Archive for the ‘David Ward’ Category
Friday, July 30th, 2010
David Ward’s Thursday Night Insight this week reminds us all about the importance of making the right impression in front of our prospective customers.
Last weekend my family and I took a short trip to Sandbach, Cheshire. My wife’s hairdresser has taken a new job at a salon there and, since it’s only a short hop over the M6 motorway, she has decided to start to frequent that salon instead of her usual haunt. Sandbach is only 10 miles from home and I felt somewhat embarrassed about the fact that, in what will soon be six years in this area, I have never visited it. On Saturday I put that right.
We arrived in Sandbach with a feeling of anticipation and interest as to what this little town had to offer. My wife and daughter attended their appointments and afterwards we (my wife, not my daughter) decided a nice cold beer in the sunshine was just what the doctor ordered, so we settled down for a refreshing drink at a very nice looking pub established in the 1600s.
With its ageing façade adorned with enormous planters festooned with colourful flowers, it really did look a picture. This was a place full of character in the heart of all that was happening in the town that day, including a bustling farmers’ market. It was also a place that was home to a simple slice of marketing. A sign by the door hoped to entice passersby into the pub by declaring that they should “Come and relax in our beautifull secret garden.” Now call me an old-fashioned chap but unless the spelling of “beautiful” that was used dates back to the 1600s and the original owner is still running the place, I find this kind of simple error unacceptable. Did the owner not read the sign before it was displayed? Doesn’t he care? If he doesn’t care about what is presented outside his pub, what else doesn’t he care about?
Sometime later on that same day…
Just by chance (and I’ll explain the link to my initial ramblings shortly), my daughter attended a local carnival with my wife and, with pocket money burning a hole in (not surprisingly) her pocket, she (my daughter, not my wife) set about spending it. At six, she’s not quite a shopaholic yet but she did seem to enjoy the experience. This is what she bought:
- 3 rides on a bouncy slide (likely to cause burnt flesh unless properly covered)
- 1 imitation snake on a stick
- 1 plastic hairdresser toy pack brought to our fair isle by a Chinese company
- 1 large bag of sweets
Item number 3 is where this becomes relevant. On the front of the packet we were informed that the toy was “design for Childrenall. Are fangled and in the high quality welcome you use our product.”
“Huh?” I hear you ask.
Well, that was my initial thought too. On two separate occasions on the same day I had my Thursday Night (or should that be Saturday afternoon?) Insight sewn up. And here’s the punch line, so to speak…
Sometimes there is very little to distinguish between products, companies or services. One simple thing that can be done is to avoid making your offering stand out for the wrong reason. It can be the small things that make the difference between success and failure. Don’t let something as simple as poor presentation of messages, communications, or an eye for the finer details be one of them.
Think about what sort of impression you leave with your prospective customer. If you don’t care about the details of spelling and grammar, what else don’t you care about? Potential customers will ask themselves whether their needs will be treated in the same lackadaisical way. I’m sure most businesses do care about this kind of detail but I’m convinced that over time it’s gradually getting worse and worse. Don’t fall into the same trap and don’t underestimate the impression given through a lazy use of language.
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Thursday, May 27th, 2010
David Ward this week reflects on what the many implications of our aging populations may be.
In developed countries life expectancies are steadily on the increase. We live longer now than we ever have. According to the Office for National Statistics, life expectancy in the UK increased from 73.4 years to 77.5 years for males and from 78.9 years to 81.7 years for females between 1991 and 2008. An interesting fact is that of all the 65 year olds that have ever lived, over half of them are still with us today. This fact is quite a stark illustration of the increasing life expectancy we can all hopefully look forward to.
Couple this increasing life expectancy with decreasing birth rates and we’re left with an ageing population. Of course the UK isn’t the only country experiencing these types of changes. Japan is an excellent example of where the population distribution is changing. The following website – http://www.wwq.jp/indexfr.html – shows how the age distribution of Japan’s population has gradually got older since the 1880s. Starting off with the typical pyramid shape, by the 1960s it is clear that the base is narrowing and the age groups with the largest populations are migrating up the pyramid. With a current fertility rate of around 1.2 (a rate of 2.1 is needed to maintain a steady population), Japan’s population distribution shows no sign of changing.
It has been reported on a regular basis that this change in population structure will bring with it problems for generations to follow. Who will look after this ageing population? With such a low number of births, who will work to keep our economies running? We will have problems with provisions for the population too. Will it be a case of too many people taking out of the system and not enough people putting something back? These are just a few examples of the issues that could face the developed countries.
This ageing population will also pose an interesting dilemma for marketing and market research. A change of tack will be needed to tailor the marketing approach to suit the requirements of those people with the most spending power that have been gradually creeping up the population pyramid. They will also have to adapt to the changing attitudes of people as they age. Perhaps the population as it gets older will be less driven by consumerism, less inclined to want to have the latest tech gadget, and less influenced by the commercials as they are shown to us today. It may be the case that fewer whistles and bangs, and more substance and depth, might become the order of the day to sell your latest product to perhaps a more discerning customer.
To me, as someone who studied geography at university (although admittedly I was more interested in geomorphology and remote sensing), the population changes we are seeing are interesting. This is not only for the impact they will have on our societies but also from a marketing point of view. I for one will be interested to see how this one pans out.
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Friday, February 12th, 2010
This week, David Ward explains how a little extra thought could go a long way for some of our prospective clients.
I am colour blind. To be honest, I am so colour blind that my 6-year-old daughter takes great pleasure in telling me I’m getting my reds, greens and browns, my blues, purples, pinks and greys all of a muddle. As we sit down to do some drawing together, more often than not the scene taking shape on the page is eclipsed by the alien-looking purple sky or dry, parched-looking brown grass as though some prolonged drought has been in full swing for several months. I’ve lost count of the number of fouls I’ve given away playing snooker when I’ve inadvertently potted the brown thinking it was a red. I’ve long since given up looking for red tees against the green grass on the golf course. I long ago got used to the strange looks that shop assistants give me when I ask them what colour a particular item of clothing is. In short, it’s a frustrating problem. However, it’s hardly a life threatening one and to my nearest and dearest it’s a source of some entertainment.
Depending on where you look for the figures, between 8% and 12% of the male population are colour blind to some extent and a very small proportion of females are affected. One way of testing for colour blindness is the Ishihara test. Here are a few examples from that test.
What can you see? For the record I can see a 25 in the first circle. In the other three circles I see dots and nothing else. In the other three circles I should be able to see the number 45, the number 8 and the number 6.
I’m no expert on eye-related problems so I tried to find a simple explanation of the reason for colour blindness and http://www.wisegeek.com/what-causes-color-blindness.htm provided a good one, I think.
Colour blindness is a result of certain cones on the retina misinterpreting the wavelengths that correspond to their respective colours. Red, green and blue colours have corresponding wavelengths. Red wavelengths are longest, green colours generate medium wavelengths, and blue colours are made of shorter wavelengths. If the green cones, for example, only respond to slightly longer wavelengths, green will be interpreted by the brain as red.
I don’t need to tell you that the web is an established way of advertising, reaching new customers and selling products, but how much consideration is given to the design of the colour schemes? Being faced with a website that hasn’t used a well-thought-out colour scheme that takes us colour blind folks into consideration could be costing you. For example, according to the last census in 2001 there were 28.6 million males in the UK, and with around 12% of males being colour blind that’s potentially 3.4 million males that may be put off from using a website purely because of its colour design.
The message for my Thursday Night Insight this week is simple. Although it’s often not a serious issue, please don’t forget about people like me that struggle when it comes to the world of colours and making distinctions between them. It’s not a difficult thing to take into consideration and there are 3.4 million in the UK alone that may just thank you for it.
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Friday, November 13th, 2009
David Ward this week takes the time to point out that in marketing, just as in many aspects of life, timing is everything.
A disturbing thing happened to me about 2 weeks ago. But before I tell you what that was I wanted to share with you something I read in an edition of New Scientist from the 24th October. The article looked at how the brain perceives time. Have you ever noticed how sometimes particular events in our lives appear to happen at differing speeds? If we are having a bad day where things are going poorly, the day can seem to last an eternity. On a good day it can appear to speed along and, before you know it, the day is over.
In one experiment carried out by David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, a man was dangled off an eight-story-high tower and dropped. After a drop of several seconds, he landed unharmed into a safety net below. Eagleman wanted to know whether during the drop or extreme events the brain’s clock accelerates, making what’s happening around us appear to happen much more slowly. Other than this experiment, the article also discussed how we perceive what happens around us as series of frames rather than a continuous stream and we collect information through discrete snapshots.
“Time,” as Eagleman puts it “is weirder than we think it is.”
I said at the start of this Thursday Night Insight that something disturbing happened to me about 2 weeks ago. No amount of peculiar perceptions or warping of time could account for it. I am sure I experienced what I did and I refuse to be told otherwise. And what was it that I experienced, I hear you ask? At the end of October, in a coffee shop in Bramhall, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Christmas music coming from the speakers. Yes, that’s right. Christmas music. Even before the celebrations of Bonfire Night were upon us, there it was, Christmas.
Now this isn’t a tale of Bah Humbug on my part. I happen to not mind Christmas one little bit. It has its merits. With presents, time off work, time spent with the family, and a special time religiously for some, what’s not to like? Christmas, however, seems to be rammed down our throats earlier and earlier each year. Unlike the Americans, we Brits don’t have a barrier such as Thanksgiving to provide us with a shield to the festive season starting too soon. Now, 2 weeks after the first disturbing signs of Christmas, the commercials on TV are increasingly becoming Christmas themed. By the time the big day comes around it’s a wonder we’re not all sick of hearing about it. I don’t know, maybe we are!
My message this week is twofold. Firstly, timing in marketing is an important thing. Targeting the right people at the right time with the right message about your brand and your offering is a key element. Too soon before a new product is launched, for example, and people forget. Too late and there’s not enough time to get your message across. Drag it on for too long and its effects can be negative. Secondly, let’s start the run in to Christmas later than October. I for one would love to hear nothing of Christmas until mid November. Let’s try not to warp time by attempting to stretch what is one day of the year into 8 weeks.
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Friday, July 17th, 2009
As improved technology and increased pressure enable and push us to speed up our work, David Ward this week ponders whether these faster turnaround times are always a good thing.
When I used to work at a well known bank, bouncing cheques and cancelling payments for those unlucky people frequently going beyond their credit allowance, a colleague and line manager of the team I worked in used to have what I suppose you could call a catchphrase. He would walk up behind an unsuspecting member of the team and utter the following words…
Faster, faster, faster… must go faster!
I never really understood whether or not this was his bizarre motivational technique gleaned from reading a book on people management or whether he really was just irritating. Who knows? Maybe it was both. His catchphrase sums up well a trend that I have noticed in my 10+ years in data processing and market research
Market research has always, as far as I can tell, been a fast-paced business. And this is very true for those working in data processing, especially as computing power and techniques in processing data improve. The time between questionnaire sign-off to CATI or e-survey setup seems to shrink, as does the time between fieldwork ending and the delivery of cross tabs. Everything has to be as thoroughly checked and accurate as before. It just needs to be delivered that little bit quicker. Over 10 years I think this is an undeniable trend.
Ever since I joined B2B International, I’ve looked at ways to improve the turnaround times in data processing that allow us to keep meeting our clients’ expectations. There are many ways of doing this. For example, we can invest in new software, as we have recently with Confirmit for our e-surveys and QPS Insight to allow us to carry out data entry more efficiently. We can also use the software we currently have more wisely, such as writing VBA scripts in Excel to automate certain tasks. Whatever the method we use to meet this challenge, it is a challenge I enjoy.
Having said that, I often ask myself whether there will come a point when people working in our industry will start to have to say no more often. Will the time come when the speed of delivery will start to have some detrimental effect on all-round quality of research carried out, and at what point does the trade-off between quality and speed become acceptable? At B2B International we’re well placed to deal with the challenges that market research throws at us. A combination of a strong team, smart thinking, and a constant drive to improve the way we work means we haven’t yet reached the point where “no” is something we have to say very often – and long may that continue!
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