Single idea.

The centre of gravity in business has shifted from inside the organisation to the customer. Consumer centricity and agile has resulted in more customer research happening than ever before by more people. This has resulted in many more people in the organisation needing to talk to customers and democratisation of information has become an imperative. A whole of company imperative.

The impact of external factors such as COVID, market conditions and laws/regulations has created a few key challenges for most senior exec’s when it comes to managing customer research. These challenges relate to capacity, doing more with less and the perception of being data obese but impact lite. The future of effective use of consumer insights is not about brilliantly insightful market research anymore, it is about something much bigger. Something that delivers clear impact & ROI connecting customer understanding directly to business execution.

What we see

Many business professionals advise that they have more research to complete with less money and fewer people. More people across their businesses are expected to talk and engage with customers. Without models measuring the impact, the businesses are going to lose out. Insight has changed and now the focus is on the impact; about what happens after insight has been delivered.

The way a lot of insight is purchased is part of the problem. Project based rather than part of a continuous strategic approach that stretches right through from customer understanding to activation. What is required are teams of customer and data specialists working together to deliver and track impact. There is a need to have continuous engagement with the organisation. Unfortunately, the transactional nature of ad hoc customer conversations set parameters that limits the strategic narrative. A mindset shift is required from outputs to outcomes.

The rise of customer communities and investment in CX measurement and tracking over time requires impact measurement. The current state of CX is concerning. More customer feedback than ever before, unstructured feedback galore, but we must leverage technology to make better sense of it so to drive impact/action. Technology applied without a clear purpose and without human intelligence in both design and execution is likely to struggle to deliver impact. Many great companies are failing by delegating CX to customer facing roles instead of taking a whole of company approach. It is possible to win by enabling deep customer insights into the hands of the right people, at the right time. We cannot think of it as being owned by one function. WE cannot simply deliver a metric; brands need to understand the WHY at scale. This is how to unite an organisation around the customer.
To build out an insight team that can deliver in this connected era an organisation’s priorities should be to:

1. Provide impact to the business/brand rather than collect data and present insight,
2. Ensure you can integrate data from different sources to see a complete customer picture and
3. Be able to influence change.

Blending Humanisation and Digitalisation.

To do this, you need the right blend of humans and technology. Time between insight and action has shortened considerably in the last 12 months. The ability to harness customer input is moving at light speed. With ever increasing mountains of customer data, leaders need to balance three key factors, doing more with less, being flexible in volatile and uncertain times while developing an ability to deliver value at speed.

To do this you need a customer insight team built for the connected era. One that can understand ‘why’ at scale across all customer touchpoints and using technology to show the right people the story, in both a timely fashion and in ways they enjoy it and understand it. More research is being requested with less experts internally to do this. What is required is a blend of technology and support that extends right through the customer/revenue value chain.

For Agencies it is hard to balance services and technology – especially when a blend of both is required to really deliver value. The business and funding models are often in conflict with what clients need. Customers get frustrated with either service expectations not being met or the tech solutions not self-service enough. This is where a ‘Do it with you’ Agency partnership model can really unlock value for customer experience focused professionals. Human expertise supporting brands to maximize the power of the latest technology.

In today’s connected era, finding the right blend of technology offer and service support will unlock big value opportunities. Too much technology is being slickly sold and then not used to its maximum impact because internal teams are already overloaded. Targeting a hybrid tech and service model is worth the time and focus and will enable leaders to deliver impact, not just data or insight.

So, to achieve greater impact, challenge your customer insight team to think wide. Search for partners that can not only deliver technology solutions to understanding customer feedback at scale but those that can also wrap smart, committed account teams around this tech to ensure the impact is both tracked and delivered in spades.

The most successful brands are balancing this human touch with digitalisation to create impact.

Peter Harris, Bastion Insights

Next month marks Black History Month in the UK, and while conversations around diversity, equality and inclusion received more attention over the last year, now is a perfect time to continue that conversation and focus on initiatives that can spark real change.

A recent Glassdoor study found that more than two thirds of job seekers are taking a hard look at workplace diversity when considering employment opportunities. Lucid is partnering with GRBN to measure, benchmark and report on how the mindset of employees in the market research industry compares across the globe.

For an industry whose output often has a global impact on the products, businesses and services released to the market, it’s even more critical that all research and insights professionals feel seen, heard and represented, and market research as a whole embraces diversity, equality and inclusion at its core. The global research project that will be released this winter will highlight areas of opportunity to focus on in the future, but we already know that there’s work to be done now. To start:

• Get involved with Industry bodies taking action. The Market Research Society asks CEOs to make five commitments towards creating safer and more representative workplaces as part of their Inclusion Pledge. The pledge includes: publishing pay statistics annually, working towards government targets for women and ethnic minorities at board level and improving recruitment practices.

Beyond major industry bodies, new organizations dedicated to engaging a global community are cropping up and driving initiatives to specifically improve diversity and inclusion in the research and insights industry. ThinkNow in the US just recently released new standards to modernise the survey qualification questions. In the UK, the Colour of Research (CORe) has recently launched to advocate for the inclusion of ethnic professionals in the market research industry.

• Rethink recruitment practices. Changing recruitment practices may be difficult to implement overnight, but is necessary for progress. To start, recruit talent from a variety of sources. Don’t just source candidates from traditional graduate programs – look at job boards created for underrepresented communities or simply encourage colleagues from diverse backgrounds to share opportunities in their circles.

Assess what perspectives or skills are currently missing on your teams and seek to add diverse skill sets, mindsets, and experiences. The unique backgrounds of our teams at Lucid are bringing diverse thinking, enabling more creative solutions for clients and helping us build a more inclusive work environment. It’s been vital for making our business stronger, and it will do the same for others.

Bake DE&I into workplace culture. Organisations must consciously act on opportunities that not only promote diversity and inclusion, but that also recognise and support the mental health and wellbeing of our teams — then they must ingrain those practices into the very foundation of workplace culture.

Revenue will always matter, but success in today’s business world is also being driven by values, fairness, and the greater good. Those who support employees in their endeavours, recognise the importance of  work / life balance, and create ways for individuals to feel as though they are truly a welcome member of the team, will be most successful.

Ben Hogg, MD of International at Lucid

What’s been happening out there

What started out as weeks has now evolved into months of unprecedented disruption in consumer behaviors and priorities. Driven by product availability and other dynamics of COVID-19, many consumers have:

• Purchased from new product categories
• Made brand and/or product substitutions
• Become less price sensitive
• Changed some of their selection criteria when choosing brands
• Tried new services for the very first time like online shopping in general, online grocery delivery, and curbside pick-up
• Current market dynamics have driven many consumers to buy categories and brands that they might never normally have used, and this shift has occurred in a very short window of time. When shelves return to a more natural state, what impact will these brand experiences have on your category or brand?

Will consumers stick with the new brands or categories they’ve tried or revert to what they were buying previously? Now that consumers have been able to evaluate a larger proportion of the category, will they base their future choices against brand loyalty, an out-and-out value proposition, or other factors? Will selection criteria change, and how?

Businesses need to understand their consumers, their sentiment and their behaviours during “normal” conditions, but it is essential during this pandemic because of how quickly perceptions and habits are changing. If you are not tracking consumer behaviour and the trends, your business is going to miss a huge opportunity at best or suffer consequences.

How to Move Forward

Now is the time to reevaluate your research strategy. While it is not the time to extrapolate and project for all of 2020 how people will spend their time, shop for or consider new products, or consume media, there are certain projects that should be started or continued. And anything that projects normalcy now needs to be treated with caution. But the ability to stay connected to customers and take faster, more impactful decisions that make a positive difference in daily lives has never been more important.

Here is what we suggest brand and companies to not stop doing:

• Tracking (brand or other forms) –Determine relevant updates to current tracking programs to ensure consistency, as well ensuring topical questions are leveraged in current programs. You need to understand how opinions are changing regarding your brand. Now is not the time to wait a year to see impacts on your brand. Test sentiment and perception now— and keep testing.
• Communications & Advertising testing –Pre-test, Pre-test, Pre-test. Customer opinion is changing by the minute. You must test all messages before launch to ensure that they resonate and have the right tone, sensitivity and reflect well on the
• Consumer sentiment research – Either through one-off pieces or tracking, look to understand current needs and opinions as they
• Opportunities in new markets/territories – Develop projects to understand new market opportunities as needs and markets continue to change. Communities can help
• Changing/transition programs –Update your research abilities through the use of online qualitative or quantitative research, rather than telephone or face-to-face

Because during volatile periods, it is more important than ever to gauge the views of your audience. The faster the pace, the more frequently you should consider listening to your audience, testing messages (and not just once – frequently), understating behavior changes, and possibly learning which competitors they’re using.

Businesses need to pivot in a smart, efficient manner. Amidst the pandemic crisis, the need to maintain customer closeness is greater than ever. As circumstances and sentiments shift rapidly around, speed is critical and now is the time to act.

Luca Bon

Toluna

Data Quality is an important pillar of Market Research (MR). The goal of MR is to assist users, brands, researchers, and any other stakeholder to help their cause to achieve its goals. If the quality of the underlying data is poor, then the results and business outcomes will poor as well.

As such, it is imperative that Data Quality be treated as core to the industry. Data Quality is as much a question of practical reality as it is a question of ethics. Tia Maurer of P&G recently publicly shared, via the CASE initiative, a few real-life stories of multi-million-dollar investments which were undermined by poor data quality.

In many ways, Data Quality is an abstract topic – just like ideas, opinions, predictions are also abstract and cannot be defined as ‘good’ and ‘data’, data quality is contextual also.

We will all most probably agree with what bad data quality is – I would define bad data quality as a practice wherein the subject (i.e. respondent or data source) is disinterested or disengaged in the research but is taking the survey purely for some alternative reason. Objectively, we will also define that any gathering of ‘opinions’ through click farms, bots, and other kinds of poor sources is bad data quality.

Subjectively, we can also agree that anyone who is taking the survey because they were forced into it, or because they felt obligated for some reason, or only for the incentive is likely also going to be inclined to give poor data either on purpose or situationally speaking. In short, we see bad data quality is situations where the subject (i.e. respondent or data source) is disinterested in the research but is either taking the survey purely for some alternative reason.

In a case where we have an issue which is both objective and subjective, then we need multiple aspects to fight fraud. While we can call agree on what bad data quality is, it is harder to agree on what good data quality is. However, we can take some specific steps in that direction. Typically, a combination of the below gets you a good result – ‘good results’ being truthful and usable research data.

1. We definitely want to get rid of bots, bad actors, fraudsters, dupes and professional takers. This should be Step 1.
2. Good survey design – as much as the ‘supply side’ is responsible for Data Quality the researchers, designers and programmers are too.

As a practical matter of fact, in running regression and correlation analysis with respondents who were scrubbed out of surveys, we have found that bots actually “performed better” than respondents who are disengaged or simply frustrated with the experiences.
In other words, if respondents are frustrated with the survey, the outcome will not be elegant, regardless of what they are paid.

3. Red Herrings, attention checkers and other types of qualitative analysis are also powerful. The simple questions that more designers are used to, do take us far – and, there are also a few other initiatives coming through which use machine learning (ML) to ‘cross reference’ answers within a survey, or even across surveys to establish consistency.

The next topic that is debated is pricing and incentivization. First, let us talk about incentivization itself. Incentivization is hugely important in research, and in life for that matter. After all, we all do our greatest work when we have interest in the subject AND when there is a fair incentive for that interest. In fact, I would argue that most researchers and supply partners (digital or physical) would be willing to allocate more of the research spend to more engaged respondents and data subjects. So, in my opinion, incentives must continue to be part of story here. I myself take part in surveys, especially B2B surveys because of my intention to share opinions, and curiosity of what researchers are interested in and thinking about, and because many companies do pay what I find to be a fair dollar amount in terms of response.

With regards to the effect of incentivization on research, there are a few competing ideas as to what causes or creates bad vs. good data. On one hand, we have an idea that correlates fraudsters and professional survey takers with $. The other theory is that humans are incentivized by payouts, and attention is not a commodity. It is an asset that needs to be paid for. And as such, we get better responses when the human being is attentive.

Both are true. The simple to pose, but difficult to answer, question is – how do we keep the fraudsters / bots away, but incentivize the good, engaged folks to share thoughtful answers with us?

That is the million-dollar, or should we say, the 10 dollar question.

Vignesh Krishnan

Sample Chain

The GRBN global survey on trust in institutions is primarily focused on the public’s trust (or otherwise) in market research, data analytics and polling – both overall and in terms of appropriate data protection. But a bonus of a study such as this is that it can also reveal insights of considerable importance to society and the world. One of these in this case is the collapse of trust in the American government, most especially among African Americans and the young.

Americans no longer trust their government

While governments around the world are certainly not the most trusted institutions, ranking 9^th out of 15 types of organizations measured globally, they nonetheless manage to eek out a net trust index (trust minus do not trust) of +13. Not in the United States. There, only 27% have trust in their government, while 39% actively distrust it. A net index of -12. That measure widens even further when respondents were asked if, as a result of Covid-19, they trusted their government more or less. While only 14% said that their trust in government had increased, a staggering 41% said that it had declined.

Trust is rock-bottom among African Americans and students

While low and declining trust in the American government is reflected across all demographic groups, it is at unimaginably low levels among African Americans and the student population – and getting seriously worse.

Given that the effects of the Covid-19 crisis have been more acutely felt among minority groups in the U.S. (as measured by infection rates, deaths and economic damage), it is perhaps not surprising that the government’s response has resulted in a decrease in trust among African Americans. The same erosion among students, however, suggests a massive crisis of confidence among the country’s generations of the future.

Americans (used to) trust their police – but African Americans do not

Generally speaking, Americans are slightly more likely to trust their police than is the case globally. While 53% of people across the countries surveyed show trust in law enforcement, that figure rises to 60% in the United States. The same phenomenon is seen in net trust scores – +37 worldwide and +44 in the U.S.

But that is definitively not the case for African Americans. Only 36% of this group actively trust the police and, even though their net trust score is still positive (+7), it still lags significantly behind their non-Black fellow citizens.

More poignantly, this survey was carried out before the eruption of protests and disturbances that followed the death of George Floyd. One can only imagine what the numbers would look like now.

Health authorities – a lone trusted voice

Among all the governmental authorities measured (government, police, secret service, health authorities), in only one is there agreement between the USA and the rest of the world: trust in health authorities.  Worldwide, this segment of public authority is trusted by a plurality, with a net trust score of +45 globally and +43 in the United States. What’s more, such trust has only increased since the onset of the coronavirus crisis (+15 worldwide and +14 in the U.S.).

So, what are we to make of this?

What this study suggests, perhaps to the surprise of only a few, is that America is in the midst of a profound crisis of trust. The United States government has lost the trust of its citizens, and law enforcement – at the time of the survey – was on the way to doing the same. Events since then would suggest that this crisis has only deepened. Most importantly, it is clear that this trust deficit is at its most acute in the African American community, which feels marginalized and cannot trust those who have sworn to “serve and protect”.

What is also striking is the loss of trust among students. Establishment politicians should be extremely worried by this, especially since this cohort has strongly endorsed ideas put forward by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that, until now, have been scorned as ‘socialism’. But perhaps this portends a radical shift in American politics and society over the next decade that will surprise us all.

Simon Chadwick

Cambiar Consulting

John is the head of Customer Experience (CX) for a large hotel chain.  Jennifer is the CMO.  John shares his latest report with Jennifer that shows 40% of their customers thought their stay was enjoyable.  Is Jennifer pleased with that report, or is she appalled?  Probably the latter. But for some reason, we in market research (MR) seem to be satisfied with this same low level of positive CX among the many millions of respondents we engage each year.

According to the latest GRBN Global Trust Survey, just 40% say they find the research they participate in to be enjoyable.  Wait, what??

There’s more.  Right now, as highlighted in the same global research, almost half the people say they aren’t sure if they trust MR (45%). Another 16% flat-out don’t trust MR.  As an industry meant to distill what people say, do, and think into meaningful and accurate insights, should we be concerned that only a third of the people trust us?

Let’s assume we do want to engender a higher level of trust.  How does CX fit into this equation?  The answer is that CX drives trust.  And trust drives participation – especially participation for the right reasons.  And broad participation from people that want to contribute improves data quality – which improves trust.  See where this is going?

Tackling trust as an issue is hard.  Where does one even begin?  You got it – by improving our CX. GRBN’s research shows a direct relationship between CX and trust.  If we can improve the CX we provide to our respondents and participants, a broader level of trust is sure to follow.

	Trust MR	Not Sure	Don’t Trust MR
Positive CX	59%	36%	25%
Negative CX	11%	22%	32%

 

Let me recommend a great resource on how to get started on improving CX – GRBN’s participant engagement Handbook, ENGAGE 2.0 – a guide with 30 expert tips for improving the research participant user experience.

Customer experience can be defined as the customer’s perceptions, opinions, and feelings developed through the cumulative effect of their interactions with a brand or supplier.

So it will take time to change opinions that have perhaps been formed over a long period of time during which people have become accustomed to a certain level of engagement (or lack thereof).  It will take effort.  But there’s no doubt that as an industry, we have ways and means to accomplish the goal.  The question is whether we have the will.  I hope so.

Dave Rothstein

RTi Research

InnovateMR contributed participants from our proprietary panel, PointClub, as well as facilitated the field management for the GRBN’s 2020 Trust Survey. This study fielded across 10 countries with the primary objective of understanding the general public’s level of trust in the marketing research industry. The study also set out to understand how the public perceives different types of organizations and agencies (as it relates to trust and data privacy protection efforts). While several countries and regions across the globe have implemented regulations intended to protect citizens’ data privacy, our study revealed that market research companies need to do more to gain trust from survey participants.

As we evaluate the level of trust across different organizations and professions, market research ranked 7 out of 15 with only 23^% of participants indicating ‘trust’ for the industry. While our industry fares better than other segments such as search engines (19^%), media (13^%), and social media companies (13^%); other sectors outperformed our vertical such as health authorities (47^%), as well as banking and financial institutions (46^%).

While our survey data paints an alarming picture on the state of trust in our industry, there are material actions we can employ to change this troubling paradigm. While we may feel overwhelmed, transparency can and should be regarded as an opportunity, not a burden. There are meaningful changes MR companies can employ to win over consumers:

• Beyond the obligatory privacy policy, provide a concise and simple summary which distills complex legal jargon. Participants should be clear on how your business collects, stores, shares, and destroys personal data.
• As updates are made to your privacy policy, provide a summary of what has changed and provide participants with the ability to review historic versions.
• Be explicit – provide the purpose and need for this data and how it benefits not only your company, but the participant as well.
• Ensure that an active opt-in is presented during each instance of personal data collection. It is unfair to expect that a consent captured at panel registration provides companies free reign to collect additional personal information in perpetuity. Each business scenario is different and the drivers for personal data collection vary from project to project; advise participants every step of the way and re-confirm their consent.
• Provide a sufficient feedback loop for survey enquiries and find ways to share non-proprietary data with participants. Giving back to your survey participants has been shown to increase engagement rates and mitigate attrition. Strive to make the participant experience transformational, not transactional.
• Fully document your participant data flow and security mechanisms, as well as implement standard operating procedures designed to prevent the risk of a data breach. Mandate employee and 3rd-party compliance through on-going training and e-signature agreements.
• Socialize knowledge throughout the entire organization and develop processes to support continued education on this dynamic and complex topic. Establish a regular cadence to revisit privacy protocols, partner agreements, and ensure all internal stakeholders have a seat and voice at the table.

Get involved and start building trust now!  Don’t be intimidated by consumer privacy. Find ways to engage with your organization and the wider industry. Share your commitment to data ethics with others and use your personal influence to help your colleagues gain a deeper understanding.

Lisa Wilding-Brown

Innovate MR

The German population has very high expectations of data protection and data security. Experiences of dictatorship and surveillance in the 20th century shaped the German tradition of data protection. The National Socialist era made all Germans aware of the serious consequences of the collection of personal data; the aftermath of a data-gathering regime like the GDR are still present today. The issue of trust in institutions and also in market research, against this backdrop of historical relevance, is always a direct consequence of the question of data protection and data security.

It is particularly noteworthy that, compared to other international participants, Germans are far less distrustful of market research (22%) than the average of those surveyed in the current Global Trust Survey (30%).  When it comes to the protection of personal data and its appropriate use, their trust in market research has also suffered the least from Covid-19 (8% of Germans stated that they trust market research companies less as a result of Covid-19, compared to an international average of 13%).

But what are the reasons for this high level of trust, when the general expectation of data protection and data security is particularly high in Germany? It is worth taking a more detailed look at the results of the Global Trust Survey. The key to this trust is, on the one hand, a working environment of market research in Germany strictly oriented towards data protection and data security and, on the other hand, a high degree of transparency in this everyday work and information about this working environment. To the question “How well do you feel informed by market research companies about how your data is collected, stored and used”, 37% of Germans answer with completely or very well informed and only 7% feel not informed at all. In both values the results deviate significantly from the international average (31% and 13% respectively). As a result, it is not suprising that a third of Germans are not at all concerned about their personal data being securely protected by market research companies. In comparison, this figure lies at 13% internationally.

Transparency and sufficient information about the handling of personal data in market research have a direct positive effect on the general trust in market research and its companies and on the trust in the handling of personal data by market researchers. Those who feel better informed trust more. In order to maintain this level of trust, it is not only advisable to continue to adhere strictly to data protection and data security, but also to permanently communicate this working method to the public.

Dr Otto Hellwig,

respondi

 

 

 

 

Dr. Otto Hellwig is CEO and founder of respondi since the company was founded in 2005. He has been working in the field of market and social research since the early 1990’s. Hellwig has a degree in Social Science, Psychology and Media Studies.

The Global Research Business Network (GRBN) have released the latest global results in their “Trust” report, a repeat of a study undertaken in 2014, 2016 and 2018.  The news for the Market Research (‘MR’) industry in Australia was positive with our net trust index increasing vs. 2018, but there remains a lot of work to do.

Overall, 75% of Australians see MR as beneficial to companies, significantly more than they see it as beneficial to themselves.  Over one third see surveys as being too long and not enjoyable.

For MR, COVID-19 has had a minimal impact on our trust scores, however, looking across categories, there was a significant positive shift for trust in health authorities, which makes sense given how well the Australian health system managed the crisis. At the other end of the scale, the media and social media companies saw negative shifts in trust. There is huge distrust in Australia for any company that is not adequately protecting and appropriately using personal data.  So, the question has to be asked for MR, given the impact the Cambridge Analytica data scandal had on trust, can we afford to wait before we supercharge on mass how we engage with people and credibly build trust?

To maximise engagement, similarly to most human interactions, the key to winning people over every time and achieving real human connection is empathy, closely followed by belonging and authenticity. Let’s unpack what these 3 pillars mean for MR:

Empathy: are we asking relevant topics in engaging ways? Are we asking interesting questions in an interesting way that people can make sense of? Are we really listening and responding like humans do?

Belonging: are we feeding back why people’s views matter and what is happening with the information being collected from them? Do they feel part of the solution or just part of someone’s process?

Authenticity: are we promoting good practice and calling out bad practice?

An interesting and topical example is the public’s interest in Black Lives Matter, and its varied focus for different countries and groups. Is the research industry showing empathy, belonging, and authenticity? If not, we need to start now.

If we want to move the needle on trust, we must tackle each of the three pillars seriously.  Globally it is a struggle to get the industry aligned on each of these issues as commercial realities (usually quite rightly) win out.  Believe me I get it, however for the long game we must invest together to change the dynamic so that more people want to contribute to what we do and do very well. The risk is if we don’t, we will end up talking to increasingly small proportions of the population, then what we do will be called out as inaccurate, something opinion and election polling are dealing with right now.

Remember every touchpoint a brand or government has with people is a chance to improve perceptions, create trust and demonstrate empathy. Every survey, pop up, intercept, video chat or diary activity is such a touchpoint.  If our profession is changing, it is clearly not changing enough to improve perceptions and create trust.  Let’s not wait for our own reputational disaster to hit.  One thing we can all do today, and every day is to stop and ask yourself before anything is sent out, “is this something that I or my family would bother engaging in?”. If the answer is no, then do yourself and all of us a favour and start again.

Peter Harris

Human

Board Member TRS

CEO Potentiate

Only a week ago the disaster facing CMOs was the sadness of not being able to air a new campaign that may have taken months to create.  The care with which the idea had been nurtured, the negotiations to get the best talent, the budget secured from the C-suite, all were about to be lost.  All that hard work, gone.

Marketers have now moved from grief to action over the last week as they grapple with the rapidly evolving COVID-19 crisis.

“Meeting the needs of your customer at a profit”, the famous definition of marketing from Professor Philip Kotler, needed rethinking.  What good is a highly paid celeb in your ad enticing you to buy your product if your customers are losing their jobs and can’t pay to keep their homes?  What are the needs of your customers now?  And should you be thinking about short term profit or lifetime value?

For the last few years, talking about brand purpose has been in vogue.  Last week was a great test for brands to stay true to their purpose and values.  How could these values guide decision-making?

On Tuesday, March 10^th, TSB, NatWest/RBS and Lloyds Bank in the UK announced they would help customers affected by coronavirus with mortgage payment holidays and other measures.  These were the urgent needs that many banking customers had.  Yet in the US, it was Thursday, March 19^th before announcements were seen that Bank of America would help customers to defer mortgage payments if they were impacted by coronavirus.

MESH Experience, the company I founded, is a small data, analytics, and insight business.  We work with big banks and other very influential clients in companies that can make a difference to the economy and the way society feels.  We added new questions to our UK retail banking study and by Thursday discovered that 49% of people felt that UK banks were doing enough to help customers during the coronavirus pandemic and 51% felt they were not.  Let’s see how this sentiment changes in the coming weeks.

Never has there been a more important time to live up to a company’s purpose!  And we have seen some wonderful examples from companies big and small over the last week.

Hyundai and Genesis offered up to 6 months of car payments for those losing their jobs due to coronavirus on March 14^th.  By March 16^th Ford pulled its national vehicle ads in the US and offered customers help with re-payments with Ford Credit Support.  And by March 19^th Ford and General Motors were offering to make much-needed ventilators.  It is noticeable that Hyundai offered support in 2009, during the recession when owners could return their financed purchases or leases within one year if they lost their jobs, which created considerable goodwill.  Ford’s advertising shows how the company has helped during two world wars by creating planes and tanks.  Acting quickly, decisively and with a true sense of purpose can build long term trust.

LVMH acted quickly and on March 15^th announced that it would be switching perfume production to hand sanitizer production.  Beer manufacturers, including Brew Dog in the UK, also began making hand sanitizers on March 18^th.  Meanwhile, Guinness, a brand that has been around for 260 years, acknowledged that St Patrick’s Day 2020 was going to be “different” in its brand ads.  Quite rightly, it pointed out the importance of being with people you care about and hit the right notes with a touch of humor.  This weekend, Olive Garden TV advertising was suggesting to order online for those dishes you might be craving.

Spectrum Comcast and Cox Communications offered free internet for students now working from home.   Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are waiving late payment fees, increasing Wi-Fi hotspots or providing higher mobile data for their customers.  In the UK the BBC is providing a whole host of content offerings applicable for the times – not simply coronavirus updates, but educational programming for children, Health Check UK Live for people in isolation and virtual church services.

Personal communication via email has become much more important.  Those from companies severely hit by this crisis stood out to me for their customer focus, including some from Ed Bastian at Delta Air Lines and one from Arne Sorenson at Marriott International.  However, with Delta owning 51% of Virgin Atlantic, it was disappointing to see 8,500 employees being asked to take 8 weeks’ unpaid leave.  On a positive note some retailers, also severely hit, like Levi’s and Apple are reassuring their employees that they will be paid even if their stores are closed.

This last week was pivotal.  We need to quickly overcome the grief attached to well-laid plans for new campaigns and move on to action, guided by our values and purpose, in helping customers and society in the way that each of us, however big or small, can do best.

Fiona Blades

President & Chief Experience Officer, MESH Experience