What are memes and whats the idea behind this first guest-edited edition of Research World? Memes are contagious ideas spread between people through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable means. Richard Dawkins coined meme to rhyme with gene' to describe how one might extend evolutionary principles of copying and natural selection, to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena such as popular songs, crazes, catchphrases, dances, religious beliefs, fashion, social behaviour and I would suggest, the spread of successful brands. The guest-editor idea is to provide the opportunity for a fresh, provocative perspective and to engage diverse contributors to share their content and creativity.
Philips has a long-established history of introducing innovative products in the consumer electronics space: from the cassette tape to the compact disc, which it co-introduced with Sony. Sustaining innovation on this scale is challenging, and Philips' market research arm is constantly evaluating new approaches to discovering what consumers want to see next. In 2007, the company wondered whether it was doing all it could to understand consumers. Until this point, Philips had been continuously evolving its traditional methods with new forms of market research. However, the team found that its ability to gather unexpected, game-changing insights from consumers was still limited. The traditional methods they had in place were most useful for testing consumer opinion and sentiments, and the newer methods, while effective in harvesting insightful information, were expensive and time-consuming. Philips wanted to look three years ahead perhaps even further to discover its next breakthroughs and this, it realized, was only possible if it could more effectively harness consumer insights early in the product development cycle. In 2007, spurred in large part by the mandate to more deeply embed consumer-centric thinking companywide, Philips' Consumer Electronics (CE) sector took its first steps toward engaging a private online community, planning to thoroughly test it over the course of one year. Still unsure of how an online community would work and how it would complement existing market research efforts, the company approached Communispace to help build a private online community.
We conceived a study in which we explored what makes people act, at the most fundamental level and, further, what makes people act on behalf of brands. In this paper, we'll explain what's behind an openness to act on behalf of brands, what needs this fulfills, what brands need to do and be in order to inspire action, what they get out of it, and finally what all this means for us as qualitative researchers. Our participation journey led us to a clear understanding that successful brands today focus less on the external project of how to create participation, and more on the internal project of how to create useful, engaging and distinctive brands. This internal brand focus results in a magnetism that makes people instinctively want to participate. Compelling and irresistible brands attract organic participation that builds the brand story and advances consumers' relationship with the brand. On the other hand, participative communications risk remaining outside of the brand context and thus lack meaning and power. Our learnings clearly demonstrate to us that the role of researchers must evolve in order to help clients take advantage of the current world and become more worthy of the participative energy of the people we speak with in our professional lives.
Are we jumping on the brandwagon? That was the core question discussed at an ESOMAR event a decade ago in Berlin, at a time when brandology and brand management were fast rising in importance. At the end of the conference, it was stated that there was still a lot of room for improvement in the area of measuring product/brand performance. Measurements of images, value systems and loyalty were seldom consistently reliable and valid over the long term. This increased turbulence around the brand has probably not promoted the further accrual of a solid body of knowledge. Indeed, it seems as if the softies might have gained the upper hand, given the popularity of semiotics, small scale qualitative research and related approaches. But is this really the case? In this edition of Research World we look at the brand in today's context of rapidly changing competitive relations. Is the accent on short-term profit and market share still stronger than long-term brand building? We present a snapshot of a burgeoning conflict.