Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing interviewed Bill Neal the well-respected market researcher about the relevance of customer generated media as it relates to marketing research. Bill is a class guy and Toby did a good job framing the questions. This exchange was particularly enlightening as to Bill’s take on consumer generated media:
TB: You’ve been around the research block a time or
two and have seen many changes in the industry in terms of methodology.
The latest concept is to use consumer generated media to gain insights
into consumer behavior. Do you think that "listening in on the raw voice of the customer" has merit?BN:It’s always a good thing to listen to the voice
of the customer, in every form. That’s one of the main mandates of
marketing research. And it’s our job to take those many voices and make
some sense out of it all – call it insights.But I have some real problems with consumer generated media as a
source of credible and reliable information. In many ways it combines
the worst elements of non-scientific research – self selection and
advocacy – both positive and negative. That is, those out there in the
Internet world who are generating their own media are self-motivated to
do so and are not representative of any defined population of buyers.
And, given the fact that they have taken a public position on a
particular product or service, it means that they more often than not
have exceptional or non-typical attitudes about those products and
services.The information they generate may be true, or not true – there is
now way to discern which. Therefore, the information generated by those
folks is neither credible nor reliable. So, as researchers, yes, we
should be listening, but we must be very cautious and skeptical about
its veracity and its usefulness.
Max Kalehoff who is a word-of-mouth "evangelist", VP at Nielsen BuzzMetrics and a new marketing practitioner offers a caustic yet interesting rebuttal to Bill’s point of view. This is Max’s opening salvo to Bill answers:
Hi Toby,
Thanks for bringing Bill Neal into the fold — because he is well
respected, as well as someone who needs to be inducted into the world
of CGM. I just wish he learned more about the subject of CGM before
making so many broad, INCORRECT assertions. I believe he owed that to
your readers and his followers (which is a hefty bunch, to be sure!).In fact, I was so moved by how off base I believe he was, I
dedicated my last weekly MediaPost column to it — along with
concurrent blog posting. I would like to invite you, Bill and others to
a virtual Skypecast discussion to debate the issues of CGM research —
an educational, good spirited discussion. You should hear from a few of
us shortly. In the meantime, here are key points from my post:http://attentionmax.com/blog/2006/06/is_there_really_something_wron.html
If you can get past Max’s obnoxiousness he makes some good points about how early adopters are relevant and shape the conversation according to their passions. In a recent posting I attempted to frame the debate between the "old" and "new" marketing doctrines.
Learn how to wage and win battles for market share. Download the free PDF preview of the Art of Attack. Just click to get the PDF. There are no forms to fill out, you don’t need to leave your email
address. No annoying questions to answer. Just click and get your PDF.