My grandfather-in-law, who lives in England, recently turned 100. I was very excited for him, greatly anticipating the obligatory telegram from the Queen.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “We have to write to them to request one.”

WHAT?!

My local video store knows my date of birth, along with my local pharmacist, my local library, my hairdresser, my beautician and just about all the major retailers with whom I have a loyalty card. But the Queen’s Anniversaries Office, can’t find out when I turn 100? I thought digital technology was making it easier to find out such information!

OK. So we get over that hurdle and request a telegram.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “He got a birthday card.”

A BIRTHDAY CARD?!

I was disappointed. It’s not the quaint, old fashioned telegram that I was expecting and I’d never seen a real telegram before so I was looking forward to checking out this traditional form of communication. But neither was it a new and innovative way to send your wishes like a tweet or a Facebook message (don’t you just love it when your Facebook page gets filled with birthday messages? – but I digress). No, it’s somewhere in that grey area of being almost – dare I say it – common.

I wonder if when it’s my time to turn 100, I’ll be receiving a tweet from King William? Or perhaps that will be considered too “quaint”, “old fashioned”, “traditional” or “common” by then. I can just hear my daughter now…. “Oh Mum, tweeting is so yesterday!”

Latitude prides itself on delivering insights not information but more recently we have been focussed on driving insights more than ever (pardon the pun!).  Last week, Latitude Insights took to the motor show to check out the latest in motoring.

Our first stop … the soon to be released Nissan LEAF – the first mass produced, purpose built electric vehicle to enter the Australian market.   Kerralie took to the stage to test drive a Nissan LEAF almost breaking the speedometer at 139km/hr.  This is the first time a car has been allowed to be driven inside the motor show – because the LEAF has no tail pipe emissions, it’s safe to drive inside or out.  Although with Kerralie at the wheel, I’m not sure how safe we really were ;-)

Latitude is proud to be working with Nissan in the lead up to the launch of the LEAF.

Researching the LEAF is a fascinating experience for us and we are excited to be part of the changing motoring landscape.

Look out for more driving insights in the future…

It’s incredible to think so much has changed over the past three years. As Charleni Li points out in her recent blog Groundswell Paperback: A Look Back Three Years Later, it was only back in May 2008 that Facebook and Twitter were still emerging trends. Even more incredible, the iPhone had no apps! Can any of us now imagine a world without our iPhone, without Facebook or without Twitter? I know I can’t!

And marketers and researchers alike are embracing these technologies to reach their different audiences.

This then led to me on to a bit of a tangent, wondering whether MROCs (market research online communities) or insight communities have yet fully ‘emerged’. It seems the world of marketing research may be lagging a little?  There are still many who are wedded to the idea of focus groups sufficing for all qualitative research.  Which continues to amaze me, because once the richness, depth of information and honesty online research community members reveal, there’s really no going back.

News.com.au has launched a visual map, Cabinet Confidential, which charts the political relationships within the Labor government. Interactive journalism at its best, this venture captures a wider audience – one that may not be partial to reading long political articles. Essentially, it’s a snapshot of major players, positions held, and powers of “Labor’s top ranks”.

Digital has made data visualisation progressively more interactive. In the NewMR’s ‘New approaches to presenting data’ webinar, Peter Harris introduced a range of data visualisation tools that allow researchers to take advantage of the digital sphere. Gradually, these tools will become commonplace for information industries, where the ‘entertainment factor’ in presenting data will deliver the highest impact.

News.com.au’s editor, Paul Colgan initiated the Cabinet Confidential project saying, “One of the things that the news media rightly gets accused of is not harnessing new technology enough to improve storytelling”. Are there lessons here for market research?

According to research done by Google recently, there will be more web searches done on mobile phones than will be done on desktops by 2013. In more traditional markets like Australia and the US, a more standard progression in technology has seen the desktop become a feature of most households over the past 15 years. However in emerging markets such as India and China, access to desktop computers was limited during their expansion in the west and now instead of following the trend of western markets, consumers in these countries are skipping desktop computers and the fixed internet connection in preference of mobile devices. Across the world mobile internet usage has increased 3000% in the last three years, largely driven by the access that consumers in emerging economies have to these previously out of reach devices.

It seems only natural that research should take advantage of this shift in reliance on mobile internet usage. Whilst being able to contact a respondent at their desktop at any time at any place has always been one of the foundations of online research’s benefit over traditional methodologies, mobile research takes this one step further and allows us to interact with respondents in their natural surroundings whenever we want.

The convenience of being able to reach for our phones and access the Internet anywhere is something that should be jumped upon by researchers. The devil makes work for idle hands, so why not use time when sitting on a train, in front of the TV at home as a time to undertake research.

A company in New Zealand has done something very similar. After the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, the plumbing to houses has been significantly impacted and residents are having to make do with portaloos installed on street corners. In these portaloos, a firm has begun recruiting participants for research through adverts placed on the walls. Surveys asking for opinions about the reconstruction efforts are sent and in some cases completed whilst…umm…taking care of business.

Being constantly connected through Internet enabled phones presents such a strong opportunity for companies to get an immediate read on their consumers. To take advantage of even the shortest amount of downtime to complete research can easily be seized upon. Being able to get feedback in either a qualitative or quantitative study could potentially take hours, not days or weeks.

A few days ago I was leaving a meeting with my boss. We were in dire need of petrol. No problem I announced, iPhone to the rescue! Perfect scenario for the smart phone: in an area of town I didn’t know very well, no idea where the closest petrol station might be, not near any obvious main roads or shops. So off we set, blue dot blinking happily on the screen indicating our current location, with a choice of dots indicating petrol stations. Too easy!

Or so you would think.

To cut a long story short, we did find a petrol station before the car started coughing and spluttering, but just barely. It was a good 20 minute drive from where we started. Completely missing the petrol station that was a mere 30 seconds drive away.

New technology is a splendid thing, offering us easier ways to get around, easier ways to keep in contact, etc. You no doubt know all of this. So what happened??

It seems that the lovely comforting blue dot was just slightly off. Only a few metres mind you. But this meant that we turned left instead of right. And we drove for a ridiculously long period of time in the wrong direction before realising that the petrol station dot was not getting any closer.

Sounds like one of those stories where people drive into a swimming pool because their sat nav told them to, right?

I’ve always laughed at those stories in a smug superior sort of way, thinking ‘idiots’. Ahem, it appears I have now joined their ranks! It was not just my reliance in technology and not just my trust in the technology that steered us wrong. It was the fact that I abandoned my common sense along with it. If I had actually taken a minute to look around at the actual road and surroundings rather than the blue dot, the mistake would have been obvious much earlier on.

So why is this relevant in a blog about research? This incident got me thinking. Partly because I keep getting teased about it… ;)

But seriously. We embrace lots of new technologies and new techniques in our research. Because of the multitude of benefits that they offer us and our clients. But this has inherent dangers. The danger of relying on the technology in the absence of common sense and abandoning ‘old school’ ways of doing things just because they have been around for a while. To remember that sometimes a pen and paper questionnaire is actually the best way of doing something. To look up from the blue dot and think ‘does this actually make sense’? To notice the real world and not just the virtual. To remember that new techniques and new technologies are great. But should be an addition to our repertoire, not necessarily a replacement for other ways of doing things.

Basically, I will be reminding myself not to blindly drive headlong into the research swimming pool.

When it comes to social networking, Google hasn’t had a very good run. Google Wave no longer exists, while Google Buzz got off on the wrong foot (with privacy invasion) when it first rolled out. In the next few weeks Google will launch its +1 button – which functions the same as Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. Given its track record, will Google ever be able to go social? If a company such as Google can’t build a successful online community, what hope is there for us market researchers?

Google obviously has the technological savvy to create these types of social networking platforms, but its core offer isn’t about being social, it’s about being useful. Google Search, Maps, News, Scholar. It’s about getting the user on and off a page as quickly as possible, with the information needed. Social media offers fun, entertainment and interaction – keeping the user on the platform for as long as possible.

Building an online community takes more than just providing a platform. Ignoring ‘the social’ impacts considerably on how your community grows – if it does at all. When establishing an insights community, keep in mind the lessons of Google. It’s just as much about interaction as it is information.

Since April Fool’s day has just gone, I wonder how many of you fell victim to a hoax in the online world? I know I did.

My friend, Donna, is on Facebook and has about 500 friends. She has been with her partner for about 23 years, so it was a bit of a surprise when she suddenly changed her status to “single”. I flicked her an email asking her if she was OK and what was going on….. not a thing as it turns out!

She did it as an April Fool’s joke. When she turned her mobile and computer back on about 24 hours later, she had about 20 text messages and 100 email messages, not to mention all the Facebook threads! Surprisingly, only about 1 or 2 people picked up that this could have been a hoax (admittedly I was not one of them!).

But it amazed me at how widespread her April Fool’s prank actually was. With 500 friends, that’s a lot of simultaneous pranking. Usually, you’re restricted to just one or two friends on whom you’re playing your joke. I guess social media has changed all that.

Of course, the BBC still goes down in history as pulling the greatest April Fool’s joke of all time. I wasn’t even born when this prank was pulled, but I still know about it (thanks once again to the web). The Spaghetti Tree Hoax was a 3 minute broadcast by the BBC on April Fool’s Day in 1957, on their popular current affairs program Panorama. Being a reputable program, many people fell for the story that spaghetti grows on trees and that this year was shaping up to be a bumper harvest. Many people called the BBC to ask where they could get a spaghetti tree from. If you want to watch the original broadcast, click here

Now that really was pranking on a mass scale (about 8 million households). But it took a major corporation to have the resources to do it. With social media, anyone can pull a hoax on a mass scale (people like my friend Donna). But with many of the pitfalls associated with social media the real question is, do you really want to?

And the best April Fool’s prank for 2011? It would have to be Ikea’s Hundstol Highchair. At $59, you can set a place for your dog at the table because “not only is the dog a part of the family, they are like a trial run for kids”.