Sunday, December 11, 2011

A new model for gathering consumer insights?

If you know what they really want and you build it, will they come?

Consumer focus groups get tainted by group dynamics and facilitator bias. I say this only based on prior experience and observation, there are ways to mitigate these effects but can you still trust the results?

When the big brands participate in crowdsourcing for advertising ideas, do they care if they can't actually run or post these efforts on their media channels? It does not really matter. For very little money, they can actually buy some true consumer insights; how their product/service is perceived by the creative consumer is captured in the solutions that they post. At least that's my premise. I think the challenge is in how you write the crowdsource brief. Take note that crowdsource creative briefs look nothing like the ones that a commissioned advertising agency would see. They are vague and stripped of any real information about the brand. And of course, all brand guidelines are ignored as well.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Major Research Project - Introduction 1.

It's time to start crystallizing a direction and research topic for my MRP (major research project at OCAD U). SInce the focus of this blog was originally on open sourced idea generation for the private sector I think I will park my ideas here.