Advertising and marketing Analysis: Why Our Strategies Want To Modernize
While media and marketing have become increasingly complex over the past few decades, many market research methods are stuck in the 1940s. Here Leonie Annor-Owiredu argues that it is time to move on
The most famous quote from Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower is: "The only lasting truth is change." It has never been as poignant as 2020, and while this year has brought about more changes than most of us would have ever imagined, there are still many areas of life and work that are still in the past. One of them is market research.
While consumer research is at the fore when it comes to solving problems creatively, its approach is – mostly – far from creative and seldom consumer-centric. Some of the core methods – polls and polls, for example – were popularized in the early 1900s, while focus groups date back to 1940. That means that one of the most popular types of research used today is 80 years old.
So why are we circling in and out of research methodology used in the days before Mad Men to engage people today? To understand more about how we can think differently these days, especially after Covid, I spoke to three research leaders about how they go about doing things, focusing on three different angles: how we speak; How we gather; How we group.