Jeffrey Henning’s #MRX Top 10 – Gritty Hindsight, Branded Foresight

By Jeffrey Henning

Of the 21,897 unique links shared on #MRX last week, here are 10 of the most retweeted…

1. How Britain Voted in 2015 – The share of Britons who turned out to vote in the 2015 general election remained consistent with previous years; however, the demographic makeup of the major parties has changed, according to Ipsos MORI. Conservatives maintained a plurality across most groups, while Labour only had a clear lead with voters in lower social classes, renters, minorities and voters under 35 years old.
2. The Q1/Q2 2015 GRIT Report Is Here! – The newly redesigned Greenbook Research Industry Trends report with data from Q1 and Q2 of 2015 is now available, with a new emphasis on key verbatim responses.
3. Why the Long Survey is Dead – People do not want to complete long surveys. Heck, they don’t want to complete surveys of any type: Pew Research Center has reported that response rates have fallen to 9%. Ray Poynter tackles the implications, at length.
4. Branding Trumps Advertising as Driver of Brand Value – Research by Lambie-Nairn and The Partners revealed that organizations with strong branding but weak advertising saw 49% more growth than organizations with strong advertising and weak branding.
5. Foresight is Better than Insight – Michael Glaber discusses that while insightfulness is important, it is also common business practice. Far more critical is foresight, which allows businesses to predict and model future trends in order to best achieve their strategic goals.
6. 7 Habits of Highly Successful Market Researchers – Ray Poynter lists habits that successful market researchers have. The first three habits: become a strategist, use both sides of your brain, and develop a specific expertise.
7. Technology the Biggest Challenge Facing Research, says GRIT Report – Reporting on the new GRIT results, Research Live emphasizes that a large number of market researchers find that technology is the biggest challenge facing the industry, followed by handling data and sampling.
8. How Brands Really Grow 3: Brands in the Brain – Jan Hofmeyr uses neurobiology to analyze how the brain stores information and opinions on brands through various mental processes.
9. Marketing Foresight: Adapting To Consumers Evolving Needs – Colin Hare of 4i Consulting Group outlines a 3-step process for companies to stay connected to their customers in order to better forecast consumer behavior in the future. The three steps are: identify and quantify consumers and need states today, identify and assess the impact of future growth drivers, and align the product category to trends – then look forward.
10. Why Storytelling Is the Key to Your Research Findings – Andy Jolls of Instantly gives 5 tips to promoting the understanding and internalization of research results.

Note: This list is ordered by the relative measure of each link’s influence in the first week it debuted in the weekly Top 5. A link’s influence is a tally of the influence of each Twitter user who shared the link and tagged it #MRX, ignoring retweets from closely related accounts. Only links with a research angle are considered.