Tag Archive for AQR

Coffee and Culture: My first Conference Paper in Rome

May 9, 2012 AQR, Conferences, Qualitative Research No comments

Our Senior Research Executive Tom Morgan presented a paper at the AQR ‘Qualititative Renaissance’ Conference in Rome last week. Here he tells us about his adventures with weapons-grade coffee, magical sights and what its like presenting to your heroes…

 

Last week I went to the AQR/QRCA ‘Qualitative Renaissance’ conference in Rome to present my paper as a young market researcher.

The first night of the conference involved a number of introductions, kisses on the cheek and handshakes as everyone got to know each other (probably one of the very few times I have legitimately given someone my card who isn’t my mum or grandma). The party split off into smaller groups for dinner; I had pasta, obviously.

The next day, any remnants of the first night’s dinner and drinks, were seen off with a small cup of coffee that can only be compared to plutonium in its strength – I know it’s a cliché but Italian coffee is SO GOOD! As I sat down at my table, it occurred to me how lucky I was. Not only had I left rainy London for sunny Rome, but I had been given the opportunity to sit at a table and listen to the likes of Rose Campbell, Liz Van Pattern, Wendy Gordon, Luigi Toiati, Ken Parker, Kevin McLean etc.

After much clapping, tweeting, nodding and note-taking, at the end of the first day we decided to walk through the streets of Rome to the ‘Gala’ event that had been arranged for us that evening.

As the majority of us didn’t really know what a ‘Gala’ was, you can safely say we were more than impressed when we walked up a flight of stairs to find that we were to be eating and drinking atop a balcony overlooking Rome as the sun was setting.

The next morning, after some more weapons-grade coffee and a few great presentations, it was time for the ‘Young Apprentice’ section of the conference. The idea was that Me, Sara and Ben all present our short paper, then our assigned mentors (mad props to Liz Van Pattern for being my ‘Simon Cowell’ for the conference) would tell the audience why they should ‘vote’ – presenter that received the loudest collective clap was the winner!

I have to say Sara’s wicked paper about trying overcoming the challenge of memory in research deserved to win – interesting stuff and really well presented. Being able to stand up and talk to so many great research heroes was such a fantastic feeling, having said that, there was a point where my nerves nearly got the better of me.

Every so often I would imagine the plethora of horrendously embarrassing things that could happen while up on stage; my Prezi presentation not working, the mic cutting out and top of them all; the classic broken-belt-trousers-falling-down-in-front-of-everyone scenario. Despite all this, I remember standing down from the platform to a hearty round of applause (second loudest according to some but who’s counting right?) realising that not only had I managed to avoid sounding like Dubya Bush in his speech-making heyday, but that I had actually enjoyed the experience!

At this point I would like to give a shout out to my awesome colleagues for all their support, they never once complained about hearing my presentation a gazillion times without complaining (not to mention the individually signed card from the Razor gang which Chloe gave me half an hour before my presentation). Matt was a great inspiration for the writing of my paper from start to finish too.

Biggest thanks definitely go to Chloe however, who on our arrival into Rome made this amazing transformation from agency co-owner and research director into a combination of trainer, coach and groupie – at one point I actually thought she was going to put on the Eye Of The Tiger and insist I run up some stairs but instead she just sat at the front of the room when I got up on stage and gave me the confidence I needed – nice one Chlo.

The afternoon after my presentation was testament to how much of a lovely bunch us qualitative researchers really are. I couldn’t move a step without someone congratulating me, patting me on the back and generally being nice about my paper. Some even billed our young apprentice session as ‘the best of the conference’ – high praise indeed when so many truly inspirational researchers had spoken before us and after us for that matter.

That evening, Chloe and I flew back from Rome and I could not wipe the smile off my face – all that work had paid off – and I decided while chomping on my slightly soggy British Airways chicken sandwich, sipping on an impossibly small celebratory can of beer, that I may have developed a taste for the bright lights. Now all I need to do is come up with is some groundbreaking theory…

 

Tom

Blatant plug for AQR’s Bring It!

April 22, 2012 AQR, Networking, Qualitative Research No comments

Booking now open for AQR’s ‘Bring It’

How do YOU enter a room? Do you ever find yourself watching other people present and wish YOU could swagger around the stage like you own it? Do you know what first impression you make? Find out how to be more confident, charismatic and memorable with performance coach Charlotte Austin.
I know you think you can’t draw. But you can. And not only can you draw but you can get better, quicker and more concise in your ability to distil a single thought into just that great one-liner. Learn how with marketing cartoonist Jake Goretzki.
Co-Founder of the London Comedy Film Festival (LoCo) and screenplay writer Jonathan Wakeham will get us thinking about how we tell stories and how we can tell them better by following some simple rules of genre, character, plot and action. Debrief as Spaghetti Western? You got it.
Even the term cliché is a cliché. Nick Southgate’s bag of tricks will help us unleash our inner creative beasts and think outside our boxes as we turn idea into insight. Feel the fear and do it anyway. What goes around comes around and you’ll never take language for granted again.
Finally, Datch Datchens (really), copy-writer at Saatchi & Saatchi will pit us against the clock to create memorable, snappy, meaningful descriptions of brands. You think they just sit and drink martinis all day. Well, maybe they do, but we can all sip with them.
During Bring It we’ll all be challenged to make weird noises, weird shapes and use words we tend to forget when we write our debriefs. It’ll get us thinking harder, being more confident and ultimately, remembering that we do is a lot more creative than sometimes we give it credit for. It’s not often we get to spend a day with such inspiring, charismatic and clever people…and that includes you…so come along.

Friday 18th May, 9:00pm – 6:00pm
Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre
108 Stamford St, SE1 9HN (a few minutes walk from Waterloo)

£210+VAT for AQR members and £350+VAT for non-AQR members (includes 1 year of membership)

*********
Session leaders include:
Charlotte Austin is a Performance and Development Consultant to some very swanky people indeed, including creative agency AKQA, the BBC and the Ministry of Justice.
If she can get chap from the Ministry miming ‘climbing the stairs’ and ‘opening the gate’ (with sound effects), then she can do anything. Seriously though, her expertise lies in helping you do things, say things and BE things you didn’t know you could be.

Jonathan Wakeham is the co-founder of LoCo and the London Comedy FIlm Festival at BFI Southbank. He was an advertising planner in a past life (AMV, St Lukes)
and has worked with entertainment companies including Disney, Discovery, the BBC, ITV and Random House, and is a director of Arts Emergency and Camden People’s Theatre. His screenplay The Nile will be directed by Susanna White. He’s still trying to work out whether he’s a man or a Muppet.

Nick Southgate is the IPA’s very special advisor when it comes to all things Behavioural Economics. But fear not (or I’m sorry), we’re going to be borrowing his skills as a ‘thinker’ for this course.
He’s a philosopher, a planner, a lover of art. And he teaches people ‘how to be cool’ at the School of Life.
You never know, if we stand close enough, some of it might just rub off on us.

Datch is an enigma. A man for whom only one name is sufficient. And whose surname is Datchens. Proof that some traditions in ad agencies are still upheld, he is a copywriter
who has worked alongside his art director partner (Reuben) since before they got their first ‘creative pair’ job at RPM (they’re now the hot stuff at Saatchi’s).

Jake Goretzki is a freelance researcher and consultant but that’s not why he’s Bringing It with us. He’s also a satirical cartoonist and illustrator, specialising in cartoons that lampoon,
reflect, challenge our marketing ways. Can’t think where he gets his inspiration from.

To Book: complete and return attached form or book online at http://www.aqr.org.uk/calendar/info.shtml?event=TC12BI

Tom talks about girls. And boys. And girls and boys.

July 3, 2011 AQR, Qualitative Research, research method No comments

Tom hit the big screen at AQR’s Q Fest a few weeks ago…

Check out the link below to watch him share his thoughts on training to be a researcher and gender.

Go Tom!

AQR Q Fest and The Devil Wears Prada

June 19, 2011 Qualitative Research, Razor's progress, research method No comments

Remember the scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Anne Hathaway’s character claims she’s ‘just wearing a sweater’ and Glenn Close turns on her and reminds her that the cheap turquoise ‘just’ sweater she’s wearing has in fact been passed through the style gullets of 10 or so luminaries in order to reach the level of affordable accessibility that she calls ‘just a sweater.’

I think maybe that’s how I feel about the things I hear at qual conferences.  By the time I get it (aka understand it)– it’s been through the layers of trend setting, dissection, resurrection and application that turn the theory into something I can actually use.

To be fair, I’m not a very good conference –goer.  Like I’m not a very good church-goer.  Or a stand up comedy-goer.  I can’t help but adjust my face into some sort of sceptic frown at some point around the first biscuit and it doesn’t lift until the final ciggie out the front with the cool kids.

Last week it was the AQR’s Q Fest – touted as the Glastonbury of Qual.  That sent me spinning for a start – as my idea of merry hell would be Glastonbury.  Or Sainsbury’s on the first BBQ weekend of the year.  But I gather it was all about melting pot, free-thinking and freedom of expression.  I was rather hoping it meant free weed but I have yet again misjudged my colleagues in qual.

I hear the big words: neuroscience, paradigm, plasticity, heuristic…and this year we have ‘BE’ (Behavioural Economics) – looming over all the how’s and why’s.

But what sticks?  The next day – always more than I think at the time.

But there’s something else I learnt more than anything else and that’s having the courage just to TALK about what you’re doing is as important as doing the doing.  What was it Jo Kennedy Snr said in the first episode of C4’s The Kennedys (it’s not as dire as you think) “It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s who they think you are” that counts.  And that’s it.  I think at Razor we shy away from bundling our practices into words and calling it theory.  We assume what we’re doing is dead normal and run of the mill and actually, I’m wondering whether maybe it’s more unique than that.  And sometimes we DO get there first – or at least, we’re not last.

Okay, maybe I personally will only ever be the one wearing ‘just a sweater’ but we need to keep surrounding ourselves with the people wearing the banana print sawn-off shorts and sometimes we need to be confident enough to go out there wearing the latest fashion and being proud of it.

Chloe

Intergalatic travel into the world of online qual

July 18, 2010 General No comments

Do you know what an MROC is? Or a BBFG or an OFG or a Squidoo? I kinda did, but now I really do. Leaving dissing the acronyms aside – this stuff should matter to us.

The AQR (esp Andrew Therkelson) in conjunction with Joanna Chrzanowska and John Griffiths ran an amazing, totally sold out, course on Friday dedicated to the galaxy of online research. 4 of us Razors went along – we really know how to dominate a room.

I think online research is fascinating and I’ve got very tired of going to MR conferences where either it’s assumed that ALL online research is online focus groups (not true) or that it’s a horrible scary thing that ‘we’ wish could just go away.

The truth is, it’s not ‘going away’ and nor should we wish it to do so. That’s like saying we wish we were still using acetates to present debriefs of a light projector. Or that life was better before email.

In all honesty, I found it a tad depressing that a room full of people who should be at the vanguard of qualitative thinking were still (initially) trotting out clichés about it being fast and cheap, a blunt tool, only for the kidz, etc. We can do better than that. But I was pleased that despite all the scepticism and mild grumbling at the beginning of the day, the mood seemed a lot more buoyant and ‘give it a go’ by the end.

The forays into using online tools that we’ve had at Razor have been neither fast nor cheap. Well, that’s not quite true. We have charged less than we could have done for some of our online communities but to be honest, that’s because we’ve still been learning and feel it’s been appropriate to reflect that in our cost structure.

It’s never been a blunt tool – though at times it’s worked better than others. Mostly this has been down to the subject matters that we’ve been lucky enough to have used online tools for: subjects that people are naturally drawn to being garrulous about (chocolate, more chocolate, cosmetics and The Archers). But you know what, every subject is fascinating when you find the insights worth discussing and if that wasn’t true then qualitative research would be a lot more boring than in fact it is.

And is it for the young? I’m sure they won’t mind me pointing out the obvious – that the course was devised and lead by Joanna and John…neither are spring chickens. Every time I hear them speak I’m reminded that this industry needs the thinkers, the challenges, the rebels and that us ‘young’ crowd are being a little lazy at the moment. I think innovation in the industry is still coming from the generations or two one step ahead of us. Where are the real innovators and thinkers in their 20’s and 30’s? I don’t believe that ‘older’ people are all luddites and technophobes (how utterly patronising and dismissive)…it’s an attitude, not an ability.

We don’t have a Razor way of doing online and I suspect we never will. We’ll continue the use the tools we’ve used already as part of the many methods we employ in any given project. We’ll find a way to have a go at those we haven’t used yet. We’ll do what we always do which is sit down together when we get a client brief and figure out which of our many tools are the best for the job. And if that involves asking respondents to blog, populate, scrape or lurk – we’ll do it.

But the real challenge I came away with? As a young agency, still a relatively new kid on the block, if we’re not the ones challenging, provoking and doing, aren’t we just being lazy, complacent and ultimately, just a bit boring?

Blimey – where’s the intergalactic passport to sort that one out? Watch this space.

Chloe

How to write better – Pimp up your Qual

April 22, 2010 AQR, Qualitative Research No comments

You know when you’ve been planning something for months and months and then it happens and you think, ‘what took me so long?’ That’s how I feel today, a day after the fabulous (though I say it myself) Creative Writing Meets Qual Research course that I had the pleasure of organising for the AQR.

The premise was simple. I wanted to devise a course that took qual researchers OUT OF research for a day and to spend some time being inspired by writers (not researchers). So much of what we do is written and yet I don’t think enough of us spend enough time thinking about HOW we write, as opposed to WHAT we write.

We had 4 speakers:
Joanna Pocock, a writer and creative writing tutor. She took us through the ‘rules’ of good and bad writing – watch out for those stretches, thickeners and all that jazz.
Jonathan Wakeham, a freelance planner, currently writing various screenplays. He used film as an example of how drama’s tell a great story. We were challenged to create and pitch a film in less than 25 words and in little more than 25 minutes.
Robert Bain, features editor of Research Magazine. We were reminded that good editing is as important as good writing and we practised writing better headlines.
Nick Southgate, freelance planner and tutor at the School of Life. Nick gave a whistlestop tour of Oulipo and got us committing ‘vowel-icide’, writing Haiku’s and writing like Martian’s sending a postcard home. Yup.

35 attendees: loads of different research agencies: champagne: blunt pencils: pigeons: popes and the complete opposite of writer’s block.

So, what next?!

Chloe

Do you know what a Lipogram is?

April 21, 2010 AQR, Qualitative Research No comments

Chloe wrote about the fabulous AQR Creative Writing course that she organized last week in her latest blog. Here’s a nifty piece of info that I picked up when on the course:

A lipogram (from Greek lipagrammatos, “missing letter”) is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is omitted — usually a common vowel, the most common in English being “E”.

So here goes…

On a day that follows Monday, it was 13th April in fact, a group of Razors took a turn back in a classroom to find out ways in which to boost skills in an art known to all as writing. It was a day full of intriguing and thought provoking tasks. Facilitating this day was our top notch Razor (initials CF) who did an amazing job of bringing a bunch (four in fact) of writing aficionados into a room to pass on small dollops of information to us hungry pupils.

To start, Joanna Pocock taught us how to hook in an individual who wants to pick up a book and absorb its words. It was about knowing what is good, bad and ugly writing. Short is good, too many words not so good. A straightforward approach is good, dancing around a point not so good. Painting with words is good, as is having an original sound. All important stuff.

Jonathan W was all about how to build a story. So it’s about always having a string that runs through the story upon which bits of information can hang. It’s about building and building on this to and taking an individual on a trip, up hills and down again.

On to Rob Bain who, to put it simply, told us to cut out any crap to avoid pussy-footing around. No fluff. Just good writing.

And Nick S took a lot of words and basic ABCs away from us and told us to go without. So it was about thinking out of the box and using words that could put across a story in a way that was at odds with our gut instinct.

All in all a fab day. Thanks AQR.

Lucy