Scrappy Research

Oh, I'm so glad that there is something exciting and non-apartment related to blog about! I hope to get around to some of those other things I promised as well, but I'll tell you about this bit of "scrappy" research first.

So I work with this one planner who is the best at coming up with new ideas for research - just off the top of her head, according to the client and the task at hand, and she can do it easily because she just has so much experience with all of this planning stuff. Discussion guide? Who needs it! The organization exists but perhaps only in her head. One thing she really shows me is how to be laid back and have fun with it.

Her word, and soon my word to describe everything she does, is scrappy. She does scrappy research, she has a different way to approach problems, she is scrappy...and I LOVE it!

Tonight is a perfect example of this. Not totally revolutionary - focus groups - but we had them in a bar, we had them later in the evening, we served beer and bar food, and we had a discussion that related to all of that with themes of going out and late night eating. The atmosphere is what made the research what it was - and far more valid than the very clinical research facilities, in my mind.

I think what struck me as cool about the whole situation is that the client came too, in this uncontrolled situation, and took it very well. In fact, I think the client was even a bit more relaxed too because of the environment we were in.

Hey if you're gonna have to work late, might as well have fun doing it. A lot of my job tonight was to greet the people coming for the groups and put them at ease - it helped that the first thing they encountered was a "research" person buying them a round of drinks! ;) And everyone working tonight benefited from it too as we relaxed with beers (this was all at The Flying Saucer) and discussed what we learned from the groups.

At the end of the day, though, it is about the learning that comes from the groups and they said some incredibly smart and funny things. Their comments still helped us with the concepts we were presenting but it just wasn't so miserably clinical.

This scrappy coworker is exactly who I want to learn from in creating research that is innovative and relaxed, cultivating relationships with respondents that are trusting and amusing these people to no end until they are just too curious not to ask, and wowing the clients with an approach that they wouldn't have thought would work at first but it did - a lot like some of the "crazy" ideas that are presented to them as creative work.

It all sets up the idea that agencies provide a service that clients cannot provide on their own (or probably can't) and that an agency's offerings are going to be worth it - we really do know how to break through to people. It also enforces that all parts of advertising truly are creative.

So it might not seem like anything too special - they were still focus groups, after all - but this kind of down and dirty, "scrappy" research is real and that's what our consumers are.