The Nursery Blog

Warming up

They always tell you in qual training that you must never skimp on the warm-up when you're moderating groups - however little you time you have.

Normally I'll spend around 20 minutes in warm-up chat and it's one of my favourite parts of the group. I get respondents to tell me a bit about themselves: home, family, job and then ask them a basic question about something they did recently, such as one thing they did at the weekend, or what they were doing this time yesterday.

It's great because you never know what you're going to hear next yes there's a lot of watching Coronation Street or cooking the supper but there's also 'in bed with their girlfriend' or 'smoking a joint'.

Last night however I had 1 hour groups and lots to cram in so I went straight to a conversation about advertising respondents had seen recently, which was a great way of priming them to talk about a new TV script and getting them chatting, but I found I missed hearing those insights about their lives, those little scraps of detail about husbands, wives, kids, home life, getting drunk, doing the ironing, watching Big Brother, online betting, falling asleep, leaving for the night shift. The groups went fine, but the respondents were names and opinions and nothing else. Efficient, but I missed some of the soul.

GQ Man

A couple of months ago I was a respondent in a qualitative survey of qualitative researchers that GQ conducted to find out what we all know about men. What a great methodology to interview us researchers over a slap up moderated dinner at Vogue House. It was also instructive being a respondent. I could do that more often.

This morning GQ launched their resulting ‘State of Man’ survey at the Soho Hotel.

 

It suggests a spectrum from determinists (traditionalists) to evolutionists (new man) which is not in itself rocket science but they had some nice observations about how this dynamic is central to the success of ‘Life on Mars’ and thoughts about the imagery that brands could use to attract each type. ‘Father handing on to son’ imagery works well for determinists but ‘successful relationship’ imagery works better for evolutionists.

This explained to me why I love the latest Patek Philippe ad. Their previous ads, associating the brand with material wealth, speeding around Lake Garda on a Riva might have rung bells for ‘determinists’ but they left me cold.  

 

I’m pretty sure I’m closer to the evolutionist end of the spectrum and I got goosepimples from this evocation of father and son being baffled by homework together.

 

 

It feels even more powerful when you come across it at 30,000 feet in High Life magazine just at the moment when you are feeling guilty for not spending more time at home. Just this subtle evolution in creative strategy almost made me want one of their watches. How superficial us modern men are.

   

The Romanians are coming

Spent two days in Bucharest this Spring training the Leo Burnett Planners.

What a smart, well read bunch they are. They study all the blogs, they read all the books and they ship in people to train them. Razvan saw me at the APG Battle of Big Thinking and invited me out there. I thought ;“great I’ll dust off some of my old talks and explain what planning is should be a breeze”. I then learned that Merry Baskin, Russell Davies and John Griffiths had all preceded me. Russell and John both commented on how wonderfully hungry to learn everyone had been. I know Faris Yacob has since been out there with Russell again and John is going back this summer. Have blog will travel.

So instead of basic level training it was very much a masterclass. It certainly keeps you on your toes. I started doing one exercise and they said “Oh yeah, this is in Jon Steel’s first book”. Scary! It was not far off the discussions when I teach on the IPA Diploma course.

All of which means Bucharest has the most highly trained planners in Eastern Europe - and possibly anywhere?

Their issue is that they are at Planning 2.0 while their clients, the Romanian economy is still very 1.0 I asked if a certain issue came up on their GM business but the answer was GM could sell more cars in Romania than it can currently import so they don’t need much advertising!

The trip also brought home to me the extent to which the plannersphere has made planning sexy. Everyone wants to be a planner nowadays. It seems to be the coolest job in Bucharest. I was interviewed twice for Web TV channels! Here I am with handy Romanian subtitles.

There are hundreds of young planners in emerging markets eager to do planning. I had a browse of the ‘Plannersphere on Facebook’ group and was fascinated by how far flung its members are. There ought to be a market for an offshore planning resource to help overstretched agencies tap into this inexpensive talent pool on a project by project basis. It’s bound to happen one day soon.

 

In the meantime if there is anyone out there looking for some planning support, get in touch with the excellent Razvan and see if he can help.

Is blogging killing things?

Went to the IPA sponsored 'Is Blogging killing Planning?' debate last night. I thought I ought to blog about it on our own blog.

 

Good debate but I was hoping for more blood on the walls. In the pre match exchanges it looked like the big divide was shaping up to be around different definitions of planning; how important data, rigour and facts are versus inspiration and creative ideas from wherever. I expected a Planning 2.0 reworking of Stephen King’s old Grand Strategists versus Ad Tweakers spectrum.

I was surprised but I guess pleased that both Johns seemed to agree on a definition of planning as rigorous analysis plus inspiration. John G who was billed as the champion of the 'who needs boring old data?' camp revealed that he’s been miscast in that role and has posted plenty of forensic analysis of Honda’s European sales figures.

So if everyone’s agreed that data is crucial then the question becomes; ‘why isn’t there more rigorous planning analysis being discussed on the plannersphere?’

I suspect the answer is twofold:

1. Client confidentiality. It’s clear in the original posts that John L is dying to dish the dirt on Dirt Is Good but he can’t reveal P&G’s proprietary data to do so. If planners posted actual discussion of stuff they were analysing and clients got to hear about it then they’d probably be in all kinds of trouble. Even discussing real time strategy without revealing any hard data can be extremely dangerous. There’s the cautionary tale of the planner who sent a breezy all agency memo inviting suggestions for a positioning for his mobile phone client and prizes for the best ideas. The memo was leaked to Campaign and the client got angry at being treated cavalierly. Meanwhile Charles Vallance and Rooney Caruthers saw the memo, developed a positioning, contacted the still sulking client, nicked the account and launched their agency on the back of this brand they called O2.

2. The second reason there isn’t more rigorous planning analysis of data on the plannersphere is perhaps because the market doesn’t want it.

How do planners use the blogosphere?

What’s the role of the medium?

In the absence of any rigorous research let’s make a working assumption that for most planners most of the time it’s displacement activity isn’t it? You’re working away on stuff, you hit the wall, need a break for a bit of outside stimulation and that’s when you surf your favourite blogs, looking to be diverted by some cool stuff. The plannersphere meets that need very effectively. I’m trying to remember what we did to distract ourselves before blogging and have realised that Blogging may or may not be killing Planning but it’s certainly killing Solitaire and Tetris.

Find me more virgins

Wow- i had some virgin respondents in my groups last night. A rare occurrence these days. Loved it, although it really does remind you of the basics of moderating. Initially i struggled with 'dave' - like a kid in a candy store, so overwhelmed by the opportunity to air his views that he couldn't be quiet for a moment. A tricky one to manage - you obviously want to hear everyone's views, but at the same time, you don't want to dampen that enthusiasm. And then there was 'Sarah' - so shy initially and yet clearly yearning to say something. It took a while to for her to come out of herself, but once she got into it, she couldn't stop beaming. They were all so full of gratitude at the end - clearly chuffed simply to have been part of a group experience, and also to feel that their views might really matter to the marketing world.

It was their lack of cynicsm and honesty when responding to the ad ideas which was most striking. Makes you wonder whether 'consumer cynicsim', which is taken as read these days, is actually more about those focus group junkies giving average consumers a bad name

 

Malaysian Photos

4 days in Malaysia

I recently spent 4 days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia watching groups for one of our international clients.  Apart from discovering that jet lag truly does exist these are some other things that surprised me:
-          The heart of KL is probably one of the most westernised, developed cities I’ve been to, yet it’s 60% Muslim.  Something very few articles seem to mention when arguing the ‘incompatibility of Islam and The West’
-          Although saying that, stereotypes seem to hold fast the world over: A group of Chinese Malays asked what type of person would represent an English brand described “a definite gentleman, suave and sophisticated…a very polite man with manners, wouldn’t upset anyone,  someone like James Bond….. or Tony Blair”!
-          To Chinese ears Moby is “just a loud noise” “too fast” and “not at all harmonious”.
-          The Malaysian obsession with industrial development and modernisation (even the Malaysian bank notes have planes, trains and skyscrapers drawn on them) comes without any regard for the environment.  It made me wonder whether cycling to work and recycling a few empty wine bottles can really make a difference when developing nations are polluting the atmosphere more than any of us in the developed world can offset.
-          I was there during Ramadan and noticed that lots of brands try and jump on the ‘seasonal’ bandwagon like they do over here during Christmas.  I think I even read somewhere that the advertising revenue during Ramadan is as much as the rest of the year combined! For example, Pizza Hut sponsor the time the sun sets each day in the local paper – breaking the fast with a Chicken Supreme with extra cheese – my kind of country!

Kids talk

Last night I was researching ads with kids, something that I know a lot of moderators dread. And indeed there can be nothing worse than 6 naughty 9 year olds on a sugar rush.

But in lots of ways they're great, and they're really good for advertising development, although it does helps that all the sectors advertised to kids,  like food, toys, TV channels, are things they're really into. There is no equivalent to household insurance for them!

The brilliant thing with kids in groups is that it is immediately clear what they like and what they don't like and if they like something in an idea they've been shown they immediately come up with lots of other ideas that build on it ('it would be good if they could do that, and then he could do this and then that would be really funny' and before you know it you have a fully fledged campaign that could run and run.

As a result they spend much less time moaning about what they don't like, instead if they're shown an idea that doesn't engage they simply take the brand or the character and come up with something they would like.

It's all great fun and the other good thing about kids' groups is that you don't have to work late!

Last night when doing groups in London I was struck by how many non-TV ads respondents were recalling. Usually when we ask people about ads they recall, they can only come up with TV ads. This lot was an Inner London type sample, upmarket, sophisticated, cosmopolitan. They mentioned tube campaigns (Dove, Jack Daniels), radio, even print.

This is definitely part of a trend, I'm finding respondents are clearly not watching as much TV (4/5 years back they used to say they never watched TV and then proceeded to talk about all the ads / TV programmes they had seen and thus disprove their point). The ads of course might be less easy to recall.....And I do think it's different for different types of consumer.

When they talked about ads all the usual faves were mentioned: Citroen robot, 118 118, Halifax, Guinness, Honda. One girl even mentioned watching the Honda Ads channel on Home Choice. She was a bit embarrassed about it.................