Breaking the research client-agency barrier

While marketers are quick to sit down with their communications agencies to build campaign strategies and communication material, the same courtesy is not always extended to research organisations.This was an issue highlighted during a panel discussion at Research Asia Interactive 2014.Philip Steggals, insights director at Kadence International, said while there were some clients who saw market research agencies as trusted partners to build the brand up together from day one, it was rare.“One of the barriers that market research agencies are facing today is that marketers are still not bringing their research agency on board for the co-creation of the brief. What can we do to break that?” he asked.Mukesh Kumar, head of marketing for the Maggi India light meal business at Nestlé India, said a partnership was a critical factor when it comes to building good research for the future.“Those on the client-marketer side are quick to admit they work closely with communication partners to build up communication strategies,” he said. “This co-creation strategy should be extended to the research partners during the process of creating a brief. It should not just be a client posing a question to an agency, which is what is still typically happening in market research.” He said consumers today had evolved because of the influx of technology and information. Hence, it is even more crucial for marketers and research agency partners to sit together to define the right set of questions. It is no longer feasible for the marketer to simply hand out a set of questions to their research agency to get the data done.“The only way to get the right answer is if you ask the right set of questions. Only then can marketers comprehensively decide the way they should conduct the research – be it traditional or not,” Kumar said.However, this is not always the easiest to execute.Overcoming barriersSohyun Song, assistant VP of market research for group customer experience at OCBC, said for sectors such as banking, there were a lot of restrictions put in place when it comes to gathering consumer data and, hence, a lot of research needs to be done in-house.“Currently we employ our research partners to conduct the field work, but most of the thoughts and studies are designed in-house because of data protection issues,” Song said.“While we can enlist help from agencies to conduct research, we cannot simply share the data at hand.”Hence, the organisation has to rely on an in-house market research team that conducts surveys, and data analysts who work on this data.However, she admitted, this does not always result in the best practice because they might end up behind the curve without the guidance of a market research expert.Meanwhile, another hurdle in building a closer relationship between research agencies and marketers lies in the rise of digital players such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.With each of these digital platforms offering their own set of analytical data on consumer consumption and media habits, how should a marketer’s budget be split? Is there a way for research agencies to marry these platforms for a comprehensive analysis?“I don’t think anyone has been yet to crack that,” Steggals said.While the jury is still out on the matter, what he does recommend is that research agencies should be constantly evolving and challenging their research team to find new methodologies – regardless of information coming from social media or traditional research means.