I couldn't stop giggling. I was presenting to a potential customer in Washington DC, and had put up a slide from a research study done for us by a management school intern. It said, and I quote, "Perceived product quality of brand k in India is 0.849564455." Swear, not making this up.
If anything this "research" broke the ice. The two of us traded "You're an MBA if..." jokes, and the meeting took on a much more casual turn.
I was taken back to my days in advertising. There we are, in the creative department, rushing to put together a pitch for a client, and the earnest account director asks-"But what does research say about it?"
While restraining my art director from causing bodily harm that could potentially impact the said account director's matrimonial prospects, I ask, innocently-well, what would you like to research, champ?
His answer is not very confidence-inspiring. "Well, everything you know. The brief. The positioning. The creative..." His voice trails off, and I realise he may actually be serious. I play with him, "Hey, while we're at it, why don't we get a group of consumers, and get them to do a campaign for the brand?" His eyes light up-but not for the reasons I'd hoped. "Wow!" he says, "why haven't we done that before?"
This brings me to the crux of most research I've seen. Some research is done to prove the obvious-when the guy commissioning it doesn't want to seem to have an opinion. This is safety for the coward: "What colour is the sky? Let's do a focus group and find out" kind of stuff.
Other research is done to get datapoints that are completely unusable-just to be seen to have covered the bases. These can be largely ignored. But the truly insidious, damaging research is the one that seems to be well-meaning but delivers homilies that direct you to create dull-as-dishwater messaging and products. "Seventy-six per cent of the consumers do not like a negative approach." Really? So should the Sippys have made the dialogues in Sholay more imrb-friendly: "Saab, main ne aapka namak khaaya hai."
"Ab dal roti kha."
Or if research said "consumers like pictures of babies and dogs", should da Vinci have added one of each, just in case, to the Mona Lisa? Be on your guard against such research-driven idiocy.
To succeed, new concepts have to disturb and shake people out of their complacency. Catch their attention among the thousands of other things on the TV or the papers. Research CANNOT tell you what to do and how to do it. It can tell you, at best, where the target audience's mind is.
Shakespeare, Spielberg and even Steve Jobs have understood this well. Their creations are not the results of studies. But come from imaginations that build on a deep understanding of their audience's mind.
A disturbing trend I see these days is building businesses based on research. Gartner, or some other consulting house, says Sector X will grow to be a $5 billion business by 2008. So all rush to be there. Really? What did they use-a time machine?
I deeply distrust all such 'research into the future'. I'm not sure how such numbers are produced. Perhaps someone's throwing dice and producing random numbers in the back office. I think of The Wall Street Journal, where a monkey throwing darts is one of their better-performing stockpickers. If research companies were right, we never would have had the tech boom, or for that matter, the bust.
Do not mistake research for reality. It is more a pleasing, convenient fiction, like your horoscope for today or next year. Read it if you want to, by all means, but remember that it has about as much bearing on the future of your business as your neighbour's cat's star sign.
