MRG One Day Conference: Home Or Household?
Nick Jankel-Elliot of the Happy Dog market research group and Claire Nuttall, research manager at GWR took the floor at the MRG conference in London yesterday to introduce a new research technique designed to enthuse advertisers about the space in which “brands live and breath” – the home.
Jankel-Elliot, director of strategy and insight at Happy Dog, began by explaining that “commercial ethnography” is: “An innovative research project designed to help marketeers understand more about the household media space.”
What he meant became clear when he said that this involved a researcher living with a family for four to five days in order to gain an insight into their habits and how vulnerable they are to advertising. He said: “The job of a research technique like this is to explore and interrogate everyday consumer behaviour, actions and language to generate new insights into the way in which people consume brands.”
He explained that a study carried out for GWR, which made use of the new technique, focussed on “technologically aware” households with a least two TV’s, a VCR, a radio and computer connected to the internet, to find out what type of medium was most successful for conveying a particular brand to a particular type of consumer.
Nuttall emphasised: “This is important because the medium you use convey your brand sends a message to the consumer about your company. For example TV advertising creates a very different impression about your brand than SMS advertising.”
Nuttall went on to say that gaining an “unbiased” insight into the home was of great benefit to businesses, she said: “It allows you to watch people consuming your brand. Minor observations help to create a wider vision of the context in which you are trying to sell your brand.”
She added: “We as an industry should adopt a more holistic approach to research and should concentrate on gaining a better understanding of our consumers.”
More information about yesterday’s conference can be found on the MRG website: www.mrg.org.uk