Market research slammed as "pathetic"

Market research used to understand the effectiveness of advertising, based on 20-year-old methodologies, has been labelled "pathetic" in a rousing call to arms to marketers in Kuala Lumpur this morning.

Research which relied heavily on recall and likability were useless as there was little relationship between the likability and recollection of an ad and purchasing the product.

The claims were made in an address by research shop Synovate's visiting international director of research and development, brand communications practice, Jan Hofmeyr.

Hofmeyr, told the group of agency professionals and marketers that consumer and brand research had not kept pace with major advances in understanding of consumer behaviour.

Hofmeyr says advances in neuro psychology and non-linear mathematics provide a much deeper insight into how a consumer's mind reacts to advertising and how advertising can create associations with a product and things that are important to them, particularly over a long term campaign.

The brain, according to Hofmeyr, is changed by advertising that makes connections with a consumer's life experiences.

He went on to explain how certain parts of the brain can make emotional connections with a brand well beyond logical considerations. It was these emotional connections or 'the emotional power of advertising' that current methodogies were unable to measure.

In challenging the sacred pillars of traditional market research Hofmeyr attacked not only the questions that were asked, but when they were asked and the context, in testing the impact of campaigns without understanding existing associations with a brand.

"We have to understand what they (consumers) already know," he said.

South Africa based Hofmeyr, who heads an innovation team there, says an understanding of how communications impact a consumer's brain can help a company reposition a brand.

He gave the example of Marlboro cigerettes which began life as a female targetted product with the tagline "Mild as May" but given soft sales decided to radically change direction and skew the product, in the opposite direction to men. The brand's owner, the Philip Morris Company, went with a repositioning as a tough man's cigarette. They finally, and famously, rested on the cowboy imagry which consumers then associated with the cigarette, and the long term campaign took the product to the number one spot, although it took 18 years.

This Hofmeyr says is an important lesson in consistency and repetition which marketers here need to consider when they think about agency hopping, or changing the campaign strategy too often.

His forward formular for a successful branding campaign that can alter consumer's minds and habits is simple:

""Match the brand with images you want to be associated with then repeat," he suggests.