————————————————————————————————————
GARTNER SURVEY

As part of a consulting engagement to understand consumer preferences around mobile PCs (laptop, notebook, netbook); we have launched a web survey across several countries.

In addition, we are inviting Gartner Associates’, their families and their friends to participate in the survey.

————————————————————————————————————-

The survey can be found at: http://www.ciwweb.com/~mobilepc/logologn.htm

As a follower of research firms and as one ourselves it struck us as odd that a respected brand and leader in its space would offer up a survey to its alumni network. And for research for a paid consulting engagement? By doing this (planned or unplanned) they made the survey open to anyone on the open web, opening their response pool to virtually anyone. The approach not only introduces bias into the study because of the group chosen, it also mars how any client could potentially feel about how research is done on their behalf, especially with a firm whose tagline on their website reads “world class research and insights to meet your needs.”  In a world where anyone is an analyst or a consultant – this consultant now being armed with SurveyMonkey and an open website and his social network does his client and the Gartner brand a disservice. Given that Gartner is faced with a lawsuit about its research and client ethics practices, it’s especially poor timing.  And they still don’t appear to have a published ethics and integrity policy on their site or one easily findable, something we’ve advocated for years.
Says one member of the Outsell team – “this reminds me of an old market research story from one of my professors at Babson who was discussing sampling and questionnaire wording . Back when Ford was designing the Edsel they sent a bunch of researchers to ask simple questions, one simple framing one was to describe the kind of car you think your brother-in-law would like.” Turns out Edsel bombed and people didn’t think highly of their brother-in-laws.

Gartner is too good for this and it’s a research moment gone awry.  Let’s hope Gartner’s friends and family like the company sponsoring this research and have good views about mobile PCs.  I think I’ll ask the extended-Stratigos clan to answer our next news-user study too.

Share & Save

Last week I realized that tonnage was on the rise again and it increasingly is the only thing Uncle Sam is delivering these days. Our bills have gone paperless. People are emailing a lot more than sending
cards and letters and while many like their magazines they are increasingly being read online OR associated w/ environmental disaster and carbon footprint and people are cutting back on those too.

Which means that increasingly all that’s left is junk. And increasingly publishers who send magazines in print and direct mail in print are going to be associated with junk. In marketing they call this ‘brand association’ and increasingly it’s not a good thing for publishers to be associated with junk mail and the detritrus filling our mail boxes.

Case in point. Last Tuesday here’s what we received: one survey from the Republican Party with lots of questions clearly slanted to the right followed by a donation request, a solicitation from the Sierra Club and
local police officers association, a credit card promotion from Delta Airlines Skymiles program in partnership with American Express, a promotion for Invisalign dental products, coupons for Costco, and one
request to participate in a class action lawsuit (that turned out wasn’t relevant to us.)  This does not make for a happy mailbox or home owner who proceeded to send this all to the recycle bin.  Having magazines arrive in
this heap is, I’m afraid to say, increasingly a brand experience nightmare, waiting to happen.

Share & Save

Right up front they target people interested in experiential travel, those who go to new places to “connect you with the authentic essence of the place and its people, deepening your understanding of the world, its cultures, and yourself.” Their founders’ note talks about the spirit of this type of travel and the people who don’t want to “acquire places” but fold into the fabric of them. No more glitzy resorts, fab fountains in flagstone trimmed pools, and candelabras and gilded lobbies in tropical surroundings or golf-course-covered deserts.

They are targeting a psychographic and the advertisers might have a tough time grasping the concept but pick up a copy of the magazine and you’ll realize this is no Travel & Leisure. Their mission statement pretty much encapsulates the spirit of the publication and brings the “MINI lesson” of my earlier post closer to home in publishing. Michela O’Connor Abrams, President & Publisher of Dwell chairs their board of advisors and you can see the Dwell influence in the publication. It is well targeted, well designed and narrow and nichey…the kinds of things that aren’t for everyone but will bring a certain audience and marketer together to everyone’s content.

Self-funded, we’ll be watching and waiting to see how the property does in this environment and no matter what the outcome, there are great lessons for any publisher, starting w/ our mantra, no guts, no glory and marketing experiences and feelings around your content.

Share & Save

Their brochures were fun. And guess what. They’re brochures were ‘mini.’ They were multi-fold that you could open and close like an accordion and no bigger than about 4 inches x 4 inches. The MINI Cooper had a mini brochure! And its difference made it fun. Notice the operative word? Fun. Notice the consistency. Their brochure wasn’t standard size. That would have been incongruent with their brand image. No one would have noticed, maybe, but the fact that the brochure was small made sure you knew MINI was mini and mini is fun. You know the car is safe, you know it drives. It’s a car for heavens sake so they spent no time on that and more time on their brand image and promise, making sure their brand image (what it stood for) was being consistently reinforced and making sure that the experience of all things ‘MINI’ are congruent and fun. There’s that word again.

Memo to information providers and publishers. Make your product, your company, your team, and the way you interact with your marketplace stand for something. Conjure up images that are positive. Make the experiences real. Be relentless in being consistent and dare to be ‘real’ and dare I say, fun!

Share & Save

Rule of thumb 1 -Don’t upset a core market when trying to target a new  one. It’s not smart.

Rule of thumb 2 – Make sure products are properly differentiated.

Rule of thumb 3 – Librarians have certain wants and needs with their use of legal information. Market to them about those applications and the benefits to them.

Rule of thumb 4 – If librarians are not just using legal info but also provisioning it for direct use by users, talk about those products benefits.

Rule of thumb 5 – Market to users about the products designed for them and  focus on their wants and needs. Dissing librarians to accomplish this goal is bad form and counter-productive.  (See Rule of Thumb 1.)

And golden rule of thumb 6 – Treat customers like you’d want to be treated.

There’s gold in golden rules.

Share & Save

There’s another critical point here besides market education and proving the value of highly tailored audiences and Ed Dunn in a response to Spanfeller sums it up best…the whole notion of advertising is becoming antiquated as social networks, bloggers and conversations on the web create more immediacy for awareness, referrals and lead generation. In going where the money’s going, publishers can’t ignore the social movement, especially while commoditizing themselves using ad networks that in many cases can clearly hurt more than help.

Share & Save