People are still people even when they’re working. Being able to tap into emotional responses is just as important in B2B. The challenge is to get away from the rational ‘work mode’ in which these projects normally take place. Here are four concepts which may be of use.
Ethnography has its roots in the anthropological observation of tribal cultures. How can it help us to understand what makes businesses tick? You’d be surprised.
By observing the daily routines of SMEs, in scenes reminiscent of ‘The Office’, Jigsaw Research learned they often use technology to mislead. Companies can seem bigger or smaller with the canny use of multiple emails, phone-extensions and multi-tasking. The study also revealed that texting is on the up amongst younger executives and no-one who claims they have a ‘wacky’ or unique office culture actually does. Ethnography reveals a rich understanding of situations and behaviour that cannot be accessed with traditional techniques.
A recent BPRI project focused on forklift trucks, following up extensive quantitative telephone research by asking respondents to document their work by taking a series of photos. We wanted to get under the skin of drivers and find out how they really felt about their trucks. The response was overwhelming. The drivers took the task very seriously and provided images of their trucks and their environments which were detailed and at times surprising. We uncovered clear advantages and disadvantages of truck design, and about the way the environment influences use. Above all, the emotional attachment these men felt for their trucks shone through. This would never have been evident from a telephone or paper survey.
How far can creativity be pushed while still maintaining professionalism and the ability to penetrate the most complex business issues? Can we realistically move from discussing the impact of reputation crises in the oil sector to if this multinational was an animal, what would it be?, and get away with it? At senior, corporate levels, we talk with people time and time again on strategic issues, and can’t risk causing offence or patronising intelligence with a lame or wacky experiment. But carefully selected projective techniques can work well and even win round the most hardened board-room cynic.
Visualisation techniques can initially come across as Californian new-age. Nonetheless, their effectiveness is surprising. One method we use is called the Imaginary Boardroom. The group shuts their eyes and the moderator sets the scene: You are walking down a corridor, at the end is a wooden panelled door. Inside is a boardroom: a table, 12 chairs, and at each place setting, a pen, a notepad and a name plaque. You read the plaques, on each is the name of a major B2B brand, each of them being best in their sector… you realise that this boardroom is set for a meeting of the world’s strongest B2B brands. Read the names. Leave the room and open your eyes. Now write down the names of the brands you saw.
This is a great ice-breaker on a branding study. You can explore why certain names are there, who’s missing, why sectors are over-represented and what makes a strong B2B brand? The possibilities are endless, and you’ve achieved this in no more than 10 minutes.
In a one-to-one interview there are other techniques that are revealing and adaptable. You can ask an interviewee to look ahead and write or talk through an obituary of your client’s brand or another major name. It is with sadness today that we report the death of… GE… a global giant in consumer durables, finance, engineering and media. You can then run through its values, its image, its competencies and perhaps its fatal flaws. Findings can deliver a powerful wake-up call to senior management.
Experience, and a certain amount of sensitivity, is often all we need to tell us what will and will not work in B2B research. Everyone has scary stories of how not to research healthcare products in Germany by opening with a creative ‘collage jam’ session, but if we are to continue to produce B2B campaigns that are insightful and deliver growth, we need to push the creative envelope. As we say to our B2B clients and colleagues, be brave.
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