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
