MRGA JOURNAL Volume 1 Issue 1 02.16.11

Who Is MR Heretic? An In-Depth Interview Offshore Transparency

Market Research Bloggers You Should Follow Now

Adopting A Social Model For Market Research

02.16.11

Volume 1 Issue 1

4 Welcome to the MRGA JOURNAL

3

MRGA JOURNAL

JOURNAL ENTRIES

Volume 1, Issue 1 :: February 2011 MRGA JOURNAL by MRGA Members is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

S

Subscribe

6 Exclusive NGMR

Interview with the Most

Mysterious Blogger in Research

12 Featured Bloggers You

Should Follow Now

16 Featured MRGA

Blog Posts

19 Corporate Membership

Spotlight

20 Adopting a Social Model

for Market Research ::

MRGA Interviews

Globalpark

17 LinkedIn Conversations

33 New Membership

Spotlight

46 Top Stories

50 Events

52 Videos

55 Social Media Innovators

43 How to Enhance

Productivity in

the Human Cloud

35 A Candid Conversation On

Off-Shore Transparency

44 Throwing Down the

Gauntlet

P

Publish Your Blog

E

Post Your Event

Welcome to the first edition of the MRGA JOURNAL, the Market Research Industrys first user generated content periodical. We find it appropriate that our first cover story comes from

two of the most talked about bloggers in market research self proclaimed market research super villain (hes really a very nice guy, in my opinion more super hero) Tom H.C. Anderson and the MR Heretic, whos mystique leaves us all rooting for the vocal researcher keeping quality in check. We believe the stories, content, and press covered in this edition and

JOURNAL entries to come, will cover the most important issues facing our industry today.

After all, our content is comprised of MRGA Members and industry experts just like you

trying to navigate observations and needs within the market research landscape. We hope

you will make it a better place for all of us to succeed, gain knowledge and do a better job

for those we help gain insight and make strategic decisions.

Please follow the articles back to the original bloggers or the MRGA Discussions Forum and comment with your thoughts

or write another article if you feel inspired. We have no agenda other than to support what you our members and readers

are interested in. We give all of our members an equal voice as it pertains to market research!

If you are inspired to write a story or publish an article as a professional member, please do it it only costs your time to participate. If you are a brand and want to share ideas about your company brand you just need to become a corporate

member. All you need to do to share your news is be a member of the MRGA, and pick one of these areas within the

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Step 1. Become A Free Professional Member (Individual) of the MRGA or Become A Paid Corporate Member (Company

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Forums & Discussions (The best place to gather like minded professionals under industry topics) Groups & Online Product Labs (Join other like minded professionals to discuss topics and follow product innovation.) Events (Post Your Industry Events, Webinars, Speaking Engagements, Interviews etc.) Videos (Have media content you want to share with the world? Post it here and share)

Step 3. The MRGA will automatically publish and optimize your content through our one-click publication network as

soon as you click submit! Our network publishes to over 17,000+ instantly. Our network is comprised of ::

MRGASN ResearchVibes GreenBook Blogs (Selected Commentary) Social Media Resources (LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and More!) Our goal is to give you an easy to publish, share, and achievable open platform that opens gives you ownership of

your content and indexes for it the industry.

The podium is yours,

Eric Bell, Founder & CEO

The Market Research Global Alliance

[email protected]

Volume 1, Issue 1 :: February 2011 MRGA JOURNAL by MRGA Members is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. 4

MRGA JOURNAL

Welcome to the MRGA JOURNAL

Eric Bell, Founder & CEO

The Market Research

Global Alliance

Click To Comment

Where ever you see the blue

bubble, click to comment. or just

visit the discussion forum to see

what other industry thought

leaders are saying!

If you, like me, feel market research is in dire need of

change, then its hard not to enjoy reading MR Heretics sharp and witty posts, often containing very visually apt

meme like images, on the Market Research Death Watch

blog. While speaking anonymously, @MRHeretic does

so with a certain elegance and restraint, that is hard not to

admire. I often find myself hoping his efforts will encourage

and spawn other masked heroes to join his ranks, taking on

the establishment that market research has become.

Since I mentioned Id be interviewing MR Heretic on the blog a few days ago Ive had several people contact me with questions and guesses about his identity. Personally, I enjoy a bit of mystery, and so while theres no harm in guessing, the following interview with MR Heretic is strictly about

his views on our industry.

Im pleased to delve a bit deeper into market research with MR Heretic here on the Next Gen blog. He indicated he might even take a few reader

follow up questions/comments if there are any.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Youve gotten quite a following, and a lot of people including myself really like and agree with what you have to say. Can you tell me

a bit about why you started blogging and tweeting, and why do you do it

anonymously?

MR Heretic: I guess there is a heretic in all of us. Thats why I started the blog. The same things kept coming up in private conversations with friends,

acquaintances, even clients. We all saw how broken MR is, and felt powerless to

change it. Some were inhibited by fear of losing clients or jobs, others just tired of

swimming against the current. MR Heretic became our voice. Especially early on,

the inspiration for many of the posts came from other people I just pressed the keys. Thats why posting anonymously made sense. MR Heretic is not a person, its an idea. The blog doesnt belong to me, it belongs to everyone who is tired of the same old bullshit and in favor of destructive reconstruction for the greater

good; I just post words on a web page. The fact that I can speak freely without

putting my employer or myself in potentially sticky situations is a bonus.

Tom H. C. Anderson: I have to admit, I think part of the intrigue is that you are

anonymous. I think the anonymity is something weve lost on the web with social networks. I think part of it is good, part of it is not. Anyway, a lot of us would still

like to know a bit more about you. Can you give us a few clues about who you

are?

MR Heretic: I am the silent discontent of research-serfs everywhere, given voice

and freed from fear of ostracization. I am everyone, and I am no one. In other

words, Id like to dodge the question.

6

MRGA JOURNAL

Exclusive NGMR interview

with the most mysterious

blogger in research!

By Tom H. C. Anderson, MBA

& MEA Founder & Managing

Partner Anderson Analytics, LLC

Tom H. C. Anderson

founded Anderson Analytics in

2005 as the first full service

online market research firm to

leverage data and text mining

with other online research

techniques. Since then Tom

and his team have won several

awards for their innovative

methodologies and

groundbreaking work.

He earned his BS in Marketing

and MBA, Beta Gamma Sigma,

in Marketing, Finance and

International Business from the

University of Connecticut where

he is a frequent guest speaker

in graduate level marketing

research and data-mining

courses. He attained his Master

of Economics with honors from

Lund University, Sweden.

During his thesis work he

consulted for several joint

ventures in Shanghai, China

and also interned for the United

Nations (UNICEF Geo-Political

Analysis Group).

Several of his articles and

methodological approaches

have been published in trade

JOURNALs as well as decision

science text books including:

Business Research Methods

10e , McGraw-Hill 2005,

2007 & 2008, and Qualitative

Market Research Approaches and Applications IFCAI

Books/IFCAI University Press

2007.

MR Heretic

Continued


Tom H. C. Anderson: Fair enough. Can you at least tell me a few particulars so we can

sort of get an idea of where youre coming from. Are you a Boomer, Im guessing Gen X? Are you American, European, Australian (you seem like a native English speaker)? Have you worked in any other industries before MR?

MR Heretic: Ive lived in Europe and North America. I worked briefly for a large tech company a long time ago, the rest of my career has been in MR. I might or might not belong to GenX depending on the definition you use.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Getting back to Market Research, what is your single biggest

industry pet peeve?

MR Heretic: Seth Godin calls them the forces of mediocrity. They are sheeple who fear change and resist it with devastating efficacy.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Ah, so you like Seth Godin. From where else do you get inspiration?

MR Heretic: I try to ingest a variety of perspectives. The Cluetrain Manifesto has a special

place on my bookshelf. Some others sources of information and inspiration: Getting Real

and Rework by 37signals, @researchlive, @mrnews, all the usual MR Tweeple and

bloggers including yourself, Mashable, TechCrunch, Ted talks, Twitter, Facebook, The

Economist, Science, New Scientist, Advertising Age, Mitch Joel, Clay Shirky, Guy

Kawasaki, OReilly radar, Kevin Kelly, and whoever else has something interesting to say on any given day. Some are in my content queue because I agree with them and they inspire

me, others are there specifically because I think they are full of shit. The second group helps

me remember that each of us projects our own reality and I shouldnt take myself too seriously. My favorite quote this week comes from Hugh MacLeod talking about

Rackspaces evil plan: believe in the future by creating it first.

Tom H. C. Anderson: What company or companies do you most admire and why?

MR Heretic: I admire MR companies that treat respondents like human beings. Sadly, I

dont know of any. Do you?

Tom H. C. Anderson: What do you mean exactly? I like to think my co. and many other

companies treat our respondents ok.

I do think I know what you mean though about long surveys, spammy ads and low as you

can go incentives without sharing any results with respondents? I can see how changing

this would improve our data and street cred with civilians, but I think the other part of the

equation lies in improving our analytics skills, leveraging and merging more data sources for

predictive analytics, would you agree this is maybe even more important?

MR Heretic: I agree that improving skills, merging data sources and predictive analysis are

all important. I dont agree that they are more important than re-framing our respondents as customers. Its not an either-or proposition; both are essential. I focus on user experience because thats what I know and thats what Im most passionate about today. We have an image problem, a serious one, and a deserved one. Tell the average 20-something you

work on market research surveys and they will look at you like you have leprosy. This

stigma limits who we can reach now, and if we dont fix it it will continue to hold us back in the future regardless of what skills or tools we develop. I want to believe that your company

treats respondents well, but I need proof. I invite you to let me participate as a respondent in

some of your research and I will give you an honest review on my blog.

MRGA JOURNAL

7

Who is the MR Heretic?

I am the growing multitude of people in the

Market Research industry

who have realized that

the status quo is

obsolete, and we face a

choice between evolution

and extinction. http://www.mrheretic.com/

Continued

Volume 1, Issue 1 :: February 2011 MRGA JOURNAL by MRGA Members is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.33

Tom H. C. Anderson: LOL, thanks for the offer. Not really the way we recruit (we have a

small highly specific GenX2Z panel) but will keep your offer in mind. For many studies, we

like all other companies I know of are guilty of participating in the great panelist exchange

market

You are completely right about our reputation Im afraid. As we branch out with new skill sets and techniques, perhaps this will be part of the change.

So, what do you think the future of marketing research looks like? 1 year from now? How

about 10 years from now?

MR Heretic: Nothing will change in the next 12 months. The industry will continue to hype

innovation while dabbling halfheartedly to convince clients (and ourselves) that we are

moving in the right direction. The buzzwords will change, but everything else will stay the

same. In 10 years what we think of as MR will fill a small niche in a new ecosystem

dominated by Web-based analytics and visualization tools connected to active and passive

data feeds from a variety of sources. Think back to the music industry in the days of vinyl

records, tapes, and CDs; now fast-forward to iTunesthis is going to be a bit like that.

Tom H. C. Anderson: I think I like the future. But I think many of us are not prepared for it.

What new techniques do you find most interesting?

Conversely, which ones do you think are already getting more hype than theyll probably ever deserve?

MR Heretic: Is this my cue to plug Odintext? Its too early to declare winners and losers. We need to give all of them a sporting chance and see what works and what doesnt. Of course everyone is going to back their own horse and try to trip the others up. Thats unfortunate but unavoidable; take everything with a grain of salt. No one really knows what theyre talking about. Were all making it up as we go along. We will all end up using a variety of tools to get the job done, so dont write any of them off just yet. I happen to believe in an interactive MR canvas where a variety of techniques are all available as modules and you

simply drag & drop whatever is right at the time. I see a lot of potential in predictive analysis

using search and social data. I also see an opportunity to rethink how we ask questions;

something more intelligent than a poll, less annoying than a survey. Most importantly, Im prepared to be wrong and open to having my mind changed.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks for the plug, LOL. I like to think OdinText fits nicely into what

youre describing RE the interactive MR canvas. And like you, perhaps a persona might even develop around the effort

In any case, Its easy to criticize, I find myself doing it on more than one occasion. However, I think its also important to give constructive criticism. What are some things you think market research companies could do to improve?

MR Heretic: Create a better respondent experience and you will gain the keys to the data

kingdom. For starters, MR is a two sided market, so start conducting yourself accordingly.

Respondents are your customers. They consume your Web content (surveys, apps,

community websites, etc.) and pay with their time and data; start showing them some love.

If you start designing Web experiences for customers instead of respondents good things

will start to happen: the number of people willing to take your surveys will grow and

dependence on incentives will decrease.

MRGA JOURNAL

8

Continued

I admire MR companies that treat respondents like

human beings. Sadly, I dont know of any. Do you?


MR Heretic: Create simple, beautiful, usable web pages and apps. Write question copy that is

as good as the best marketing copy. Make the process as short and relevant as possible.

Dont use social media to recruit survey takers or scrape data in sleazy ways; hire amazing social spokespeople to provide customer service (i.e. support) to your survey takers and

nurture genuine relationships. Use social media to make your company human and provide

service to the community, thenand only if they feel its genuineyou wont have to recruit them with cash and prizes, they will come willingly. We believe these things are hard,

expensive, and reserved for technology companies. Thats a myth. They require a different skill set and a different approach, but they can be done by any company with minor retooling

and a big attitude change. When done right they are cheaper and easier to execute (not to

mention better ROI) than the brute force tactics we are using now. If our entire industry is

riding on the backs of the 1% of Internet users willing to take a survey, imagine how much

money there is to be made if we could move that number to 2% or 3%. It can be done. I just

told you how.

If you outsource any part of the data collection process, test it as a respondent. If it feels like

torture to you, and you wouldnt wish it upon your friends or loved ones, dont let it happen to someone elses loved ones. If you outsource participant recruitment via web search, check the referring URLs in your web server logs I mean actually open the pages. You might be shocked at the sleazy tactics your suppliers are using on your behalf. Vendor practices are

shaped by market pressures, put some pressure on your vendors to clean up their act.

If you commit to doing the things I described so far I tip my hat to you, and your web-

customers thank you for making MR a lot less painful for them, but surveys and focus groups

can only take you so far because there is no real value in it for participants. Start doing some

serious blue sky thinking. Encourage it in your company. Dont let the forces of mediocrity stifle it. Look for ways to gather data that require less time and effort from participants, give

them something of real value in return. Dont listen to the fear-mongering about Web data; if you gather it the statistical models will come. Try things. Experimenta lot! Dont be scared of ideas that break or cannibalize the current business model, they might be your future business

model. If you dont develop them, someone else will.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks, wonderful advice. I think as usually I agree with most of what

you said. Again, I hear the best interest of the respondent as key in much of it, which is good.

It feels a bit like youre holding suppliers a bit more responsible for the status quo than I think we deserve. Anderson Analytics has ventured into some of the areas youve mentioned. Facebook apps for instance, which were both more interesting for respondents, and collected

a lot more interesting data

.

We moved away from this early effort mainly because client interest wasnt there. I heard Was it marketing or marketing research? and that the small extra expense wasnt in their budget. I think part of that might have had to do with recession pressures, but were just responding to the demand.

So what Im saying is, if we build something better, do you think theyll really come, and want to pay for it?

MR Heretic: Failure is good. We need to fail more. If you try and fail many times you will

eventually build something they will come and pay for. The learnings you get from failing are

breadcrumbs on the path to success. The key is to prototype quickly, without spending a lot of

money, and feed what you learned last time into each new iteration. Web technology is perfect

for that. Expecting everything to fall into place on the first try is unrealistic.

MRGA JOURNAL

9

Continued

Failure is good. We need to fail more. If you try and

fail many times you will

eventually build something

they will come and pay for.

The learnings you get from

failing are breadcrumbs on the path to success.


Tom H. C. Anderson: Yes, iteration is certainly key in what we do.

What skill sets do you think will be most important for the Next Gen market researcher?

MR Heretic: The next generation of market researchers will use new technology and

updated statistical models; those skills become pretty straightforward to acquire once

someone writes the manuals. The tricky part will be staying current in a world of constant

change. Curiosity, creativity, adaptability, and technophilia will be essential characteristics for

the next gen researchers as much as analytical & statistical aptitude. In some ways those are

the same things that make a great researcher today; the big difference will be the

environment they will have to navigate and the ever increasing pace of technological and

social change.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Are you happy with your efforts so far? What are your goals going

forward? Any intentions of revealing your identity at some point?

MR Heretic: Im happy to see more candid and open minded discussion about the state and direction of the industry. How much that has to do with me is immaterial. I didnt have any expectations when I started the blog, it became a success as soon as one other person read

it.

The goal is to build the future Ive been writing about. I was recently reminded by someone on Twitter that talk is cheap. Thats true if all you do is talk. Im ready to get my hands dirty.

Im sure I will reveal my identity to a few people at some point, and then its just a matter of time. So, yes I think at some point you will find out who I am. Am I going to broadcast it? No.

Tom H. C. Anderson: Thanks and great having you on the blog. Im sure I speak for most Next Gen members when I say I look forward to seeing more of your posts soon.

View more articles by Tom H.C. Anderson by visiting his blog or MRGA profile.

View more articles by MR Heretic by visiting the Market Research Deathwatch blog.

What do you think of this interview? Share your thoughts & theories!

MRGA JOURNAL

10

The goal is to build the future Ive been writing about. I was recently

reminded by someone on

Twitter that talk is cheap.

Thats true if all you do is talk. Im ready to get my hands dirty.


Click To Comment

Marcelo Sicoli

Marcelo has an MBA in marketing and graduation in International Relations.

Has worked for a few Embassies, has many articles published in major

magazines, newspapers and websites. World Champion of International

Negotiations forum for students(Harvard World Model United Nations-1998.

Event held in Brussels, Belgium). Professor of International Marketing in MBA

courses. Consultant for food, industrial and pharmaceutical companies in

Brazil and all over the world.

Recent Posts by Marcelo:

Entering the Brazilian

Pharmaceutical Market

Stable economics and

growing healthcare concerns

make Brazil one of the top

emerging markets, with a

current growth rate >20%.

Many analysts argue that the

future for Brazil, which has

been called for decades the country of the future, has finally arrivedRead More. By Marcelo Sicoli.

(EDUARDO GARCIA/

GETTY IMAGES)

Designated as a "pharmerging

market," Brazil is revamping its

pricing models.

Brazil is the eighth largest

pharmaceutical market in the

world with 2008 sales estimated

at $19.5 billion and the number of

units sold in 2008 estimated at

1.8 billion (1). By 2011, Brazil and

the other "pharmerging" markets

(Russia, India, China, Mexico,

South Korea, and Turkey) are

expected to contribute

approximately 27%...Read More.

By Marcelo Sicoli.

The banalization of Market

research in Brazil

Over the past several months,

observing some market

research companies at work

and some of them quite large,

one immediately notices the

banalization of market research

in Brazil.

The need for cutting costs

within the market research

segment, has resulted from a

desire to maintain profit

margins, while maintain pricing

structures at a level at which

the contracting parties abroad

were accustomed (willing) to

pay at the time of a strong

dollar. However, particularly in

the well known area of cash

incentives for research

participation, I see the market

working at unrealistic and less-

than-professional levels...Read

More. By Marcelo Sicoli.

12

MRGA JOURNAL

Featured Bloggers You Should Follow Now


Leonard Murphy

Lenny is a seasoned and respected industry leader with an entrepreneurial

drive. He has been called a visionary and is renowned as an innovator. He

has successfully established several companies in the MR space including

Rockhopper Research, a leading full service global research firm and MDM

Associates, a MR consulting firm, before founding his current companies:

BrandScan 360 and his consulting practice LMC group (www.asklmcg.com).

Lenny serves on the Board of The Market Research Global Alliance, the

premier social network for the global MR profession. He is the Founder and

Executive Director of the Research Industry Trends Monitoring Group &

Publisher of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends Study, the oldest study

in the industry devoted to tracking changing trends in MR. He is on the

Advisory Boards of the Festival of NewMR and The Merlien Institute. He is

also the Chairman of the IIR Technology Driven Market Research conference.

Rounding out his busy professional life, he is the Editor in Chief of the

GreenBook Blog. Lenny can be reached at [email protected]

Do It (Yourself) Or Die

Regular readers know that I think a

lot about the future of the market

research industry. I make it my

business to follow as much news

as possible, network with peers,

talk with thought leaders, and

collect my own primary and

secondary research data on the

topic. I do all of this for three

reasonsRead More. By Leonard Murphy

Recent posts contributed by Lenny:

Mental Spring Cleaning

One of the biggest challenges for

me as a blogger is finding the time

to write about every idea or news

item that catches my eye. There is

so much great information being

generated and disseminated out

there that it can be a real challenge

just to keep up with it all!...Read

More. By Leonard Murphy

Be There Or Be Square!

Now that the Holidays are

over and we've put 2010

behind us, it's time to start

planning for that perennial

tradition in Market Research:

conferences and seminars!

There are a bevy of events

coming up that are near and

dear to my heart, so rather

than recap everything that is

scheduled (you can find

that here), this is the list of

events happening over the

next few months that I

recommend all readers of

the GreenBookRead More. By Leonard Murphy.

13

MRGA JOURNAL

Featured Bloggers (Cont.)


Guadalupe Pagalday

Guadalupe is an experienced and highly motivated bilingual professional

with a diverse background in online marketing, public relations,

international sales, operations, and teacher as well as language training.

Currently, she is a Marketing Associate at Qualvu.

Join the

conversations!

You can be a

featured blogger,

too. Post your

blog to the MRGA,

so you can be

heard.

Recent posts contributed by Guadalupe:

Changing the Odds: How

Online Video-Based Market

Research Can Be a Game-

Changer for Product Design

We all admire people who want

to defy the odds: the athlete

whose dream it is to compete in

the Olympics, the civic-minded

student who hopes someday to

become President, the struggling

writer whose dream is to write

the Great American Novel...Read

More. By Guadalupe Pagalday.

Great Research Begins with Great

Respondents

Its essential to have cooperative and willing respondents because qualitative

research tends to take longer than

quantitative research. And thats because of the depth of information

researchers seek. Projects that focus

on why instead of what require participants to do more than just check

a few boxes; qualitative research seeks

consumers stories on why they make the choices they do...Read More. By

Guadalupe Pagalday.

14

MRGA JOURNAL

Featured Bloggers (Cont.)


16

Kinesis Survey Technologies Achieves Seventh Straight Year of Record Growth and Profitability

Austin, TX - Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC (Kinesis), the industry leader for future-proof market

research software solutions, today announced record revenue growth for 2010 and its seventh consecutive

year of sustained profitability. Founded in 2003, Kinesis has been profitable every year and has

experienced year over year revenue growth to date, all of it generated organically. Read More. By Kinesis

New Study Shows How Ebooks Have Changed the Reading Landscape Research from iModerate

Research Technologies and Brock Associates finds that 66% of consumers with multi-function devices have

increased their reading their habits and 46% have been inspired to read more books in print. In a recent

study to understand how portable, multi-function devices or MFDs (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android

devices, etc) are changing consumer book reading habits, consumers who utilized these devices expressed

a tremendous affinity for them, struggling to come up with any signRead More. By Adam Rossow.

Four Keys to Creating Value (& Brand Insights!) from Facebook Fans Facebook is clearly King, as

evidenced in the Time cover, it's valuation and all the media and blogosphere buzz of lateRead More. By Globalpark.

Gazelle Global Announces New Viewing Room in Manhattan Gazelle Global Announces New Viewing

Room in Manhattan January 25, 2011 New York, NY: US-based research operations service provider, Gazelle Global Research Services, LLC., announces the opening of their new qualitative viewing room

located in their Manhattan, NY headquarters. This viewing room is centrally located, offering busy

professionals a convenient, flexible solution for conducting qualitative research in New York City. The room

comfortably holds a group of 8 participants with a separate viewingRead More. By Gazelle Global.

Turnkey DIY Alternative for Online Focus Groups: uSamp Delivers Real-Time Participants for

GutChecks Online Qualitative Market Research Chats Encino, CA uSamp (www.uSamp.com), one of the worlds fastest growing technology and online sample companies, announced today that it has teamed up with GutCheck (www.GutCheckIt.com), an innovator in online qualitative research, to provide the

automated delivery of screened and qualified participants for moderated, online qualitative market research

studies. Read More. By Diane Urso.

5 Strengths of the New Agency Times are hard in the marketing and advertising world and there seems

to be consensus that things wont be getting easier. The old agency model is on the road to extinction, but no on seems quite sure how to survive. There is agreement that agencies need to adapt and transform from

integrated ad agencies, to some new type of organization that is defined by broad thinking, flexibility and a more strategic approach to problem solving. The problem is that this sort of thing is easier to talkRead More. By Gavin Johnston

FocusVision Enhances Video Editing Tool Stamford, CT, 17 January 2011 FocusVision, the leading global provider of qualitative research solutions, has made it even easier to align key decision makers using

video highlights from theirRead More. By FocusVision World Wide

16

MRGA JOURNAL

Featured MRGA Blog Posts


Alfonso Regalado How online community

research can help brands keep their finger

on the pulse of shoppers decision making?

Coca-Cola Project Shopper 360 shows how

brands can respond to the challenges of the

post recession shopper landscape through

continual dialogue with consumers. This

presentation of ESOMAR INSIGHTS

Conference Brussels 2011 will show how

cutting edge community research combined...

Maruan Trascu What are the "hot" research

topics on media and advertising in your

countries?

Hello everybody! It appears that in Romania

we (or at least I) have managed to come to a

stop in the flow of interesting topics related to

media and advertising that we can use as

study object for research projects. I'm talking

here, of course, not about research for...

Junaid Zakria The GRI Report Survey

Report chloregy.com

You will all recall the GRI Readers Choice

Awards last year and the reporting survey that

formed part of the competition. Some of you

may recall how the Brazilians cleaned up,

winning six first place

Stephen M. Sweid Dr. Market intelligence

and the right business decision? With a

reliable market intelligence you can get the

right decision and the wrong decision,

depending on the capabilities of the decision

marker(s). With the lack of market intelligence,

or the inaccurate data, you are bound to get

the wrong decision, irrespective of...

Jessica Groopman How do you approach

international market research? focus.com

What are the different considerations MRGA you

need to make when embarking on international

market research?

Sam (Yu) Zhuang Smart Path: Merries,

Huggies, Pampers, GOO.N and MamyPoko

dominate China diaper online market.

According to latest tracking report of Smart Path

(www.smart-path.net), Merries, Huggies,

Pampers, GOO.N and MamyPoko dominate

China diaper online market, with a collective

90.6% share in 2010Q2. These top 5 players

have been holding a dominant position in China

diaper...

Mark Uttley Fancy bringing your global MR

skills into the music industry? Sony Musics Global Marketing team in New York City is

setting up a Global Insight Lab. The Lab will

provide insight that makes Sony Musics global campaigns even more targeted, creative and

effective. If you have 5+ years of relevant insight

experience and a US VISA, why not...

Jack Jefferson Whats with all the buzz about Customer Advocacy? Market Probe News Live correspondent Melissa

Hartzel interviews Dr. Michael Lowenstein and

Mr. John Gilbert of Market Probe about customer

advocacy, customer satisfaction, customer

loyalty measurement and market research at the

Loyalty World conference in London, UK.

MRGA on LinkedIn ::

The MRGA group on LinkedIn is comprised of almost 8,000 members globally.

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MRGA JOURNAL

Conversations


Company Description

Globalpark offers panel, community and feedback management solutions that drive loyalty, product innovation,

and marketing reach. We help organizations like Citi, Daimler and Nintendo, and top MR and HR agencies, to

ensure the voice of the customer/employee informs daily decisions. We offer web-based solutions for:

- Online Research including mobile, for instant in the moment feedback - Research Panels with the most open, efficient panel management platform available

- Private Feedback Communities fusing quant and qual research

- Advocacy Networks to build reach, reputation

With over 10 years experience, we offer a proven, cost-effective solution to help organizations manage what

matters and fuel bottom-line growth.

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MRGA JOURNAL

WHY YOU SHOULD GET TO KNOW GLOBALPARK: the recently announced Social

Insight Connect solution seamlessly integrates their Enterprise Feedback Suite with

Facebook. With this first of its kind application, researchers get an at-the-ready

audience with higher-than-average response rates; marketers get to

know and measure who their Facebook fans are; and fans get unparalleled

engagement with their favorite brands without ever leaving the social networking site.

IN GENERAL: Technology company helping to shape the future of market research

with an open feedback management platform that integrates across mobiles, social

media and surveytainment. Listed on Deloitte "Fast 50: Germany" every year since 2007, Globalpark is making its mark internationally with offices in London and New

York and top brands like Citibank, General Mills and the BBC on its client roster.

HISTORY: Founded in 1999 building a 35,000-member online transportation panel for first (and current!) customer, Daimler to engage customers in collaborative product design.

THE MAN BEHIND IT ALL: Globalpark founder and CEO Lorenz Graef has worked in

the field over 25 years: he created the first GOR (nee German Online Research)

conference in 1997, has been a long-term board member of German Society for Online

Research, and has written numerous texts about online research as recently as 2010.

Find more on www.globalpark.com.

Dr. Lorenz Grf

Chief Executive Officer

(CEO) of Globalpark

Corporate Membership Spotlight


Adopting a Social Model for Market Research

By: MRGA Live Chatter

Aired: 2/10/2011 7:00 PM UTC

Description: The MRGA and Globalpark discuss the opportunities and inherent challenges of adopting a social business

model for researchers and across the enterprise.

Join a 45-minute radio show that will reveal:

How to adapt to a social business model: content, curation and collaboration

Benefits of aligning consumers with employees across the enterprise

The nuances of influencers and influence, enabling word-of-mouth, and measuring social currency

The new ability to extract measured and actionable insights from Facebook fans without them ever leaving Facebook!

Join the discussion on the approach, and its impact on both marketing and research teams. Mark your calendars for the live

debate, and register now to get access to the recorded broadcast - as well as a seat at the February 24th webinar that dives

further into the topic!

Eric Bell

(0:56): Hello everyone. Welcome to Live Chatter. Today's show is about using social market research to create value and

insight for Facebook fans. Here to talk about this with us is Jim Whaley, a 30-year veteran of the industry currently heading

up business development at Globalpark. Jim has spent his entire career in research and technology. He has worked in

marketing and business development at firms like IBM and held executive positions at SPSS, InfoSTEP, and Gazelle

Global. In 1990, he founded a research firm where he was president until 1999. Today he is the vice president at

Globalpark US, a firm focusing on enterprise feedback management solutions. He is the father of two girls and also a new

grandfather. Congratulations Jim!

Jim Whaley

(1:40): Thank you Eric.

Eric Bell

(1:41): A quick fun fact about him, for those of you that know Jim. He is a member of a blues jazz fusion band called Hipster

Hotel where he plays piano and keyboards out of Ridgefield, Connecticut. He also holds a private pilot's license. For those

of you, who are not familiar with Globalpark, tell us a bit about yourself Jim and what you do.

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Corporate Membership Spotlight Adopting a Social Model for Market Research ::

MRGA Interviews Globalpark Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Continued


Jim Whaley VP Business Development

Globalpark

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MRGA Interviews Globalpark (Continued) Hosted by: Eric Bell Special guest: Jim Whaley

Continued


Jim Whaley

(2:01): Thank you very much, Eric for that introduction and, thank you for this opportunity to engage with the MRGA

community members. Certainly, we are happy to have the opportunity to talk about some important trends that we see

influencing businesses today as they seek to understand the social web and particularly, the world of customers as they

develop new social business models. Also to understand a little bit more about our role as researchers. As you had

mentioned in your introduction, I have been around a little bit of time and that's sort of given me the opportunity to evaluate

quite a number of technologies as they've come and gone over the past couple of decades. So, I've built a lot of business

cases and deployed a lot of new technologies during my time as a practitioner in the research space. Also, I grew up in a

research family. So, I appreciate the work that we do. And also as you mentioned, I spent about half of my career in

technology companies, primarily solving customer business problems in companies like IBM and SPSS, and the other half

of my time as the owner of a research company. So, today I'm pretty happy that I can satisfy both of my passions at

Globalpark.

Speaking about Globalpark, we are a company of researchers and technologists, and we're deeply committed to enabling

our customers with best practices and tools in order to enable them with the ability to address their business information

requirements. Today, our customers are using our platforms to deploy lots of diverse insights and advisory communities.

They're conducting online and offline research with communities that are as little as just few hundred members to very, very

large communities that have multidimensional segments associated with them, and have millions of active participants. So,

our goal is to speak to those who desire to deploy continuous feedback into their business management processes.

Eric Bell

(3:58): Great! So, let's jump into this. You do a lot with General Mills from the IIR presentations that involve social media

and mix of offline activities. Is that your typical client? What types of organizations do you serve?

Jim Whaley

(4:14): Sure. Well, certainly General Mills is in many ways a typical client. They are certainly one of our flagship clients here

in North America. And we are happy to be associated with them. But we also work with a lot of other companies that are

global in nature. Citibank for example or Citi if you will, where we do a lot of work with in the area of Voice of the Customer.

And we do research around the customer as well as their employees. And then Nintendo, we have an interesting

engagement with them where we collect insights at the point of presence of their gamer portal. So, we have a community of

roughly about three million Nintendo Wii customers. And Nintendo reaches out to them based on the different types of

games they use. For different initiatives around product design, and development, and marketing communications.

Eric Bell

(5:12): That's fantastic. And am I right, you guys have been in business for more than 10 years?

Jim Whaley

(5:17): Yeah. We've been around for a little bit of time and one of our first customers back in 1999 was Daimler. Many of

you know them as Mercedes if you will. Long before the social web existed, we built a community of around 30,000

customers. A panel basically that was for collaborative product innovation. So, issues like ergonomics and seat design.

Things like that. We engaged engineers, and customers, and employees to sort of work towards building you know, better

products. So, we were doing some of this collaborative research long before we knew it was cool.

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Eric Bell

(5:58): And I think what's cool today is social media, of course MRGA, that's our main business focus, and then of course

Globalpark. Particularly, with Facebook, just the other week as Globalpark launched Social Insight Connect. My

understanding of Facebook application that gives organizations of private channel with fans, with new ways to interact and

measure their input. Is that the kind of a summary that I got from the press release?

Jim Whaley

(6:25): Absolutely. We're very excited about Social Insight Connect, but sort of taking a step back, most organizations

today, Eric, have a Facebook page by now. So, the primary, thrust of those pages have been sort of a passive way to

collect fans, connect with customers, and share information. But the piece that's lacking in that is an integrated way to

engage, and understand, and activate fans within that community, and beyond the community. You know today, people

have a desire to be a part of the process and feel like they have a voice. And the traditional ways that we've gone about

embracing our customers' opinions and insights are still pretty useful and important, but today we can do so much more.

People know this, and they've come to expect it.

Eric Bell

(07:11): That's great. So, as researchers what should we be focused on relative to social media research? What is the role

of the researchers that Globalpark sees it?

Jim Whaley

(7:21): Sure. Sure. Well, when we take social media into consideration, I think it's important to sort of think about what it is

and what it's not. Today, as part of this discussion, the focus is about technology, but not so much that it overwhelms the

conversation. Social media really is sort of an abstract term for sort of an abstract entity, if you will -- it's less about

technology and more about the idea that we can connect today with the people that -- we feel -- have similar interests, and

desires, and motivations. We can connect and share. So, this is a new environment where it sort of changes the dynamics

of the discussions that we're having. I think as researchers -- there's a few questions that we need to consider -- from the

standpoint of where we fit in to this process, and one of the first questions that I think that we should think about is what do

we say to our customers. When they come to us and say, "Hey! I want to.. or how should I engage in the social media process?" I like to think about that this way -- you might answer your customer -- why would they want to do that. So

a lot of times you'll hear something like, "Well, because it's what everybody else is doing". And I submit to you, this is

probably not the best motivation to start a social media campaign or even research around social media. What I like to

respond to my clients with when they ask me about this subject is -- "Hey, look. What is (on a scale of 1 to 10), what is the relationship that you have with your customer today?" And more often than not, I get a response like something like, "Well,

I'll give it an 8 or a 9". And I said, "Okay. Good. Now, what if I ask a hundred or maybe even a thousand of your customers,

you know what THEY think the relationship is?" And then you get sort of a different response, that is like, "Well, you know,

I'm not exactly sure. And what I would say is that, "That's the reason why you want to engage. That's the real motivation". Think about it that way. The second thing that I would ask myself, what I want to know is how I help my clients shift from

traditional customer marketing, which is a one-way communication to more of a customer collaboration, which sort of

transcends all my lines of business, which brings you to strategic planning process that you want to start to consider. And

then the third thing is -- how do I put programs in place to measure the performance of whatever strategic initiatives that we

find that are necessary to implement.

Eric Bell

(10:00): Great questions to think about, Jim. Why do you think businesses are starting to get serious about social media

and building communities?

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Jim Whaley

(10:06): Well, okay. Well, there are several reasons. I think that first of all if you take a look back over the last couple of

years, there has been sort of stagnant or slow growth in new program adoption. And most organizations have been sort of

reticent to sort of jump into this, but that's starting to change. Businesses are starting to now increase their budgets. They're

investing capital and other resources into the social business endeavors. The second thing is that social communities are

not new. We have been serving them at Globalpark, as I alluded to earlier for quite some time. Certainly the basic concept

of communities had existed long before we ever started building communities at Globalpark. What's new really is the social

web. The social web being sort of self-defining online communities that come together around people's interests. That we

have in each other, interests that we have as individuals in each other, as well as communities that are focused on special

interests and activities. So, for us this is really an evolution. This is the thing that we're reacting to. It's all about reaching

people where they live, listening, communicating, understanding, and collaborating.

Eric Bell

(11:18): The attention on all of this is really high. Many of our MRGA members are talking about social businesses, this is

certainly a program for us.

Jim Whaley

(11:27): Well, all of this attention is quite understandable. Just take a look at the growth in all these social networks that we

hear about on a regular basis. Literally, hundreds of millions of active new participants are joining the ranks of Facebook,

LinkedIn, Twitter -- this is the new media. And this has all happened in a relatively short period of time. You have to be in a

vacuum not to be aware of how much attention is being paid to this. So, this is true. Even if you don't have a Facebook or

Twitter account, but could you imagine that?

Eric Bell

(11:57): Yeah. Exactly, the focus on trying to get people to zero in and where to start -- that's the core focus of what the

MRGA does is we try to people understand where to get started. So, its hard to imagine that being on Facebook or LinkedIn with all the buzz today.

Jim Whaley

(12:14): Absolutely. But, despite all the buzz, if you're a business decision maker - you're not just going to jump on the

social media bandwagon without some hard reasons or hard numbers to look at. Not because its the latest thing. So, we must think about this in a way where we're investing only after we understand what's happening in the market place and

what things are driving this market opportunity as it exist today.

Eric Bell

(12:37): So, what specific trends are you referring to?

Jim Whaley

(12:39): Sure. So, let's take a look at how we work today. The fact that we're becoming more open and connected as a

society, and then we can't ignore the fact that the personal technology that's available today is ubiquitous and it's very, very

powerful. So, just consider today how we work. For many of us, we have sort of adopted sort of an always on, always

connected posture. And this has really kind of changed the concept of how we work and where we work radically. Today,

we work at different times. We have one or many offices. Many of those offices are offices that we check into. I personally,

work at several offices and my home office, as I travel. So, I have a virtual office concept as well.

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Continued


Jim Whaley (Cont.)

And this is sort of becoming increasingly accepted for most of us as a way of life. At least for me and the people that I know.

Business are not just looking at this is just the way to save money. They're looking at it as the way to retain and attract the

best people, and so that people can be productive. This is really important because this really changes the way we view the

world and our place in it significantly. We have today the time to be interested and connected and engaged in more of the

activities and the people that we're drawn to. Our companies has recognized this and as a result, the perception we have of

our own value increases and it should increase. We become more engaged, we become more involved, and hence, we

become more influential.

Eric Bell

(14:09): Yeah. Sounds like with this concept in place, it drives more motivation around the workplace, and I think, Im not sure if you agree or not, but I think companies benefit from this because they become constantly plugged in and are

constantly referencing and helping their employees gain momentum, and see a preview of things that are happening in

discussions.

Jim Whaley

(14:40): Yeah. No doubt about that. It's a good progression. You know the second thing or the second trend that we need to

consider is the idea that we have moved in this society to being more open and more sharing. Most of us have this sort of

the need to be connected even before the web. And I think about people that were influential or people that are influential

before there was LinkedIn or Facebook, many people had like the very sophisticated ACT database or giant Rolodex, or

what have you -- makes me think about Harvey Mackay a few years back when he first wrote Swimming with the Sharks.

He went on a book tour to promote his book and he was talking about the fact that when he was in the publishing process,

he was having a hard time getting Random House, I believe, or McGraw-Hill, I'm not sure, to publish his book because he

was an unknown author. And he talked about the fact that he went to them and said, "Look. You need to make sure that

you can sell at least 10,000 copies before you take a risk on this". And they said, "Yes". And he said, "Well, I have 10,000

people that I'm directly connected to, and those 10,000 people know at least five people that will buy my book. So, there is

50,000 right there." And they took his word for it and decided to publish it, and of course we all know what a big success

that book was. But today, think about that coveted list of Harvey Mckay's contacts and many of us -- many of the people

that have big powerful networks are on Facebook/Linkedin now. And those networks are shared. This is really kind of an

important shift because we understand and recognize the importance of relationships. We understand each other better

now in a more three dimensional way. We view our peers and who they're connected to -- we know what's important to

them. So, this really changes the motivation, the frequency, and even the depth of the conversations that we have.

Eric Bell

(16:22): I completely agree. That's a really, really powerful example.

Jim Whaley

(16:26): And the last piece of it is personal technology. I mean, most of us have a Smartphone or an iPhone if you will and

even a regular cell phone. There is more computing power in that cell phone today then ran a small community bank not too

long ago. And what really is interesting about this is it gives us the ability to do a lot with the very little. On my Smartphone, I

basically can surf the web, navigate, do emails, make phone calls, text, stay very, very connected. I can even publish and

modify content if you will. So, we now have more access to information than anytime in the past - we can digest and modify

this in anyway, shape or form, and provide feedback.

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Jim Whaley (Cont.)

As a result, I know that I make better choices with the information that's in front of me now than I was ever able to do. A

good example of how these have changed the way my life operates in a more efficient way is that recently I was -- I live in

New York City and worked downtown and I was -- I was needing to go up to Connecticut for a meeting later in the afternoon

on a Friday. So, I went by my apartment and during that time, I got an email from a customer saying, "Hey. Can you check

on this piece of information?" So, I needed to enlist the help of one of my colleagues back at the office. So, I was able to fire

off an email to him on my laptop. Check my little applications on my iPhone that looks at the train schedules and constantly

rolling update of it, which really saves me a lot of time. And I was able to fire that email off to the client, get in a cab, go to

the train station, get a response back, and then make a modification on my iPhone. Send that email off and still make my

train. And also, found an alternative way to get from the train station in Connecticut to the house all on my iPhone. So, is

this workplace balance? Absolutely. Because I was able to make a personal engagement without having to get tied up with

what was going on at the office, all because I have the power there in my hands.

Eric Bell

(18:41): That's a pretty powerful example. Imagine if you could capture that insight on a community that you're monitoring

with people that enjoy communicating and talking on a regular basis. So, as a researcher or I should say as researchers

addressing our customers' social business initiatives' -- how do we leverage that all the trends that you outlined for us?

Jim Whaley

(19:04): Sure, absolutely. Well, let me go back and say it's important that we take the holistic approach to considering and

modeling business opportunities, right? So, today most social media still focuses on customers and prospects. And what

lacks is the strategy that employs all the key players. The new social business needs to include business partners and

employees, as well as customers. If you don't do this, you're going to miss important opportunities relative to trends in work,

society, and technology.

Eric Bell

(19:33): With the important outcomes and various stakeholders, it's important to have a plan I would assume.

Jim Whaley

(19:39): Absolutely. It's really, really important to have a plan. And this is really the main point that I'd like people to take

away from our discussion today. I can't stress the importance of setting goals and objectives. This is all relates back to

strategic planning. So, I mean, many of us understand the process of strategic planning and from our first position as a

manager or even back to business school. So, these are principles that should all be very familiar to us. I can give you a

couple of examples of some successful engagements that we've had with a couple of clients where doing strategic planning

aligns the business and all the resources together with the final outcomes of the social media and research campaign. I'll

give you one example of General Mills. At the very high level, they talked about setting goals. This is all about business

alignment. General Mills wanted to set or basically maintain or achieve brand category leadership across a number of their

big brands. So, they set that goal. The next step of course in strategic planning is to establish some objectives and of

course objectives which are measurable. So, increasing brand awareness and the adoption was where they were focusing

their attention. Next that gave them the ability to sort of lay out some strategy as they were thinking about using the

resources they had internally and matching that up with the opportunities in the social web. So, they decided that they

would identify key influencers within their customer base and activate them. Leveraging word of mouth principles if you will.

This led to some specific tactics that said, Okay what we're going to do is develop a series of online and offline communities of advocates. they organize around word of mouth events and open sharing between the brand, people that advocate those brands, and other influencers that talk about the brands to encourage in sort of an open sharing in a

promotional environment via the social web.

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Jim Whaley (Cont.)

What this led to is some series of engagements of insights communities to advocacy communities where the brands were

able to share behind the scenes, types of activities about people that were enthusiastic about the brand and very socially

connected so those people would share with people that they were connected to. So, they ended up with pre and post

awareness of net promoter scores and awareness y measurements before and after these campaigns. And they

experienced the tremendous amount of lift before and after measurement. Another example is with a client that is an

industry leader in the area of online education curriculum. And what they did was they really wanted to look across what

their business requirements where and they decided that they wanted to sort of expand in this new market specifically the

secondary education market, and so they set out series of strategic goals and incorporated principles within the

organization all the stakeholders that were responsible for making that happen. They had established some objectives

which were to create new curriculum to develop new accounts and specific revenue targets which were able to be

measured before and after. So after dealing with that that they laid out a strategy which was to basically developed a world

class curriculum for the secondary education market, which led to some tactics which said what they would do would be to

create a community of curriculum developers, educators, students and parents getting together for collaborative co-creation

of these new curriculums and they were widely successful on this process.

Eric Bell

(23:24): Oh, that's great. Some say that surveys are irrelevant that we should forego them in favor of listening without

asking, what are your thoughts on that, Jim?

Jim Whaley

(23:33): Sure. Well you know there's been a lot of talk about, you know, whether or not people should still do surveys.

Whether or not, the information on the web really give us all the information we need from a listening posture. But I would

say that that's not necessarily the case. I think that if I were to go into the customer business meeting and just listen and then come back and respond without ever asking questions they wouldn't feel like after leaving that meeting, I was very

engaged with them. So I think the principle of asking questions is important especially if we want to develop relationships

and really want to understand deeper what's going on with our customers. But certainly listening is important. But I think we

have to take an inventory of where we were coming from a research standpoint, and what we have to work with today. What

the opportunities are - So let's kind of consider the traditional approach to research. So a familiar approach for a brand to

take to target their marketing. First, by taking a look at survey data. Think about the kind of customer that they would like to

service. And use that information to build a model if you will or sort of profile of a set of customers. So what would they look

at, they would look at things like, age and gender, maybe income and profession if you will. What types of media that they

were consuming? What they are buying? And then you sort of use this information and work backwards to sort of refine the

messaging you know? What channels to use and how much to spend in these channels to sort of communicate with

customers in that one way paradigm. You know this is pretty much the way research has been done for the past several

decades. The challenge there and the limitations of depending solely on that sort of demographic approach is it becomes problematic in a couple of ways, Eric. First, it all starts to fall apart when you start to consider the digital media world.

Because you don't really necessarily know who you're talking to, at least not until you start to engage. The other thing is that

demographic information isn't particularly useful because on any given channel or, website or community.. People get together around exactly what the site is about, people get together around the things that they are interested in or things

that their passion as opposed to a sort of a pre-defined group that we typically look at. Great example of that are a

community of people that play Final Fantasy, you could have a wide variety of demographic categories of people coming

together around the globe. They have very, very different profiles about their personal life and what their personal choices

are but they have a common interest around the gaming and fantasy gaming. The same as games like Second Life or even

around communities that have to do with sports, sports or food or what have you.

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Continued


Jim Whaley (Cont.)

We don't really know much about these communities until we start to engage them and start to do some of our own

segmentation. So the opportunity is that you know, we can start to develop deeper insights by going sort of beyond listening

if you will and start looking at people's behavior, what their networks you know, their own networks look like you know what

their influence profiles look like. As marketers , what our customers want to do is be able to learn how to use these

conversation so that they can have better relationships and as researchers you know, our job really is to sort of help them

provide a context around this conversations and really make it easier for the customers to act on the insights that are

gleaning from them. Ultimately, I think where we want to go is having the collaborative relationship between the company

and the end user.

Eric Bell

(27:17): That's really interesting insight. Thank you for sharing strategy and tactics and of course the challenge around that

process. So with social media in your words, what do you think is the best way for someone to get started that wants to

explore this?

Jim Whaley

(27:23): Well its simple really you know, First find your existing customers, fish where the fish are. Have a conversation

online, start talking to them and then ask them if they'd be interested in helping advance the conversation.

Eric Bell

(27:46): That's it? Is there anything else? It sounds really easy.

Jim Whaley

(27:48): Well, I mean it is easy, you know why? Of course if you begin with the end in mind, right?

Eric Bell

(27:53): Yeah.

Jim Whaley

(27:54): And I think that there are other things that you can do from a tactical standpoint. I certainly think it's important to

look at the traditional data that we've had to work with and what some of the sort of new data points are that we should start

to consider. Certainly, some of the traditional data points that we have to work with that are available on the web are

demographic and product-related, and there's lot of tools out there for listening and scraping websites that you can, sort of

start to glean this kind of information about products and demographics. Certainly a lot of business applications have APIs

in the Facebook analytics, companies like Radian 6 can do a lot of listening. But beyond that there are a whole lot of

information categories that you can consider in the social web. Certainly, there are psychographic types of data points you

know, where you can glean information about people, about their feelings, and what they think about things. There's a

behavioral activities that certainly people talk about on the web that you can start to develop deeper insights in. And then

the referral data, there's lots of websites like Klout and Yelp, where you know people are talking about "they like this, or they

like that" and you know, this information can all easily be processed. Some of the newer types of data points that you can

consider are things like location data and intention data. Certainly if you have a smartphone and you know, really, really

hooked in with the latest trends, there are companies like Foursquare that provide location type of services. These are

services in more open in sharing environment that many of us are you know, more comfortable working within. Where I can

be in a particular restaurant or a particular event and it automatically will update my network of where I am. I happen to use

this feature, it's sort of controversial I know, but many of the people I know do use it.

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Jim Whaley (Cont.)

So this is still new and people are still getting used to it and trying to figure out what you can do with this data but it's very,

very powerful stuff that you get creative and think about how you can weave this into your insights program. And the other

type of data is intention data. So there are lots of new activities that you can do on Facebook or LinkedIn about events that

you're planning to attend or things that you're planning on doing, there are sites like Eventful where you can talk about

events that you're planning on going to it and there are whole communities that can be built around that. So this is also

stuck but you know, it's very, very interesting to look at and I think that over the next coming years, people really jump on

this and marketers will be able to use this type of information to be more proactive in their offerings.

Eric Bell

(30:42): Okay. So let's say about Global Fortune 100 company and let's say I've got 10,000 fans or maybe even 100,000

fans to support my Facebook page, what should I be doing?

Jim Whaley

(30:57): Okay. This is a good question and this is the question that our customers are asking us today you know. So find

out who your fans are, what you want to do is what I've been talking about is basically building social business insights and

collaboration into your Facebook site. But I want to step back and I want to reiterate that it is important that you take a

holistic approach that considers a couple of key areas. First of all, start with the connections that you currently have on your

Facebook and start to drive new interests in your fans page by providing something for these people to do; and then start to

understand who these people are, the type of things that drive them. The second thing that you might want to consider is to

understand who your fans and customers are, and how they're connected. Who are they influenced by and who do they

influence. Then understand who you're connected to and how you're connected to them. Taking this sort of social business approach to connections leads to a better deeper relationship management system which will ultimately lead to

better outcomes. So start to develop a meaningful relationship and dialogue between your customers, between your fans,

and your business partners as well, and your employees.

Eric Bell

(32:26): Great. So you know, using your strategic planning example, those are great goals and objective. Now what about

the strategy and tactics, what specific action items should we start to think about?

Jim Whaley

(32:38): Okay. Well you know what we like to talk to our customers about is this. Think about content, curating, and

collaboration. So you know, think about the progression of your fan page or your community in terms of those three actions.

Start out by thinking about content. Start by executing your business plan by providing regular and useful content on your

community. You know, and don't worry about whether or not it's going to go viral. I mean the fact that the matter is that very

little content goes viral nor does it need to go viral. Instead focus on serving and educating your customers you know, start

out by being more open as an organization. Why not consider taking the covers off of your organization and letting people

see who you are as a company and you know, what your values are and what your employees you know, want to do to

serve their customer base. Then start to look at how much your customers will really appreciate their transparency. That's

what's some of the best examples of companies doing social media today are doing. When it comes to curation I mean, let's

think about this. We all start our lives on by consuming, right? So before we do anything else, we need to be fed but after a

while as we develop as human beings, we start to find the need to, put things together you know, that we read about on the

web. We start to add value to these pieces of, or snippets of information by providing the context around them. And their

context comes in many forms like putting this content together and repackaging it with your insights, and your feedback

about it and then starting to share that with people that are important to you, or that you think might have a stake in what

you have to say.

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Jim Whaley (Cont.)

The other form of curating when it comes to sharing is you know, we curate our networks of our relationships. So another

form of curating is who are we connected to? So we can start to understand our customers by understanding as I said

earlier, who are they connected to? Just help us to have a more three-dimensional view of who the person is that we're

communicating with as the customer. And then I would say, the next progression is to move towards the collaborative

environment. So beyond content, beyond listening to feedback, beyond watching for the progression and transformation of

your content, if your customers are providing or adding value to what they share, it's really important to engage with your

customers and ask them the how and the why. Ask them what's really driving, what they do, what things are important to

them. So this you know goes beyond the benefits of sort of simply going out and getting ideas from crowd sourcing

standpoint. It makes you more real and more relevant in your customers view. And also gives the customers just taking the

game in a sense that you know, a sense of ownership that the brand, the efficacy is a little bit in their hands at least to some

extent anyhow. This joint trust really becomes important and also becomes very intoxicating for your current customers and

those that might be customers. So this is the kind of thing that you want to consider as your point you know, and this is the

kind of thing that your customers wanted to think about is they're forming a relationship with your brand.

Eric Bell

(36:03): So content, curate, collaborate that seems pretty straightforward enough and how does this all play in the

research?

Jim Whaley

(36:11): Sure. So you know, at Globalpark we like to say that we help our customers measure what matters. So, you

know...

Eric Bell

(36:19): Right.

Jim Whaley

(36:20): Thinking about this discussion about from a strategic standpoint, are you measuring what matters? Are your

programs aligned with your corporate strategy and have you identify those things that are important to measure? So

basically, the substance of all these social business initiatives must really relate to metrics by which the business really can

manage itself. So this is about you know, measuring fan engagement, event participation, influence as well as you know,

what are your sales results. So there's a way to link all of these together. So the idea here is to drive up the ratio of the

signal to noise ratio. If you are clear in your intent, and you're clear in your tactics and you know what you need to measure

before and after, you can start to increase that signal to noise ratio and start to hear what's important in terms of whether it

relates to all the chatter that is out there online, and help you take the reins and control of your business back by being

more focused. So it's all about deploying the right tools and listening but also practically engaging.

Eric Bell

(37:36): Would you say is there a danger to focusing on fans only?

Jim Whaley

(37:40): Well of course there is. I mean if we take it the idea of just Facebook fans we don't necessarily want to just look at

Facebook fans. First of all, we don't really know who they are but it certainly is a great place to start. I think beyond just

measuring who your Facebook fans are, I think you want to understand and compare them to your overall customer base

and your target audience. You know, a great example of that is Ferrari. Ferrari, if you go to their Facebook page you they

have many, many fans around the globe.

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Jim Whaley (Cont.)

As a matter of fact, they have many, many more fans than have ever owned a Ferrari or ever own a Ferrari but that's not

really the idea. For Ferrari, the idea of their brand and its popularity and the sort of the cult status that it has, is the

perception in the industry is very much driven by fans. And this goes across the all the products that they offer and events

that they provide you know, well beyond just you know, people buying cars or servicing their cars of their own.

Eric Bell

(38:55): Thanks a lot. So this information, can I better segment my audience and interact with them more appropriately and

I would say that social insight connects support next steps you know, what makes it actionable for people listening in.

Jim Whaley

(39:11): Sure. Alright, so think about where we came from you know, basically sort of passive Facebook sites or

communities if you will, and think about what you can do with technologies like Social Insight Connect. For example, what

makes it actionable is that you now have the ability to identify and engage appropriate advisers. Advisers that can help you

with the variety of programs that you put into place like product testing, co-creation, ideation or you know, campaign

optimization like word of mouth that I had suggested earlier. The other thing that you can do is begin to identify and enable

influential advocates within your communities or brand ambassadors which will help also.. What will ultimately drive your

community to grow? You know, the other thing that you should consider is when you're considering a platform is one that's

open and is able to integrate with your business systems. I mentioned in the Nintendo example we are very much,

integrated within their gamers portals so it is very seamless into, their business workflow. So you know, we like to talk to our

clients about not just enabling feedback but how to just fit in to your business systems, how do you embed ongoing

feedback management and measurement into your whole business system.

Eric Bell

(40:45): So the idea of integrating Facebook has been highly anticipated and I think just within the industry in general, I'm

really glad to see that Globalpark is taking that lead on this. And it was featured in a recent Forrester report about the

industry obviously trying to figure out the evolution of MROCs and for those of you that are familiar with the term MROCs, it

means Market Research Online Communities. You seem to be the only organization doing it?

Jim Whaley

(41:13): (Laughs)

Eric Bell

(41:14): (Laughs) It's an observation.

Jim Whaley

(41:16): We like to think that we are first out of the gate on this. I would say that the customers and prospects that we've

been showing this to are really amped about the ability to start to build these types of communities within the context of a

social media framework. A lot of the social media and marketing experts are talking today about how users are starting to

develop their own safe environments on the web and they are sort of curating their relationships if you will on the web and

they want to be able to do things within their safe environment if that happens to be Facebook for example. So to be able to

have a community and insights community, with things to do inside the social media framework is very, very important and

our customers are very, very amped about it.

Eric Bell

(42:12): That's great. Thank you so much for the taking the time to share what MRGA membership and people that have

tuned in, it's been a real pleasure interviewing you.

Jim Whaley

(42:22): Well thank you, Eric. This has really been an enjoyable discussion.

Eric Bell

(42:26): And just for everyone listening and for the folks that might want to find out m

Documents

MRGA JOURNAL Volume 1 Issue 1 02.16.11