Ready for innovation

Editor's note: Katie Buckley is a managing partner at Basis Research. 

Long before COVID-19 shut down facilities, states, even entire countries, the qualitative research world was ready for innovation. Our subjects’ lives were changing while our in-person methods, however tried and true, stayed the same. Then came the virus – and this unexpected chance for reinvention. 

Now is the time to revisit our approaches and commit to continued excellence in service to the brands that rely on us. It’s an understatement to call this a challenging time for marketers. To stay connected to consumers, brands need the insights we unearth more than ever.

Until the post-COVID-19 era arrives, many brands plan to fill the insights gap by leveraging the resources they have and trusting the hard numbers; tasking internal teams with mining and synthesizing their own sales and behavioral data, existing insights and secondary research. This effort makes sense, especially in industries where products and services normally in demand are put on the back burner. But it also runs the risk of falling short of providing the full behavioral picture. And if one word could summarize the current consumer state, it’s “human.”

To help brands explore what consumers need them to be – right now – our industry has work to do, and quickly. We know face-to-face talks yield the best insights but we can’t physically gather like we did. We know emotional intimacy is essential to what we do. But we can’t rely on physical closeness to help us develop it anymore.

Never committed

Online tools had already started changing the qual landscape for the better long before COVID-19 and many of us pivoted to platforms we knew and trusted when lockdowns began. But our field has never committed to virtual engagements as a primary means for connecting with people. The time has come for a dedicated exploration of this potential. 

Even the most complex forms of research can be completed online, sometimes even better thanks to AI and platforms that aggregate insights in real time. As my colleague Jamie Gerson rightly points out, “The tech is getting better, crisper and more refined each day. And consumers are getting far more comfortable since they are using it regularly in their personal and professional lives.” 

The picture is clearer and there are fewer glitches on platforms. There is more openness and candidness. We’re seeing more of consumers’ authentic selves – they’re more comfortable on camera, in their own space and have a greater willingness to share early on in our conversations. In terms of output, we are developing video expertise. We know what to expect from these platforms and the pitfalls to avoid and can give tips and tricks to get great footage that feels natural, not forced.

Rather than abandon this progress at the first opportunity, let’s build on it with digital experimentation. There’s a rising trend in socializing in smaller “clusters” and families and individuals are “quaranteaming” together. Instead of gathering six strangers virtually, we should engage these already-formed social circles. These communities come with pre-established trust and built-in “BS meters” in the form of close confidantes. Chats can take place in spaces that already feel comfortable and safe: homes. And we can observe and converse safely online. 

We should also make the platforms where our participants spend so much time already work in our favor. Forming WhatsApp groups for research can connect us to people around the world seamlessly. “In our recent experience talking to young women in Nigeria,” says Charlotte Smith, global head of qual at Basis, “engagement was super high and we built close bonds with this group, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where face-to-face would be have been more challenging and limited from a cultural point of view [without COVID-19 restrictions].” 

A virtual reality platform shouldn’t just be a “special occasion” tool anymore because it enables us to observe natural reactions in the places and spaces we can’t be right now. We can expose people to new concepts, pack designs and innovations in context and re-create scenes and moments that rely heavily on visual experiences or customer experience. While this option is still expensive, there are secondary benefits that increase its value – no more awkward interactions in store (with other customers or staff), greater comfort of the participant to think, feel and share their natural reactions and much less time and cost eaten up traveling to different cities and stores/shops/homes. 

We also can’t ignore the work we need to do to keep client engagement high in this new digital sphere. Being in “the back room” is more than just M&Ms and Thai food, there is magic that happens. The immediacy of insights, the connections and camaraderie between stakeholders and the sheer proximity to customers magnifies and accelerates client learning. Digital workshop tools and online meeting software can help replicate the magic. Brands like Miro and MURAL make coming together virtually easy, efficient and fun; from places to debrief after groups to hosting whiteboard sessions, brainstorms and concept-writing workshops, they offer tools that aid in facilitation and implementation of great ideas.

Force a permanent shift

It’s likely that this pandemic will force a permanent shift into more online and agile qual. But once we are living in a post-COVID-19 world, we will want to come back together face-to-face as well. We are social beings who need to experience physical and emotional connections. And the value of personal interviews remains uncontested. Subjects feel their interviewers’ warmth and perceive their genuine interest and they respond with greater openness. Moderators sense what subjects withhold, what is not being said. We base some of our best insights on what we physically feel vs. hear. 

Once we can get back together, we should leverage the spaces and places where people are most comfortable. Community and social research will be here to stay as it offers up a way to more naturally see how people are influenced and make decisions. One moderator entering someone’s home to sit and talk with four or five friends is not only safer than six strangers in an unfamiliar place but will likely get us closer to true feelings, behaviors and motivations. 

Going on walks, talking in parks and sharing a coffee in a café with smaller groups of people not only sounds more fun but will likely elicit more meaningful conversations because people are relaxed, more open and able to step out of their lived realities and we can see natural behavior firsthand. This will be important as expectations on qual deliverables will also shift. It’s not just about great insights anymore, the demand will be for research that helps clients solve a problem and generate innovative solutions.

Test every possible way

None of us can know what the “next normal” will look like yet. But for researchers and brands, our priority moving forward must be forging stronger connections to our consumer participants. We must test every possible way to keep getting the human-centric qualitative insights that we know make all the difference for brands.

“If we are honest about it, we probably didn’t do enough to create emotional intimacy when we had the advantage of being face-to-face,” says Tom Neveril of Storybrand Consulting. “Now with virtual conversations, it’s a must. Incorporating richer pre tasks or simply spending some time asking participants about themselves and telling them about ourselves will pay off.” 

For example, we recently trialed an initiative encouraging respondents to share something meaningful in their immediate physical environment. One participant placed himself in front of a framed picture of actor Cary Grant, which opened a lighthearted conversation about his enduring love of 1930s and ’40s romantic comedies and his membership to the British Film Institute and encouraged others to share more about themselves. 

Fresh appetite for experimentation 

Over the next 12-18 months, qual should claim its new virtual spaces and methods with speed and a fresh appetite for experimentation. We’ll need to keep evaluating, reevaluating and refining but it’s up to us to lead boldly and build new solutions. As design theorist Bryan Lawson has written, “design solutions create new design problems.” Which is to say, solving one problem can create another – but that’s okay; it’s all part of the process. We must continue to evolve as fast as the world around us – as fast as the people we’re studying. 

Researchers can know one thing about our next normal: it won’t be defined by looking back. Our grand reassessment, triggered by COVID-19, was overdue. But let’s be inspired by our own enduring value. Seeing, hearing and empathizing with people is our specialty. Time to roll up our sleeves and get inventive. We have an essential practice to reimagine and advance.