{"id":1075,"date":"2006-10-13T17:55:54","date_gmt":"2006-10-14T01:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/13\/diy-market-research-instant-and-unfiltered\/"},"modified":"2006-10-13T17:55:54","modified_gmt":"2006-10-14T01:55:54","slug":"diy-market-research-instant-and-unfiltered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/diy-market-research-instant-and-unfiltered\/","title":{"rendered":"DIY Market Research – Instant and Unfiltered"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s one of the dirty little secrets of market research that the time-honored audience questionnaires are about as accurate as sitting down and playing "let’s pretend."  Especially here in L.A. – as exemplified by some of my friends who are unemployed actors. <\/p>\n

They gleefully told me that what they referred to as their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153part-time\u00e2\u20ac\u009d job was all figured out \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they conspired with the various market research firms in town. Many of them maintained three or
\nfour different identities to use \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a housewife for a research testing some new laundry detergent, a hipster raver for a new energy drink, a depressed former mental patient for a clinical trial, etc. etc. The one overriding consideration was how not to get asked to stay after lunch. <\/p>\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spend their mornings looking at the product and talking about how much they hated every little thing about it. Then they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d eat the Pollo Loco or whatever, and then, since they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like the
\nproduct, the marketers would tell them to go home. <\/p>\n

Score! <\/p>\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get their checks for $75 or $125 and then go home and practice screaming and pretending they were afraid for the Troma low-budget horror night shoot.\n<\/p>\n

All this as a longwinded intro to this piece<\/a> in Ad
\nAge that talks about how Corporate America is starting to seriously monitor
\nwhat people say in blogs. <\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve long tried to convince my friends that the blogs are
\nmore than just a place for wackos to babble about how the Elders of Zion
\nplanted shaped charges in the Twin Towers on Sept. 10, or for narcissistic teenage girls to gush about how the lead
\nsinger for Deathcab for Cuties looks like he has an armadillo stuffed down the
\nfront of his trousers. \n<\/p>\n

No, the blogs are in the purest sense of the word, Vox
\nPopuli. They are a true barometer for what people care about and what they feel
\npassionate about. Even the best market
\nresearch falls prey to the Schrodinger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cat syndrome<\/a> – where the act of
\nobserving influences the actions of the observed. There are some exceptions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like in the
\nmini-research I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done, where it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so much what people say, but HOW THEY
\nSAY IT.  <\/p>\n

For example, for the piece on
\nBakotopia, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that people wrote in gushing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that they not only
\nwrote in, but they went out and recruited their friends on Bakotopia to write
\nin as well. What that tells me is that the
\nsocial-networking effect that they talk about is strongly at work here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the users
\nhave become the evangelizers, and damn effective ones at that. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, over at Google, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Zeitgeist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meter<\/a>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201c which shows you what are the most popular search terms, broken down by month
\nand by country. Again, very revealing. Obviously, if you know what a person really
\nwants, you can tell what it is that that person is all about. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure if I felt good, bad, baffled
\nor dismayed to learn that in Holland, Malaysia, Greece, Mexico,
\netc. etc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one of the top ten searches was for Paris Hilton.<\/a>  <\/p>\n

That skank truly is worldwide. Can anyone explain this to me? I know that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re
\nstupid-ass kookoo for cocoapuffs drooling morons here in the U.S.for the Cult of Celebrity as exemplified by my former employers and US, In
\nTouch, etc. <\/p>\n

But whatinhell kind of connection
\ncan Paris have to the lives of the
\naverage Malaysian? She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had one movie \u00e2\u20ac\u201c House of Wax \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and one grainy sex
\ntape. And a TV series. Maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the TV series got syndicated\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\n<\/p>\n

Anyway, all this to blather in, around and all over the point that the word of mouth on the web and its importance is an idea that is gaining serious traction.  <\/p>\n

The next step, of course, is to take this kind of analysis down to a real granular level.  But more about that in a bit… <\/p>\n