If you can't beat 'em...

Just spotted an interesting article in good old Research Mag (actually rather good online) ... In effect it's saying that research is increasingly out of step with people's experience of social media and the Internet (and even of phone calls for research purposes) when it continues to try and ring fence itself from marketing.

I totally agree that researchers claiming the high ground - we're not trying to sell anything here - is often not relevant online. As far as consumers are concerned, they're interacting with a manifestation of a company that does want to sell to them at some point so it makes no sense to pretend otherwise.

Plus, as the article points out, both research and brands can benefit by seeing research as part of a brand experience. People generally like giving their views if they're invested in a brand - and tend to think better of those companies who make an effort to listen to them.

Yes, there are issues about how 'biased' or otherwise these views are within a brand context, which is why the Tank believes it's important to ground opinions garnered online with more 'conventional' interactions. And of course we have to obey by the data protection laws - which may sometimes make things a bit tricky...and as some of the commentators point out may need some client education.

But we need to be aware that social forums and online brand interactions are more and more used to supplant research as we know it, often not by researchers or Insight Departments. Apart from doing justice to consumer experience there are pragmatic commercial reasons why we just have to embrace these cross-over marketing/research interactions. A purist approach won't do us any favours, just give us less of a look in...