research

Translating Something? Consider This. (Another Post in our Editorial 101 Series)

April 22, 2011 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Angela Williams, Editor, Palio

Did you know that when you translate a document from English into Spanish, the copy length typically increases by about 25%?

This small tidbit of information may seem unimportant, especially in the midst of a multilingual marketing campaign, but planning for translation hiccups up front will help ensure your communications are as clear, engaging, and culturally appropriate in another language as they are in English.

Writing or designing for a translated piece? Keep these 5 rules of thumb top of mind.

1. Err on the side of lean. Chances are that if your English copy is teetering on the verbose side, the foreign language translation will too. Use clear, concise language, shorter sentences, and simple, standard constructions. Translation vendors charge per word, so wordiness will cost you.

2. Steer clear of idioms, colloquialisms, and jargon. Expressions or terms with unconventional meanings (eg, the bottom line, quick and dirty) don’t always have suitable counterparts in other languages. If you’re not careful, their translations may inadvertently come across as inappropriate, offensive, or confusing.

3. Avoid excessive use of acronyms. If there isn’t already an established foreign language equivalent for an English acronym (eg, the translation of HIV is VIH in Spanish), its spelled-out translation will tack on length very quickly – at a rate of a few extra words per mention.

4. Don’t skimp on the white space. An airy layout with a good amount of white space might look slightly odd before your piece is translated, but when your manuscript comes back 25% longer, you’ll be thrilled you don’t have to crop images or sacrifice design elements to cram in that additional copy.

5. Tailor colors and graphics to your target. Before you start designing, do your research. Consider your audience’s nationality, religion, and level of conservatism when selecting imagery. And be aware of how your audience views certain colors, which may carry different connotations or meanings in other cultures.

Your translation vendor should be able to approximate how much your copy length will increase based on the language and/or dialect into which you’re translating. If you’re not certain, find out. And then make sure members of your creative team are privy, too.

Palio is a full-spectrum global pharmaceutical and consumer advertising, marketing, and communications agency that excels in brand creation and specializes in brand strategy, product launches, global marketing, and digital and integrated media.

Filed Under: Creative, Editorial Tagged With: Communication, editing, research, translation

Beyond or Behind the Click

December 29, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Carl Turner, VP, Research and Analytics Director, Palio

It’s the hottest buzz phrase in digital analytics these days. Everyone’s talking about moving beyond the click. Marketers are no longer content with counting clicks. They are now demanding new metrics to understand what a click buys. In advance of a campaign, they want to predict what a click will mean for brand recall and consumer sentiments toward a brand. To predict relationships between clicks and these important marketing metrics, digital analytics teams are beginning to look to complex statistical models. It sounds complicated because it is.

Very few people (other than statisticians or mathematicians) understand the assumptions and limitations underlying the statistical models being developed, yet there is increasing confidence in their value among digital marketers. It’s interesting. As we move further into the digital world, we are becoming more reliant on numbers and sophisticated analytics to understand human behavior. In some ways this makes sense. The digital world is constructed of codes and mathematical relationships. Shouldn’t we measure the digital world using the same codes and mathematical relationships that define the space? This seems logical until you consider who is navigating this space. Although the digital landscape is constructed from codes and math, it’s navigated by human beings. People have complex attitudes, beliefs, and values that underlie their behavior and govern their motivation. Additionally, they don’t typically act in ways that are intuitive or logical.

In our quest to move ahead and predict the impact of digital marketing, have we focused too little on what drives behavior? Do we really understand what motivates people’s behavior online? Yes, there are user experience designers who can help us to understand user goals and conduct usability testing, but often they rely on industry assumptions or flat-out myths about behavior. Although user experience has roots in psychology, it has veered away from them in recent years. Fewer and fewer UX designers are well versed in the psychological and group dynamic principles that have been scientifically proven to guide behavior. As we call for more statisticians and mathematicians to lead the evolution of digital analytics, perhaps we should also be calling for more social psychologists and anthropologists to lead the charge. Perhaps we should be spending more time understanding the “why” behind user behavior. Perhaps we should be spending as much time behind the click as we spend beyond it.

Here are two articles that support this line of thinking:
This article speaks to the lack of understanding when it comes to behavioral drivers.
This article speaks to the current deficiency in user experience design.

Filed Under: Brand Planning, Research Tagged With: analytics, digital, Human Behavior, Psychology, research, Statistics

The 4 Most Common Research Mistakes

September 16, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Lee Whitcher, Research Manager, Palio

What is the affect of a mistake in market research? Some readers may have noticed the mistaken use of “affect” in the previous sentence. Some may not.

We all know how costly typos, a misplaced hyphen, or a mispelled word can be. Unfortunately, mistakes in market research are even easier to miss, and sometimes, can have a much more serious and long lasting impact on our brands. To that end, the following presentation includes a few simple and common errors that we should all be wary of.

We hope the presentation is helpful; let us know what you think!

Filed Under: Brand Planning, Research Tagged With: research

Adirondack

July 1, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Philip Reynolds, Associate Creative Director, Palio

There are two sides to Amtrak’s New York-to-Saratoga train, the Adirondack. If you’ve done it before, you know to get a seat on the “good” – west – side of the aisle, because that’s the side that affords you one of the most beautiful 3-hours of view I know; the wide, watery Hudson River and all the activity along it.

Only a train traveler gets to see it. I-87, the more traveled auto route, claimed the land and the views nobody else wanted. When I took the trip down on a cloudy early morning recently, I spent much time looking out the window at forts and farms, barges and green hills shrouded in Washington Irving mist. I always get on the good side of the train.

Then, just after that trip, I was reading the paper – an item about the war. Apparently an American soldier over there isn’t so different from me after all, in that she spends way too much time looking at Powerpoint presentations. Some in the military are saying that this is a problem, because Powerpoint forces out an appreciation for complexity and connection. Instead you get the tyranny of bullets spewed out, slide after slide, in a relentless, mind-numbing drive to get to the point. “Hypnotizing chickens” is the wonderful phrase they use for the Powerpoint briefings they give the press over there.

In a second item, Alice Miller died at age 87. Miller was a psychoanalyst who in 1981 published an influential book that helped to overturn the dominant Freudian model of parent-child relations. The Drama of the Gifted Child advanced the idea that we were all permanently scarred in childhood by our parents who enforced codes of conduct through psychological pressure, corporal punishment, or worse. This idea, though out of style in our culture today, provides a fresh perspective on the message testing I had observed the day before.

Market research is, after all, an offshoot of psychology; and many researchers boast graduate degrees in that field. Both disciplines use scientific methodology to explain a mysterious subject (person, creative concept). I think market research today follows Freud. Our children – I mean our creative ideas and executions – are wild, naughty things that benefit from parents working them into things fit for a civilized world. But if Alice Miller had her way, we’d see this wildness as a power with which we should not fiddle. What are we doing to our children, I mean our concepts? Are we killing their natural power and magic in an effort to get them to conform to our market research models? Are they born perfect and we don’t realize it?

So Alice Miller is gone, Powerpoint is king, and I observe market research. It’s a small rebellion, but for the ride back to Saratoga I’ve put myself on the bad side of the train, looking at the rockfaces and ditches and architectural mistakes of the east.

Filed Under: Advertising, Creative Tagged With: Adirondack, Alice Miller, Amtrack, Hudson, PowerPoint, research, Saratoga

Is “the best defense a good offense”* in pharmaceutical marketing?

May 27, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Paul Johnson, SVP, Account Services, Palio

“To attack or defend” is a question our pharmaceutical clients seem to deliberate over incessantly when facing substantial competition within their categories. They utilize war game research, physician IDI (in-depth interviews), and many other tools to help guide their strategic decisions. Often times, these primary research tools tell a hyper-inflated, depressing story that the new competitor will replace the incumbent product in just a matter of time. To further compound the brand manager’s decision, marketing budgets of the incumbent brand are often tight, forcing them to make tough decisions about their marketing dollars when facing a competitor with a launch budget.

We recently evaluated this strategic issue for a client from a purely objective perspective, and found surprising results. To guide our comparison, we sought to find product analogs facing new competition with a similar efficacy profile but some substantial advantage in a tangible asset (less frequent dosing, lower side effect burden, etc.). We limited our search to products facing competition from 2005 through 2009 so that we could evaluate the number of tactics initiated, the media channels utilized, and the total spends within channels. We sought to understand how companies allocated sales details, professional tactics, direct-to-physician tactics (non-field related), journal advertising, and professional education resources. To caveat our findings, we were only able to find substantial data in a handful of categories, so more research in this area is warranted to provide conclusive results.

Our results were surprisingly consistent. When facing a single competitor or multiple competitors with a better profile, many brands assume a defensive posture and contract resources. In multiple instances, including muscle relaxants, osteoporosis, and acne, when companies retracted resources in the face of launch competition in multiple media channels, they lost substantial market share in the first 12 months of the competitor’s launch. We also observed a “Johnny Come Lately” phenomenon in the analogs we evaluated, where several of the brands we evaluated increased their marketing spends in the year following the launch of competition, seemingly in an effort to regain lost territory. Conversely, when a product increased spends in multiple media channels in anticipation for a competitive launch and maintained resources through the initial launch period, the impact of the competitive launch on the incumbent brand was blunted. We observed that brands which maintained or increased resources in professional tactics, sales force details, journal advertising, direct-to-physician tactics, and professional education offerings either lost less than expected market share or actually continued to grow their market share.

Our evaluation of this issue would support that, indeed, the best defense is a good offense. In our limited observations, brands that maintain positive momentum in the face of competition were better served than brands that took their foot off the accelerator. Many brand managers will struggle with this strategic decision at some point in their careers. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on primary research, urge them to examine brand analogs with similar attributes for insight. The results may surprise them, too.

*The origin of this adage is unknown. It has been attributed to prizefighter Jack Dempsey, the late PRC Chairman Mao Zedong, Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. If you don’t believe me, go to Wikipedia. When is that ever wrong?

Filed Under: Account Services Tagged With: research, war games

Gut Check Time

May 17, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Paul Harrington, SVP, Creative Director, Palio

You sit down to dine at a fine restaurant: it’s supposed to be the best in town, impeccable service, and the food is reputed to be out-friggin’ standing. It’s going to cost you a bundle, of course, but worth every penny, right? So, would you hand your menu to a stranger at the next table and let him order for you?

Of course not. While the anonymous diner next to you at Chez Fancypantz might have some things in common with you – after all, you both breathe oxygen, you’re in the same restaurant on the same night, and might both be able to afford a meal like this – you really are your own person, with your own tastes and objectives. Why would you let a perfect stranger order your dinner for you? Instead, maybe a better idea would be to lean over and confidentially ask, “Say friend, how’s the steak here?”

You solicited an opinion to help you make a more informed decision. That’s the American Way: free thought, individual choices. So why, for Pete’s Sake, do brand managers let a roomful of strangers choose a marketing campaign for them in research instead of choosing themselves?

Tummy troubles.

Research/testing/interviews are just what their name implies: they are fact-gathering exercises. Fuel for making informed decisions. Yet all too often, advertising agencies sit back in horror and watch their client brand managers abdicate a marketing decision to a roomful of strangers. Talk about a case of indigestion.

Millions of dollars go into the preparation of concepts for the purpose of testing. And this litmus test of ideas is terrific, a crucible that helps separate the good from the bad, the better from the best. Opinions count, and understanding what your customers want is critical. Yet to let the strangers on the other side of the glass choose your marketing campaign is a recipe for disaster.

It takes guts.

However, a room full of gastrointestinal surgeons is not a room full of marketing experts. They don’t know your business plan, your competitive challenges, the looming FDA hurdles, and the rest. They know intestines. God Bless ‘em, they know intestines inside and out.

So let them tell you what they know about their specialty, their practice, their patients, and even what they think about the intestine medicine concept your ad agency created that uses the Gordian Knot analogy. That’s valuable information.

But their input is not a “get out of jail free” card. It doesn’t shift the responsibility for making the hard marketing decisions from our shoulders. We, the marketers, have to account for their tastes and opinions, but in the end, we have to have the intestinal fortitude to make a decision and pick a concept that will change behavior. (Sensing a digestive theme here yet?)

Queasy? Good.

In the ‘80s, there was a great quote: “If your advertising doesn’t give you butterflies, don’t run it.” A quarter of a century later, we seem to have forgotten that advertising is supposed to be inherently risky – the old, “nothing ventured, nothing gained” mentality has gone the way of the dodo. Advertising must be daring and unorthodox, because we are asking the audience to change the way they presently think. Why would they do that if the ad you show them only reaffirms what they already know.

Ergo, if 4 out of 5 gastrointestinal surgeons liked the Gordian Knot concept, that doesn’t make it a good ad to run. Their appreciation may well mean that this concept made them the most comfortable and felt the most familiar. It didn’t rock their world too much. It was the safe choice. Sure, it’s good. It tested near the top. It makes everyone feel swell, and everyone up the corporate food chain will stamp it “a-ok.” Mission accomplished.

Run. Don’t walk – RUN from this concept. It doesn’t possess the power to change behavior. It doesn’t challenge conventional thinking, and it doesn’t challenge the audience to consider another POV.

You want your advertising to make people uncomfortable. They will then purchase your product to alleviate that discomfort. If everything is safe, happy, and bouncy, why do they need what you’re selling?! Disturb them. Rock their world. Shake their faith. Make them question their fervently held opinions. Then, in a true behavior modification model, reward them for doing what you wanted by giving them a savory treat: your product.

Listen and learn from your stomach.

This is a risk, of course. It takes guts, and might cause you some sleepless nights and a trip or two to kneel before the porcelain throne. It’s damn scary. But it’s scary good too, like a great carnival ride. Buckle up buttercup, cuz it’s gonna be a wild ride.

However, you will ultimately own the day. You, the bold one who dared to follow your inner voice and break a new trail, will be validated. You looked, You listened. You internalized and studied. And in the end, you trusted your experience, heard the counsel of your peers, and ultimately followed your gut instinct. Boo-yah.

An advertising campaign that “listens” to research instead of “obeying” it?

Mmmmmm: tasty. Order up, and dig in.

- Paul Harrington, Iron Chef

Filed Under: Brand Planning, Creative Tagged With: Brand Planning, concept, Creative, research

Widespread Empathy

March 10, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

Courtesy of graur razvan ionut

From Bob Mason, EVP, Managing Director of Brand Strategy, Palio

Back around 2004, I had the good fortune of participating in some meetings with a company called Jump Associates, a San Mateo-based growth strategy/innovation leader that had worked with the likes of Nike, Target, and Hewlett-Packard to better institutionalize innovation within the organizations.

So I thought it was ironic when an essay caught my eye – because as I began reading it, I realized it was written by Dev Patnaik, Jump’s founder and principal, and one of the folks with whom I met.

The essay (which was in a book Palio received through our relationship with TED, a small non-profit conference organizer extraordinaire, devoted to “ideas worth sharing”) grabbed my attention simply from the title and subtitle – “Innovation Starts with Empathy: The Importance of Developing Deep Connections with the People You Serve.” The tenet of “connecting with” customers is one that I believe many marketers pay lip service to, but don’t really deliver upon. So I was drawn in to see what, if anything, the essay had to say on that theory.

In his precise observation, Patnaik acknowledged that this isn’t just “…about market research. It’s not about the Voice of the Customer. It’s about strategy and culture.” What he advocated, and I wholeheartedly agree with, is that companies need to foster a sense of “widespread empathy” among everyone (across all disciplines) within their organization to be able to truly make those customer connections.

Almost all of us have seen instances where bad market research derails good ideas and progress; or instances, in Patnaik’s words, when “stupid or irrelevant questions…tied the team up in a state of analysis paralysis.”

Data can often be used as a crutch and, in many instances, doesn’t really provide the true or entire story of a situation, marketplace, or customer. But it serves as “impartial fact” that can be referenced to (“But the data says…”). As Patnaik points out, though, we need to go beyond the data to having everyone in an organization – not just marketing folks – be attuned to customers’ real lives and needs (which, by the way, aren’t often overtly stated in traditional market research). He encapsulated his points in this great quote:

“All business is personal. People, not machines, steer the engine of capitalism. And people, not machines, actually buy and use products and services. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling teddy bears or aircraft engines, your company could benefit from a deep intuition of customers that transcends explicit data.”

Facilitating this within an organization, of course, is far from easy. It requires complete and total immersion into your customers’ lives. This could entail, but isn’t limited to, extensive in-home ethnographic immersions with customers, or shop-along trips with them. Or, perhaps, in the case of marketers in the healthcare and wellness field, in-office visits and discussions with healthcare practitioners. Either way, it involves time outside of the proverbial ivory tower (including the traditional market research facility) – time with our sleeves rolled up and having heart to hearts with customers. And that means time spent not just by marketers and market research people, but by people from every walk of the organization. That’s the first step to the kind of widespread empathy that allows a company to have the pulse of its customers – and to be able to provide the innovative solutions that will measurably affect its bottom line.

Filed Under: Brand Planning Tagged With: connected, Dev Patnaik, Jump Associates, Nike, research, TED

The Arts Are a Vital Force for Life

February 26, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Carl Turner, VP, Research and Analytics Director, Palio

Public schools all over the country are facing budgets cuts. When school budgets are cut, arts programs are usually the first to feel the cut. Some perceive the arts as merely supplemental programs and not a vital part of a standard curriculum. Arts programs help children to develop creative skills. Creative ability has been linked to problem solving, conflict resolution, and even the ability to understand abstract scientific and mathematical principles. Additionally, many fail to recognize the importance of creativity to the US economy. In fact, the United States ranks higher than any country in the link between creative industries and GDP, and US exports of creative services rose from $38.2 billion in 1996 to $89 billion in 2005. (To learn more about the emerging class of creative workers in the US, check out http://bigthink.com/richardflorida.)

Not only is our workforce becoming more creative, it’s becoming more diverse. The US workforce is in the midst of a sweeping demographic transformation, and the minority portion of the workforce is projected to double by 2020. These data highlight the importance of an arts education. The arts must remain a fundamental part of early childhood education to help children to develop creatively and appreciate cultural differences.

Although most would consider research among the least creative of jobs at an advertising agency, I often rely on my musical background in my role as a researcher. Devising novel research solutions is made easier by my background in improvisation. Improvisation teaches you that there are infinite ways to rearrange a limited set of parameters. I find that a deep understanding of personality and the ability to recognize others’ motives help tremendously when attempting to unite perspectives over a new research approach.

Research has shown that more artists, musicians, and other creative types are generally more empathetic. Lastly, there is something extremely inspiring about witnessing others in the creative process. Whether it’s watching creative concepts develop into full-blown campaign executions or watching my 4-year-old daughter expressing herself through drawings, witnessing the creative spirit often renews our enjoyment of everyday tasks and reinvigorates us to approach our work with fresh thinking.

To do my part in promoting creativity, I volunteer on the board of the World Awareness Children’s Museum, an educational institution that fosters knowledge and appreciation of world cultures through exhibitions, interactive programming, the International Youth Art Exchange, and educator-led tours. Created in 1995 and located in Glens Falls, New York, the Museum has collected over 6000 pieces of children’s art from more than 65 countries. They expect to open to the public in their new location sometime this year. And, when they open, they will feature interactive exhibits that tell the stories of other cultures through children’s art, allow children to try on clothing and play instruments from other cultures, and may even allow children to speak with children in other countries via Skype.

On Thursday, March 4, the Museum will host a Mardi Gras Party (which will include wine and dessert tasting) at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls, New York. If you share beliefs about the importance of creativity and are concerned about the lack of arts in education, please join with me and Palio in support of the World Awareness Children’s Museum. To learn more about the museum or the upcoming event, contact Jacquiline Touba, Ph.D., Executive Director, World Awareness Children’s Museum, 518-793-2773, jtouba@yahoo.com.

Filed Under: Brand Planning, Creative Tagged With: Advertising, International Youth Art Exchange, Palio, research, The Arts, World Awareness Children’s Museum

Eli Lilly, Merck & Pfizer – Good Guys Taking Pharma Leadership to Another Level

February 24, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

Get this hat at Stetson Hats. Click the image...

From Mike Myers, President, Palio (@mmyerspalio)

As a continuation of the theme brought forth in my recent post “Healthcare costs and pharmaceuticals – who’s the bad guy?,” I wanted to share an example of the positives that exist and continue in the pharmaceutical industry. In light of recent information that has come to light about GSK and Avandia, this may seem like “small potatoes.” In reality, this is one example of the countless number of “good” activities conducted by an industry that is all too often seen as the “bad guy.”

At a time when everyone seems to increasingly want to jump on the anti-pharma bandwagon, I was happy to see that the media is trumpeting the recent research collaboration between Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Merck. A not-for-profit, the company “will help speed up research on new medicines to treat gastric and lung cancers. The company, which will be called the Asian Cancer Research Group, is one of the first examples of a collaboration among major drug companies to combine resources and expertise to rapidly increase the knowledge of a disease and the disease process.”

“Over the next two years, the three companies will work on creating an extensive pharmacogenomic cancer database. The database will consist of information taken from about 2,000 tissue samples from patients with lung and gastric cancer and will be made available to researchers around the world.”

“Through its work and the subsequent sharing of information, the ACRG hopes to empower researchers, foster innovation and improve the prognosis and treatment of patients with cancer,” said Gary Gilliland, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president and franchise head, Oncology, Merck Research Laboratories.

On all fronts, I think that this is an outstanding move. In what other industries do we see not-for-profits being set up by competitors?

As I’ve said previously, take a closer look. The guy wearing the black hat may not be the one you thought. Anyone out there want to shoot back?

Filed Under: Industry Trends Tagged With: Asian Cancer Research Group, Eli Lilly, Merck, Mike Myers, Palio, Pfizer, Pharma, Public Health, research

Are You Contributing to Bad Research?

February 12, 2010 By jfisher Leave a Comment

From Carl Turner, VP, Research Analytics Director, Palio

Marketers are quant junkies, ad agencies love qual, and market researchers can’t get enough of both forms of research. The truth: there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all research. There are no formulas that dictate when to use research, what type of research to use, or even if research is necessary.

Experience guides perception and it only takes one unproductive focus group, one bad segmentation study, or one terrible vendor to create negative perceptions about the value of research.

When comes to research, many marketers engage in a game of whisper-down-the-lane. They broadly communicate the objectives to the market researcher. The market researcher then conveys their loose understanding to the vendor. Is it any wonder that marketers aren’t happy with the insights they’re getting from research? By the time the vendor communicates the findings back to the marketer and the market researcher, something has been lost in translation.

How many times have you heard a variation of the following?

Quant kills good creative work

Qualitative research is worthless due to small sample sizes

The bigger the vendor the better the research

Quant is only for tracking and segmentation

It’s the job of market research to design the research and evaluate the vendor

It’s better to stick with the vendor we always work with than to search out a new vendor

Although these generalizations are based on bad research experiences, they threaten future insight. All forms of research have merit, but their potential is always dependent on the amount of time spent on the design and methodology. Poor research design is to blame for most bad research, so if you don’t like the results you’re getting maybe you should contribute more to the development of the research.

Marketers should actively question the design and methodology of any research related to their brands. Leaving all the thinking to market researchers disregards a marketer’s knowledge of the brand, its marketplace, and its consumers. When a marketer’s questioning, influence, or presence is absent, research is unlikely to be useful.

How do you make sure you get more bang for your research buck? Always ask your researchers and research vendors the following questions:

What is your understanding of the research objectives?

Are we trying to address too many objectives with this research?

What are the features of the marketplace, the product, competitors, or the target audience that are influencing the type of research you are recommending?

Why did you select the methodology or vendor you chose?

Why is the vendor we selected right for the research we are conducting?

Is it a good idea for us to conduct this research with the same vendor who conducts all of our research?

You might want to postpone your research until you like the answers you receive.

Filed Under: Brand Planning Tagged With: qualitative, quant, research, research methodology