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 I
couldn't stop giggling. I was presenting to a potential customer
in Washington DC, and had put up a slide from a research study done
for us by a management school intern. It said, and I quote, "Perceived
product quality of brand k in India is 0.849564455." Swear,
not making this up.
If anything this "research" broke
the ice. The two of us traded "You're an MBA if..." jokes,
and the meeting took on a much more casual turn.
I was taken back to my days in advertising.
There we are, in the creative department, rushing to put together
a pitch for a client, and the earnest account director asks-"But
what does research say about it?"
While restraining my art director from causing
bodily harm that could potentially impact the said account director's
matrimonial prospects, I ask, innocently-well, what would you like
to research, champ?
His answer is not very confidence-inspiring.
"Well, everything you know. The brief. The positioning. The
creative..." His voice trails off, and I realise he may actually
be serious. I play with him, "Hey, while we're at it, why don't
we get a group of consumers, and get them to do a campaign for the
brand?" His eyes light up-but not for the reasons I'd hoped.
"Wow!" he says, "why haven't we done that before?"
This brings me to the crux of most research
I've seen. Some research is done to prove the obvious-when the guy
commissioning it doesn't want to seem to have an opinion. This is
safety for the coward: "What colour is the sky? Let's do a
focus group and find out" kind of stuff.
Other research is done to get datapoints that
are completely unusable-just to be seen to have covered the bases.
These can be largely ignored. But the truly insidious, damaging
research is the one that seems to be well-meaning but delivers homilies
that direct you to create dull-as-dishwater messaging and products.
"Seventy-six per cent of the consumers do not like a negative
approach." Really? So should the Sippys have made the dialogues
in Sholay more imrb-friendly: "Saab, main ne aapka namak khaaya
hai."
"Ab dal roti kha."
Or if research said "consumers like pictures
of babies and dogs", should da Vinci have added one of each,
just in case, to the Mona Lisa? Be on your guard against such research-driven
idiocy.
To succeed, new concepts have to disturb and
shake people out of their complacency. Catch their attention among
the thousands of other things on the TV or the papers. Research
CANNOT tell you what to do and how to do it. It can tell you, at
best, where the target audience's mind is.
Shakespeare, Spielberg and even Steve Jobs
have understood this well. Their creations are not the results of
studies. But come from imaginations that build on a deep understanding
of their audience's mind.
A disturbing trend I see these days is building
businesses based on research. Gartner, or some other consulting
house, says Sector X will grow to be a $5 billion business by 2008.
So all rush to be there. Really? What did they use-a time machine?
I deeply distrust all such 'research into the
future'. I'm not sure how such numbers are produced. Perhaps someone's
throwing dice and producing random numbers in the back office. I
think of The Wall Street Journal, where a monkey throwing darts
is one of their better-performing stockpickers. If research companies
were right, we never would have had the tech boom, or for that matter,
the bust.
Do not mistake research for reality. It is
more a pleasing, convenient fiction, like your horoscope for today
or next year. Read it if you want to, by all means, but remember
that it has about as much bearing on the future of your business
as your neighbour's cat's star sign.
Mahesh Murthy, an angel investor, heads
Passionfund. He earlier ran Channel V and, before that, helped launch
Yahoo! and Amazon at a Valley-based interactive marketing firm.
Reach him at Mahesh@passionfund.com.
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