Archive for February 2012

TEDs 2012 Ad’s Worth Spreading

February 29, 2012 Advertising, Opinion No comments

Each year TED sets a marketing challenge to create ads that communicate messages in a way which TED wants to communicate with its followers. In short, they ask for ads you want to share with everyone around you. Personally I think this is an incredibly useful campaign to run, ALL advertising should be interesting, engaging and most importantly, talked about so I love to see something like this challenge lazy advertising and encourage creativity.

The 10 finalists really do just that. TED have scouted the globe for the winners and its easy to see why they were picked. Raising the bar for advertisers everywhere, these ads make you think, inspire you and get you talking and really isnt that what advertising should be about?

My favourite has to be ‘Bear’ by Canal+, silly but clever message about getting involved in film:

I found the L’Oreal Aimee Mullins spot inspiring and courageous:

This stunt by Ogilvy Tunis for Citizen Engagement provoked a genius reaction from the public, clearly getting the message across:

“The Difference Between a Dream and Reality is Just Doing it” – inspiring words from illustrator Boey for Sharpie’s ‘Start with Sharpie’ campaign:

 

View all the winners on Youtube

Tara x

 

Saatchi Live Chat 22/2/12 ‘Is the High Street Dying?’

February 22, 2012 Debate, Twitter One comment

Today Saatchi & Saatchi launched their first live twitter debate on the subject “Is the High Street Dying and do we Care?”. The result was a mish-mash of adland professionals, research gurus and concerned consumers battling it out to get their opinion heard with some really interesting results! Chloe, Tom and our new intern Rhonda all got stuck in to the online discussion which provided some very enthusiastic (and vocal) debate throughout the Razor Office. From analysing the tweets we found some of the main points to be:

  • It’s all about the ‘experience’ of shopping and the local high street has to offer something special to draw people in.
  • Government incentives are needed to draw the big stores in to the high street rather than locating in out of town retail parks. Alternatively local authorities should buy up derelict buildings on the High Street and rent them out at more affordable rents to new retailers.
  • If brands get too involved in the local community will people start to think of them cynically and as just vying for customers.
  • High Street needs to be more exciting (see the ‘experience’ point above) and pop-up shops were seen as a positive way to encourage High Street growth.
  • Buying online obviously has its pros but you can’t beat the thrill of buying something and having it physically in your hand
  • Is this a cultural problem too? Does the onus lie with the consumer to be locally aware and support their local shops?
  • Integration is the solution, how can the online world and high street world operate harmoniously?

Got an opinion on the above? Send us your thoughts: @razorresearch

Want to join the chat? Check out Saatchi Chat for details of the next live debate.

Tara x

Cold weather DOESN’T necessarily mean cold respondents!

February 20, 2012 Qualitative Research No comments

I thought I would write to tell you about my recent vox popping adventures in London and Berlin. I was asked to get the ‘voice of the people’ i.e. young, urban, trendy people, regarding a popular Australian soft drink and to video their responses. In many ways this is what my job as a researcher is all about – picking the people/the masses/the public off the street and encouraging them to talk about how it tastes/looks – essentially, are they prepared to buy it? Qualitative market research in it’s purest, most stripped down form – oh yes!

Having said that, we started in London and I am not sure if you remember 31st Jan? Well let me remind you – it was the day PROPER winter started, temperatures dropped and Mother Nature decided that we had had enough of the mild weather – all that ‘winter hasn’t been that bad this year’ chat was punished with some truly Baltic conditions – a perfect day to spend on the streets of London haha! That said, we all managed to keep warm with some very daft ‘clapping monkey’ (see above picture) style dancing, and the footage turned out great – the visible breath and snow flakes only served to add to some very atmospheric shots!

The plan was to visit 3 locations in London and get some Vox Pops in each one – South Bank, Exmouth Market and Spitalfields/Brick Lane. It is pretty common knowledge that as a group, Londoners have a bit of a reputation for being rude and ‘too busy to talk/stop/be nice generally’, which didn’t fill me with confidence when I thought about the prospect of asking them to stop in the cold street and chat about a refreshing soft drink. Against all expectations however, this was not the case – we had an amazing response, not only was the average Londoner happy to stop but most seemed genuinely happy to help – nobody was rude (well, nearly everyone – thank you Shoreditch!), people were genuinely interested and friendly!

For as long as I can remember people (namely anyone who doesn’t live in London, largely Northerners) have told me about the inherent rudeness and ‘sorry I haven’t got the time’ attitude of people that live in London. The story always goes that in anywhere up north, you get people making new friends EVERY day, on the bus, in the supermarket etc. etc. while in London you get pissed off commuters refusing to even look at each other, let alone say hello.

Well, I beg to differ! Our Londoners were so much fun, we had a great response as people were happy to stop in the cold and talked for way longer than we expected. The climax of this for our Australian client viewing the interviews (as you can imagine, coming from 32 degree heat in Oz, he did NOT appreciate the colder weather conditions!) was someone putting their hot lunch down to conduct the interview – this respondent was prepared to let his LUNCH GET COLD – all in the name of market research – what a guy!

The second part of the project was to visit Berlin to get the voice of the German people. We visited the very cool districts of Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Friedrichshain – only this time it was -15°C. The first time I have ever worked in 5 layers and STILL felt the cold – as you can imagine, many more monkey clapping impersonations ensued! After a slower start, we soon found that Berliners are as up for a chat as their London counterparts, despite the insanely cold conditions. The one small difference between our British and German respondents was the fact that in Germany, they could ALL speak another language i.e. English and we are not talking pigeon, GCSE style ‘I have a dog, a sister and my Dad is a postman’ English but proper, full blown let’s have chat English – I was even able to recruit Berliners in English! Also, you don’t have to look for cool people in Berlin because THEY ARE ALL COOL, and not just cool – über cool – if trendy East London were a city, it would definitely be Berlin.

Anyway the rather drawn out and convoluted point to this story is that in my opinion all is not lost with modern society – the young and the cool in London (and Berlin for that matter) are not as rude and disconnected as everyone makes out – they DO have time to stop for a chat, in fact some will even sacrifice the warmth of their lunch in the name of said chat – so to all you haters and doubters out there – have faith, we are not as bad as everyone makes out!

Tom

The Razor Intern Experience

February 8, 2012 Razor news No comments

With less than a week left until I finish my internship at Razor I’m trying to work out how the time has passed so quickly. I started here at the end of November, nervous, shy and very excited, and completely unsure what to expect.

I quickly learned to expect the unexpected – everyday at Razor is different and definitely not your average internship of fetching coffee and endless data entry. It was straight in at the deep end and in my first week flying solo (sans previous intern Emmie), I was accompanying Rachel and Steve on a focus group trip to Birmingham. Having never sat in on a real focus group before I was excited to hear what people had to say. I’ve been to a number of groups since and have realised that the excitement doesn’t fade; it’s always interesting to meet people and hear their opinions. What I found harder was fighting the urge to pipe up with my own thoughts during the discussion!

Since then I have been doing a whole range of tasks, from helping make stimulus boards, analysing pre-tasks, taking in-store photos and assisting in-store intercepts. I think, after 2 months and a half, I’ve also finally cracked how to answer and transfer phone calls, although maybe I shouldn’t speak too soon!

Along with all the hands on experience I’ve had at Razor, it’s also been really great to be working in an office where everyone is so welcoming and friendly. It’s always nerve-wracking starting an internship, but I was soon at ease here and have met some great people. I hope that when I find a permanent job the work is as interesting and the office environment is as nice as what I have experienced here. Razor have set the bar high!

So thank you to all you Razors, it’s been grand working with you and I will miss you. What’s more it will be a great loss to me not being able to get a daily Konditor and Cook sugar fix – although perhaps that is for the best!

I hope we stay in touch,

Jessie xxx