Barbara Barclay, General Manager at Tobii, was kind enough to give Future of Insight an in-depth interview.

Robert Moran:
First, tell us a little bit about Tobii.

Barbara Barclay:
Tobii Technology is the global market leader in eye tracking and eye control. The company was founded in 2001 in Stockholm, Sweden, and was the first to introduce “remote” eye tracking to the world – that is, a system for eye tracking that is completely unobtrusive and virtually invisible to the research subject. This new technology in many ways revolutionized the industry. Tobii’s products are widely used by researchers who measure visibility and attention within the scientific community and in commercial market research and usability studies. They also are used by people with disabilities as a means to communicate.

In terms of international growth, Tobii first came to the United States in 2004 with a single salesperson on the West Coast. We set up our first office in Falls Church, Va., in late November 2005, and our North American office is still in Falls Church. Tobii also has offices in Germany, Norway, Japan and China.

Robert Moran:
Wow. Interesting, I didn’t realize that you had somebody in the US doing that in 2006. I just assumed it was even more recent.

Barbara Barclay:
I think some of our early clients – like Microsoft, the University of California at Davis and UserCentric – starting working with Tobii in 2005 and possibly even 2004. They were our early adopters.

Robert Moran:
What percentage of Tobii’s revenue is derived from the market research space as opposed to sales, say, in assistive technology or the scientific research spaces?

Barbara Barclay:
The business as a whole has three distinct business units that are run as separate companies. Two of these units each generate about 50 percent of the revenue – Assistive Technology and Analysis. The assistive technology business develops and sells Tobii eye control products designed to help people with disabilities to lead a fuller, more meaningful life. The analysis business develops and provides eye tracking solutions to scientific, product usability and market research customers. The third business unit is our Future Markets group, which is focused on generating new products, tools and technologies based on eye tracking to meet the future needs of various industries, specifically automotive, computer control and medical.

Robert Moran:
Was market research originally a point of focus? You know, I have heard that the technology was originally created for the scientific and assistive technology spaces, right?

Barbara Barclay:
Well, that is partly true. The original vision for Tobii eye tracking was future mass-market implementation.

However, the funding available to the founders at the time they started the company made them focus on more immediate, practical applications of the technology that could be developed and brought to market quickly.

Those applications ended up being in the assistive technology business, where there was truly a critical need for advancements in technology to help people communicate, and also, obviously, there were fantastic applications for the scientific community in many areas.

Robert Moran:
Interesting. I heard somewhere that the original uptake of the product was more in helping folks who needed eye tracking to help them communicate and live a fuller life. Is that accurate?

Barbara Barclay:
Yes. That’s the assistive technology segment. There, our eye trackers are used for eye control, which allows those who are unable to speak due to physical disabilities to communicate using eye movement.

The majority of these customers have either cerebral palsy or ALS [also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease]. The Tobii products in this area are a total life changer.

Robert Moran:
Right.

Barbara Barclay:
The scientific and assistive areas definitely were the focus point for early company achievement and growth. But I think the vision for where the company is headed is still mass-market applications, such as transportation, shopping, home entertainment and much more. There are so many possible applications that our biggest challenge is knowing where to start.

Robert Moran:
I think this is useful for folks in the market research industry to get a broader sense of what this technology is being used for today. And this might actually help us be even more creative in our thinking.

You know, we have used Tobii’s eye tracking technology to test print ads, but I do want to get a sense of where Tobii is getting the most use in the market research space today. Would you say ad testing, or package design, or retail environment, or Web site usability? Where are you getting the most uptake today within market research?

Barbara Barclay:
Outside of scientific research, usability professionals were the early adopters of eye tracking in the business research arena, and perhaps one of the groups we see the greatest returns, in terms of growing applications and use of current technology. In fact, Tobii products are being widely used in usability studies by all of the largest online content providers and application developers.

On the market research side, you have some early adopters such as Procter & Gamble, which has been a Tobii client for a very long time. Within market research, much of the work is package- and shelf-related and advertisement testing – both on- and offline. But in terms of mainstream usability and mainstream market research, we are just now entering a phase where you have usability professionals who have been working for a long time in the industry and suddenly they are getting requests from their clients to include eye tracking with their studies.

Robert Moran:
That’s a good point. When I think about our client base, they aren’t requesting eye tracking. They don’t even know to think of using that technology.

So we end up proactively bringing it to them where we think it makes the most sense. I imagine mass acceptance will take a little time. I mean, we are still talking about a six-year-old solution.

Barbara Barclay:
Absolute infancy. You are at the leading edge of what is going on, and the biggest impediment to eye tracking, both in usability and market research, is awareness. “What is it? How does it work, and how does it help me?” Additionally, clients want to know, “If I’m going to do it, what does it mean? What conclusions should I draw from it for my customers?”

Robert Moran:
That was, candidly, the most fun in using the technology for us. Here we have all this data that we would never have even thought of being able to generate before and now we have to make sense of it. It became a really fun intellectual challenge of looking at the key fixation points, how long they are lingering, and the eye flow from text to graphics and graphics back to text. How long are people lingering on some of the key text we want them to linger on? We, I think to be fair, we are still evolving what those metrics for success are, and I think that my guess is that most of the folks like us who are using this technology have still not come to a mature and final set of core metrics on how to use it. I think we are still learning, to be honest.

Barbara Barclay:
Absolutely true. And that’s just a reflection of how young it is. In fact, you’ve got this example I gave you of the usability professional. On the market research side, it’s not dissimilar in terms of its stage; it’s just a more complex market structure. There are so many different access points for people who are in this business. In market research, you can do eye tracking studies on packages, ads, shelves, commercials and products themselves.

You have the brands themselves, which benefit internally; the large research firms; and small boutique firms that do brand work, small analytical market research firms that analyze sales and loyalty data, panel data and others. They are more numerical and analytical. For them, it is actually easier, and I am not sure of the background of the different employees that you have, but if you have somebody who is more of a “quant jock” – not because it is hard to interpret the data but because they see this technology – they all of a sudden see all the possibilities without much training. And so they love it.

Robert Moran:
We tend to take a quantitative approach where we are testing multiple executions on the same ad theme. And then we are comparing the metrics across. Now, you know one of the obvious challenges is getting your sample size for each ad execution large enough that you can draw some meaningful conclusions across each ad execution. But we love playing with it.

Barbara Barclay:
Well I have a question for you. Were you doing advertising testing before eye tracking?

Robert Moran:
Yes.

Barbara Barclay:
That’s a perfect background.

Robert Moran:
Candidly, one of the things we were trying to figure out is how we can incorporate, not in sort of static ad testing, but in a 30-second or 60-second spot how we could incorporate online dial testing with eye tracking data so that we know – so that if you combine the two you know what audience reactions are in real time to what they are seeing and hearing. Once you can get that honed then I think you are in great shape. One of the challenges is that there is a little bit of lag on the dial testing between how you are rating your response versus the moment that you receive that response. It gets into the weeds. But that is one of the questions, you know; how to adjust for that lag is one of the things we have asked ourselves. But I was going to ask you about shelf testing. We haven’t done that with Tobii, but are you seeing shelf testing being done with the eye tracking?

Barbara Barclay:
Oh, absolutely.

Robert Moran:
Okay.

Barbara Barclay:
I’d say on the usability side, there is a significant amount of both qualitative and quantitative usability testing on websites and applications. On the market research side there is package testing including package design and the elements of a specific package. Then there is shelf testing, which would be visibility on the shelf. There is in-store testing, which may include store elements and layout. There is also online ad testing, print ad testing and broadcast commercial testing.

Robert Moran:
I could see package design, I could see this being very useful for packaging, and, candidly, we haven’t done any eye tracking on the package-design side.

Barbara Barclay:
Sure, and also think about how helpful this kind of data could be to analyze in-store promotions. The amount of money corporations invest to deploy in-store promotions is huge, and here’s a way to determine whether they are going to be effective before you fully invest.

We have a company right now that designs in-store promotions and is looking to use eye tracking. How do you create an in-store promotion that has the most stopping power, and what it is that you are trying to convey with that in-store promotion? Do people stop, do they look at it? Do they see the elements that you want them to see?

Robert Moran:
I would assume that you could use this as one of several tools to improve, in a retail environment, that point-of-sale experience and to optimize what the consumer is seeing at that point of sale.

Barbara Barclay:
Absolutely. And there is so much opportunity to do that type of thing, because there is signage, shelf pricing, end-aisle displays, in-aisle displays and promotions. You can turn your attention to almost anything.

Every day I am amazed by someone new who says, “I would like to try the following.” I mean these are obvious applications, and of course there are others, where our clients combine our data with EEG, heart rate and other biometrics. We also have clients linking Tobii eye tracking to virtual reality.

Robert Moran:
Aha. That’s very smart.

Barbara Barclay:
Yes, it’s the next dimension.

Robert Moran:
Very smart.

Barbara Barclay:
And there is a lot of work going on in the virtual arena as it pertains to eye tracking. But it is in the discovery stage right now. There are a few players who are doing virtual, but I would say it is not particularly well-developed. And virtual kind of falls over into the gaming arena as well, where people are looking at eye tracking in gaming.

Robert Moran:
I can imagine that being very useful for game design. Do you sell, do you do any work in, I’m using the word “gaming” in a different sense. Do you do any work, or do you sell any of these kits to any of the casinos?

Barbara Barclay:
We haven’t sold to the casinos, but definitely to gaming companies. Computer control is, of course, a strategic element of what we do, and obviously, computer control is the fundamental element of the assistive technology business. But think of using eye control that reacts when you look at an in-store display that can react when you look at it and show you different images depending on what you glance at. Or in a game, eye control could help you drive the game.

Robert Moran:
Oh, completely.

Barbara Barclay:
Customers today buy our software development kit, and it is being done today. If you look on YouTube and type in “Tobii” you won’t believe all the examples of people doing all kinds of crazy things, including games.

Robert Moran:
You know I read somewhere about, I think it was, a university doing a study to try to see if they could use eye tracking to better segment individuals by their level of decisiveness or hesitancy.

Barbara Barclay:
Oh, I am certain that you could do that. Another example of another experiment was that a woman called me and she said, “I am in fashion merchandising at a university.” She has been borrowing the Tobii eye tracker in the psychology department and she wants to understand how people look at a person in a dress or other designed clothing. How do they look at clothing that’s being designed? What do they look at?

Other mostly academic organizations are interested in human interaction in social situations – where does a person look?

Robert Moran:
Hmmm. Well, you know what’s funny – we know just from our own work that people do tend to fixate heavily on the face.

Barbara Barclay:
Oh, certainly. And, of course that influences how you design your ads and how you tweak ads, doesn’t it?

Robert Moran:
Yes. But it must be something about us as humans that we do fixate on that face so much. I mean, it almost screams off the page when you do your data overlays and in any kind of advertising. Just the focus on the face.

Barbara Barclay:
Absolutely.

Robert Moran:
Yeah.

Barbara Barclay:
Well, in fact, I would say the major categories of scientific experiments that are taking place in the university environment today with Tobii eye trackers – one of our largest groups of users – is in the infant labs. A lot of the work being done is on various experiments, sometimes multiyear experiments, to build models for early detection of autism and ADD [attention deficit disorder]. Some of the elements of being autistic have to do with your recognition of emotion on the face.

There are all sorts of experiments in which researchers are trying to understand development of the brain related to your age and your eyes, to determine what you think you see. I was talking with a fellow the other day at a major university. They conduct reading studies, and it’s interesting to see who reads every word and who skims, by both ability and by age and personality type.

Robert Moran:
I know that when we test print ads, we notice tracking through the copy, reading through the copy, and then stopping and backtracking because something confuses them. It’s not the word itself necessarily. These are adults who can read. It’s that word choice or meaning that is confusing them or stopping them…

Barbara Barclay:
Absolutely.

Robert Moran:
…and it’s interesting to see how that works. {laughter}

Barbara Barclay:
Yes, that’s exactly the same when you are a child and you are learning how to read. When you come across text that is more challenging, you linger, or you will turn back to look at something again. It is so similar.

Robert Moran:
So let me ask. How do you see passive data collection technologies like eye tracking impacting the market research space over the next five years?

Barbara Barclay:
Today I see passive technology impacting the market already, and there are obviously a lot of folks using our technology combined with other biometrics. Eye tracking has the advantage of being truly objective and it is always included with other biometrics as a stable element combined with them.

Robert Moran:
Right.

Barbara Barclay:
I believe that in five years eye tracking in Web design, package design, shelf testing and advertising testing will be a must do. An absolute must do.

Robert Moran:
I agree.

Barbara Barclay:
You wouldn’t even dream of not doing it at a developed, larger organization with proper labs or proper market research. It is just one more step in confirming the decisions that you are making. And to some extent, it’s taking the subjectivity out of the design.

Robert Moran:
Right.

Barbara Barclay:
And the cost of observing without eye tracking? “Oh, I think they looked at that, didn’t they?”

Robert Moran:
Yeah, I think the challenge there is that the industry, the market research industry – the industry that I am in – we are all probably experimenting with some of our metrics and how we are analyzing the data we get, but we will have to mature somewhat to develop a common language around the metrics we use in order for us to talk to each other and with our clients across projects. To my thinking, the metric side is actually critical now.

Barbara Barclay:
Yes. And to help the market grow rapidly, there is a great need for training. We just hired a training manager for that reason. Some of the responsibility of that role will be to help with what I would call a certification process that gives people in different fields some basic information and understanding of the ranges of use, data outputs and best practices, as well as an understanding of and an ability to answer basic questions such as, “Why is the data significant and what does it mean?”

Robert Moran:
You know what would be interesting is if you and a teaching organization collaborated on a course, a two-day course of study certified by them.

Barbara Barclay:
We definitely have a plan to try to develop a future course in collaboration with academic or training institutions.

Robert Moran:
Great!

Robert Moran:
Now what are your thoughts on what the market research industry might look like in 2019? I mean I realize this is…

Barbara Barclay:
Mmmmmmm. {chuckles}

Robert Moran:
…colored by your experience, but I am interested in your thoughts.

Barbara Barclay:
Well, there is actually a lot of recent work going on toward this kind of integration with different biometric methodologies. And I definitely believe the holy grail is getting to the point where you don’t interfere with the person you are researching; you simply capture the information by what they do. And you prefer to ask them as little as possible because we all know the challenges and low relevancy of self-reported data.

Robert Moran:
Correct. I agree to the purely passive approach.

Barbara Barclay:
Yes. I think it will get closer and closer to passive research, and I think there will be true integration of the passive tools that are available, along with validation of the methodologies behind them. There is no question that eye tracking is a technology with a huge future. I think that is fairly straightforward because it is objective and there are paths of technologies, objective passive technologies and subjective passive technologies. If you are looking at something, you are looking at it. Now, the subjective element is what you are thinking about it and how you feel about what you are looking at. But, still, when you are looking at it you are looking at it. It’s objective. With all the related biometrics – whether it is dial or heart rate, skin response, temperature, EEG, facial coding, or other things that have a subjective element or an interpretive element, they ultimately require validation of some sort for more acceptance, right? But I have no question in my mind that they will be in wide use as a combined toolkit.

Robert Moran:
What’s interesting is that when we are using it now you can see where people linger, you know areas that they are fixating on, how they are jumping – and then you just simply ask them very open-ended questions, as we tend to do in our business, about, you know – “Well, tell me, what was your experience looking at this print ad?” Over time you’ll get a lot of answers as to why they might be lingering on one thing or the other. And then you can match it up with what you see, and we have all sorts of interesting and just fascinating examples of things that that I can’t share because they are for clients, but it is absolutely fascinating and I know that the advertising folks we work with have loved it because it gives them a level of detail that they just didn’t have before as to how people might be reacting to just one image that they had produced, for example.

Barbara Barclay:
It is, and what’s really interesting is if you bring eye tracking into an environment from the wrong angle. Then it is perceived as a threat. But if you bring eye tracking into the environment at the right angle then the reaction is very positive.

I remember a story from one of my clients – it was an entertainment client, and I said, “Gosh, I am curious as to why more people aren’t using eye tracking for film trailers to optimize the experience of a person in the audience (or so that a brand knows if the product placement is effective).” Every one of us has seen a film trailer that didn’t represent the movie accurately.

Robert Moran:
Right.

Barbara Barclay:
And the interesting thing he said was, “Oh, you know they tried that some years ago, and the agency came in with some eye tracking on a trailer that had been done and presented to the group of people who had made the trailer, and they (the agency) criticized the trailer using eye tracking.” Well, you are not going to get anywhere with that approach.

Robert Moran:
Right.

Barbara Barclay:
You take eye tracking to the people who are designing the trailer and you say, “If you can use this while you are making the trailer, it can help make sure that the point you are trying to get across is the point that actually people see. It’s a tool for you to make it better while you are making it.”

Robert Moran:
Exactly. If you stand out and just criticize but you are not being constructive, it doesn’t help. It is so funny because this is why we’ve moved towards iterative research designs. So we test, we learn, we tweak, we go back, and it’s a cycle. And so it used to be that you’d have a two-phase research design that was qual and quant, and we are trying to move much more toward a research design that looks like a cycle where we keep learning instead of just a two-part dance. And I think you could use – we’ve used eye tracking in this way and I think then it’s not – you’re not using it to critique someone’s work. You’re using it as a way to help them refine it and play around with it, to make it better. To optimize it.

Barbara Barclay:
Yes, certainly.

Robert Moran:
Exactly. Well this has been a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for your time.

Barbara Barclay:
It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Quarterly brand trackers are commonplace and a key (dependable) source of revenue for the larger MR suppliers.

Annual corporate reputation studies are also fielded for most large corporations and are focused on a much wider array of universes than the brand tracker.

Different metrics and different audiences separate these two research programs. For now.

But, what happens when the following trends collide?

1. Frictionless data acquisition on any company or product.
2. Complete transparency driven by niche blogging, employee websites, wikileaks, etc.
3. Aggregated corporate reputation rating schemes. Think eBay seller ratings and ratemyprofessors.com

If and when this happens we can anticipate the merger of brand and corporate reputation with the possibility that corporate reputation swallows up brand research.

Why?

Because the amount of chatter and user generated content created externally about the corporation and its products, mission and behavior will be much, much larger than the mindshare purchased via advertising.

I have recently read two books that address this issue in passing. Consider the thinking of these authors:

Richard Watson, Future Files:
“By the year 2020 people, products and organizations will have reliability ratings. These will grade honesty, integrity and transparency and will be created by and available to everyone…Reputations will therefore be actively managed and, in some cases, even traded or stolen.” (page 34)

Rachel Botsman, What’s Mine is Yours:
“People will have ‘reputation bank accounts’ alongside their normal banks accounts, and a reputation rating will literally measure contributions made to various collaborative communities.” (page 224)

If you follow this thinking to its conclusion, then reputation management will likely eclipse brand management within the decade. This will be a bigger, more holistic job, than brand management, because it will interface with HR, operations, marketing, etc.

On one hand, this could be very good for market research. It could give MR a much stronger seat at the table.

On the other, all the needed tracking data could be open and available to all. This would mean that MR would need to aggregate and track the data, as opposed to collecting it.

Insights functions should strongly consider the implications of this shift.

It was all strategic foresight.

Tom, with his focus on the trends driving our futures, represents one aspect of where I believe market research is headed.

Luckily, I had the opportunity to talk with Tom before his presentation and as luck would have it he is heavily involved in strategic foresight and the Institute for the Future.

One discipline or methodology that Tom utilizes is tracking macroforces by meta analysis of books. Some of the more interesting trends he sees from the meta analysis are a reappraisal of capitalism along ecological and social justice lines, the rise of creativity as a key force (see Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”), and a better understanding of the consumer (via behavioral economics and positive psychology).

One of Tom’s more provocative questions was what business rules are or will replace Michael Porter’s famed five forces. I think we’re already seeing an opposing paradigm emerge along mesh business lines utilizing ad hoc collaboration, open networks, shared purpose and community engagement based on transparent reputation. On this last point Tom presented what Coca-Cola is doing with community and environmental groups to reduce waste (energy and water) and shrink environmental footprint while increasing profits.

Tom closed with something many of us have been mulling for a while now.

What will a brand be in the future?

My contention is that brands will change dramatically from “me” to “we”, from status to purpose, and from consumption to particpation. Tom argues along the same lines – that the emergent brand is based on “societal construction.” It’s the “should brand.”

I’m particularly looking forward to Saatchi & Saatchi’s presentation on the evolution of wellness and Coca-Cola’s presentation on “how macroforces are reshaping relationships, roles and the very idea of ‘consumer.’”

With all this thinking about macro-trends one excellent source for futurecasting is the Institute for the Future, based here in California (Palo Alto). the Institute recently published their futures map (2010 map of the decade). I highly recommend taking a look at it here. The map charts four alternative futures – (1) One step ahead of disaster, (2) Sustainability, (3) collapse, (4) transformation. It analyzses these four scenarios across several dimensions. The most interesting to me is the “water ecology” dimension.

Water is the next oil. Some of the more interesting water-driven outcomes in these futures are “water footprinting” and other conservation efforts. If the Institute is right, then beverage marketers, hydrated CPG companies, appliance manufacturers, lawn and garden companies, detergent companies and many others will be impacted. The convergence of many trends here (scarcity + ecological sensitivity among GenY + the LOHAS psychographic) could drive some significant change in how marketers and marketing researchers think about products with water in them.

It’s good to see more emphasis at TMRE on culture and trends. I suspect this emphasis will grow as MR becomes even more forward leaning and futures oriented.

On the flight from Washington I had some time to think and finish reading Rachel Botsman’s new book on “the rise of collaborative consumption.”
Botsman paints a sweeping landscape of consumers cooperating in their purchase and use of products. It’s an excellent read.

Her book makes me think that one way to look at the change coming to market research is to segment these changes by endogenous change coming from within marketing research and exogenous change coming from the outside (something Smith and Raspin in their book Creating Market Insight call the “remote environment”.

As an industry we have quite a bit to be proud of, especially when it comes to recent innovation (MROCs, mobile, neuromarketing, the stuff BrainJuicer seems to cook up daily, etc.), but it certainly does feel as though a significant piece of the change is coming from outside.

And, when it comes to external change, the world Botsman paints suggests some extreme levels of change in product innovation (crowdsourced), branding (from status to purpose and me to we), product usage (shared) and product lifecycle (longer). It’s no exageration to say that the future she paints would turn marketing and marketing research upside down.

If Botsman is right, then those of us in marketing research are more likely than ever to run/manage/moderate insights communities (MROCs) and design communities (see HYVE). We’ll track the discussion of purpose-driven community clusters in real time, tightening the feedback loop.

If she’s right, brands will become much more about shared purpose and passion. And, they will be built or destroyed by a corporation’s reputation. But, this reputation element will no longer be ethereal. As I’ve noted before and as Botsman states in her book, by the end of the decade we are likely to have a kind of online reputational currency for both people and corporations (she calls these “reputation bank accounts”).

We know from research released by Pew today that 4% of online Americans and 8% of online Americans under 29 years old are already using these services. Pew is now tracking this trend. And, while we know from the research that there hasn’t been much increase in reported adoption since May, we can reasonably expect that (a) access to these services will be ubiquitous in a few years as consumers upgrade their mobile phones-devices and (b) this technology is utilized by the tech savvy Millenials.

So what are some of the implications?

At the social level I believe that we will see a great sorting out with some people adopting this and other technologies aggressively and others becoming the new off-gridders. It will be interesting to watch. Take the simplicity movement for example. Some in the simplicity movement would argue that they can make their lives simpler with new technologies. Others in this movement seem likely to reject many of the same technologies. The young, being socialized with this technology are unlikely to fit within this decision matrix. We can expect them to adopt this technology.

In addition to the simplicity reaction against location based services I expect a privacy-driven reaction. Again, most of the young may not view this technology as a privacy threat, but older people almost certainly will. Those folks will choose not to participate.

On the bright side, we have heard sociologists bemoan anomie and focus on “bowling alone.” Well, location-based social media certainly seems to be one tool that fights against a disconnected, socially atomized society. These services could bring people together in new ways. For example, consider interest swarming. People can now congregate with like-minded, or similarly interested peers. This kind of swarming is likely to lead to culture exchange and possibly collaboration. This strengthens civil society and threatenes repressive political regimes.

Things start to get very interesting when two additional advances are made:

1. When geolocation is used to help people make a connection based on their physical proximity to each other.
2. When geolocation is merged with augmented reality and social currency.

First, I expect that the geosocial trend will lead to an environment in which like-minded passengers on trains or like-minded pedestrains are introduced to each other by this technology when they come to within a pre-set distance from each other. Dating services watch out. You may have a new competitor.

But the true killer app is when geosocial merges with augmented reality and social currency. Augmented reality apps already exist. See Junaio. Now imagine that this app gives you additional context (such as social status or trust score) on people you meet as well as places you walk past. This will be like Angie’s List for humans and it will be accessed via AR glasses. In a way, it is startling how close we are to this now. Geosocial technology is expanding quickly. Augmented reality is doing the same. Social currency experiments like the Whuffie Bank are completely achievable. And, this exact future has been developed and explored by Cory Doctorow with his idea of “whuffie.”

The next question is how this might impact MR.

First, geosocial gives location-based businesses a way to interact with their biggest fans and customers. Research can be built into this relationship easily, as simple surveys could be triggered at check-in or check-out. In fact, promotions could be tied to top consumers and measured like a personalized groupon.

In addition to this, geosocial will only make a firm’s reputation more transparent, measurable and valuable. If there are is little consumer interest in “checking-in” to a restaurant, department store, dealership, etc., of if the comments are largely negative, then the downside of a negative reputation will begin to bite. Reputation research will become critical, and not just reputation tracking. The key will be finding actions that a firm can use to improve its reputation in a truly transparent marketplace. For example, what if any consumer can add information to a firm’s geotagged physical address so that any other consumer could read this information? The upside is vastly more consumer context about the world around them. A consumer might note that a startling number of people have tagged a certain QSR in their neighborhood with health-related complaints (like food poisoning). A jewelry chain’s decision to sell conflict diamonds or diamonds mined at slave wages could be tagged for all to see. I would imagine that business, in return, would want control of their own geographic coordinates. This will set up an interesting policy fight between free speech and property rights and who owns the geographic coordinates.

This creates in us a sense of urgency and we want to point out how these futures are already happening (in a small way) today.

In this regard, Leonard Murphy at the GreenBook Market Research Blog does us all a favor with his piece titled:

The Future Is… Now

Here Murphy outlines how many of the things Ian Lewis (research in 2020) and I are thinking about as future trends already can be found in small efforts, experiments, and new tech ventures today. For example, I believe that “serious gaming” will become a serious research tool, and Murphy points out how BrainJuicer is already experimenting with serious games for MR — today.

The challenge that we all have in thinking about the futures is that while we see the weak and strong signals for a future today, we are often at the lowest phase of the S curve looking up. As many have pointed out, the S curve appears to be a dominant pattern in all kinds of physical phenomena, including changed states and this applies especially so to technology adoption. At the beginning, adoption is slow and increases at an almost arithmetic rate, then it hits a critical mass and the adoption of that technology increases at a lightning pace. Once adoption hits near ubiquity, it levels off. Our challenge today is that in analyzing the futures of market research, we are looking at weak and strong signals for the future in the very early stages of the S curve. We expect change to come quickly, but the futures may keep us waiting longer than we would like.

Murphy does us all a favor in identifying the weak and strong signals today that will lead to change tomorrow. His piece gives us concrete examples of how the things we are talking about are not as far-fetched as they sound, and he helps us better understand where we are on the S curve.

As I’ve noted in a previous post, I think the word is being used in a general way to mean “thinking ahead of the curve” and not in the specific sense used by professionals working in “strategic foresight.”

I do think that market research will become increasingly forward leaning and future-focused and anticipate that “anticipation” will be the next buzzword in this area.

But, where will MR need to go to truly harness foresight?

Method:
In terms of method, I think MR will adopt something like the framework developed by Peter Bishop and Andy Hines in their book Thinking About the Future. MR will do this by integrating existing research techniques with the creation and analysis of possible, probable and preferred futures developed through a STEEP analysis.

Tools:
Here I anticipate the mass adoption of prediction markets, realtime Delphi panels and crowdsourced futures engines like the ones being tested by the Institute for the Future.

Conclusion:
This may ultimately result in what I’m calling “futures dependent strategy”. FDS creates multiple futures scenarios based on the social, technological, economic, environmental and political drivers operating in the present. Then it requires that these futures are mapped in two dimensions – expected likelihood and potential impact. Once this is done, strategies can be developed to (a) achieve preferred futures, and (b) avoid or mitigate unfavorable futures.

But, this will challenge market research, because as many have noted “there are not future facts.” Stretching our thinking from the now into the future will move MR into a different space, well beyond our current comfort zones defined by surveys and focus groups.

Citing Intel’s Andy Grove, Rubinson argued that market research is itself at a “strategic inflection point.” He’s obviously right and this is the reason for ARF’s research transformation initiative. As Rubinson noted, the research industry will either transform or become irrelevant.

As Rubinson pointed out, the traditional insight industry is not the only insights game in town. Insights can now be harnessed in realtime, social media listening, DIY tools and via a host of new entrants.

Two main takeaways from Rubinson’s opening remarks:

1. Rubinson toplined Kim Dedeker’s analogy of the future of research as a “river” or rushing stream of data that researchers will need to learn to fish and explore in realtime. Here Rubinson made the point that unlike the traditional research process, the river analogy means that the datastream predates the marketing question or hypothesis. In the future, projects will flow out of observations and questions arising from the datastream.

2. The shift from “so what?” to “now what?”. For years we’ve talked about answering the “so what” question, but a better question for research is “now what?”. Very good. In fact, I would argue that the question should be “what’s next?” I’m hearing a lot today about “foresight”, but it is a term being used in a general way. I think the insight industry needs to more fully explore the field of strategic foresight and the great work being done at the University of Houston, Institute for the Future, etc.

It should be.

Consumer listening is one aspect of the evolution of MR. This listening comes in a number of forms, and one of them is via monitoring online content.

The problem is in deciding what content is in and out of bounds.

Blogs and Twitter are clearly in bounds as they are in the public domain and the authors write them with the expectation that others will read. But, scraping semi-open communities, so called “walled gardens”, and closed communities strikes me as out of bounds. But, then again, I may have old fashioned views of privacy. After all, all this scraping is to the long term benefit of consumers. It helps us deliver better products and services.

In my thinking about the futures of market research for LEMR, I kept returning to this basic challenge.

Privacy.

Societal privacy expectations (see: “We didn’t know you were listening.”) are the biggest challenge to the Listening Era.

I expect that technological change will proceed so quickly that large segments of society will attempt to “opt out” and become what I call “the new offgriders”. Part of this movement will focus on privacy.

MR obviously needs to get ahead of the regulatory curve and self-police, but I think the privacy reaction will be so strong that it won’t matter.

Still, it strikes me that some kind of general understanding can be reached. One obvious issue is anonymity of those posting comments. Another is a more granular definition of what platforms are in and out of bounds.

Ultimately, the issue may be decided by young people based on their own conception of privacy.