RETROWURST: Viva La Vida (June 1987)

                                            Me and colleague, Ragley Hall June 1987

I read a depressing, but I imagine all-too-frequent account in the Sunday Times yesterday. This concerned a student who'd already accepted a graduate job from a strategy consultancy and was preparing to move to London once he'd finished his final dissertation. 

But then he received an email saying that the consultancy had withdrawn the offer. Further investigations suggested that the company would be "employing" AI rather than graduates to do the job. 

I'm thoroughly pleased that I started my career when I did. The past seems like a foreign country now - we did things differently then. 

The photo is me in my 20s, not much older than the young man in the article. 

The event was the Millward Brown summer party, in June 1987. The venue was Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. Just down the road from where the research agency was based, in Leamington Spa. 

It all looks very glamorous, in a 1980s way. And it was. Even as market researchers, we were wined and dined and treated as royalty. Was it over-the-top? Possibly, but it certainly built up good client:agency relationships and made feel we were valued clients, whatever our level in the pecking order. 

The 1980s market research landscape was full of names that have long since disappeared into the WPPs, Bains and other big conglomerates. 

Taylor Nelson, BMRB, Mass Observation, The Research Business - and all manner of boutiquey qualitative agencies. And most of these would lay on a party, or a dinner at some point in the year. 

Fast forward to 2026. I've had a recent invitation from what-was-Millward-Brown, now Kantar. It's not Ragley Hall, rather somewhere on the Bockenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt. And I don't think it warrants a ballgown, as it's not a ball, not even a dinner dance. 

It's a 2 hour awards ceremony aka presentation, run by Kantar, giving out Advertising Effectiveness Awards. There will be "drinks and snacks" afterwards. 

This is how it works these days. The big agencies call the shots - get the right scores on their traffic light system and you might pick up an award if you're lucky, and get to chink glasses with a Kantar director of something-or-other. 

Having answered the invitation and said yes, that would be interesting, I had a reply. I am on the "waiting list." Well, I think I'll find something more constructive to do with my time that day. I expect AI sifted through the replies and composed the "waiting list" email, too.

RETROWURST: My finest hour? January 1994

 I’m not sure what my finest hour was in my brand and advertising career (or maybe it’s yet to come, ha, ha!). But when it comes to Market Research, which is where I started out, I think it has to be this one.

It wasn’t an hour, more like 72 of them, not to mention all the conceptualisation, preparation and follow-up. Back in January 1994, I convened the MRS course on Advertising Research. 6 speakers, and delegates from client companies, market research, advertising and media agencies. 

You can see from the biography I submitted that I wasn’t taking myself too seriously. I encouraged the other speakers to do the same:

But the subject-matter - the whys and wherefores and state of play of advertising research 32 years ago - we did take seriously. People (or their companies) were shelling out good money for this. 

I started the course with a barrage of headlines of the “Is research killing advertising?” genre. And kicked the whole thing off with the comment “We could be forgiven for thinking this is the serial killers’ convention.”

This debate, of course, is still raging (or whatever one does on LinkedIn) today, as I now suspect it was raging thirty years previous to my course, back in the 1960s. And one thing that I was careful to do in the course was to look at the various advertising research methodologies, qual and quant. When should each be used? What’s the overall objective of each? The over-riding theme of the course was that it’s not simply “advertising research” but “people’s response to advertising/ideas” research. And that creative development research, for example, is used for deeper understanding of how people respond, and why - and how it can be improved. Not evaluation.

Fast forward 32 years and the plot has been well-and-truly lost. There may well still be MRS courses, but all I see flapping around the internet are flocks of White Papers. Many of these are shrill opinion pieces, given a veneer of scientific credibility through the addition of spurious charts, graphs and data tables.

Some of them are from individuals and organisations who I’d respected up to now.

This is an extract from The Cure for Dull 

 

“Only quant can truly measure dull”. 

Well, yes, only quant can truly measure anything. The clue is in the name. 

The paper goes on to state “Quantitative emotional measurement tends to produce stronger feeling, while over-reliance on focus groups can push work toward consensus and safety.”

Where to start? Apples and pears? Chickens and eggs?

But it’s not my business to get uppity and tell today’s agency leaders what’s what. I hope instead that at least some of those course delegates still remember what they learned from us in those far-off days - and are putting it into practice or passing it on to their juniors. 

Quo vadis, qual?

 

“The mechanisation of qualitative research”

“The sanitisation of real human beings.”

These are a couple of pages from Wendy Gordon’s excellent Goodthinking A Guide to Qualitative Research, published in 1999. The latter section ends as follows:

We study consumer behaviour as David Attenborough studies gorilla behaviour - sometimes in hushed awe and sometimes with cruel laughter. By using the word “consumer”, we attempt to objectify human beings and persuade ourselves that we understand people as individuals, when in fact we have often drawn stereotypical and numerically based approximations.

David Attenborough is still out there studying gorilla behaviour but Wendy Gordon is sadly no longer with us. I wonder what she’d have made of qualitative research in the world of AI and synthetic respondents?

There’s certainly a lot going on in qual, which is in itself healthy. I’ve pulled out four examples of the directions various agencies and individuals are taking. What these have in common is that they’re all emphasising the uniquely human characteristics that are key to brand growth - so far, synthetic sales are not a thing, as they say.

REVOLUTION! The Billion Person Focus Group (Abi Awomosu)

From the claim upwards, outwards, downwards, everywaywards, this approach is mind-boggling however I look at it.

Abi Awomosu has worked at Meta, Uber, Apple and Co. , has written a book How not to use AI   and runs a consultancy called Data, Art and Soul. 

It’s a completely different perspective on AI, radical and dare I say it, political. Less about “extraction” (I had never thought about AI in those terms, but now I think about all that “scraping” ...) and more about listening and going where people speak unfiltered. This includes “dark data” and IRL (now there’s an idea Wendy would definitely approve of!).

This course (although it’s not really a course, more an induction into a way of thinking and working) will enable you to set up your “own OS with agents, workflows and cookbooks”. A first for me, reading through this is “digital body language” which includes "cursor hesitation" and "rage clicks”. 

DIGITAL DOPPELGANGER: Juno (Michelle Gilmore)

Juno is a little easier for me to get my head around. What Michelle Gilmore has done here is essentially created a doppelganger, encoding her craft as an experienced qualitative researcher into “Juno”, and training her to run expert interviews. So Juno doesn’t just run surveys, she carries out qualitative interviews - listens, thinks then acts. Juno “tracks emotion, detects hesitation and knows when to probe, and when to hold back. The way an expert researcher would.”

There are options for recruitment of respondents, including drawing from a global panel of 3m people. I assume none of these are synthetic ;)

Here’s an 8-minute video of how it all works.

EMPOWERING RESEARCHERS: Quallie.ai “Good work made easy"

There are undoubtably a few outfits like Quallie.ai about. This is a support system for qual researchers taking care of the “donkey work.” “Don’t let hours of qualitative research overwhelm you.”

The philosophy, is hey, let’s not pick sides, AI is here to stay. Our platform can help you speed up the process, leaving you with more time for the insight and brain work. The platform can transcribe (in 40 languages), summarise, interrogate the transcripts, organise and analyse. 

HYBRID: Source Nine

Most of the big research players have embedded AI in their products and services - and the smaller specialised qualitative agencies are doing that too. Source Nine have a product they’re calling Signal Insight - “for when you have no time or budget for full quality, and “synthetic AI” isn’t enough.”

It’s a combination of desk research, in-depths and Source Nine’s propriety tools. 

The trick here is that the AI isn’t an add-on - it’s embedded in the agency’s ethos, in this case “Building brand equity grounded in emotion.”

So there we go. There’s plenty going on. And what is cheering is that all of these, and others like them have gone beyond flogging improved efficiency. They are all looking for genuine human understanding - and I for one hope I’ll hear less disparging remarks about “focus groups” and more positive comments about the qual(ity) of market research in the future.

  

Synthetic, fake or just sh*t?

Fur, leather, meat - when you don’t want to wear or eat the real thing, there are alternatives. These are often described as “synthetic”, meaning that they’ve been been artificially produced in order to closely imitate the natural product. 

As well as the “artificial/not natural” connotations, “synthetic” also has associations of insincerity or affectedness. Fake. But fake can be a positive too, especially if presented as a clever alternative to using up natural resources, be they animal, vegetable or mineral.

I’m a bit slow off the mark, I admit. I only consciously heard the phrase “synthetic data” a couple of months ago in a seminar about “The Future of Measurement.” It was used in this context for data generated by AI to patch holes. This made me a little uneasy, but I brushed it off - after all, we’ve been patching holes in data via statisitcal modelling and analysis for as long as I’ve been in this business, and no doubt before that.

But the mention sparked a memory from another seminar, or something I read in the marketing press. That market research organisations such as Kantar are busy with R&D on “synthetic samples” which can generate “human-style responses.”

Does the euphemistic “synthetic sample” really mean fake people?

A year ago, Kantar were still moderately cautious about “synthetic samples”.  While AI has some great applications in market research (coding open-ended responses is an obvious example), the article points out some of the shortcomings of using AI as a substitute for human respondents. For example, look at the differences here:

I’m not surprised that the AI is more enthusiastic than real people about statements that sound AI-generated. Who in their right mind would agree to gobbledegook such as “my product is a way for me to bond/connect with others who share my passion”? Particularly if it’s bog cleaner or something.

The article concludes that: 

Our conclusion is that right now, synthetic sample currently has biases, lacks variation and nuance in both qual and quant analysis. On its own, as it stands, it’s just not good enough to use as a supplement for human sample.

And Kantar advise a blended approach based on “real people” and supplemented with AI.

Fast-forward a year and Kantar are far more gung-ho about it all. They’ve launched an AI Lab and appointed a Chief AI Scientist . And there’s a new GenAI marketing assistant, too. 

Competitive pressure, the race to be first, client demands for faster, faster - or genuine innovation and leadership? Who knows - but Kantar are not alone. Mark Ritson has written enthusiastically about his chums at an outfit called Evidenza.AI

Evidenza say “we survey AI copies of your customers to build finance-friendly sales and marketing plans ... we generate hundreds of synthetic customers based on your product category ... we test your messaging with synthetic customers.”

Meaning, I guess, use AI to generate marketing communication and throw it to the customer copies to get a tick on that box. No messy humans involved.

Self-fulfilling prophecy? Can we look forward to “synthetic sales”, too?

Cory Doctorow takes it a few leaps further in his brilliantly-titled critical piece, “The Coprophagic AI crisis.” From warnings about botshit ("inaccurate or fabricated content shat out at scale”) and human-created content sinking in the cesspit ("As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated “content” in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels.”) he goes on to consider the consequences should AI Search really take off:

The question is, why the fuck would anyone write the web if the only “person” who can find what they write is an AI’s crawler, which ingests the writing for its own training, but has no interest in steering readers to see what you’ve written? If AI search ever becomes a thing, the open web will become an AI CAFO and search crawlers will increasingly end up imbibing the contents of its manure lagoon.

Food for thought, and I feel distinctly queasy.

It’s another example of a contained system or black box that’s easy to control. Like home-grown problem: solution advertising.

And the answer is to get out of the system, go back to first principles, get inspiration from the internot. And remember that we are responsible for the data we produce and how it’s used. This stuff does matter.

The proper way to the beach

 

I was taught the planning cycle at a relatively early age - not quite as early as my times tables, but I had it drummed into me in a similar way. 

Where are we now? (With our brand or business)

Where do we want to be?

How do we get there?

Are we getting there?

I have the feeling that because the whole area of marketing has exploded into so many specialisms, t the focus has slipped right onto “how do we get there” in its intricate detail of touchpoints, new tech, personas and all the rest without any consideration of where we’re going with this and why.

I recently had a brief that went along the lines of - we have to develop an app that’s going to do x, y & z - without any thought given to why, or even who this app might be for.

I’ve seen this wonderful picture recently from The Proper Marketing Club (Matt Dillon) , which gently reminds marketers of the starting point if you want to be the brightest brand on the beach.

Even if your business can’t afford stacks of ad-hoc quantitative surveys, desk research on markets and trends plus a couple of questions on an omnibus and a few intelligently-conducted stakeholder interviews are always a good start.

 

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. 

Two tribes?

 

I've mentioned the work of More in Common before - in Germany, for example, where we see what are thought to be the traditional "fault lines" of society - like East: West - aren't, really.

I'm often mildly irritated by the attitude of the London-centred UK ad community and how out of touch many people in agencies seem to be with the rest of the country. A problem we don't have to such an extent in Germany as the ad industry isn't so concentrated into one city - and advertising was never on a self-important pedestal in the way it was in the UK. As an aside, I remember thinking that I'd be considered a more interesting and acceptable dinner party guest here if I worked selling insurance.

I don't like to sing a report's praises until I have read it, but I've had a look at the executive summary of Britain's Choice (launched on Monday 26th) and it has certainly whetted my appetite for the full Monty, all 291 pages of it.

The sound-bite that I'm sure will hit most people first is what we sort of knew all along - that there's a group "Progressive Activists" who are around 5 times more likely to post political stuff on Twitter and other social media than any of the other 6 groups. So, if you're using a research method that relies on what "people" are saying on social media - particularly if the topic is political - then it's likely the research will be biased.

But that aside, there is plenty in the report to give me hope. The seven groups are described as the fragments in a kaleidoscope - they are drawn together to form patterns around issues where there is common ground. 79%, for example, are proud of the advancements the UK has made in equality between men and women.

Both "hate speech" and "political correctness" are seen to be problems by the majority.

And most want to see a Britain that is hard-working, environmentally friendly, compassionate and honest.

Hooray for that.

Meanwhile, the two tribes can go on bashing each other's filter bubbles over on Twitter to their hearts's content. 

Should advertising always be a mirror?

I read an excellent article this week by Graham Booth, entitled Why your advertising should be MAD. Graham presents a reel of 15 ads that he's helped to create during his 30 years' experience and comes to the conclusion that all of these - though very different  - have something in common: a genuine creative idea. The ads are well worth a look, and I'm sure even someone not employed in the ad industry could say, with confidence, what the idea in each is.

By contrast, we're surrounded these days by idea-free advertising, as I bemoaned a couple of posts ago. But, as Graham says, "every ad should aspire to be more than the strategy put on screen, or the brand purpose spoken over generic visuals, or some reflection of the 'real life' of the consumer." Looking at his 15 ads, he remarks that they all employ metaphor, or exaggeration, or contrast. None of them "tell it straight." Hence the title - Make Advertising Drastic (or Daft, Dangerous, Dada ...)

But Graham is just an account man turned researcher. What does a creative director say?

Here's a creative director getting a bit mad, too, but in another sense. I suppose you do get mad when you have someonething telling you that you don't exist. But I do wonder when and where all this "demanding to be reflected" business started. For someone creative, it seems to be taking things terribly literally. I am sure that Graham Booth had plenty of respondents in his group discussions saying they didn't like the ad because the woman on the storyboard had blonde hair, and they've got dark hair.

"Representing diversity" is not a creative idea.

How does this creative director know that the woman in the trainers/chocolate/car ad isn't lesbian? Is sexuality of any relevance whatsoever when you're selling floor cleaner, anyway? Shouldn't we be looking at finding universal human truths that unite us, instead of being divisive?

I vote for getting away from these real life ads (which all look like what we used to call "mood videos") and get creative, and MAD.

But if you're going to do real life, do it well. This ad from Coke is a terrific example and, I'd say, uses a slightly MAD mirror.

Riding my hobby-horse

"If you're doing 'consumer safaris', your alienation from the real world is total and complete."

That's one of my favourite lines from Martin Weigel's latest blog post, Escape from Fantasy.

A lot of blog posts I read tend to approach one ear, then turn around and slink back off into the morass of jargon that is LinkedIn. But this one hasn't just stuck in my mind, it feels worthy of regurgitation so I can rapidly find it again. It would have been pinned on the wall in the old days, I guess.

It's well-written (if a little finger-pointy with its "we do this/that, we think this/that" style which I have a personal aversion against), compelling, funny and pinpoints the biggest problem of the brand communication industry today - this industry is based in a parallel fantasy world.

The evidence for this is not difficult to find and ranges from giving groups of people super-heroesque labels, through to my particular hobby horse - the aversion of a lot of planners these days to getting away from their desks and screens. "Far too many planners are no longer in constant, direct, unmediated contact and dialogue with people."

The solution - to "do what others do not, can not or dare not do to" is simple. It's about finding the truth - "the truth of real people in the real world."

One small area where I'd take issue, though, is the area of "we are nothing like the people we serve." It's simply not true, if you go under the surface demographics. We are all human beings, with the same basic needs and motivations, even though these may be expressed or fulfilled in different ways. And this is part of the solution, as far as I'm concerned. Advertising, or whatever it calls itself now, is probably always going to be dominated by young people. But if those young people are worth their salt as planners and creatives, they will at least try to get into the mindset of someone older, someone different, someone who is outside their immediate experience. Perhaps by finding common ground in the way that person feels, what's important to them.

And always remember - "the consumer" only exists in Fantasy Land.

Are your roots showing?

A long time ago, when I was still in the UK and working on the British Airways account, they set up a fascinating piece of international 'Britishness' research which looked at impressions of Great Britain in a number of countries around the world. This was qualitative research, and people in each country were asked to imagine a typical British town and what the characters were like there: policeman, doctor, teenager, manual worker and so on. It was rather like that 'Heaven and Hell'  joke, one version of which you can see above. And - surprise, surprise - there was little consistency in the way Britain was seen around the world - sweet and quaint in the US, compared to pushy and arrogant in Australia.

I've just read a long article in The Guardian about the rise of nation and place branding, which appears to be a booming business. Not just from the point of view of attracting tourists, but for governments to attract investors, workers, students, or to allocate resources and increase esteem generally internally and externally, much as you would use a Brand Purpose or Position.

It's not an easy job. Apart from an uneven playing field to start with (as in the differing impressions of US and Australia in the example above),  just think how quickly the overall impression of a country can change due to a change in its leadership. Obama's USA and Trump's USA - worlds apart. Or how a personality associated with a country or place can make or break impressions. Or how a natural disaster can overshadow everything. The article quotes Naomi Klein: Diversity and debate are the enemies of branding. Is it folly to try and reduce something as complex and multi-faceted as a place to a mere brand?

As mentioned in the article, Institute for Identity are having a good try. Their work sounds like a dream job - travelling around, getting the feel of the place, talking with the people, everyone from historians to lace-makers to film-makers.

And even if it seems a step too far to attempt to distill an entire country with all its dynamism, history and diversity down to a slogan and a logo, in these days of globalisation it's increasingly important for brands to be unique and authentic. And part of that has to come from the provenance. How has where the brand came from, where it was founded, informed its purpose and values? Instid have some useful tools and techniques on their website for getting a clearer understanding of a place - through the intellect, emotions and senses.

For brands, as for people, it's important to never forget where you came from.

Out and about

2016 was full of shocks for the pollsters and indeed, many bright young things working in advertising and marketing. How could we have got things so wrong? What? The collected opinions of my Facebook friends don't constitute what the Great British Public is thinking? I thought that if I 'de-friended' a few of those people whose views I didn't like, then they'd disappear into a puff of ether and I'd never have to be troubled by them again.

I blogged about the return of the Untrendy here and so far, 2017 has been full of references to bubbles, echo chambers and the like in everything from song lyrics through to advertisements (Heineken springs to mind) so I suppose at least there's awareness now that that the world is full of different views, not all of which may be palatable to us personally.

As a marketer, there's no way you can guarantee that your brand will be desired and bought only by people whose demographics appeal to you, or whose worldview co-incides with your own. So what can you do, to find out how other people tick? At the risk of sounding obvious, you have to go out and meet them, observe them, talk with them, listen to them. And not through the filter of the screen. The agency Ogilvy and Mather announced their intention, last year, of sending their planners out and about around the country, under the banner 'Get Out There.'

My first reaction as an old fogey in this world was a wry smile and something of a sense of bemusement. Surely this is what planners at ad agencies do? It appears not. Kevin Chesters, the Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy in London is quoted as saying that only 2% of creative briefs are informed by original first-hand research.

When on earth did we lose touch so badly?

Once I'd gulped and realised just how dire things had got, I had a look at the Get Out There blog.  There are clips and articles about Oldies in Eastbourne, the question of Brexit in Boston, Christianity in Hereford and so on. Yes, you could pick holes in stuff like the journalistic approach (picking on towns that are 'extreme' in one sense or another and packaging it all up with video clips and snappy headlines) but that's the way of the world these days. I trust that there's some good substance and insight behind the public exterior and in the end, at least they are doing something rather than debating and pontificating.

I notice the Marketing Society is re-naming its 'Brand of the Year' 'BRAVE Brand of the Year' to reward risk-taking. I'm looking forward to seeing a brand marketing to appeal to people out of the hipster London bubble.

Empathy by numbers?

A few years back, I invested in the heavy tome above: The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World of Crisis. I started reading the book with good intentions, and I did get a good way into this history of human civilization, the evolution of empathy and where we might be going. Can we achieve global empathy before we self-destruct and take the planet with us? An even more pertinent question today, perhaps, than when the book was published in 2010.

I'm ashamed to say that I got stuck, and stopped reading. I wasn't bored, nor was it too much for me. Blame it on my 21st century attention span if you like. Other things simply took over. It's not to say I won't take it up again someday, but for the moment the heavy tome remains on the shelf.

Since then, empathy has become a marketing buzz word. Even more so in the last year, when marketeers have become aware of their filter bubbles and we're seeing initiatives such as that of Ogilvy: Get Out There. Nothing wrong with going back to the roots of what market research and planning is all about, I suppose, but the article at least is phrased in some most non-empathetic terms. 'Planning in the wild' - suggesting that the people the planners are going to talk to would rather tear them limb from limb and gobble them up than give them their views. 'Real people' - as opposed to - what?

There is now an agency dedicated to 'transforming the world of business through empathy'. They are called The Empathy Business and are an evolution of an outfit known as Lady Geek, who championed women in IT and technology.

They define Corporate Empathy as follows:

We define corporate empathy, not compassion or sympathy, as the emotional impact a company has on its people -staff and customers- and society-the next generation.

And true to the new business tool requirement these days (as in Meaningfulness Index, Simplicity Index, Sustainability Index) they have an Empathy Index, based (I assume) on a model with the convenient but slightly cringeworthy acronym EMBRACE which lays out the aspects of Empathy.

This does make a lot of sense, but I do wonder whether empathy should be a pre-requisite for anyone working in communications rather than something that we have to discover and learn.

Surely the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and see the world - or just a brand - from their point of view is simply the starting point of what makes a good planner - or creative?

Creative direction by numbers?

I've already bemoaned - or at least questioned - the use of 'predictive software' in the film industry, both here and here. And I see the phrase 'data-driven decisions' everywhere I turn, it seems.

The latest company I've become aware of plying their wares in this are is ScriptBook whose tagline is 'Hard Science. Better Box Office.' Moving on from the 'Hard Science,' they have quite a hard sell - 'subjective decisions lead to box office failure.' And they have the data to back it up. 87% of films lose money.

Now, there may be something wrong in the logic that making a film involves subjective decisions, and most films lose money therefore subjective decisions mean failure, but anyway. What ScriptBook  offer is Script2Screen, which employs artificial intelligence to analyse screenplays, delivering an objective assessment of a script's commercial and critical success. Out with hunches, intuition, bias, gut feeling and in with fairness and objectivity.

Not only do ScriptBook promise commercial and critical success, but innovation and originality, too:
'At ScriptBook, we believe that by unifying technology and storytelling, we will enhance innovation and bring back originality in film and television.'

Eh?

Do tell me how a 'predictive algorithm' which works by looking at a database of existing scripts can bring back originality? Unless it means oh, RomComs are successful and so are Zombie films and Historical Biographical, so let's have Gandhi meeting a zombie for a madcap affair.

Let's go back to the data-driven decisions. I remember a few years ago, panic about how e-commerce would destroy existing bricks and mortar retailers. But what's happened is not an 'either or' situation. Everyone is going multichannel in retailing.

It's the same with data. In the same way that Millward Brown and other pre-testing research agencies used to claim to 'predict' the success of your TV spot based on the analysis of their database of tested commercials, companies like ScriptBook are no different. it's just that there's even more data, and what we can do with that data is ever more sophisticated.

Perhaps data-informed is better than data-driven. 'Driven' suggests someone cracking a whip at a herd of cattle. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, while speaking about House of Cards: 'We start with the data ... but the final call is always gut. It's informed intuition.'

Before we leave this subject, here's some light relief for my German-speaking friends. Who needs artificial intelligence when you have monkeys? Comedian Jan Böhmermann composed this smash-hit single with the help of monkeys who chose which of either the four most frequent words in German Chart Hits ('Menschen' 'Leben' 'Tanzen' 'Welt' ) or phrases from TV commercials should come next in the lyrics:

Measurement Madness

Some of the wisest words I have read in my career come from the social scientist Daniel Yankelovich, on the subject of measurement:

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. 

The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. 

The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. 

The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
'Corporate Priorities: A continuing study of the new demands on business'

These words were written in 1972, in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, and illustrated what is known as the McNamara fallacy or quantitative fallacy (Robert McNamara was US Secretary for Defence). This fallacy is making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (metrics) and ignoring all others. For example, basing the 'success' of a war purely on enemy body count.

I have often used these words to argue my point with clients and quantitative research agencies that marketing, like war or sport, is not an exact science. There is perhaps a fifth step to the argument:

The fifth step is to attach undue meaning and importance to that which is easily measurable.

These days, with digitalisation, we can measure so much more. And although company and even personal performance can't be put on a par with war and loss of life, we should guard against making the same mistake.

A few years ago, only business people talked about KPIs. Nowadays, people have personal KPIs - calories consumed, steps taken, words written, likes achieved - and all the rest, all enabled by digital technology.

I will continue to cite Yankelovich. And not just to the business clients that I work with, but to friends and acquaintances who are in danger, perhaps, of not seeing the truth for the data.

The untrendy strike back

I was amused (and a little dismayed) to read Charles' Vallance's perceptive piece in Campaign recently - Trends aren't trendy any more. Starting with the story of the hipster trendspotter who wouldn't bother interviewing Brexit voters as they "... don’t set trends, they tend to be older. They’re less experimental and don’t live in London," the article examines the rather "untrendy" but clearly happening trend of social conservatism. This mass trend underlies movements in politics and society from the knitting revival to the election of Donald Trump. 

I've already blogged about why the polls got the Brexit vote so badly wrong, and I think exactly the same dynamic happened in the US election. We don't learn.

The article addressed a number of things that have been puzzling me recently:

1. The tendency for people who work with brands and in consultancies to put their heads in the sand (or ignore the elephant in the room - choose whichever overworked African wildlife cliche you prefer) when it comes to what really drives and motivates people - the majority of everyday people, mainstream people, if you like. Because it doesn't fit with their worldview. I am against Brexit, but that doesn't stop me wanting to find out why people think, feel and vote as they do.

2. Maybe worse than the first option is consultancies who recognise this trend, and then try and sugarcoat it so it does fit their worldview, which is exactly what Trendwatching have done. This consultancy, in their 5 Trends for 2017 has made the distinction between the 'New Global Citizens' and the 'Nation Nurturers'. This latter group, or trend (it's not really clear which) will 'favo(u)r a turn inwards, seeking solace in the familiar.' Which seems all very well, but brands are warned that 'branded displays of faux patriotism won't fool consumers for long.'

Not sure. It will depend on who is defining what 'faux' is.

3. Having been a bit sniffy about  Trendwatching and their slightly naive (or is it patronising?) attitude, I must say I enjoy reading their bulletins, and those from Springwise, as well as reading 1843 magazine. Here, I can step into a bright and shiny world of apps for everything, contactless payments, smart homes and reality in at least three variations on virtual. But then I go back to my car that's 10 years old and my 'new' iPhone which is an iPhone 5, and argue with my son about the pointlessness of Spotify for someone of my age who has as many CDs as I do.

4. When I started out in this business, we used to do Group Discussions (they weren't called  Focus Groups then) in people's homes. These tended to be in very untrendy towns and suburbs at addresses that were almost impossible to find in those pre SatNav days. And I must admit I would often feel uncomfortable in those homes. There was no one-way mirror and soundproofing to hide behind and make snidey comments. As a junior from the client or agency, it was easier - you'd be passed off as the researcher's assistant and could sit there and help with the tape-recorder. But more senior clients had to be instructed on how to behave - take off their tie, don't arrive late, don't interrupt, don't snigger. Needless to say, you often heard opinions you didn't like. Not just about your brand, but about the world in general. 

The move from Group Discussions in suburban homes and face-to-face street interviews to the internet via research studios and telephone has meant that we have lost touch with the people who buy our brands. Yes, of course we can analyse Tweets and Instagram posts to see what people are saying about a brand or a market, but this is all what they choose to project, not what's really there.

And if one thing has characterised this year in marketing for me, it's a leap forward in diversity and inclusion in some respects, but a huge step back in others.

It seems these days, in the world of advertising and the media, that diversity of opinion is not welcome.

Goodbye to all that

A few years ago, my mother was asked to take part in some market research. It was what used to be called a Hall Test, and maybe still is. It involved tasting samples of orange juice. My mother enjoyed the experience, and being asked her opinion.

However, at the end of the interview, the market researcher asked my mother her age and explained that she was 'terribly sorry, but they wouldn't be able to use her interview as she was past the cut-off point.' Needless to say, my mother was not too amused to be declared 'past the cut-off point,' as if her opinions didn't count.

When I did my stint as an interviewer, the 'cut-off point' was absurdly young - 65 or even 60. This was explained to me (if I remember correctly) that 'older people' were difficult to interview/find and all the rest. Some couldn't hear well, some couldn't see well, some couldn't manage the steps going up to the room where the research was taking place. I have noticed on surveys I have done that it has crept upwards, but I expect there is still a bias against say, the over 75s.

Orange juice is one thing, but decisions about the political and economic future are another. When I woke up to the news this morning that was so different from the last poll I'd heard last night, my second thought was my mother and orange juice.

It's only a theory, but I expect that the polls underestimated the 75+ vote. From the demographic breakdowns I saw before the referendum, there was a clear age effect, with the 60+ group strongly more pro-Brexit compared to the average. My suspicion is that 75+ would be even more so.

With Brexit, it seems as if the 'Silent Generation' have found the voice the pollsters didn't want to hear - and used it.