As a market researcher, I use a little more science and a little less personal touch when helping my clients choose a name for their new product or company.  But it’s important not to totally remove the “feelings” evoked when someone first reads or says the name of what you have to offer in the marketplace.  This is especially true as the American melting pot becomes filled with more and more diverse cultures, ethnicities and religions.

Perhaps the most famous case study used in market research class is when Chevrolet introduced a small car to the Mexican auto market years ago.  It didn’t sell at all – despite relative success north of the border.  Of course, if they would have done proper research, they would have known that “Nova” in Spanish translates to “No go”….not exactly the strongest attribute car shoppers are looking for, regardless of where they are located!  

Smaller companies shouldn’t think that naming research is a waste of time or money either.  A more recent example I stumbled upon is a local “Korean Fusion Bakery” originally opening using the name “Blu Puppi”.   Now, I admittedly know nothing about the Korean language or its cuisine, but I can safely bet that I know why their parking lot was virtually empty each time I passed.  Over a year later, they now boast a new sign that announces the restaurant’s revised name as “Blu Sky”.  For a lot less than the price they paid for that first illuminated sign and its likely impact on lost business, I could have told them they were way off base for maximum achievement here in the South! 

As these two extreme examples show, the name of your product or service can literally make or break your chances at success.  A good market researcher can use a variety of techniques to find just the right label for your company and its reputation.    Don’t be afraid to use market research to ask others, especially those who might bring a different point of view, background or custom to the table.  What is it they say about not getting a second chance to make a first impression?   If you need help with naming your product or service, give me a call – I promise to use proven market research protocols in helping you and won’t force you to use my family names!

For my daughter, she simply likes to find the answers on her own and frankly, that has been a successful strategy for her so far.   But she told me last semester a professor actually announced the first day of class that he didn’t like “stupid questions” – and that if you asked what ended up being what he thought was a stupid question, he would knock points off your grade.  Needless to say, she will never raise her hand in that class!  While marveling over this one day, my son also admitted his math teacher said the same thing last year to his Honors Algebra class.  She implemented what she referred to as the “five second rule” – not the “drop the food on the floor, scoop it up and blow it off” five second rule, but the one where she required all the kids to think about the question they were going to ask for five seconds before they raised their hands.  If they still thought it was important, they could ask but if they ended up deeming it “stupid”, they had a chance to save themselves the embarrassment first.  Wow!  What a way to put a damper on student exploration, inquisitiveness or just a basic need for clarification (and I’m not talking about the kids that really are stupid and raise their hands to ask “is this material going to be on the Final Exam?”…)

I guess as a parent I find it a little shocking that some teachers are reverting to this approach.  But once I really think about it, I guess I have fallen victim to this tactic myself a time or two.   I have caught myself rolling my eyes, taking deep breaths and trying to practice the utmost in control when I get asked what I think has to be the most stupid question of all — “Why should we do Research?”  OK, maybe I’m biased because I’m a market researcher and these people threaten my livelihood, but ask yourself just how well you can answer the following:

• Who are your customers?  What do they “look” like and how can you find more of them? 
• How happy are your customers?  How do they talk about you when you aren’t in front of them?  Would they recommend you to others?  If they are unhappy, do you know how to fix the relationship or do you just let them take their crayons and go play somewhere else?
• Is there something else that they would like to buy from you but are forced to go elsewhere because you don’t realize the potential sales that can come from product/service expansion, vertical integration or incentives for repeated purchase?
• Who is your real competition?  What are they doing “right” that you can benchmark?  What are they doing “wrong” that you can capitalize upon?

These are just a few of the not-so-stupid questions that I can help you address.  I’m betting you have others and I would love the chance to brainstorm ways that Markets in Motion can help you find the answers you need to help your business grow.  Feel free to give me a call, mention this post and I’ll knock a few bucks off your bill….but I promise not to take any points off your final grade.  Don’t stand still while your market’s in motion!

It wasn’t a magic carpet that got us from Point A to Point B.  We got into a bus, car or subway, travelled many miles, changed lanes, changed speeds, stopped at red lights and even navigated a parking lot and elevator.  And yet, we seemingly have no real recollection of even leaving our own kitchen.  Scary…..  But basically it’s simply a sign of Routine.  Boredom.   Habitual behavior.  We go through the motions of life, relationships, chores, jobs and commutes, without taking a second glance at the many things we have seen over and over.  And most times, we don’t really even notice things that are “new” if they are offered in the same cluttered, everyday setting.  (C’mon, how long did it really take you to notice your mate’s recent haircut?)

So now, this makes me wonder….Is your business marketing program plodding along this same mundane path?  If it isn’t “broken”, do you not see any reason to “fix” it?  And, perhaps most importantly, are you still only relying on traditional media to reach your prospective customers?   If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then we need to talk….

I’ve done media and messaging research for many clients over the years.  It’s actually where I got my start in market research.  I find that it’s one of the more actionable and rewarding types of research that can be done.  So many research projects are conducted by lower management because upper management tells them to do it.  The reports get written and then sit on a shelf somewhere in the company while business remains unchanged.  But I have found, for most media research projects, you can usually see immediate changes and positive impact to one’s business bottom line.  I love sitting in my living room when one of the commercials comes to life on TV.   I enjoy being able to tell my kids that the person used to say “this”, but my research told them to say “that” instead.  Or, the storyboard showed “this” in its original form, but testing indicated it needed to show “that” instead.   Sometimes such testing requires major overhaul to a communications plan, but more often than not, it’s a simple tweaking that makes a significant difference in how prospective customers respond to your message. You would never know unless you asked….

Getting that outside opinion on the front end can often identify other potential flaws in your communications plan.  For example, a recent study I did found that, although the market-at-large watched certain TV shows and subscribed to certain print media, customers that considered themselves “loyal” to my client tended to watch entirely different shows and read entirely different magazines and newspapers.  And perhaps most surprising to my client, I found that their customer base was a real leader in the world of social media.  They “tweeted”, “googled” and “friended” on a much more frequent basis than the rest of their geographic neighbors.  This finding helped my client rework, not only the placement of their ads, but in updating the message itself to “speak” to a more cutting-edge, forward thinking audience.  They “popped” up in places they had never been seen before, and suddenly the existing customer base “woke up” and took notice, as did a whole new group of potential customers that were “asleep at the wheel”.

If you are wondering just how many of your existing and potential customers need resuscitation, I can very quickly, easily and surprisingly inexpensively help you find out.  Let’s rely on a little science and a little input from your strongest critics to breathe a little new life into your marketing and messaging plan…  Hey — that’s even what my company motto means –  “Don’t stand still while your market’s in motion” — even if they appear to be sleeping!

I have two kids, one girl and one boy.  Despite their coming from the same parents, being raised in the same house and being treated the same in terms of rules, discipline and respect, they could not be more different.  My daughter, the oldest, has always been a rule follower and people pleaser. She would sit quietly and do her classwork, begin projects way before the deadline and worried obsessively over making an 89 on any assignment.  Give her a box of crayons as a five year old and she would organize them in “rainbow order” before meticulously completing a picture by staying carefully inside the lines.

In contrast, my son could really care less about his grades, proudly announcing that at least he “passed” the test. He loves school, not because of the educational opportunities and lifestyle it will afford him one day, but because it’s where his friends are.  Look in the dictionary under “class clown” and you will see his picture.  Some teachers tell me that he is “a hoot” – others just send him to detention.  Give him a box of crayons as a five year old and he immediately would turn each into a pretend pistol, along with nearby sticks, pencils or French fries. 

 I’ve had discussions with other parents about this issue and have yet to decide if it’s a boy/girl thing or a kid one/kid two thing.   I have friends with both similar and different stories, regardless of the number, age, gender or order of their children.  None of us can make sense of it, other than agreeing that all the bad traits come from the spouse’s side of the family.  The bottom line is that every individual has a different personality and marketers need to understand this when dealing with the other four P’s.

I used to work for a home builder.   In one of our divisional offices there was a marketing director that, at face value, “looked” exactly like me.  We would have both checked the same gender, age, education, marital status and income boxes on a standard survey.  However, she was the type of person that wanted to buy an old home, gut it and build it back with historical details.  In contrast, I love new homes.  I will always have a “new” home.  When my windows get dirty, I don’t wash them; I sell the house and buy a new one.  OK, not in this economy, but you get the idea…    I used this point a lot in my presentations to the division presidents as I tried to make them understand that you had to think beyond basic demographics when formulating your product and accompanying marketing strategy.  They didn’t want to waste their limited ad dollars talking to “Her,” they wanted to spend their money finding and selling to “Me”.  Using traditional research methods and standard demographic “check boxes”, this might be missed.  A good market researcher will recognize the important role a personality can play in the outcome of a project and should consider recommending a “Psychographic” component to complement Demographic variables.  And as a good parent, I recognize that having different personalities in my family can only make for more interesting parent-teacher conferences and dinner conversations.  Give me a call and I’ll help you figure out what your customers are talking about around their dinner tables as well.

• Beach – there’s no such thing as a “close” beach to Atlanta.  A six hour drive didn’t appeal to us as a prospect when we wanted to use this home on weekends and not just during the summer when school is out.
• Lake – we’re not really water people.  I didn’t want to be burdened with the added expectation that a boat and jet skis would inevitably follow.  I remembered the old adage that the two best days of boat ownership are the day you buy one and the day you sell it.  And being forced to spend a lot of my vacation time in a bathing suit, or even shorts, didn’t sound too relaxing to me and my thighs.
• Resort –I already live in a master-planned golf community as my primary home.  The idea of spending my vacations in a similar structured setting, with covenants, rules, guardhouse, stylized amenities, clubhouse and planned functions seemed a bit too formal for us. 

So we settled our search on the North Georgia Mountains.  This location seemed to fit our needs, being close enough to get to even on weekends when my son has Saturday morning soccer games, yet far enough away to feel like I am in heaven when I need it most.  It’s semi-centrally located between my husband’s out of state siblings so we are able to gather a little more often than we used to. Friends from Atlanta use it for quick getaways and I’ve even spent time up there alone when the four walls around my home office start caving in.

Interestingly, as I was embarking upon this adventure with my family, I was also conducting several second home/resort market research projects for developers who were taking advantage of the booming real estate market at the time.  One specifically wanted to find the appeal of property that would boast a large golf course, clubhouse and spa in a very secluded location.  Another wanted to interview buyers in one of their existing high-end master planned communities to see if they would buy a second home from the same developer and if so, what special amenities would they have to include.  

While I always try to separate the Me-Search from the Re-search, I found that my ability to relate to the clients through the eyes of a true prospective buyer lent itself to enhanced data gathering and ultimate analysis.  What I found most compelling in the various personal and professional research projects was the role that technology was playing in the decision process.  While it is not surprising to note the role that the Internet played in our ability to shop for a home from the comfort of our living room, I was quite surprised to find that the number one criteria for second home shoppers was the accessibility to cell phone coverage and the World Wide Web!  This initially struck me as very strange – I mean don’t people want to “get away” at their “getaway”?  But then I realized that each time we were getting out of our car to look at a home, each of my kids and my husband (OK, me too) would stand in the driveway and pull out our respective PDAs and cell phones.  If we had no coverage, we didn’t even go inside the home – we would get back in the car and go to the next house!  While that seemed a little silly and something I wouldn’t really admit to anyone at the time, I discovered in my formal research that we were not alone.  When asked what the most important aspects of a vacation home were to prospective buyers, this new take on “Location, Location, Location” rose to the top of the list in every market I surveyed!!  Having access to such technology significantly overshadowed the accessibility to amenities, an airport/highway and shopping or dining opportunities – variables that no doubt would have won the contest as recently as ten years ago.   Technology had become the new “Golf!” 

 My shocked developer clients were advised to quickly share this information with their land acquisitions department  –  and to arm each one of them with a Blackberry or I-phone.  My tongue in cheek advice was to instruct them to drive the countryside and when they got five bars on the meter, start looking for land on which to build a second home community!  A good market researcher will not let a client’s preconceived ideas keep them from finding out new, and sometimes surprising, twists from their research projects.  And a good market researcher will carefully weigh when the use of Me-search can actually benefit or add validity to a project. 

For us, we found a home on the side of a lovely mountain overlooking a gurgling creek.  We made sure that we all could get reception on our phones, regardless of the different carriers. And we put into the contract that we had to be able to get Internet access before we would close on the home.  Location, location, location….  What would be the “new golf” for your company or product?

You’d keep the survey short, simple and to the point.  You’d consider your audience.  If girls were asking a shy teen boy this question, they would probably keep it at Yes/No and maybe even provide him with the pencil so he could answer immediately while the “interviewer” lingered nearby.   For teen girls, they would be given a little more time to complete the survey.  Male survey “sponsors” would have to allow for a lunch period so the target market could gather their friends and discuss the outcomes of which box they would check.  Thus began the concept of in-depth interviews and early stage focus groups…

After doing market research for over 25 years, I have seen all types of surveys and watched their evolution over time.  In the early years, when budgets were flush and companies did research because they wanted to or knew they were “supposed to”, we surprisingly stuck to basics – awareness, image and some basic competitive questions.  We would formulate tracking studies and ask core questions over the course of a product’s life cycle.  We would compose pre-post studies that were performed before and after advertising flights.  The project objectives were very clear and concise.  We wanted to know if the “boys and girls” in the marketplace liked us.

Over time, however, market research budgets have been slashed along with most other line items in a marketing department.  Those of us in the industry marvel that companies would get rid of the one “P” out of the four marketing principles that we perceive as the most important.  I mean how can you have a Product and know that it’s properly Placed and Priced without doing early Promotion, including the research to make sure the other three P’s are meeting the needs of a fifth P they don’t talk about in class – the People?  Ah….but I digress.

Surveys now seem to include everything but the kitchen sink. Corporate budgets are tight and the ability to conduct research at all tends to be a unique proposition.  I hear from clients all the time – “While you have them, can you also ask them XYZ?”  Well, yeah, sure, but I caution them that response rates will drop with a longer survey.  Your incentive will likely need to increase to keep people from regretting they ever agreed to talk to you. A good market researcher will strive to make the inevitably odd topic fit into the core objectives, but most respondents will be thrown off track by the questions that seem to come out of right field.  And to be quite honest, I can count on one hand how many times these added questions are even asked about by the client after the fact. 

So next time you are able to fund a much needed market research project, remember those early days when all we really needed to know was Yes or No.  The answers to these simply phrased questions can go miles in formation of your product strategy.  If you need help figuring out what should be asked and what should be left amongst the dirty dishes piled in that kitchen sink, drop me a note in my “locker”.

Each day (OK, sometimes multiple times each day), I venture to their pages and find myself clicking on various pictures of other kids.  I enjoy seeing how some of the girls I led in a Brownie troop have grown into lovely college co-eds.  I marvel at someone’s ability to take pictures of themselves from an arm’s length cell phone or in various positions in front of a mirror without capturing the camera or the flash.  I chuckle at some of the boys bruising comments about school sports teams and college rivalries.  I discover who is in and out of a “relationship” and whose is “complicated”.  And yes, I then venture over to my own page and begin clicking on pictures there, checking out old boyfriends and comparing the aging process of girls I knew in high school or college. Inevitably I find myself also comparing children, spouses, careers and hairstyles…Ah, I digress.

 Apparently in the online world of teens, this concept is known as “creeping.”  Linking from one picture or page to another, especially for those people whom you do not know, is evidently frowned upon according to my children.  They claim only sexual predators, “wannabes” and prying parents do this.  However, I prefer to think of this action as yet another way in which I am honing my investigative and exploration skills, feeding a curiosity that has lent me well over the years as a primary market researcher for a variety of clients.  I am inquisitive by nature, and while my son calls it “being nosy”, I find that it helps me understand more about what my kids are doing, who they are doing it with and where they are doing it.  I found it particularly helpful when I recognized the background in certain posted pictures as being taken in my basement on dates that my husband and I were out of town.  I believe it is yet another tool in my bag of motherly tricks that I rely upon to protect them from themselves and from an unforgiving entity called The Internet.

Lucky for those of you in business, I can also successfully use these same snooping skills to help you understand what your customers are up to, what they are buying, where they are buying it and most importantly, what they think of you!   Although my methods are a lot more scientific and quantifiable for my clients, the outcomes are still the same.  I end up knowing a lot more about a person, place or thing after I complete a research project than when I started.  Good market researchers would use this type of information to help clients form a plan of communication, product development, and customer satisfaction.  And good parents would use this type of information to monitor what their kids and their friends are up to, even if it makes them a “creeper”.