the radar hoping to hitch a ride on the coattails of success. Collectively they're doing a lot of talking--not much else, and stifling the company's chances of cooking up something good.

You don't need twenty executive chefs to run a kitchen. You need one boss, and a team of doers who can execute with speed and consistency. If you're lucky enough to have one or two innovators on the team give them the freedom to try new things, but once the menu is set and the dinner rush starts it's time for everyone to roll up their sleeves, shut their mouth, and serve up dish after delicious dish of the daily special.

The client is going to walk out if something tasty doesn't arrive on the table soon.

Choices

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:55:00 +0000

FAIL	WIN
Launch every feature	Keep it simple and focused
Over-analyze every decision	Launch and learn
Put money before people	Solve a problem
Try to be cool	Be human
Compromise	Fight for what's right

A penny for your thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:33:00 +0000

Tan Le's wireless neuro headset is cheap, easy to use, and doesn't look like a torture device. Her company (Emotiv) also claims to have developed software that can 'unfold' cortical differences between individuals, vastly improving the accuracy of signal source mapping. We're talking about a commodity priced neuro interface that plugs into your USB port. EEG meets wireless mouse.

An optimist would look at this and say the golden age of neuro research is nigh. Not so fast. Someone still needs to develop software that can reliably translate EEG signals into research results; that kind of development requires ubernerds and we don't have any... but market forces will eventually birth a competent, if uninspired, solution. Then we will have to convince ordinary people to let us read their minds; that's where we will fail. Why? Because we won't put any effort into creating a positive and meaningful experience for participants.

All models are wrong...

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:36:00 +0000

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

--George E. P. Box

Think small

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:24:00 +0000

I stole this from Rory Sutherland's TED talk about simple solutions for big problems.

It's a great illustration of the gaping hole in our approach to problem solving . We've so completely dismissed the idea that simple & cheap solutions exist, we don't even have a name for it. Conventional wisdom says big problems require big and expensive solutions. Conventional wisdom is preventing us from seeing the low hanging fruit.

What do you call that bottom-right quadrant? How do you ensure simple solutions aren't blocked by big-budget blindness?

You Killed Market Research

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sat, 08 May 2010 04:01:00 +0000

You killed market research when you didn't stand up to your client's self-destructive demands.

You killed market research when you promoted your friend instead of the best person for the job.

You killed market research when you treated respondents like lab rats.

You killed market research when you mistook information for understanding.

You killed market research when you confused profit with success.

You killed market research when you defended the status quo.

You killed market research when you abandoned common sense for self-preservation.

You killed market research when you didn't accept inconvenient truths.

You killed market research when you sought safety in the herd.

You killed market research when you allowed the voice above you to drown out the voice inside you.

Monkey Business

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:49:00 +0000

When Monkey Exhibit Inc. opened, way back a long time ago, there were three monkeys in the cage.

One day the zoo keeper suspended a large bunch of bananas on a string from the roof of the cage and placed a ladder underneath. Immediately the boldest of the monkeys made a bee line for the bananas. As soon as he stepped foot on the ladder the zoo keeper blasted all three monkeys with ice cold water from the fire hose. The monkeys cowered together in a corner, cold and wet, pondering their misfortune.

But monkeys are quick to forget, and pretty soon one of the other monkeys approached the ladder. Cautiously at first, she walked over to the spot and looked up at the sweet golden bouquet. Slowly, she placed her foot on the ladder's first rung, and after a nervous pause she grinned at the thought of the treat waiting for her at the top. At that moment the zoo keeper once again doused the entire troop with cold water.

The next morning, thinking himself wiser than the others, the third monkey waited until the zoo keeper was out of sight then quickly dashed up the ladder. But the zoo keeper was waiting in ambush and before he got half way up the ladder, the would-be banana thief and his companions were soaked and shivering for the third time in two days.

After this the monkeys ignored the bananas. Every couple of days the zoo keeper would replenish their sweet smelling chandelier with a fresh bunch of perfectly ripe bananas, but the monkeys barely noticed. They shivered at the mere sight of the ladder.

The following week the zoo keeper transfered one of the monkeys to another exhibit and replaced him with a new monkey. The new monkey could hardly believe her luck when she spotted the bananas and saw that nobody else was interested in them. She started to climb the ladder but was immediately pulled down by the other two and beaten into submission. She quickly learned that the bananas were more trouble than they were worth.

As the weeks turned into months they brought with them more personnel changes at Monkey Exhibit Inc. The oldest of the original monkeys died and was replaced with a new recruit from a different zoo. The zoo keeper got sick and was forced into early retirement. The troop grew; first to five, then seven strong. Each new arrival tried to climb the ladder and every attempt was violently corrected by the others. Eventually none of the original monkeys remained. None of the monkeys in the troop had ever been hosed for trying to take a banana, but they didn't dare attempt it for fear of being pummeled by the others. They didn't know why it was like that. It had always been that way.

Many years passed. One day a young monkey joined the troop. To everyone's surprise she completely ignored the bananas. Instead, she laid low and observed the others. She gradually made friends, first with the lowest ranking monkeys, and eventually with the troop leaders. She listened to their stories and learned about curse of the forbidden bananas. She spoke to the other monkeys privately, away from the prying ears of the others. She convinced each of her friends that she knew how to get the bananas down without anyone being hurt, and she promised to share the bounty with them.

When she had secured the trust of all the others, our monkey heroine stepped up to the ladder. The rest of the troop sat and watched in silence. She ascended the ladder slowly, with purpose and quiet confidence. No one moved. She plucked the bananas from their perch and brought them down to the ground. Nothing happened. She walked around the cage and rewarded each of her friends with a sweet, ripe banana, then she sat down to enjoy her prize.

Faux News

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:49:00 +0000

Just saw this on the FoxNews.com front page.

And the results... *DRUMROLL*

... fair & balanced--not so much, but at least it adds up to 100% this time.

Tip of the Hat: Jan Hofmeyr

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:49:00 +0000

From Jan's recent Research Magazine interview.

Our industry is one of the most conservative you will come across. Look at IT - look how keen they are to throw out the old and adopt the new. Medical doctors will go to professional conferences in order to learn up until the week before they retire. We don’t do that. We go to professional conferences to get drunk and find out what the competitors are doing. A constant refrain in our businesses is, ‘That’s too complicated.’ Do you ever hear an engineer saying, ‘That’s too complicated, I’m not going to build it’? Or an accountant saying, ‘That spreadsheet’s too complicated, do it again’? You don’t.

... People love the idea of innovation but they hate the reality of it...

I think there’s a tremendous amount of laziness in our industry - people don’t want their lives to be made complicated.

Well said. I couldn't agree more.

Lockerz.com is about to kick your @$$, one question at a time.

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:38:00 +0000

This ain't your grandma's social network. And guess what? It's a market research site.

In their own wordz:

Lockerz is the place to go to buy the coolest stuff at the lowest prices, watch exclusive video, discover new music, play the hottest games, hang out with your friends - and get rewarded for just about EVERYTHING you do on the site.

Our mission is to be your daily habit, not a site for your parents or grandparents looking for their long-lost friends from Kindergarten.

All they ask in return is that you answer their daily question. Just one per day. Only on the days when you feel like it.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future of market research via online communities. There is still plenty of time for Lockerz to screw the pooch if they execute poorly, but my gut tells me the model is a winner. Here are some examples of what they're doing right:

The days of social networks for the sake of social interaction are over. Anyone who wants to manage their social life online is doing it with Facebook. If you want to attract people to your community you better be ready to kick it up a notch. Deals on hot clothes and electronics, premium video content, free games and music are a good start.
One size does not fit all. Know who your users are, know what they care about, know how they speak. Speak to them about the things they care about, in their own language. Don't fake it.
Market research on a website has the same appeal as learning about sex from your parents did. So don't make the site about research. Make it about something your users like and care about. Give them something they value and hide the research as much as you can.
An average 20-something web user's capacity for market research is one question long ... so make your research one question long.
One question is plenty. Combine one question a day with a rich user profile and all the other data you passively collected as the user shops, consumes media, and interacts with other users on your site ... suddenly the possibilities are endless.

These are all things the MR industry will eventually figure out ... probably right around the time we enter the 14th b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar. This is what it will take to get access to the people who won't take your surveys. Why not do it now while everyone else is still scratching their heads?

Lockerz is led by Kathy Savitt. Her previous gig was CMO @ American Eagle, and before that she was a VP @ Amazon.

Lockerz is owned by Liberty Media. That's right y'all! The people who filmed The Men Who Stare at Goats, owners of the Atlanta Braves, the saviors of satellite radio... are building a market research website.

The question I'm stuck on is why? What's the engame? Is this a private research community for Liberty's companies? Are they going to sell data? I don't know.

So maybe it's too early to say Lockerz is going to kick you ass. There's no question they can if they want to.

Don't wait for them to make up their mind. Learn from their example and get to work on something of your own that will be cool enough to compete.

[later] Bonus points for humor. From the section of their Terms of Use that deals with cheating the PTZ system and hacking their infrastructure: "Remember, pigs get fat - hogs get slaughtered."

Hamburg

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Before they tasted success the Beatles spent two miserable years in Hamburg. They played in seedy clubs in the worst part of town. They played day and night, seven days a week. They slept in a store room next to the toilets, and quite often their performances matched their accommodations.

They spent countless hours on the stage, often playing to a virtually empty room. But they were free to experiment and there was no pressure to be good. As long as they were loud and they finished their sets the club owner was happy. As a consequence of playing so much, their playing improved. Over time they mastered their instruments, they learned to play together, they learned to improvise, they learned to play many different songs in many different styles.

By the time they left Hamburg in 1962 the Beatles were transformed. They had a new look, a new attitude, and a new sound. Within months they had their first big hit with "Please Please Me" ... the rest is history. Failure and hardship prepared them for success.

Every success story includes a stop in Hamburg. Malcolm Gladwell claims that almost anyone can succeed with a bit of luck and 10,000 hours of hard work. Seth Godin says the number of hours is not important; you just have to do whatever it takes to become the best in the world at what you do. Both are right. The bottom line is potential + effort = success. Most people have enough potential to achieve great things; very few put in the effort required to cultivate that potential into achievement.

I see plenty of potential for our industry to succeed online, but we're not allowing our people the time or freedom to cultivate that potential. There is no shortage of able people ready to roll up their sleeves and move the industry forward, but they are met with resistance every step of the way. Our best people get frustrated by the closed minds at the top and leave. [later: it's worth noting there are also plenty of closed minds in the middle and bottom of the MR layer cake] The experimenters are labeled heretics by those with a vested interest in the status quo. The MR dinosaurs can see the comet hurtling toward them, but they refuse to evolve while the money is still flowing into their pockets.

Evolution is natural. It's going to happen whether we like it or not. It's simply a question of when and where. Either we open ourselves to it and let it happen within our industry, or we continue to resist it until it takes root somewhere else and displaces us.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? We all need to spend some time in Hamburg.

Phishy, phishy, phishy phish!

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:27:00 +0000

Phish: an Internet scam designed to trick the recipient into revealing credit card, passwords, social security numbers and other personal information to individuals who intend to use them for fraudulent purposes. The scam is known as "phishing" and the communications appear as if they come from reputable companies. The e-mails often instruct the recipient to verify or update account information by requesting a reply to his e-mail with updated information, or by providing the recipient with a link to a website where the new information may be entered.

Big brands, especially financial institutions, are the main targets of phishing scams so they tell their customers to be suspicious of any email messages that claim to be from them but don't quite look right.

Now think about the way we survey our clients' customer lists.

To make the example more concrete, let's pretend we've been hired to do an online customer satisfaction survey for a major bank. We email survey invitations to the bank customers. The messages claim to be from the bank, but the sender is either a forgery of the Bank's email address, or some completely strange address belonging to a market research company the Bank customer has probably never heard of. On top of this, the email asks the bank customer to follow a link that is clearly not taking them to their Bank's website, and provide information. It smells phishy, and it's one more good reason for the recipient of our survey invites to ignore them, trash them, or report them as abusive.

Survey invitations often wave several of the red flags web users associate with spam and phishing scams. This hurts participation rates and leads to blacklisting of our email.

There is a simple, no-cost solution to this problem: sub-domain delegation ... but that's another post for another day.

Top Heavy

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:56:00 +0000

Is your organization top-heavy?

Think that might have something to do with why there is so much talk and so little action?

Submariners in Space

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:44:00 +0000

Our online efforts are not going very well.

Hmm... Let's brainstorm about things we can do to remedy the situation. Better yet, let's appoint a committee to develop a strategy that will get us out of this mess. Fantastic idea! Let's give the whole management team a bonus!

[several weeks go by...]

The committee's report is in: 1) tap into social media, 2) buy or hire a smaller company that knows how to mine the blogosphere ... whatever that means, 3) modernize our websites, 4) make surveys shorter and jazz them up with the latest and greatest interactive gadgets and widgets, 5) do something--do anything--with online communities... just make sure our clients know we do online communities

[lots of time and money is spent...]

Shit! We haven't made any progress. In fact, no one in this company has the slightest fucking clue about how to do any of these things. Oh well, let's just forget about it. The sky has been falling for years and it hasn't crushed us yet. We'll just wait for someone else to figure it out and copy/buy their solution.

Does this sound at all familiar?

Everyone wants to talk about transforming market research, but when it's time to turn words into actions we fall flat on our faces.

Why?

Because we still aren't prepared to do what needs to be done. Because we have the wrong people doing the wrong jobs, using the wrong tools. Because no matter how many times you fill a submarine with submariners, strap it to a rocket and shoot it into space, those people will not magically become astronauts and the submarine will not achieve a stable orbit or return safely to earth at the end of its mission.

If you want to drill through the brick wall that's keeping you on the wrong side of online success I suggest you get yourself some good drills, masonry bits, and professionals who know how to use those tools. Otherwise, you're welcome to keep beating your head against the wall. You might get through it, but odds are your head will crack long before you make a dent.

Remember Remember the Fifth of November

noreply@blogger.com (mr heretic) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:01:00 +0000

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent

To blow up the King and Parli'ment.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England's overthrow;

By God's providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

And what should we do with him? Burn him!