Getting your facts straight

 

I'm not sure when the obsession with "fact-based" and "data-driven" insights began, but I do know that often enough, chasing after spurious "facts" and/or data to support whatever argument you want to make takes more time than carefully constructing your knock-their-socks-off strategy. 

Let me take a good insight - Guns don't kill people, people do

Now, who in their right mind would demand to see the data or facts supporting that? The whole thing about insight is that when it's good, it's like an a-ha, a Eureka, a leap of faith, a revelation, the obvious that you'd never really thought about that way. Your mind has done a flip from rational, step-by-step logical thinking into a more holistic way of seeing the world.

I must admit it can be tiresome to be continually asked to back everything up with facts, or data. I'm a one woman show, and if clients think it's best use of my time scouring the internet for random information that may appear relevant to the case, but on closer inspection isn't, then so be it.

For my own part, I'd offer the following advice:

What are your reasons for demanding facts and data, and are they good, or is it about ticking the "selling it in to management" boxes?

Have a look at some of the facts and data you're presented with. Do you see a % sign, an asterisk and a source and think good-o, time to move on?

Only too often, I see "facts" presented along the lines of "32% of people believe that ...."

When looking at numbers and percentages, I always ask myself whether those numbers and percentages represent people directly, or not. If not, they may well represent something like € or £ , which likely means that they are less open to interpretation.

But if the percentage represents people, you really do need to find out at least which people, when and where, to judge whether the data is relevant to your case. And best to delve into what (was meant when the word "brand" was used in the survey, for example) and why the survey was done, while you're there.

For example, you may find that those numbers regarding propensity to switch brands during the pandemic were only referring to brands of toilet paper, not brands in general.

Or that the survey of young people's attitudes to social media privacy was carried out in 2015.

Or that the sample asked about brand activism consisted only of college students from the USA, who'd volunteered to take part in a survey on the topic.

It's far more dangerous to argue from the particular to the general than it is to admit to not having 100% relevant hard data to support a particular point.

That, by the way, is my view. Not a fact. 

Scale of economies

 I never studied Economics, which probably accounts for a lot - it's something I've sort of muddled through and picked up as I've gone along. We touched on socialism and capitalism as systems for how production, distribution and consumption work at school, in History, and since then I've become aware of the various variants on and hybrids of these basic models. Overall, how resources are managed and value, in terms of goods, services and quality of life is produced.

Throughout my working life, various expressions including the word "economy" have come in and out of vogue. When I started work, in the 1980s, there was a lot of talk about how we were moving from a production economy to a service economy, and as we moved into the 1990s, chatter about the information economy and the attention economy was all the rage. There's still plenty of chit-chat about the latter.

Moving on to the next millennium and, in the wake of advertising agencies re-inventing themselves, up popped the ideas economy and the experience economy. Whether "economy" was exactly the right word for these concepts, or whether "current obsession" might have been more honest, is debatable. 

In the last few years, I've been aware of the ideas of the circular economy (sensible), the gig economy (euphemism) and the purpose economy (hmmm).

What's interesting is that many of these ideas are still circulating, and I think it's yet another example of less neat and tidy "from - to" and more cumulative, with everything piling on top of each other.

My prediction for this year is for two more economies to join the merry band. There's the wellness economy for starters. I thought we'd done and dusted wellness fifteen years ago, but it's back with a Covid-propelled vengeance, fanned by the flutterings of self-care, it seems. 

And the other rising star is the identity economy (I can hear the groans from here). There's all sorts of self-improvement and personal growth gubbins attached to this one - "brand me", "being the best version of yourself" (I've often wondered - in whose eyes?), "authentic self-discovery" and "life as an identity project."

But maybe the part brands can play in the super shiny identity economy is not so new. If it's all about the question "who can X brand help me to become?",  then my thoughts go all the way back to saving up my money aged 13 to buy a Ben Sherman shirt.

Brands have always been expressions of status and identity, even if what we mean by those terms may change.

 

Email Mayhem

 

The past couple of weeks have been pretty packed as far as work goes. I'm certainly not complaining, but the focus on getting stuff thought through and done made me realise just how much time I've spent in hungrier days reading other people's stuff rather than doing my own.

I started a sorting and culling action for the email newsletters that I've subscribed to over the past couple of decades and it has been liberating - like the feeling of clearing your wardrobe and realising a few weeks or months down the line that no, you don't miss any of that stuff or regret giving it away.

I'm not sure how many marketing/brand-type newsletters I was signed up for (in addition to all those from retailers, publishing services and other hobbies-related stuff). But it's certainly multiples more than the 5 or so I had back in 2009 when records on the current laptop begin. Back then, I was getting, say, one work-related email newsletter per day of the working week, which seems quaintly handleable. 

My culling criteria were completely unscientific. I decided anything that appears on or near the weekend in my inbox is bad manners and likely written by workaholic desperados I don't want to know anyway - the sort of lost souls who haunt LinkedIn at the weekend. So sorry, any US-based companies who think they're hitting the Friday morning spot when in fact it's late afternoon here. 

Then I used gut reaction. Is this a newsletter that causes a sinking feeling when it flops into the inbox, or one I'm keen to open? 

The sinking feeling can be caused by design (difficult to read), too much content (those newsletters that link to 8 or 10 or more articles are out), clickbait headlines, or re-hashed and repetitive content (some words are simply a huge yawn).

If I had to name two favourites, they'd have to be Contagious - whose newsletter was one of the five I received in 2009 - and Good Business' Friday5. Both of these have a handleable number of items - someone has made choices over what to put in and what to leave out. The newsletters have a distinct house style and the topics covered have a clear focus. 

I'll leave you with a screen shot of the Contagious newsletter from 11 years ago - 24th November, 2009. Unfortunately the links don't link any more, but it's fascinating to see what topics marketing people were mulling over back then: reports are offered on Mobile Apps, Branded Utility, Goodvertising (which must have morphed into purpose-driven brand communications at some point), Social Media (what that?) and Branded Entertainment. 

But nothing on email newsletters - were they missing a trick?

Data, information, knowledge and wisdom

Photo by Martin Schitto, July 2020

Would I rather be knowledgable or wise? Can you be one without being the other?

I see a kind of progression, according to synthesis level, from data to information to knowledge to wisdom.

In a preamble to one of their articles The School of Life picked up the distinction between knowledge and wisdom, suggesting that knowledge is the accumulation of facts, figures and theories, while wisdom is the further synthesis of this knowledge with experience.

Knowledge can be forgotten, while wisdom can't.

Knowledge is specific to subject and context, while wisdom is universal and timeless. 

Regarding the latter point, many moons ago, I did my A-levels following my Cambridge Entrance Exams (this was a bit topsy-turvy, but that's always been my way). I had to swot much more for the A-Levels than the Cambridge Entrance Exam as these were more about regurgitating my knowledge - the structure of DNA and how it all worked, for example. For the Cambridge Entrance Exam in Biology, you'd get asked something like "What is the importance of water to life."

I've written a post or two about A.I, and I fancy that a machine these days may have fared better in my Biology A-Level than I did. I don't discount the idea that a machine could be described as "knowledgeable" - why not, if we already describe machines as "intelligent"?

But I doubt that we'll ever have a machine that is wise in the way that a human being is.

I'd welcome a change from thinking about "data-driven insights" to "the wisdom of insight".

The rather pensive photo of me in my cellar pub had me philosophising, about the Road to Excess and all that stuff.

I know I'm doing something wrong as I don't seem to have cracked the "wealthy" bit of the healthy, wealthy and wise thing, although I'm not sure wisdom brings wealth these days.

Maybe it's a case of "Late to bed and late to rise makes a (wo)man happy, healthy-ish and wise"?

The Curator's Egg

Photo: Tyler Orehek

Today's post leads on from my last one, as well as picking up a theme a looked at over 5 years ago: curators and curation. 

Since I wrote about Brand Curators (which on balance, I still think is a good idea), the use of the word and its variants - curated, curate as verb - has exploded. it's almost as omnipresent as the dreaded "journey" - in fact, "curated journeys" abound.

Curation is a good and necessary thing in the present day, with digital overload, and it does suggest a degree of discernment, skill and knowledge. But have a look at a typical brand activity - I've picked Amazon - which involves "curation."

Amazon Prime's Book Box Service is one of those ideas that it feels a little churlish to criticise. I do take the points about encouraging children to read and love books and all the rest.

But. The books are described as "hand-picked" as well as "curated". Does that mean a human being is doing the choosing? But how much is that human being aided and abetted by algorithms? And does this kind of "curation" involve an aspect of "nanny knows best"? The word "curate" does come from curare - "to care." 

Where does curation stop and censorship (of a gentle sort) begin?

Is it the curators who have their knives at the ready to dock the long tail?  

Bad Brands

In the old days, you could spot a bad brand miles off. They spilled oil, or invested in countries with dodgy regimes, or tested cosmetics on baby kittens. And, if you felt strongly enough, you could quite easily boycott them.

But these days, rather like James Bond villains, the bad brands have evolved. Their villainy is less about a big event - it's more subtly ingrained in their way of operation. These brands are quietly instrusive. They insinuate their way into your life through the back door, bearing gifts, posing as a friend. They do a deal with you - your info for my added value. You may go hand in hand for years, singing their praises. But occasionally, they will breach your deal. It may be something small and insignificant, like automatically posting something on your Facebook feed without you having to tick a box. It will make you wonder for a second or two. But the value you get from that brand will probably outweigh the bother of closing the account.

But if it gets more serious? What if a series of articles and documentaries about dodgy practices combined with bad personal experiences pushes you to want to boycott that brand? Unfortunately, these days, it is almost impossible to extricate yourself. I used to love amazon - as someone living abroad, they were a godsend. I started giving something back by writing reviews and, of course, when the time came, Kindle was the obvious choice for my ebook reader.

Amazon, I see, are currently looking for a European agency to help them with their image problem. I expect I could delete all my reviews and my account, and buy another e-reader and all the books I have on my Kindle but, well, life's too short. So I grudgingly continue with amazon, and feel a pang of conscience when I read yet another article about how they treat their staff.

Would it be possible to boycott Google? I doubt it. Even if you did, as from today, your traces remain. Once it's out, it's out.

Privacy is one of the biggest issues for brands today. There's a good report from Flamingo research here which shows how privacy is a pact.

I just hope that privacy, as the new luxury, will not end up being something that can be bought at a price.

The age of Big Insight

The age of Big Data has been upon us for some time, with marketers and advertising rightly excited about the possibilities that the amalgamation of data - particularly "found data" in terms of the digital detritus almost all human beings leave behind in their daily lives - gives us.

If you've been in this game for some time, as I have, you may remember the thrill that accompanied econometric models in their early days. These were going to tell us the secret of how advertising worked and what made people buy our brands. The econometric models are very useful, of course, to help marketers interpret the past, but alone they cannot predict the future. And a badly conceived or interpreted model is worse that none at all.

Every time such a model is presented, I find it useful for the agency to re-iterate what correlation actually is, and what it isn't. At college, I had "correlation does not imply causation" drummed into me I don't know how many times. It's like this, if A and B are correlated:

A could cause B
B could cause A
A and B are the consequences of a common cause but one does not cause the other. So, sleeping in your shoes does not cause headaches, even though instances of the two events are correlated. One look at our friend above can tell you the underlying cause.
There is no connection between A and B - the correlation is coincidental.

This is just one of the factors that Tim Harford considers in an excellent FT Magazine article about Big Data and the potential pitfalls in its interpretation. We must beware that the errors we make with more manageable data sets are not simply compounded as the data set gets bigger - for example, via sample bias. And, in the end, the human factor in terms of insightful interpretation remains key. His closing sentences sum this up very nicely:

“Big data” has arrived, but big insights have not. The challenge now is to solve new problems and gain new answers – without making the same old statistical mistakes on a grander scale than ever.

The A to Z of brands

I love dictionaries. There are my trusty companions (Concise Oxford, German-English) within easy reaching distance on my desk, as well as a few more exotic items, such as The Dictionary of Historical Slang, on my bookshelves.

So I was delighted to hear that Google have sponsored an update of Marty Neumeier's "Dictionary of Brand". Marty Neumeier, who has the wonderful title of "Director of Transformation" at the Liquid Agency, is one of those rare people who can express marketing ideas and concepts in a simple way that is never simplistic. His presentation "The Brand Gap" (between strategy and creative) has been viewed some ridiculous number of times - in the millions. His words of wisdom appear under the very knowing  title Ideas Worth Stealing.

"The Dictionary of Brand" can be stolen, too, by downloading at Slideshare. Of course, being sponsored by Google, there are a few Google-related entries, but you'd expect that these days even if it were sponsored by Apple. Marketing not being an exact science, and the pace of change in the industry being so rapid means that the definitions are not definitive, but they give you a good enough idea of what some of these strange terms mean.

Even after decades in the business, I've learned a thing or two.

An equal and opposite reaction

This is the time of year when you get all those ingeniously named trends for the next year, such as this latest little lot from Trendwatching. I'm always amused by picking out the counter-trend to each one that's mentioned, sometimes in the same article.

My eye was caught by the Mychiatry trend - not content with people quantifying their bodies and bodily functions, people are now going to use technology to measure their minds. This trend is manifested via ideas such as an app to record, share and analyse dreams (as if other people's dreams weren't dull enough, you can now access a whole internet full of strangers' dreams) or headphones that detect the user's mood and play music accordingly from a database (I do hope that a human being of some description has been involved in the compilation and classification of the database.)

This trend, according to Trendwatching, is being fuelled by "those for whom mental health is (like physical fitness, career progress, and academic achievements) a new benchmark, yet another area for them to outperform their peers." Well, yukkety yuk. Can't wait for all these outperforming benchmark junkies to start wiring their kids up to these devices, too.

Swallowing back the admission that I did post a score I got on some pointless Facebook quiz the other day, I'll move quickly on to the next trend: No Data. This is much nicer. This is all about "brands that offer brilliant service while loudly and proudly eschewing the collection of personal data." There is certainly a need for this, with 82% of people on a global basis believing that companies collect too much information on consumers.

Unfortunately, Trendwatching can't offer up any examples on this yet.

Reaction, counter-reaction. Who's to say which way people will go in 2014? But one thing is certain - there will be no one certain answer. Planners and Marketers are best keeping their minds open, their antennae on alert, using all modes of perception.

Quoting Blake:
"May God us keep
From single vision & Newton's sleep."   

Market research made friendly

When I started my first job, market research was something of an arcane art - not terribly accessible to outsiders. Most quantitative surveys were still done on paper via an interviewer with a clipboard and ideas like CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) were considered most avant garde.

It wasn't just the interviewing, either. Presentations were endless tables of numbers and bar charts, with a few pies here and there if you were lucky. Some poor so-and-so would have drawn many of these by hand.

The first time I saw a "smiley scale" it was either for children, or for a multi-country study in an attempt to achieve consistency in the questioning where language failed. No-one at that point imagined that adults might actually enjoy taking part in research survey if they were more like a game.

These days, quantitative market research is as fun and funky as any part of the communications process, with great blogs like ilovecharts showing the very best of infotainment today. Take your pick there at the moment between 'Most visited websites per country' or 'Acceptable/Unacceptable facial hair.'

And then there's the beautifully cute IKEA online questionnaire about 'My Life at Home' in Germany. As part of the campaign 'Time for more Home', this interactive survey is fun and easy to do - as you'd expect of the original participative brand!

One word of warning though, if you don't come into the spring chicken category. You're OK up to age 54, but from 55 onwards your cartoon representation is definitely the grey-haired granny!

The data tsunami

One of the commonest complaints that I hear from marketers these days is that they simply have too much information and data. This over-abundance is sometimes described as a mountain or an overload, but more often than not, metaphors from the destructive world of water are used.

There's a data deluge, or data tsunami. People feel that they are swamped with information or drowning in data.

And lately, I have also heard the term "infobesity", with the analogy to fast food. Too high a quantity of too low a quality, making our brands distinctly unhealthy.

My approach to data has always been to take a deep breath first. Then to see what I've got and start to skim through it, with the following in mind:

1. Just because it exists and someone has paid for it, doesn't mean you have to use it
2. Hone your instinct for what is useful. If you read case histories, they generally don't use much information or data, but the stuff that's there is crucial. Ditto, most presentations, even if they are 100 page ppts, will only have two or three killer slides.
3. It's all about making choices and making hypotheses early - then using the data or information selectively to back these up. Remember, in this job, there's seldom one right answer, but the right answer is the one you decide on and stick with.
4. I like to organise data and information around a few key themes - these will start to occur to you as you skim through what you have.

And, finally, don't feel bad about ignoring information that doesn't feel right, or is simply inaccessible. The next time someone circulates a 200 page pdf with the comment "useful/interesting report," ask them which bits, exactly. The chances are that they won't have read it, either.

Data can't tell you anything

I don't know if it's just me, but I never look at amazon's recommendations for me. I do, however, follow up avidly with "people who bought this also bought that..."

Why? There are a few reasons. First of all, amazon have been so off in their recommendations sometimes - basing these on something I bought as a present that really wasn't my cup of tea at all. Or a set book I bought for my son's school. And secondly, the "people who bought this also bought that" is a simple statement of fact, not an attempt at a prediction or a judgement. Finally, in my egotistical way, I assume that, while "people" probably have predictable and consistent tastes, mine are so widely eclectic and downright weird that even someone who knows me well couldn't really predict what I might like (how many times have I had to give up on some trashy novel that a friend pressed into my hand on the promise that "you'll love this"?) - let alone a computer.

There has been increasing criticism of Google and Facebook forcing us into what Eli Pariser describes as The Filter Bubble which goes beyond meaningless recommendations into the sphere of these digital behemoths limiting and controlling the internet for us, based on past behaviour. You can do worse than taking a few of the steps recommended by Eli Pariser to escape the bubble.

And, for those of us in marketing: let's not get seduced by Big Data. And there I go, falling into my own trap. Data can't seduce me any more than research can tell me what to do. Algorithms don't think, they compute. The research does not say and the market does not demand.

All these things are inanimate. They cannot judge quality of interaction, or know the complete context - or separate a meaningless correlation from a meaningful one. Nor can they predict.

Only human beings can do these things - the data can't tell us anything on its own.

Behind the scenes at the museum

When I was a young lass, I can't remember anyone aspiring to be a curator when they grew up. Curators were associated with museums and long-dead dusty creatures encased in woodworm-infested display cabinets. Of course, museums have changed since then. Gone are the hand-scribed labels in fading purple copperplate and the forgotten cellar atmosphere. It's all flashing lights and hands-on experience.

Curator, from the Latin curare ("take care") traditionally meant someone who took care of and managed objects - artefacts, specimens, paintings or sculptures. But recently, as we've entered the digital age, the role has widened to include digital content and data - and, with it, interpretation and selection as well as simply "taking care".

Today's curators are Rock 'n Roll. Literally. I have seen the word in connection not just with contemporary art exhibitions, but with music festivals and DJs, with technology and even with curators of style and taste. It makes sense that with so much more creation going on as a result of the digital explosion, that there must also be more curation: interpretation, selection, guidance, juxtaposition, focus.

There are even people whose job description is Brand Curator. Whether this is what used to be a Brand Manager is not clear but these people have the remit of "delivering a curated set of customer experiences" as I read recently.

In these times of rapid change in marketing directors and departments, there does seem to be a need for one person in a company - with experience and a real feel for the brand - to take the role of Brand Curator. While focussing on the past and assimilating the present as it happens, such a person could also be of great use in guiding the latest marketing director into the future.

Easily Peasily

I was never that great at Powerpoint, always preferring to shove it in the direction of Someone that Could.

And, before that, while I struggled my way through a presentation course on the use of overhead slides (do you remember the horror of the research agency turning up with a stack of the things that could challenge the Empire State Building?), I was always more of a flip chart girl.

Marker pens and hand-scrawled graphics were always my chosen mode of operation. I still throw a hand-scrawled thing (scanned, of course) into a presentation now and again these days.

Well, my life could be made easier by the new infographics apps now available online. Take easl.ly, for example. It's still in beta, but inviting people to come and have a play around. I had a quick look and it all looked very drag 'n drop 'n easy.

I just hope that it won't become as commonplace and groan-inducing as the original clip art stickmen, who I still have nightmares about. They should never have been let near party invitations.

Planning by Numbers

I hear so many complaints these days from all walks of life that essential elements of doing a good job - from personal contact and discussion with colleagues to thorough problem-solving thought - have been taken over by form-filling.

And often the completion of a form means "job done" - end of story. To used that horrible phrase, all the boxes have been ticked.

In the marketing world, there have always been companies who have been more keen on forms and templates than others, but the disease seems to be rampant.

The internet is packed with templates and forms to "enable" you to write a marketing plan, or a communications strategy, or whatever.

And for most of these, you just need to follow the template, copy and paste your own info and - job done.

I'd like to see less dumping and more thinking. More small groups of people sitting in a room together and working out an overall structure. Less delegating of "OK, you guys do Section 3.1.4 to 55.6.3" and more discussion as to the overall picture.

And, once that part of the job is done, to put it into action while there's still time - and stick to it.

Nous is More

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is a little weary of the trend forecasters and their oh-so-witty portmanteau designations ("Flawsome" et al). Here is a super post with a link to a very sharp presentation from Richard Huntington of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Mr H is calling for less trendspotting and more real insight - which he rechristens revelation. And I am all for that, but I make one plea. Can we stop talking about "generating insights"? A generator, like this chappie above, churns out something basic, a commodity, in mass, untouched by human hands, let alone emotion.

Real insight is about those uniquely human abilities - intuition, intelligence, empathy. It's about nous, the difference between understanding and information.

I hope, this year, I'll have less cause for Richard Huntington's "guaranteed free of insight" rubber stamp.

Curiosity killed my free time

Curiosity, at least in its form of Openness to Experience, is said to be one of the Big Five factors of human personality.

I do wonder sometimes, though, how much of the time I while away chasing information is genuine curiosity and how much could be classified as some sort of morbid addiction.

Years ago, I didn't spend hours in the library poring over encyclopedias unless I had to, for an essay or an exam. Yet, these days, a substantial portion of my day is taken over by googling and Wikipedia-ing, chasing after useless facts and confirming half-lost memories.

I do it because I can. And I don't always feel any better for knowing whatever it was.

Sometimes it feels like a food addiction. It's so easy that it's difficult to stop and, the more you eat, the less satisfied you get. Rather like chomping your way through a packet of Pringles instead of preparing a healthy meal from scratch, laying the table, sitting down and eating in company.

The more I know, the less satisfied I am.

I just hope that there won't be a Pandora- or Bluebeard's wife- style nasty surprise at the end of it.

In yer face

I have been rather amused by the latest scandal and "breach of security" to hit the UK government. The wife of the newly appointed head of MI6 has been splashing holiday snaps all over Facebook.

One of the comments on the Telegraph website described this incident as "not a risk but impossibly vulgar." I'm glad that there are still a few old-school Telegraph readers left. Another mused over what various fictional spies might have on their Facebook profile.

Given that I'm calling myself Secret Agency, I did wonder how much or how little of my latent exhibitionism should come through on Facebook. If you're employed by a company, there may well be rules about when, where or what you can do on Facebook in office hours. As a self-employed planner it leads to an interesting dilemma. On the one hand I don't want to run the risk of coming across as "impossibly vulgar" - especially if potential clients are Telegraph readers, Old School.

But I also don't want to come over to potential clients as a digital Luddite. So I tow a slightly uneasy balance. And, at the end of it, I know that there aren't that many people who are desperately interested in the detail of my Facebook page.

By the way - do you remember how Facebook used to be? Glad I made that screenshot.

The next big Bing?

Microsoft are launching Bing in the U.S today. Bing (still in beta here in Europe) is Microsoft's challenge to Google. Interestingly, they are insisting that it's a "discovery" engine and not a "search engine", in order to suggest the next generation, I suppose. Although to suggest the next generation, I might have tackled the word "engine", which brings to mind steam fairs and the Rev. Awdry and gone for something like "rocket" or "missile".

And the ad agency don't seem to be letting this insistence get in the way of a good slogan: "The Sound of Found". I would have thought that "found" has a lot more to do with "search" than "discovery". But it's a lovely slogan, even if oldies like me still think that Bing is actually "the Sound of White Christmas".

Trying the thing out today, I did the usual narcissistic thing of typing in my name and finding images. Totally spookily, when I put "Susan Imgrund" in, a picture of my old boss, Rita Clifton, popped out! Nice to know she's still watching over me after all these years, anyway.

Has anyone else tried it? Is it really the next big Bing?

Research that entertains

Don't you just hate it when one of the less enlightened market research agencies turns up brandishing their latest 300 page Powerpoint presentation on a USB stick?

I'm not sure if Powerpoint has made life better or worse for the audiences of market research presentations. I'm tempted to say worse, but then I remember the horrors of stacks of framed overheads that wouldn't have been out of place in the IKEA warehouse, or even reading hand-drawn Nielsen charts on what was called microfiche (younger readers can ask their grannies...)

So I was delighted to receive the following link to the Japanese clothing company Uniqlo from my friend Charlie at Red Spider . Now, the subject matter is probably more interesting to all (for a variety of reasons) than the average Nielsen presentation, but isn't it just super? My question is: are they real respondents or is it all just a bit of show? Either way, I'm impressed!