Talks

AQR’s Breakfast Bites

Posted on by Razor

The perfect topic for a young researcher!

The Nursery’s Kat Cunningham gave us some excellent tips on impressing clients – starting with the dos and don’ts for young researchers – during this week’s AQR’s Breakfast Bites session. (Yes, there was breakfast. And yes, I did have three croissants.)

We learned about the importance of preparing for briefing meetings where, even if you’re new to market research, you must always add value to the conversation taking place; whether that’s through listening and being insightful with your comments, or showing enthusiasm in your behaviour. There’s a lot you can do to contribute despite not having the experience and knowledge of a director.

The talk also focused on body language and its significance; whether it’s the image you portray to your client or simply boosting your self-confidence. (Enter: the ‘power pose’!)

Kat also recommended a captivating TED talk by Amy Cuddy (‘Your body language may shape who you are’) during which she demonstrates the importance of body language in showing authority and confidence; which then translates to being respected and heard. It’s people’s actions, and how they carry themselves, which act as a catalysts in the engagement of audiences. In other words, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it! “People aren’t always listening as much as you think.”


**Keep an eye on the AQR calendar and members’ emails for details of upcoming events. Non-members also welcome!**

 

 

I pod, therefore I am

Posted on by Razor

I’m a self-confessed telly addict. I’ve a penchant for photography. I occasionally buy art and I’m not a naysayer when it comes to PowerPoint. Basically, I’m cool with visuals.

But spoken-word audio has a hold over me that none of the above does. It’s my solace, my constant companion, my daily diversion. It has a language and tonality that the visually vivid mediums don’t. 

Podcasts are my medium. You’re never waiting for something to happen. Listening to a podcast is a constant cultural update, a chance to learn, a way of being exposed to the world through different lenses.

I trade favourites with friends and colleagues; quickly subscribing when I get a recommendation and unsubscribing, just as quickly, if the first episode doesn’t grab me. I get pod anxiety. I don’t like having too big a backlog to contend with. I like to keep up.

It shames me a little that I have a preference for American podcasts – I feel disloyal to the British accent. My preference for American male presenters makes me feel even more disloyal. I hate female presenters’ propensity for vocal fry – something I learned about…from a podcast.

Recent favourites, despite my aforementioned preferences, is the R4 podcast ‘Fortunately…’ with Fi Glover and Jane Garvey. It’s truly astonishingly brilliant. Just two women chatting. Recommended, and quickly ditched, are two other women chatting; Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton from ‘The High Low’. (If I’m honest, they lost me at ‘Pandora and Dolly’ – can’t bear them). I’m also loving ‘Atlanta Monster’ (yep, more true crime), ‘Gravy’ (food tales from the American south) and will never abandon ‘The Food Programme’ or ‘The Archers’.

This is all leading somewhere… 

I’ve always wanted my own ‘research toy’. By which I mean a ‘thing’ that isn’t quite work but isn’t not work. A thing that would give me a chance to play, to experiment, and the freedom to make mistakes in my own time, not that of my clients’ (yet, anyway!)  A gift to me to celebrate ten years of Razor and a gift to a client who’s been loyal and fabulous to work with for most of those ten years.

I’ve made my first podcast.

How’s that for a cliffhanger?

Stay tuned for my next blog to find out how it went.

Talk to me

Posted on by Razor

If I were to distill the role of a qualitative researcher into two words, I would probably go for ‘professional conversationalist’.

Having great conversations underpins everything we do – yet how many times have you had, or viewed, a conversation with consumers where ‘it’ just doesn’t happen?

You know what I mean…low energy, basic answers, dead-looking eyes and real boredom both in front, and behind, the glass. 

Like most quallies, I recently had such an experience and tried everything I could to get the conversation going – energisers, breaks, changing seating positions, challenging participants – all with no success. It was a dud.

Rather than deciding to just chalk the experience up to being ‘one of those groups’, I’ve been looking for solutions.

Drum roll please…

Allow me to introduce Celeste Headlee. She’s a veteran radio journalist who recently wrote the book We Need to Talk; How to Have Conversations That Matter. 

I cannot recommend this book highly enough to…well pretty much everyone – but especially to my fellow professional conversationalists. In her book, Celeste looks back on her career in journalism and shares what she’s learned to help her have great conversations – interviewing everyone from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors to truck drivers.

Rather than giving a long-winded review of the book, I’ll share three ideas it’s inspired me to try out:

  1. Showing consumers behind the curtain more
    According to Celeste, good conversations happen when everyone understands what the topic is and what the interviewer is expecting of them. I want to play with this insight in future consumer conversations and try being a little more honest; letting them know more about what we know, what our hunches are and – most importantly – what we want to understand from talking to them. Too often, we try and shield our conversation partners from the bigger picture to avoid biasing them and they leave slightly confused asking ‘I hope that was useful?’ with a puzzled look on their faces. I want less of that.

  2. Rehearsing conversations and developing lines of questions
    What comes across in this book is the sheer level of thinking that Celeste and her team put into the conversations they have – rehearsing and refining lines of questions and developing strategies for different potential avenues of discussion. Clearly, good conversation doesn’t just happen; it is crafted and planned. I want to put some of Celeste’s ideas into action and spend more time trying to pre-empt the conversations I have. I want to move beyond the discussion guide and think bigger.

  3. Shorter conversations for shorter attention spans
    One of the big themes in this book is that the art of conversation is disappearing. Celeste attributes this change, in part, to our shortening attention spans caused largely by technology. Incredibly, an academic test to measure attention spans has shown a fall from 3 minutes in 2004 to just 59 seconds in 2014. Knowing what we know about our attention spans, why are we surprised that when putting 6 strangers in a room for 2 hours to talk about something they were not prepared for, they’re likely to become bored and lose interest? It’s time to start doing things differently and I want to find new ways of having shorter bursts of meaningful conversations with consumers. I want to learn how journalists maximise their time.

I’m now off to do some professional conversationing. I’ll let you know how I get on…

Note to self:

Posted on by Razor

I love the MRS Conference. I love spending two days surrounded by my comrades. I love my annual catch-ups with the same people I always vow to have lunch with within the next 365 days, and then don’t. I feel lucky that it’s become part of my annual social (and intellectual) calendar.

I love the fact that however hard the organising committee strive (I assume) to lay ‘theme’ across submissions and sessions (this year it was Impact with a capital ‘I’), it’s often delightfully hijacked by global and local fissures along with the sheer will, velocity, and personality of the keynote speakers – who in my view were more stellar this year than ever before.  Okay, it might have been cheaper to watch some TED talks or go to a ‘how to…’ event to see people like Oliver James, Caitlin Moran, Dan Snow, and Hannah Fry…but choosers shouldn’t be sniffy beggars.

The themes that bubbled up eloquently amongst the speakers and panellists (and are now simmering away in my intellect):

  • You should say the word disruption a lot nowadays. If you say disruption with emphasis, you will look as if you are a disruptor. That makes you look like a jolly good thing and quite an important person. I am not very disruptive.
    Note to self: work on that.
  • Being ethical is also a jolly good thing. The more ethical you are, the more people will like you and the more they will buy your stuff if you are a big company.
    Note to self: hone ethics.
  • The internet might implode soon. Or it might not implode soon, but something has to happen at some point because all the famous people who are on the internet are tired of the lawless wild wester-y (or should that be Westeros?) of it all. I have yet to be trolled so I probably shouldn’t complain.
    Note to self: don’t comment – just in case. 
  • Being a woman is another good thing. If you were a woman at this year’s conference you were lauded and celebrated for simply turning up. I’m totally up for sisterhood in principle. I’m just not great at group hugs.
  • Finally, David Bowie will reign long in the hearts and minds of researchers. I pity the other dearly departed of the last year as they quite simply didn’t get a mention. Who knew market research was so zig and zag? Maybe it happened when I wasn’t looking. 
    Note to self: be more Bowie.