Editor’s note: Edward Appleton is director of global marketing and sales at marketing research firm Happy Thinking People, Berlin.
Do you trust the quality of the marketing research when reading articles (found on or offline), listening to Webinars or attending sessions at conferences?
It’s an odd question maybe, but should trust really be an issue for MR? Do we need to second-guess narrative intent?
While we are not always aware of it, marketing research is subject to influencer marketing just like any other industry.
Let me contextualize this for you. Our industry and professional futures live on a reputation of being trusted, neutral and evidence-based. But there are multiple forces eroding and challenging this.
- Anyone can conduct market research if they have a computer, Internet connection and access to a panel. Journalists can commission research and write about the results with no social science background, professional assistance or training.
- Newcomers are muddying the water. Start-ups are often backed by substantial venture capital, giving them access and massive noise/visibility. Expertise and understanding of research best practices is often limited and validation of quality is often a secondary concern with focus on sales build coming in as an urgent priority.
- There are few meaningful quality seals of MR approval. Membership in industry organizations could count but beyond that there is little aside from general reputation.
- Training programs are increasingly thin on the ground for graduate trainees to learn the tools of the trade and what constitutes good or bad MR.
- Industry portals, conference organizers and media companies are under economic pressure as their business models are being disrupted by lower-cost digital options. Why attend a conference if a Webinar will do?
- The clear divide between paid and earned media is blurring – witness native advertising.
- Last but not least, the role of influencer marketing can be impossible to detect. For example, there are many reasons a publication may give column space to a specific person.
This is a huge issue for the marketing research industry. Quality is key as we often support major decisions at multiple levels within organizations across numerous industries.
Industry bodies, conference organizers and arguably media organizations have both an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure MR quality is understood, appreciated and that it survives. Managing quality perceptions is part of that. I will admit that this is not easy given the complexity and subjectivity of quality definitions.
A quest for quality
It is possible for all of us to adopt a more active, critical approach to content consumption as a good first step in the quest for quality content.
Here are some questions that we should all start asking when we confront content in the marketing research space.
- Does the author (or in some cases, person being interviewed) have any business relationship with the editor/interviewer that hasn’t been flagged by the publication?
- How substantial is the evidence given to support claims?
- For competitions: Is the process fully transparent? Who is the doing the judging and how? Are there a sufficient number of independent evaluators involved?
- Do conference organizers follow a blind speaker/paper submission process, with speaker/company names hidden?
- Who are the backers behind a company you may not have heard of? What is the ownership structure? What can you learn about their strategic intent?
Even with the questions above it is still difficult to identify content – such as native advertising – that is paid for but not appropriately flagged.
We should be brave and call out overclaims, hype and poor science. You can do this discreetly through an e-mail to the editorial team asking for more information or more drastically by simply asking questions about neutrality in public forums or comment sections.
This form of reader activism is one way to help drive transparency.
The rising level of noise
Ultimately, content excellence and thought leadership drive audience engagement and broader stakeholder interest. But the rising levels of noise challenges that.
Noise in MR takes many forms – narrowly self-promoting articles, overly long opinion pieces and LinkedIn contributors who pretend to raise an objective topic or issue as an excuse for suggesting their company offering as the ideal solution. It clogs up the conversation space and ultimately debilitates how content and idea sharing work online.
If fewer and fewer marketing research professionals find it valuable to read, learn and listen to marketing research content simply because what’s offered is flimsy or overly salesy, they will turn away, causing discourse and exchange to wither. We abandon market research intellectual spaces at our peril.
Quality may not be dead but it’s time to act.
Long live quality.