By: Kate Reardon, Research Executive

Like anyone, I too get quite excited by duty-free shopping and all its dollar saving glory! So on a recent trip home from Bali, we made a stopover at Changi Airport in Singapore to see what bargains we could find! (For those of you playing at home, yes, we purposely detoured from the logical, efficient way home for this shopping expedition).

I won’t go into details of the many purchases made by me and my friends during those few hours, but something worth mentioning is what caught my eye whilst perusing the alcohol section. There was a display of bright, paint-splashed ABSOLUT Vodka bottles – somewhat of an art form compared to the standard ABSOLUT bottles.

I found out that ABSOLUT had released four million of these uniquely designed, limited edition ‘ABSOLUT UNIQUE’ bottles. The new ‘look’ had been achieved by a combination of splash guns, machines equipped with 35 colours and 51 stencils, and placement algorithms to ensure that no two bottles would be alike.

My friends were instantly drawn to them. It was hard work convincing them that it wasn’t worth spending the extra money on an ABSOLUT UNIQUE bottle as it would taste exactly the same as the colourless, regular ABSOLUT bottle sitting a short distance away. Of course I was wearing my ‘rational’ hat at the time – I know it’s not really about the ‘taste’.

Nonetheless, this example demonstrates the strong pulling-power of this design innovation. And this becomes even clearer with a quick glance at ABSOLUT’s Facebook page. Many fans have posted photos of the unique bottles they have purchased on the Facebook page, while others say they want to collect them all! I struggled to find any negative comments…

I think ABSOLUT has hit the nail on the head with this one! Ultimately, it works because everyone wants to be an individual – the younger demographic especially! So offering a product that no-one else can possibly have is bound to be a winner.

But what use is being an individual if no-one knows you have a one in four million bottle? Well, tell the world on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and problem solved!

I’m willing to bet this innovation will be both a sales AND social media success!

By Victoria Parr, Managing Director, Latitude Insights Sydney office 

At the last AMSRS conference I presented a paper on the research to develop the design of plain packaging for tobacco products (yes, that colour…… Pantone 448C). During the questions that followed, an audience member highlighted that even though the emphasis of the conference had been on new methodologies and digital data collection, most of the papers dealing with significant social or community impact had used very traditional methods, including mine.  He was questioning the tension between the ‘new’ methodologies and the need for delivery of robust and evidence based research that is required for government research.

This is an issue that I believe many in the audience of that last conference were grappling with, especially those of us that work within the social and government sphere. Our government clients are similar to commercial clients in that they too need to do everything cheaper and faster. They are also aware of that ‘new fangled’ thing called the internet, and they know that  people now have 100′s of friends and followers whose profile pictures they see on a daily basis, and who they converse with in 140 characters or less.

How our government clients differ is that the research they do is funded by all Australian taxpayers, so all of us in the community who are relevant to the problem need to be represented in the research. It is a critical part of the democratic model of government that all have chance to express their views and opinions on matters that affect them,  and that means the research we do must be representative of the population in question.

And here lies the crux of the issue.

As I said at the conference, government needs to be accountable and need to  ensure reliability of rigorous and robust research methods to achieve this. But at the same time, the world is changing and we all know that the way people are communicating is now different. We type to communicate almost as much, if not more, than we verbalise our thoughts. As AMSRS committee member Victoria Gamble gamely said when called out to take the roving microphone at the conference ‘I don’t like to speak in front of so many people, that’s why I use twitter’.

So my question is, if we don’t start to talk to people using the same way they communicate with each other, are we in fact losing some of the rigour of the research? Not only do we miss representation of the people who will not elect to do face-to-face qual, are we also not missing a vital part of capturing their views and opinions by not communicating with them in the way they are accustomed to?

Fishkin[1] wrote about deliberative democracy and public consultation under the title ‘When the People Speak’. My question is about recognizing that how people are speaking is now, in fact, different and we in the social and government side of research need to explore this issue more, both clients and suppliers alike. All methodologies, both the tried and tested and the ‘new’ have their faults. What we really need to consider as we look at each new project or problem is what method is going to really give a voice to those whose views and opinions we are trying to represent?

by Anna Clowry, Research Director at Latitude Insights

We often talk about the benefits of depth and breadth achieved by online research. From online surveys, to panels and communities, it’s about helping us get closer to people that other methods might miss.

From farmers in remote cattle stations, to housewives from the Gold Coast, online communities have brought people together in virtual spaces to help companies and organisations understand the bigger picture. Now anyone with an internet connection can have a say, not just those who can come and meet us face to face.

As well as who we reach, we sometimes overlook the impact of how powerful the anonymity of an online community can be. A recent project we conducted with Australians with a range of Anxiety Disorders really brought this point home.

Most of the online community members would have found it impossible or challenging to attend a focus group with a group of strangers, in an unfamiliar environment.

But more importantly, if they had, the level of intense personal detail shared would have been nothing compared to what was shared online.

We were privileged to shape and guide conversations covering extremely sensitive and challenging topics, and were thrilled when our community members fed back to us on the positive experience of sharing their thoughts, with both us and with the other community members.

The combination of a safe and anonymous discussion space, connecting with others with similar experience, and the freedom to share when and where it suited them, in as much or little detail as they liked, made the online community an ideal approach.

So, for marketers and other clients who need to understand topics that are sensitive in nature, from health care, social issues, taboo topics etc, we fully support harnessing the power of an online community.

Gamification is surfacing in all corners of life from education and training to physiotherapy, improving your health with health monitor, communicating a social cause, soliciting friends for moral support with nike+ and even driving the new Ford Focus. Market research is one of the more obvious and advantageous applications.

Here’s my beginner’s guide to gamification…

1. Gamification is the concept of creating a fun, engaging experience to encourage users to participate in what otherwise would be a relatively boring task.

2. Worldwide, a staggering 500 million people spend an hour each day playing games online and on mobile devices and by 2016 corporations are expected to spend $2.8 billion on gamification.

3. Brands and organisations are discovering that interacting with people in a fun way produces positive results. Meanwhile traditional methods of marketing, education and other activities are failing as people seek out and receive new, more engaging ways of doing things.

4. The key benefit of gamification is the enhanced level of involvement and engagement. When an interaction is gamified, it creates a more intimate connection through the positive experience, rewards and recognition that build affinity and loyalty.

5. With gamification there is enormous potential for word of mouth recommendation through the sites like fanzy that reward fans
for spreading the word about your brand via social networks.

6. The success of the activity can be easily monitored through the use of metrics to track users who share content and friends who track back to the brand.

Surveys have traditionally been gap fillers, but these days, the prospect of completing a questionnaire is much less attractive than doing something like honing one’s investing skills in the carefully tailored Commonwealth’s Investorville, helping bring back rare creatures to the sea through theblu app or earning points while saving the planet on recyclebank. These are the calibre of activities with which our surveys compete making it increasingly more difficult to attract participation and a quality, considered response.

I’ll leave you with this short film, an entertaining perspective on where we may be heading with gamification and virtual reality. Enjoy!

With the emergence of Web 2.0 and the ability of internet users to co-operate, collaborate and share information with one another there has been a steep learning curve for brands who have had to adapt their behaviour when it comes to delivering messages to consumers.

Most recently, Sony’s Playstation Network (PSN) was hacked into and the personal information and in many cases credit card details of its millions of users across the globe compromised. Hacking of information is not a new phenomenon but it is the response of Sony, one of the world’s largest tech companies that has drawn criticism.

With the breach occurring between April 17 – 19, Sony waited a full week to release the details of the breach and just this morning (April 29), as a PSN user myself, I finally received an email acknowledging the issues, a full 10 days later!

The slow response and lack of information offered to users considering the seriousness of the issue will have significant ramifications on the level of trust users have for the brand. With the ability to act and inform those affected, Sony has sat on its hands and waited before informing the world and more importantly the 70m affected users of the problem.

Brands have had to learn to adapt their messaging about themselves but also the importance of the timeliness in delivery. No longer can they take time to ponder over their correspondences or media releases but are required to be upfront and honest or face potential major backlash from consumers.

Responding to negative press featuring a company cannot be met with a slow or non-existent response anymore. Brands have the ability to deliver a fast response to an issue, consumers not only want this, but have come to expect it.

It is trust and openness which consumers expect. The lack of information which was provided in any form, not just delivered through social networks which has been a significant issue and one which undermines trust in Sony as a brand.

Sony has one of the highest reputations for a brand in the world, behind only Google in a survey conducted by the Reputation Institute in 2010. This was built on over 60 years of innovation and finding solutions to consumer needs. The question is how much will an issue like this cost the company in the future?

In a world where brand reputation takes years to build, and an instant to break down, this could be one issue that seriously tarnishes the solid and trusted brand that is Sony.

Marketing is such a young profession and Australia is such a young country it’s easy to forget what history can teach us about these things.

When I think of the earliest examples of great branding I tend to think of  mass produced products such as Coca-Cola.  But the reality is branding was around long before the Industrial Revolution and mass production.

In fact the word brand is derived from the North Germanic language brandr meaning “to burn.” It refers to the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products.  This type of branding we typically associate with branding livestock.  But branding has also been around in many formats for centuries.

In fact, an example I recently came across while travelling Europe was, Louis XIV – the Sun King.  His branding can be seen all over Versailles and Paris.  He left his mark on buildings and so forth, just so we remembered who was responsible for creating them.

I’m sure there are thousands of other examples of branding throughout history that we can learn from.

It seems like everything is going wrong for Australia at the moment, losing the cricket to England, being knocked off as the best brand in the world and suffering the indignity of just a solitary vote in the football World Cup voting in a race that we were hotly tipped to win. People have been very quick to lay the blame for all of these performances as always but the video that was supposed to sell Australia as the destination to hold the 2022 World Cup has come under particular scrutiny.

Much of the criticism has come from Australians who once again have been subjected to the same old efforts in attempting to bottle everything that we think outsiders like and know about Australia and sell it to the world.

From inside, we see this as dated effort and clearly now question it’s worth as a marketing tool. Externally though, is this still how foreigners see Australia or more importantly how they want to see Australia portrayed?

The video of the surfing kangaroo amongst the quintessential Australian backdrops, the occasional (retired) sports star and (should have retired long ago) movie star has divided the nation with over two-thirds believing it did nothing to boost the chances of Australia winning the bid. This was a poll on an Australian website and most likely taken by Australians, who in the end are not the audience that the video was aimed at. The real question is what the FIFA representatives thought. In the end, it obviously wasn’t that much.

Although the blame can’t be put solely on the video itself, the question is raised whether the world is tiring of ‘brand Australia’ and if the stereotypical images which we send out through tourist campaigns are getting old and have lost their impact. Surely we can do better than rolling out Paul Hogan whose image is solely build upon a movie released over 20 years ago now. Is that what foreigners are still thinking about when the word Australia is mentioned? I hope we’ve come a long way since then, but do outsiders?

I’m sure that research is being done by Tourism Australia to establish overseas if the view that outsiders have of Australia is still one of Fosters drinking, BBQ eating, zinc wearing, beach goers or whether there has been a shift to reflect our more modern culture that internally at least, we’ve been trying hard to change. We have moved on and grown up as a country, but does the rest of the world want us to?