In my analysis of plausible market research futures, one that I come back to frequently is what I call the “epidemiology future.”

By this I mean the application of memetics to marketing campaigns utilizing research and testing techniques.

Memetics is the application of the viral analogy to the world of ideas. The idea is the virus and the brain is the host.

Consider that the world of communications is transitioning from a vertical communications environment (top down, advertising, telling-yelling) to a horizontal - peer-to-peer model. This transition from mass advertising, mass market to niche marketing, the long tail and peer-to-peer will have major impacts on the market research industry in the future.

And this begs the question of what model we use in this new communications era. The vertical communications era created a stimulus-response research design. The horizontal communications era may require a different set of tools.

One approach is to apply the ideas in memetics and epidemiology to message testing.

What would this look like?

First, it would require multiple monadic cells with each cell being a slightly different meme. Each meme would be tested for stickiness, repeatability and selfishness.

Another approach might be running a number of parallel viral experiments among multiple monadic cells and measuring the spread of the meme over time. This would be a purer test, but difficult to measure. One measurement alternative would be listening to participants across their social media “lifestreams” and charting the spread of a meme via repetition of key phrases. This would require, among other things, very strong text analytics. The first market researchers to do this will be considered applied memetic engineers.

But, there are plenty of challenges. One challenge is evolution. One would expect these experiemental test memes to evolve over time, with word and meaning changes along the way. Tracking these would require the creation of a solid analytical framework and powerful text analytics.

Will this happen?

I think so. We already are seeing numerous experiments tracking Twitter traffic to box office sales and Presidential approval scores. This kind of work should lead naturally into the work I described above.

This is why I was pleased to see Nigel Hollis at the Millward Brown blog write on the topic of “yelling, story telling, and selling”. Here he writes about Seth Godin speaking at Foro Mundial. It’s worth a read, and it highlights how others are thinking of a meme-driven communication mix in a horizontal, peer-to-peer world.