Corporate Secrets

I recently read about the extreme measures KFC takes to protect Col. Sander’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. For example, only two company executives have access to the recipe at any one time, and their names and titles are secret. They use multiple suppliers who produce and blend the ingredients, but they only know a part of the entire contents. If you knew where the recipe was, you would have to open a vault, then 6 locks before getting to it.

This got me to thinking about corporate secrets that companies share with their marketing research partners. Maybe they are not as huge as the original recipe, but they are still significant. We learn about new products, relaunches, reformulations, ad campaigns, expansion plans, and likely retrenchment. Granted, most client firms require signed NDAs from their research vendors. But, you should also be asking them questions such as….

1. Do they have signed confidentiality agreements from each of their employees?
2.Do they require signed NDAs from their vendors and contractors?
3. Do they shred all sensitive documents?
4. Do they limit access to sensitive information on a “must know” basis?
5. Do they have the necessary IT and firewall security in place?

Sound marketing research firms should be able to answer “yes” to each of these questions. But companies also contract research projects to consultants, frequently working out of their home. Are they following these same precautions? Do you really want a copy of your concept being thrown out in their trash?

Customer Satisfaction

I recently mentioned that I had flown on Virgin America for the first time. The experience was much better than what you typically experience on the other domestic airlines. If I had been asked to do a customer satisfaction study, I would have given them a high score. I would have also given them a high recommendation score. Both of these are a marketers and operations dream.

But why was my experience so positive? Sure they have some new toys like the interactive display at each seat, plexiglas dividers instead of curtains, and interesting mood lighting in shades of mauve and violet blue. And I give them extra points for using earth friendly method products in the lavatory. But it is a far cry from the glory days of flying. It is still a fairly stripped down experience.

The difference was the people working at Virgin America. They were happy. They smiled. They had fun. They sincerely liked their jobs! Now United has hired someone away from Disney to help improve the customer experience, but it hasn’t worked. Every United employee I encounter seems stressed and grumpy. This got me to thinking – what is the correlation between satisfied employees and satisfied customers. I think it is huge.

Customer satisfaction studies are big business. They typically measure employee related attributes such as being friendly, attentive and knowledgeable. But I recommend adding one more dimension – happy employees.

Senior Citizens and Technology

I have written in the past about people being tech challenged and how that can impact marketing research. As the industry keeps using technology to develop new ways of data collection, are we leaving some consumer segments behind? I am particularly concerned about senior citizens. While they typically are not the darling of most marketing managers, they are a growing segment of the population. In just the past few weeks, I encountered two instances where senior citizens were stumbling with technology.

Recently, I had the opportunity to fly on Virgin America (an experience much better than most domestic carriers and worthy of a future blog posting!). Virgin America has interactive displays at every seat. You can listen to music, watch TV or movies, or even chat with fellow passengers. This is also how you order food and beverages. You pull up a menu, select what you want, swipe your credit card, and within minutes your order is delivered to your seat. An elderly women sitting next to me was trying to get something to eat. When she finally flagged down a flight attendant, they just waved her off and told her to use the interactive display. It was clear that the women could easily go hungry for the next 5 hours. I offered to help her place her order. In doing this, I realized her biggest stumbling block was touching the screen. When I was younger, we were taught to always use the controls and never to touch the screen. This applied to TVs, computers and anything else with a screen. This woman never got the memo that it is now acceptable to touch the screen. Later on, she wanted to listen to music. This again required touching the screen. She just couldn’t gasp that concept. I had to select her music for her.

Then this weekend, when leaving the San Francisco Farmer’s Market, I noticed an elderly man having trouble using the “pay ticket” machine at the parking garage. Yes, in San Francisco, we even have to pay to park to go to a farmer’s market. When I offered to help him, I discovered he had inserted his credit card and paid for his parking multiple times. I’m not sure what he was expecting, but he didn’t understand that getting back his original parking stub, which denoted it was paid, was all that he needed. He didn’t see how that would ever open the gate for him at the exit.

I suspect that both of these individuals would also be challenged by some of our newer survey tools and methodologies. If senior citizens are a critical part of your market, you may want to consider an old fashioned approach to research. One where there is human interaction.

False Claims in Advertising

The makers of Airborne cold tablets recently agreed to pay a $30 million fine to settle a lawsuit and federal charges that they made false claims about the cold-fighting benefits of the tablets. Sadly, this story is not that uncommon, and is hardly considered newsworthy these days.

So what does this have to do with marketing research? Concept tests are a big part of marketing research. While I suspect the Airborne folks used these same false claims in any concept testing, a diligent researcher should have advised them against it. It is our job to question the content of any concept we test. Are the claims true? Can the product actually deliver them? Are they confusing or misleading? Are they likely to be challenged?

We frequently encounter this problem with the word “fresh”. The FTC has very strict guidelines on when the word fresh can be used to describe a product. Any time a client presents a concept to us with the word fresh, we immediately advise them to run it by their legal counsel.

Remember, companies use concept performance scores to determine a product’s viability in the marketplace. Any claim that can not be used when the product is actually introduced will bias the concept test. The results are useless.