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.

Rubinson takes a look at the evolution of the ad agency and applies this evolutionary footpath to MR with media buying the analog to the data collection side of the business and creative the analog to the full service, analytics side of the business. It’s worth a read.

In my thinking about the future of the MR agency, I have developed at least five (5) plausible futures (not mutually exclusive):

1. Army of Davids: In this scenario, the larger firms keep consolidating and attempting to buy their future by acquiring hot new companies, but the systemic change and “free agent nation” overwhelms them. The goliaths are killed off by the Davids. The carriagemakers can’t adjust to the age of the automobile, and they are overhwelmed by new entrants, new technologies, new approaches (social media listening, etc.) and agile specialty firms.

2. Whuffie-Driven Free Agency: A second and more extreme “Army of Davids” scenario, Whuffie-driven free agency develops when individual researchers band together under a kind of digital guild in which each is rated by his-her clients. The resulting client score, their Whuffie (hat tip to Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the MagicKingdom”) roughly determines an individual researcher’s compensation if and when they are chosen to do the work. Sound fantastical? Hardly. Consider: (a) eBay feedback profiles and (b) the mechanical turk. Now assume that a community of credentialed researchers (think PRC or similar) build an elance site on these principles. Insights rockstars, as opposed to large companies or even specialty firms, dominate the scene.

3. Convergence: Under the convergence scenario the MR industry is renamed, rebranded and redefined by a much larger collection of data-driven strategic consultants, including: management consulting, social media listening and analytics firms, predictive markets, game modelled consumer behavior research, foresight practices and IBM. Under this scenario, the first to combine all fields in an integrated way gains a significant advantage. The deepest pockets are the most favored here.

4. Incredible Shrinking MR: In this scenario the market research industry retains its current, distinctive, identity. It is not reinvented or transformed. Plenty of new innovations come along, but they’re not part of MR. MR labors on, like the dinosaurs after the first asteroid strike, oblivious of their doomed future.

5. DIY: Google, Facebook and future social media platforms enter the consumer research business by offering unimaginably massive panels of their users-members. With MR now a simple page on these social media sites, the era of DIY research is fully unleashed. Need a quick, global survey of fashion conscious, well-educated women? No problem. GoogleSurvey will collect data for you in 30 minutes after you have posted your (mandated) 5 questions or less survey. Need some collage-based qual done in 20 countries on a new tourist destination? No problem. 3 hours. Survey quality suffers, but the data is abundant. Insights? Well, those are a bit tougher to come by.

The future of market research is… Street interviewers with jet packs. Either that or a closer alignment to (and integration with) increasingly sophisticated and knowledge-rich customer databases.

Although street interviewers with jet packs is a fantastic “atomic ranch” image, my bet is on customer database integration.

By this Gordon means to ask which players will dominate the market research industry.

His thesis is that the answer changes based on the year, but that one probable future is the rise, and ultimate dominance of the sub-contracting firms upon which full-service shops often depend. Several years ago the answer would have been the big advertising and communications holding companies (Aegis, WPP, etc.) More recently one answer might have been private equity. But, Gordon now thinks that the sub-contracting firms that provide full-service shops with data collection, data processing, sample, etc. are positioned to overtake the traditional MR firms.

As Gordon puts it:

“Just as researchers wonder how marketing consultants can justify their fees, increasingly the “servants” of market research are feeling that maybe their “masters” don’t deserve their profits.”

This is an interesting proposition. How will these sub-contracting firms break through? Gordon sees several different paths:

1. Out-sourcers grow up and offer more advanced services until they become full-service shops themselves.
2. Technical firms will gain entry via DIY solutions on the desktop and become data mining and integration experts who stay sticky with a portal or other GUI.
3. A final scenario, and one that feels a bit out of place with the article, is the rise of the external consulting company (think IBM, McKinsey, etc.) within the classic MR space. This has been well discussed on this and other venues.

While only time will tell, I have several thoughts on the issue.

1. This article assumes the “market research industry” will be recognizable in 2020. I believe that the industry will have undergone so much change by 2020 that (a) it might not even be called market research, (b) the players will be radically different (c) the tools will be dramatically enhanced-evolved and (d) the newer employees in this field may not think of themselves as “market researchers.”

2. Assuming that the trend toward commoditization of insights continues, these subcontracting firms may indeed be the major players of 2020.

3. But, I think more likely scenarios are that:

3a. New entrants from analytics firms, consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, etc.), MROCs, neuromarketing and social media agencies transform the business and marginalize traditional players.

3b. Google, Facebook or other large online players become the sample provider of choice and then develop their own DIY and custom research offerings.

3c. The industry undergoes radical “free-agentism” with large numbers of current employees taking advantage of their skill sets and low barriers to entry and going out on their own. With each one touting their unique sector or research expertise, client side buyers begin employing a short term army of Davids via a MR version of the mechanical turk.

There was such a great response to his question (Are the kids alright?) that he revised and extended his remarks.

It is worth reading the comments.

I maintain that there is plenty of young talent in the industry, but that these talented folks in their 20s are in fields that are not (and may never be) associated with “market research”, even though these fields may ultimately replace what we call “market research” today. The next generation of market research may never think of themselves as “market researchers.”

This leads me to a much wider point.

If the industry were my client, I would advocate that they rename and rebrand. For a LOT more detail on this, see pages 7 and 8 of my white paper on the future of market research.

Some possible (as opposed to probable or preferable) futures:

1. The commoditized part of the business is called “market research” and it loses talent and ages dramatically. The non-commoditized part of the business is called “strategic foresight” (see BCG report), “data-driven consulting”, or “customer community.” The industry becomes fragmented, but many of those working in the industry evolve with society and technology into new roles.

For some more thinking on this:

http://www.futureofinsight.com/2010/01/strategic-foresight/

http://www.futureofinsight.com/2009/12/professional-line-blurring/

2. Google and Facebook become massive market research suppliers/panel managers.

http://www.futureofinsight.com/2010/01/new-entrants/

3. Millennials working in a number of other fields reinvent the industry, but it isn’t called “market research.”

http://www.futureofinsight.com/2010/01/mr-millennials/

4. Participant engagement drops to the point where survey research is simply undoable. Researchers turn their attention to simulations (games) that participants enjoy playing. These games replace traditional survey-based research.

http://www.futureofinsight.com/2010/01/lightening-the-respondent-burden-making-research-fun/

5. Online and community research coupled with the decline of the landline kills off traditional phone-based research. But, the brave new world of online surveys hits a big speedbump as (1) the data isn’t projectable and (2) privacy concerns and legislation increase the cost. The industry then goes “back to the future”, interviewing people face-to-face. Walmart and Starbucks become (through a JV) a participant intercept network that everyone tries to leverage.

But, the two that have most interested me are (a) consulting firms like BCG or McKinsey and (b) large digital platforms that could become uber-panel companies of the future. These two interest me because they occupy the two extremes of the industry: the data-driven strategy providers (high value, non-commoditized) and the data collectors (commoditized but VERY important).

I’ve written and talked about the former quite a bit, but not so much about the latter.

This is why Stan Sthanunathan’s thoughts (click here) on the matter have so intrigued me. I met Stan at TMRE, and he’s pleasure to talk with.

Stan, insights leader at Coca-Cola, poses two questions:

What if…

1. Facebook becomes an insights provider?
2. Google creates a MASSIVE insights panel company?

Thinking about each of these, and looking at the first possibility, it seems obvious to me that Facebook will become an insights provider of some kind. It also seems obvious to me that there will eventually be a privacy backlash of some kind. (As an aside, if Facebook entered the market research supplier market in a big way, it could complicate things dramatically for the MROC builders. In fact, if I were Facebook, I would buy the largest MROC builder. It is a natural fit.)

But what about Google as an uber-panel company? LinkedIn is already far down this path on the B2B side (click here). It doesnt seem to be much of a leap for Google to get heavily in the game.

What if Google entered the market?

1. It would enter in a BIG way.
2. It could offer online sample dramatically larger than the current providers.
3. It might mix in online behavioral data (triggering an eventual privacy backlash).
4. It could create easy-to-use, online, DIY survey tools. This would make surveys much more easy to execute, but would geometrically expand the volume of truly awful research.
5. Assuming this tool could manage the physical geographies of participants (setting geographic quotas), it could kill off phone polling quickly.
6. Tracking surveys could be conducted in realtime, continuously throughout an advertising or political campaign.

Someone at Google has to be thinking about this.

One of the people that will think about it will be the person with this job.

Food for thought.

A new Boston Consulting Group report supports this thesis.

You can read it all here.

But, I highly recommend the grids in the appendix on pages 27 and 28. Here BCG charts what it sees as the evolution of the MR function:

1. Traditional MR Function
2. Business Contribution Team
3. Strategic Insight Organization
4. Strategic Foresight Organization (see also page 12)

Unfortunately, BCG posits that “almost 90% of companies are in stages 1 and 2″.

In my opinion, this means that over time there will be a much stronger demand for data-driven foresight tools (like Delphi panels and futures markets – possibly loaded into MROCs) in the United States. And this demand won’t be limited to the government and large institutions, as it has in the past.

Why will we see this demand?

Because corporations will come to the conclusion that the only way to jump ahead of competitors (BCG refers to “leapfrogging”) is to (1) study the possible, probable and preferred futures, (2) build plans and future business lines around this futuring, and (3) contingency plan for wildcards – those low probability, high impact events that bring change quickly.

In fact, I believe that at some point in the future most corporations will have small wild card futuring teams responsible for (a) identifying potential wildcards and (b) building contingency plans around them with the focus on turning wildcard events into significant business-building opportunities.

For a taste of what I mean by wildcards, click here.

And the fact is that it isn’t really our choice anymore. With most populations migratng from landline to mobile, many surveys are going to get smaller and simpler (quickly!).

But, how about online research?

Welll, one thing I can guarantee will NOT be the future of mmarket research is the awful survey design Bad Research; No Biscuit identifies here:

http://researchrants.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/another-fine-matrix/

Ouch!

This entire discussion is reminiscent of an excellent presentation on online research formats given this fall in Las Vegas at TMRE. All kinds of new, interactive online formats are being tried in an attempt to make the survey process more interesting and less painful.

And speaking of pain, the Bad Research; No Biscuit highlight is what the folks at my firm (StrategyOne) refer to as a “deathgrid.” No normal human has the patience to fill out a “deathgrid” and no non-incarcerated individual should be forced to do it.

But, this entire episode raises a good question?

How do we make online surveys more engaging and “fun”?

One radical answer may come from the gaming world. What if surveys began to resemble games? What if a “survey” became more of a “simulation game” with respondents as “players”?

Play and the need for play is hardwired into humans. Filling out “deathgrids” is not. It may well be that some day we all have game programmers working for us.

MROC Variant 1 is what we think of as a traditional MROC built exclusively (usually by Communispace, Passenger, etc.) for a client with the members coming exclusively from the client’s current customer base (raving fans typically).

MROC Variant 2 is (will be) MROCs built around particular affinity groups and consumer types and accessed like an omnibus product by many different marketers. In this case the MROC or panel company will “rent” access to the group to many buyers.

MROC Variant 3 is (will be) like lockerz or expotv .

It will be a much larger type of MROC which we might label as something else entirely – possibly a OECLS (Open Ended Customer Listening Service) or a “megapanel.”

Several things will distinguish variant 3:

1. Size. These online communities could be huge.
2. Ownership. They may not be owned by traditional MR players.
3. Multiple Interests. They are likely to include members with many different interests.
4. Fun. They will be more fun than a traditional MROC and will force Variant 1 to build in games and other attractions.

Where does Variant 3 end up? One possible future is a global “cool” community operating by member invitation only that enables trendspotters to identify the most bleeding edge trends in fashion, entertainment and consumption in real time. Members would post videos of their newest purchases and offer dreamscapes on what they want to do with friends or family in the summer. Who knows, they might even discover the catchy tunes of LatinoArabia music.