Pabst Blue Ribbon

This past weekend, we bought a 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. While Pabst was part of my college years, back then I was more likely to reach for Cincinnati brewed Hudepohl or Schoenling. Nonetheless, I have not bought Pabst in many years. Honestly, I didn’t even know it was still available. We are more of a Pinot Noir or Syrah household these days. When we do buy beer for our friends, it is usually something like Pilsner Urquell or Peroni. But this weekend we bought Pabst Blue Ribbon. Because we are not a big beer consuming household, this may qualify Pabst as the brand of beer receiving the largest proportion of my beer purchases for the year.

Any of you who follow my blog regularly know that I tell these stores with a hook back into market research. This story has an especially important hook. When conducting a brand health tracker, you usually ask questions such as favorite brand, brand last bought and brand bought most often. If I had been interviewed, no offense to Pabst, but you would have been surprised that someone of my socio-economic status was buying Pabst – and even more so if you discovered it is the brand I bought the most.

The hook is that when doing a brand health tracker, we always recommend asking a critical “why” question to brand bought last or bought most often. Because this requires an open-ended question, it adds cost that some feel is not warranted.

Now I must tell you why I bought a 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. We are big fans of beer can chicken. It is absolutely the best way to cook a whole chicken on the grill. Between now and this winter, we will probably cook a dozen beer can chickens. We have learned that it has to be beer, not coke, not lemonade, not wine. And we have learned that the quality of the beer does not matter. So we decided we should buy the cheapest beer possible. Pabst Blue Ribbon happened to be that beer last weekend.

If you have many respondents like me in your survey, and you don’t ask why, you could have distorted, misleading survey results.

I’d be interested to hear of other such situations where survey results are not what you think they are. And if you want the recipe for a killer beer can chicken, drop us a note.

When the Bad Economy is Good for Research

Ad Age recently quoted Hyatt’s global marketing head John Wallis as saying “throw out your old algorithms.” Economist Chris Kuehl, keynote speaker at the annual MRA conference, said “market research is more crucial now than ever in terms of separating reality from speculation.” Many of our clients are telling us that research completed as recently as two years ago is irrelevant and possibly misleading. We are seeing economic driven aberrations in long term tracking studies. While consumers may eventually go back to their old ways, it is clear that many of them have altered their current behavior. These changes are likely to last at least a couple of years. Bottom line, fresh research is critical.

So in my opinion, this is great news for marketing research. Companies know they are vulnerable. They are starting to ramp up their marketing research activities. Segmentation studies, concept tests, price/value studies, brand image studies, and tracking studies are all needed from this fresh perspective.

Your thoughts?

What is Twitter doing to WOM Tracking?

There has been a lot of recent press predicting the demise of Twitter. The stories all basically claim that Twitter lacks holding power. Statistics show that a large proportion of tweeters have no followers, or they are only following one person. In short, they are failing to build their personal network. Sharing San Francisco with Twitter as our home base, I hope the press is wrong.

But, I do have one gripe with Twitter. It has added a layer of complexity and cost to Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Tracking. With the recent growth in Twitter users, the number of mentions per day on the brands we have tracked has skyrocketed. Because most services charge on a “number of mentions basis,” the cost of WOM tracking is increasing. However, the quality of what we receive is not worth the added cost. Due to Twitter’s 140 character limitation, it is hard to put a brand name in context when it shows up in a tweet. It’s not impossible, but it takes a lot of interpretation.

I know this is a researcher’s problem, and it will be resolved. I imagine tracking services will start allow Twitterless tracking. Or they may charge a reduced fee for the Twitter mentions. It has taken a lot of effort to convince companies that they must do WOM tracking. I just hope this short term, Twitter driven added cost doesn’t scare them away.

Great Conference!

I was in Chicago last week for the annual MRA conference. This has to have been the best research conference of the year.

The conference got off to a great start with a rousing, informative, entertaining and uplifting keynote address on Wednesday afternoon. Who would have ever guessed I would use those words to describe a speech given by an economist from Kansas City. But that is exactly what Chris Kuehl was, fantastic!

The President’s Reception is always a great opportunity to see old friends and to make new acquaintances. It was nice to see friends such as Tom and Peggy O’Connor, Michele Elster and Barbara Peters. Of course there was a strong contingency of San Francisco Bay Area researchers at the conference. I was excited to see the international presence at the conference. I met people from Germany, France, Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, and even Dubai.

The educational sessions were outstanding. MRA continues to raise the caliber of the content and speakers. Given my involvement with PRC, it was exciting to see so many people waiting to be scanned to get their PRC credits after a session.

And finally, there was the evening glass of wine in the hotel lounge. This is where researcher’s let their hair down and relaxed. It is where new friendships started and old ones were rekindled. We were no longer clients and vendors, or competitors. We were one – there for the good of the profession.

I wish to commend the many MRA volunteers and staff who made this conference what it was. I can’t wait to see what you do this fall in San Diego!