Searching for Black Swans

I love this quote from Vinod Khosla, speaking about why he only invests in technologies that have a 90%  chance of failure.

I never compute returns. If you start forecasting cash flows, you lose innovation, you lose instinct. You leverage yourself down to mediocrity.

Are you betting on black swans? If not, how are you going to find them?

An open letter to Internet users

A war for control of the Internet is under way. Governments & corporations want to lock it down and extort you for accessing things that are currently free (or very cheap). The way to stop this is simple: YOU need to understand what's at stake and say NO! Tell your government they can't censor it! Tell your ISP they can't turn it into a toll road! Tell the website and app makers that your data is not for sale and walled gardens are not cool! Tell media producers to shove their antiquated notions about distribution and copyright up their asses! These organizations serve you, not the other way around. Read more...

Panels have an image problem

Why does almost every survey panel use the exact same banner image? It's so kitsch, so camp, so cliché -- it's insulting. How could any reasonable person conclude this is a good idea?

It's just bad, bad, lazy web design. If your website or survey pages have this crap on them, fire the manager in charge and hand the reigns over to the youngest creative person you have.

Seriously, this screams "I'm not even trying!" It's shag carpet for your website.

Big Data is a big opportunity

Alastair Croll's Mashable post on Big Data ends on a note market researchers should find exciting:

The important question isn’t who owns the data. Ultimately, we all do. A better question is, who owns the means of analysis? Because that’s how, as [Stewart] Brand suggests, you get the right information in the right place. The digital divide isn’t about who owns data — it’s about who can put that data to work.

Everyone is jumping on the Big Data bandwagon... everyone except market researchers. I hear the odd whisper, but overall MR's response has been lukewarm at best. Why? This might be the best thing to come along for MR since the question mark; embrace it with open arms.

What's wrong with this picture?

Here is what you get when you paste the results of a Google search for 'survey panel' or 'take surveys' into Wordle:



Draw your own conclusions.

Renovation ≠ Innovation

...both are important, but they are not the same thing.

It will be a long, long time before we can retire the current MR fleet, so a fresh coat of paint and more comfortable seats are both needed and welcome, but painting a racing stripe down the middle of our WWII-era DC-3 won't make it fly five times faster on solar energy.

Much (most?) of what passes for innovation in our industry these days is renovation posing as something more. This innofaking is creating a false belief that all we need is a light cosmetic update and thus distracting from the fundamental changes needed to move MR forward.

Be wary of anyone claiming to be an innovator. If their plan boils down to letting participants play with social features but relies on points or other rewards to attract users, they are renovating. If they tell you they are building an online community whose primary purpose is to take surveys, they are renovating. The less disruptive their idea is, the more likely it is they are renovating.

Let them renovate, appreciate the work they are doing, but don't be fooled into thinking they are solving the problem of gathering quantitative data in a world increasingly resistant to taking surveys. 

Natural selection

I was amused by Tamara Barber's Big Idea (spoiler alert: she announced the death of MR). I was even more amused by the conversation in the comments. It struck me that I was witnessing natural selection at work.

You can still purchase music on vinyl, but in practical terms the format is dead. Surveys and focus groups will live long into the distant future, but they will be used MUCH MUCH MUCH more sparingly. Most of what we think of as MR today will be replaced by technology: a data feed and data visualization with a layer of smart viewer apps on top, to be used by client-side analysts.

(Not) sorry to say this folks, but those on the supplier side of MR are switchboard operators, unable to imagine any other way of connecting calls. A few will survive to fill niches and service the evaporating puddle of clients tied to the old school by inertia... most will have to adapt or find a different line of work.

The opportunity is immense. The Web contains mountains of data, too vast to describe, waiting for tools that can distill it into meaningful (i.e. actionable) insights and simple visualizations. Academics and traditional tech companies are already making good progress with extracting MR-like information from social and search data. There are still many dots to be connected; those who get into the game now have a chance to grab a piece of the pie. Those who invent the market insight technology of tomorrow will also have an opportunity to capitalize on their thought leadership through professional services (think IBM).

The irony is that we view technology as a subservient commodity, but the next wave of web technology will turn us into a commodity. Some will profit from the change, most will not.

To survive we need to become technology companies, yet what I hear over and over from the MR C-suite is "we are not a technology company." Keep thinking like that and soon you won't be a company, period.

Participation is not engagement

I love this incredibly pithy post by Simon Mainwaring. His social media commandments for brands are spot on:

Participation is not engagement. Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community...

1. Stop treating your friends and fans as customers and re-frame them as human beings looking for a decent relationship and meaning in their lives.

2. Accept the fact that people don’t owe your brand any loyalty or deference simply because you’re a household name. Trust has to be re-earned and maintained.

3. Take the time to listen to what your community (and the community of your competitors) are saying. More often than not, when they ask you a question they are really telling you something.

4. Slow down and take the long view. As we all know, lasting relationships can’t be rushed .

5. Tell us a little about yourself. Not what your brand makes, but what you care about and how they affects what you make. People buy the ‘Why’ before the ‘What.’

6. Embrace your inner amateur. You may have been a market leader in your category before but those days are over. And they’re unlikely to return as technology changes too quickly.

7. Be grateful (rather than annoyed) that these social platforms, tools and technology exist and that they can drive your business further and faster at lower cost than ever before.

8. When something works for you or another brand, ask yourself why? Then don’t copy it but think about what you can do that’s unique to you and better.

9. Find the human in the technology. The currency marketers trade in has not changed even if the methods have. Emotion is what we exchange.

10. Mean it. If the growing demand for transparency, authenticity and accountability has only made your brand more guarded, cynical and duplicitous, walk away from social media. The same dynamics that can fuel your success can destroy your brand image and customer base just as quickly.

Amen! It can't be said any better than that.

Where's the beef?

In my last post I wrote about the need to come up with a better value proposition for MR participants. We are not the only ones facing this problem. Check out this TechCrunch piece on how location-based services are struggling with the same thing...

...they’re not giving us any good reason to use them. Look at their web sites. Gowalla proclaims, “Discover the extraordinary in the world around you.” Foursquare says, “Unlock your city.” To which I say: “Oh, come on“ — and it seems I speak for approximately 96% (formerly 95%) of the population. I have no interest in enlisting in a virtual scavenger hunt, or unlocking merit badges — what is this, the Cub Scouts? ...If they want to reach the majority who don’t care about making it to Mayor, they need to abandon their pretense of fun, stop pussyfooting around with silly slogans, and make their value proposition stark, simple, and profoundly unsexy: “Check in and get coupons.”

And we can't talk about value propositions without a shout-out to one of the best there ever was.

Movin' on up

If you don't know you're living in the ghetto, how can you ever hope to get out?

That is a question you should be asking yourself right now because MR is ghetto as it gets on the Internet. We're living next door to sharks pushing payday loans and just a few blocks from fake Canadian pharmacies selling discounted boner pills and Nigerian spammers who want to make lucky Westerners rich.

There are two kinds of for-profit websites: 1) sites that provide a valuable service and monetize their traffic through advertising, e-commerce or subscription fees, and 2) sites that hustle, scam, or otherwise exploit naive web users by luring them in with promises of cash, prizes, porn, or other rewards. We are in the second group.

This is why only 1% of the online population will take a survey. This is why we can't get deep access to social data. We stampede the online trailer park over to our websites by announcing free BBQ and beer, hoping that once they realize they've been duped a few will still take our survey, join our panel, or register for our community... please, can someone explain to me how we concluded this was a good idea? The tragedy is we made it work; badly, but well enough to convince our management and clients that everything is copacetic.

We were already a large and mature industry when the lure of cheaper-faster-more brought us to the Internet. Driven by a heady mix of profits and inertia we jumped for joy as suppliers lined up around the block to sell us potential respondents for fractions of a penny a piece. Instead of adapting to our new environment we restricted ourselves to the sliver of the Internet that was willing to work on our terms, then we focused our brightest minds on defending the validity of the data.

The online research respondent universe is 98% online hobos, 1% hackers trying to game our reward systems, and 1% survey geeks. None of us can admit this publicly, but deep down we all know it's true.

Some of these problems are solved by social listening in all its various forms and names, but a new problem emerges: we are restricted to public data and thus know little or nothing about the people we are listening to. We are grasping at farts in a football stadium.

The time has come to admit that online MR is a pig and no amount of Flash, HTML5, or social media lipstick is going to fly this piggy to an East Side de-luxe apartment in the sky. I'm not saying we don't need better technology, we do, but updating our web tech is just the first step in a thousand mile journey and we would be foolish to think animated survey pages or licensing a social platform even begins to address the real problem...

Participants get no value out of online MR. None. Zilch. Cash is the wrong currency when you want someone to give you their honest opinion or access to their personal data. There is no good reason any normal person (test this by asking 5 of your family members) would take the time to complete a 10 minute questionnaire, let along a much longer one. We can make surveys a little more palatable by making them prettier, shorter, mobile, social and more relevant... but until we deliver some sort of real value to participants we are confined to the shrinking puddle of web rubes and survey geeks. Given the demand to move more research online, the 1%-spray-and-pray approach will not be a viable option for much longer.

A winning strategy for online MR must be supported by three pillars.

1. Great technology
2. Delivering genuine value to participants
3. Fostering participant trust by cultivating meaningful relationships

It is only by delivering value and establishing user trust that we can hope to access real people and their data for research purposes. Think Google. Think Facebook. Think LinkedIn. Think Hunch. These companies have vast amounts of detailed user data and enough credibility to command their users' attention. Even when privacy concerns come up it blows over quickly and very few users leave because they want and need what they get from these sites. That's the model we need to emulate... or partner with.

Too Many Cooks

...they're everywhere you turn. Endlessly they push and claw to get at the pot.

Each claims they alone know the recipe; none of them prepared to serve a plate and stand behind the finished product.

The research director thinks it needs more salt. The panel people are having second thoughts about the dark roux. IT is warning that the whole kitchen will go up in flames if you don't lower the heat.

The truth is most of the people stirring the next-gen-social-media-research-3.0 stew don't have a fucking clue about cooking. They are in the kitchen because the kitchen is where the action is, and they need a piece of the action to stay relevant and get ahead. Some are talking fast and praying no one calls their bluff; others fly under the radar hoping to hitch a ride on the coattails of success. Collectively they're doing a lot of talking--not much else, and stifling the company's chances of cooking up something good.

You don't need twenty executive chefs to run a kitchen. You need one boss, and a team of doers who can execute with speed and consistency. If you're lucky enough to have one or two innovators on the team give them the freedom to try new things, but once the menu is set and the dinner rush starts it's time for everyone to roll up their sleeves, shut their mouth, and serve up dish after delicious dish of the daily special.

The client is going to walk out if something tasty doesn't arrive on the table soon.

Choices

FAIL	WIN
Launch every feature	Keep it simple and focused
Over-analyze every decision	Launch and learn
Put money before people	Solve a problem
Try to be cool	Be human
Compromise	Fight for what's right

A penny for your thoughts

Tan Le's wireless neuro headset is cheap, easy to use, and doesn't look like a torture device. Her company (Emotiv) also claims to have developed software that can 'unfold' cortical differences between individuals, vastly improving the accuracy of signal source mapping. We're talking about a commodity priced neuro interface that plugs into your USB port. EEG meets wireless mouse.

An optimist would look at this and say the golden age of neuro research is nigh. Not so fast. Someone still needs to develop software that can reliably translate EEG signals into research results; that kind of development requires ubernerds and we don't have any... but market forces will eventually birth a competent, if uninspired, solution. Then we will have to convince ordinary people to let us read their minds; that's where we will fail. Why? Because we won't put any effort into creating a positive and meaningful experience for participants.

All models are wrong...

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

--George E. P. Box

Think small

I stole this from Rory Sutherland's TED talk about simple solutions for big problems.

It's a great illustration of the gaping hole in our approach to problem solving . We've so completely dismissed the idea that simple & cheap solutions exist, we don't even have a name for it. Conventional wisdom says big problems require big and expensive solutions. Conventional wisdom is preventing us from seeing the low hanging fruit.

What do you call that bottom-right quadrant? How do you ensure simple solutions aren't blocked by big-budget blindness?