Every year I read the university catalogues for summer coursework in research methods and share a few recommendations with colleagues and clients. If you are looking for more than just the information and inspiration you get from conferences, look to the substance and depth you can get from a classroom. It’s easier than you might…
If you’re looking for a career-oriented new year’s resolution, there is no better way to improve your professional skills right now, including your research and marketing skills, than to write better. You will write better proposals and better reports. You will turn data into stories that people actually want to read. And with some practice…
For every research rule or best practice I proclaim, I find myself doing the opposite eventually. Such is the case with pie charts. I try to avoid them, taking to heart Edward Tufte’s claim that they are dumb and should never be used. Studies show that pie charts do a poor job helping readers grasp…
There is nothing worse than presenting research findings to an audience predisposed to hate it. Maybe you’ve had that experience of being in a boardroom of hostile managers? They don’t like what you’re about to say, so they pick at every methodological decision, shifting focus away from the story that the data have to tell.…
Two of my usually-favorite sources for information and insight (AAPOR and the New York Times) came together this week with an embarrassing, face-scrunching example of convoluted statistical reporting: But Internet use correlates inversely with age and voting habits, making [online polling] a more severe problem in predicting elections. While all but 3 percent of those…
Tomorrow we’re giving a talk at LIMRA’s annual Marketing and Research Conference in Baltimore. The topic? Creating spectacular infographics for market research. It builds upon our Newsletter article from last July, and upon our subsequent top-five article in Quirk’s. And thanks to our own Peter Kowalski, who has extraordinary talent designing infographics for research,…
Last month we were honored to be on the main stage at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2015 Conference, sharing with the nation’s top research and advertising executives insights from our work with Wells Fargo. I use the word honored for two reasons. First, we were selected from over 200 entries for one of the…
Having just returned from giving a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual conference, Re:Think 2015, I learned that ARF’s “Ground Truth #2” is that brands are built in the brain. As such, the ARF has invested a good deal of time and money over the last decade exploring ways that neuroscience can be applied…
I’m working on a presentation with a research colleague at Wells Fargo for the upcoming ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) Re:Think 2015 conference. The challenge? Getting it streamlined and condensed so that we can deliver the whole thing within a strict timeframe. All the research, all the insights, all the business outcomes from a huge national…
Getting research used is one of the toughest challenges market research professionals face. And we all agree (at least I hope we do) that it’s the most important part of what we do. It matters that the internal consumers of our work are actually using it. That we’ve turned data into stories that are understood.…