Impact Magazine

A blog about the people and companies that use evidence and insight to make a difference

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From Winky Dink crayons to iPad companion apps, Tim Phillips traces the evolution of multi-screening, and how advertisers and content creators are adapting to a world of increasingly divided attentions. http://www.research-live.com/features/what-are-you-looking-at?/4010964.article

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Impact Magazine wins Launch of the Year prize

Impact, the quarterly magazine of the Market Research Society, last night won the Launch of the Year prize at the International Content Marketing Awards 2013.

The magazine faced competition from a range of consumer titles, including Ocado’sOcadolife, Auto Trader’s Ignition, and the Pets at Home My VIP customer magazine.

Judges from the Content Marketing Association said:

“In a year peppered with high-profile content launches, Impact stood head and shoulders above them all simply because it had a very tangible sense of being something new. The quarterly publication, produced for members of the Market Research Society, aims to take a bold approach to the market research industry and allow big topics to be explored, analysed and shared.

“The magazine was true to its title, providing unique content that looked ahead rather than reporting the past, surprising and inspiring its readership while becoming the voice of the industry. Top names within marketing such as Sir Martin Sorrell, Patrick Barwise and Jeremy Bullmore agreed to be interviewed, and the annual advertising target was exceeded within the first quarter.

“’There are some fantastic names in here,’ agreed the judges. ‘The title is credible and follows through with elegant content execution and some great results.’”

Impact is edited in-house at the MRS, with design, layout and production duties handled by contract publishers CPL. Pictured below is Impact’s lead designer Kevin Reed of CPL (left) and editor Brian Tarran.

Issue 3 of Impact Magazine is out now. Click here to subscribe, or here to browse through the digital flipbook edition.

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This week I’ve been at the Dreamforce conference and one of the most interesting sessions I attended was about examples of small businesses using data.

I listened to the CTO at Prometheus Global Media, J.Christopher Roe, the company behind The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. Prometheus has...

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Handle with care

Why data privacy will be the next big thing in corporate responsibility circles

Stories about data privacy are rarely out of the news. Ever since The Guardian first published details of the US National Security Agency’s Prism scheme in June, there has been a steady drip-drip of new revelations about the extent to which government agencies are able to peer into the private conversations of internet users.

Add to that the outcries over lost personal data (the DVLA, for example), the frequent and often confusing changes made to social network privacy policies (Facebook in particular), and the instances where companies were found to be collecting more information than they had previously admitted to (Google’s Street View cars, for instance). It’s not hard to see why Paul Flatters thinks data privacy will be the next evolution of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda.

Flatters is a trends forecaster and a co-founder of Trajectory Partnership. Part of his job involves tracking the ever-changing concerns of consumers - and this includes their perceptions of the way companies should behave. Flatters says there has been a notable shift in recent years away from concerns around climate change and environmental sustainability, which were common in the pre-recession era.

Since the downturn, he says, people have become much more pre-occupied with boardroom best practice. “Concerns about global warming have morphed into concerns about whether companies pay their taxes, how much they pay their top executives and what their bonuses are,” says Flatters.

But as the economy picks up again, we can expect demands for fair pay to evolve into demands for fair play in the way companies use personal data. “We do very strongly believe that how companies handle data will become a really central part of the corporate responsibility agenda,” says Flatters.

Read more

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What we are all about

My name is Brian Tarran. I’m the editor of Impact Magazine. And this is a bit of an experiment. 

Come check out and take part in our new blog collection over at Medium.

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"People aren't paying attention to ads anymore. Our job is to make them pay attention"

This send up of the prankvertising trend ties in nicely with an upcoming Impact piece on the same topic. Essentially we ask, at what point does scaring your customers become counter-productive?

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Meet Handshake, the mobile app that’s looking to create a market for people to sell their personal data directly to companies.

“If you keep asking customers for data, for information, at some point you have to give value back. You have to reciprocate”

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Adding up to problems

In a data-driven world, maths skills are more important than ever. But with few young people in the UK continuing their maths education beyond the age of 16, demand could soon outstrip supply.

We live in a data-driven world. It’s a familiar refrain, but it’s true. To succeed in a data-driven world, one needs a head for numbers and the ability to understand them, interpret them and analyse them. But in the UK, such skills are in limited supply.

Maths, in particular, is not our strong point. Last year, 42% of school-leavers failed to achieve grade A*-C in their maths GCSE. Worse, a study commissioned by the Sutton Trust found that the post-GCSE participation rate for mathematics education in England trails the rest of the world: only 26% are studying any maths after secondary school, compared with more than 90% in Hong Kong and Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate, 84% in Massachusetts, USA, 71% in New Zealand and 66% in Singapore.

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl says: “Maths matters too much to cut it off after [the age of] 16… It is at the heart of everyday technology, from our smartphones and tablets to the increased automation in daily tasks from driving to shopping.”

Read more

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My experience of researching Millennials was used as the basis for the first top 10 tips about marketing to Millennials in 2009, which received a 95% recommendation rating on You Talk Marketing.

This year I’ve had tons of conversations both online and offline with the Millennial target...

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You can also check out more of Stephen's thoughts on millennials in a recent Research-live.com piece on Viacom. Click here.

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Why big data is the new cocaine

It makes people feel smart and sexy – and it makes them talk a lot of rubbish. Marketers are hooked on big data, but it won’t solve all their problems, said Exponential’s Bryan Melmed, at yesterday’s IAB Engage conference.

Read more

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Divided attentions

Issue 3 of Impact Magazine, out now, takes an in-depth look at how media owners and advertisers are adapting to the multi-screen world.

Check out the free digital edition of Impact here – and if you're not a subscriber, click here to remedy that.

P.S. We've been nominated for Launch of the Year at the upcoming International Content Marketing Awards. Prizes will be awarded on 27 November. Hopefully we’ll have more good news to share with you on the 28th.

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Global thirst, local flavour

Building strong local brands is a cornerstone of SAB Miller’s success in the global beer market – and insight plays a crucial role, says marketing director Nick Fell. By Jane Simms.

In May 1983, Ted Levitt, editor of the Harvard Business Review wrote one of the first articles to popularise the notion of globalisation. He argued that as markets were globalising – and, by extension, homogenising – then the companies that globalised their brands accordingly would steal a march over their more local competitors.

So influential was his thinking that, over the past 30 years, many organisations have tried to build monolithic global brands to take advantage of the “inevitable” trend. Companies including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Unilever, Levi-Strauss, Vodafone and Heineken have pursued the global brand route – at various points crushing local cultural and taste differences to fit the theory. City analysts piled onto the bandwagon too.

But while a handful of companies have made a success of the strategy, many others have had to adapt their approach as it became clear that the growing demand by consumers for international brands was neither as inevitable nor as inexorable as Levitt predicted. A handful were sceptical from the outset. SABMiller was one of them because, in the words of its recently retired chief executive, Graham Mackay: “Beer is different.”

Mackay believes that the highly emotional characteristics of beer brands, combined with their long history and association with place, will always dictate a high degree of localism that sets them apart in the fast moving consumer goods universe. There are very successful global brands, of course, and SABMiller itself has four – Grolsch, Peroni Nastro Azzuro, Pilsner Urquell and Miller Genuine Draft. But these account for just three per cent of SABMiller’s total sales volumes.

The company’s results – sales and profits grew by 10% per cent and 12% per cent respectively in the year 2012-2013 – appear to vindicate its approach. Mackay sums this up as follows: “While much of the consumer goods industry is focused on identifying how everyone is the same, SABMiller is trying to work out how everyone is different.”

The company’s 80-strong research and insight team plays a huge part in helping the company to discern those differences.

Read more

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Stats alert!

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Bronwen Morgan joins Impact Magazine

We’re delighted to announce a new edition to the Impact editorial team. Bronwen Morgan joins us this week as senior writer and deputy editor.

Morgan comes from a background of market research, having joined the healthcare team at Hall & Partners as a graduate. She then worked briefly at healthcare-only agency Aequus Research before moving sectors with a role in the research team at educational consultancy EdComs.

She left research last year to study for an MA in magazine journalism at City University.

As well as writing for Impact, Morgan will also be contributing to our sister publication, the daily news website Research-live.com. You’ll find her contact details here.

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Business leaders anticipate 'more extensive collaboration with customers'

US – Results of a new study by IBM indicate that senior business leaders have made an unprecedented commitment to allowing direct customer influence on their business decisions and operations.

“When we published our first study in 2004, CEOs ranked their own customers sixth on the list of all market factors they believed would drive the most change in their organisations,” wrote Virginia M. Rometty, CEO of IBM, in the introduction to the report. “Today, digitally enfranchised and empowered customers lead the agenda for every CxO profession.”

Read more

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Meeting the Makers

Technologies such as 3D printing are putting the means of production into the hands of the individual. So, asks Colin Strong: What might the rise of the Maker Movement mean for market research?

The Maker Movement is essentially a grass-roots call for a return of the means of production to the hands of the individual. Evangelists such as Chris Anderson, author of Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, claim it has the potential to massively change our approach to manufacturing, via the same disruptive forces that have transformed many other industries.

The Maker Movement has three characteristics, according to Anderson:

People using digital desktop tools to create designs for new products and prototype them.

A cultural norm to share those designs and collaborate with others in online communities.

The use of common design file standards that allow anyone, if they desire, to send their designs to commercial manufacturing services to be produced in any number, just as easily as they can fabricate them on their desktop.

The movement is in its early stages, perhaps similar to the early computing movement of the 1970s, where a legion of enthusiastic amateurs are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. There are now amazingly sophisticated tools available for self-production, such as 3D printers, laser cutters and 3D scanners, which are completely redefining what someone can create in their own backroom or garage. And indeed there is huge growth in ‘maker spaces’ – shared production facilities further reducing the barriers to entry for your very own manufacturing company. Of course, these tools do not provide any real economies of scale – it would be impossible to mirror the efficiency and cost effectiveness of large-scale production facilities as owned by the likes of Foxconn. So whilst large-scale manufacturing brands may see some profit erosion, it is unlikely to be fundamentally impacted by Makers.

But where does market research fit in all this?

Read more

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Twitter TV ratings good for Breaking Bad, and advertisers too?

Nielsen has officially launched its long-awaited Twitter TV Ratings service, which measures the total activity and reach of TV-related conversations on the micro-blogging service.

“Initial analysis reveals that the Twitter TV audience for an episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors who are generating tweets,” says Nielsen.

Nielsen says that Twitter conversation about live TV has grown dramatically in the US over the past two years. Citing its social TV measurement company SocialGuide, Nielsen says: “19 million unique people in the US composed 263 million tweets about live TV in Q2 2013 alone, a 24% year-over-year increase in authors and a 38% increase in tweet volume.”

But what does all this activity mean for advertisers and media owners?

http://www.research-live.com/4010585.article