Research perfection in 59 seconds

I have found the perfect book to start the new year.  If you like evidence based ideas and love a good statistic then this book really is for you.

“Excellent! A triumph of scientifically proven advice over the myths of self-help. Uplifting and long over-due” Derren Brown

We host quite a lot of brainstorms here at Twelve, so if the next time you come there’s a large new pot plant in the meeting room, this book will tell you why. If you find me gazing at your digits (specifically the first and fourth) again, it’s all in the book. If you feel better for joining a new club or group as part of your new year’s resolutions, and stick at it, and actually enjoy it, again this book, by drawing on research studies and scientific evidence will explain why.

I will say no more except to say thank you to Professor Wiseman* for putting it all together in one easy to read format for us information junkies.

*Another example of nominative determination? –  all part of the wonderful world of pop psychology!

Career education and choices

One of our specialist market areas at Twelve is communications support for organisations in the careers and employment market, for people like the National Council for Work Experience (NCWE) or the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU). So we really make sure we ‘walk the walk’, giving careers talks and offering work experience through local schools. 

As any employer knows, it is actually quite time consuming offering work experience to young, untrained adults, and it can be a challenge to find meaningful work for them to do.  But it is such a worthwhile activity, or at least that’s my view.  I see ourselves at Twelve as ambassadors for PR, and good parents for the youngsters who come to us.  

This week we’ve had the pleasure of Will on work experience. He’s thrown himself into work with great energy and interest, and completed all his tasks with intelligence and enthusiasm.  I thought I’d be brave and ask him for his honest opinion on work experience, whether it’s been worthwhile for him, and what he thinks of the careers advice he’s experienced so far.

So here are his words:

At my school at least, there has been a big focus on careers more recently. We’ve had two career days, with people representing various professions coming to the school to talk to us about their jobs. I found that helpful, it was good to hear how a journalist feels about their job, ditto with a commercial airline pilot etc…

The school is also talking to us a lot more about work experience, and strongly encouraging us to do some, even going as far as setting a deadline by which the whole year must have done at least one stint. Although some may see this as pressuring us, I think it’s necessary, I wouldn’t have thought to do work experience if I hadn’t been told about it and its advantages.

We also take part in the Morrisby profiling, a set of psychometric tests that show us our skills, plus a questionnaire and an interview to help us decide what careers we think we’d enjoy. I found this less helpful, mainly because I think most people know their skills already; whether they’re good with numbers or words or science. Admittedly it helped quite a few people, for example who didn’t know how high their reasoning skill was. As for the questionnaire, seeing as it was based on what we wanted to do at the time, and was not based on our skills, I felt it was too subjective to be hugely helpful.

The two things that stood out for me from the Morrisby profiling were the interview on careers and university and the account with Futurewise that was a part of the deal. The interview persuaded me to start looking for work experience, and was a good confidence boost, as they go through the profile pointing out all the good bits! As for Futurewise, they are an organisation that provide career support for young people from the ages of 16 to 23. Once signed up, you get free help until 23, and although I’m not using them at the moment, I can imagine that they will be tremendously helpful when I come to look for work. They also send regular updates about career days, career talks etc…

I’ve recently done three days work experience at TwelvePR, and I’ve found it incredibly helpful. I’ve now experienced working in an office environment, a full-length shift (9:30 to 5:30), writing press releases, writing letters, stuffing envelopes, researching and presenting results, and working to deadlines. I would wholeheartedly recommend work experience to anyone and everyone, even people who aren’t thinking of going to university, it’s been an informative and stimulating experience.

The thing that bothers me personally is that this huge pressure to be “employable” is stopping a lot of young people doing what they really want to do, both in terms of careers but more in terms of subjects. I know of many people who aren’t going to study the subject they want to because they fear that it won’t lead to any career. But with any university degree, skills will be acquired that will lead to some form of career, or else why would the course be there?

The message I really want to put forward is for people of my age, people who are thinking about universities or careers. Do what you want to do, study what you want to study. There’s no point in doing something you don’t enjoy or don’t excel at just for the sake of having a career. Sure a job is important, and a degree is good, but doing a job you enjoy and studying a subject you are strong in is paramount, and, in my opinion at least, waiting maybe a year or two to get the job you really want will leave you so much more fulfilled than getting the first one that comes along.

Just how important is academic success in life?

It’s something we grapple with a lot at Twelve where we work for clients in the academic and career sectors. I was reminded of the issue again with the headline today “children over reliant on calculators in maths lessons” and I wondered just how many people really are comfortable with maths?

If we take having GCSE maths grade C to be an indicator of ‘being comfortable’ with maths than the amazing truth is that it’s around 54 per cent of the population.

And if we combine being ‘comfortable’ with maths and the written word (English GCSE grade C) then it’s just 18 per cent of the population.

That’s really is something to think about……

Choosing a PR agency

 One marketing directors view on choosing a PR agency

What I look for:

1. Talented people – rather than just good agency creds. I am a firm believer that all agencies have good people – and what you want are the good people.

People who run campaigns that win awards – independent verification of work is a good indicator of the ability to think and present ideas strategically.

2. The right skills for the brief – so as a financial service brand with value-for-money products that puts a lot of attention on the money/business media – I look for people that understand finance and the media we deal with.

What annoys me:

1. Agencies that do media audits – we do lots and lots of press briefings, talk to the personal finance and business media every day, and subscribe to Mori surveys, etc. This means we have a very clear idea about what the media thinks of Santander.

2. Ideas that are just there to demonstrate creativity without any concept of realism and delivery.

Great news – fun officially on the agenda!

An example of a research project which has served its purpose perfectly:

1. It has given the client a  good name check in the media (Adecco)
2. It is genuinely relevant to the clients business (employment)
3. It is useful

Here’s the information:

From a sample of 1,000 workers across the UK (I assume based on an omnibus, representative of the UK workforce*) Adecco found:

86% of Britain’s workers think that having fun at work is important

70% have worked somewhere where an employer has NOT promoted a fun spirit in the workplace.

74% of employees said they would prefer to work somewhere that did foster a fun atmosphere over one where they received better pay.

67% of employees admit they feel less committed and loyal to their job if there isn’t a fun, competitive spirit in the workplace, admitting that they just do the minimum required of them.

30% of workplaces have sports teams, clubs or schemes which employees can join

68% do not compete with others at work, either in achieving formal targets or on a more light-hearted basis.

The client quote is an excellent summation “As the global economy continues to strain under the burden of debt, employers should take heart from the fact that the workers we surveyed value a fun working environment over pay,” comments Andy Powell, director, Adecco. “Generating loyalty and commitment need not be about hard cash. In a climate of wage restraint, employers would do well to focus on employee wellbeing and happiness.”

* Ah the omnibus….Did the sample include C Suite staff?   Even if it didn’t the results should be useful to them - increasing productivity, share price etc.. sounds like fun to me!

Great news – fun officially on the agenda!

An example of a research project which has served its purpose perfectly:

1. It has given the client a good name check in the media (Adecco)
2. It is genuinely relevant to the clients business (employment)
3. It is useful

Here’s the information:

From a sample of 1,000 workers across the UK (I assume based on an omnibus, representative of the UK workforce*) Adecco found:

86% of Britain’s workers think that having fun at work is important

70% have worked somewhere where an employer has NOT promoted a fun spirit in the workplace.

74% of employees said they would prefer to work somewhere that did foster a fun atmosphere over one where they received better pay.

67% of employees admit they feel less committed and loyal to their job if there isn’t a fun, competitive spirit in the workplace, admitting that they just do the minimum required of them.

30% of workplaces have sports teams, clubs or schemes which employees can join

68% do not compete with others at work, either in achieving formal targets or on a more light-hearted basis.

The client quote is an excellent summation “As the global economy continues to strain under the burden of debt, employers should take heart from the fact that the workers we surveyed value a fun working environment over pay,” comments Andy Powell, director, Adecco. “Generating loyalty and commitment need not be about hard cash. In a climate of wage restraint, employers would do well to focus on employee wellbeing and happiness.”

* Ah, the omnibus…. Did the sample include C suite ‘workers?’ Even if it didn’t, I think the results will be useful at this level – increased productivity?  improved share price? Sounds like fun to me!

Brand Honesty

Commonsense and research as custodians of brand values

It’s been an uneasy time for those of us who feel tarred by the brush of the Murdoch and News of the World debacle. When journalists or editors don’t appear to be honest it seems to affect trust in the communications industry overall.

Some recent results from the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) show just how expensive a mistake can be on this front too, with whole ad campaigns having to be pulled. But to me it begs the question – where was the common sense and research? Or where was the question itself – is this really honest and true?

The tagline on one poster for Coca-Cola and its functional water brand Glacéau Vitaminwater sounded innocuous enough – “More muscles than Brussels” which the company claimed was a reference to Belgian action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme. But the ASA ruled that the product could not claim to help enhance muscle strength. It also disliked the ambiguity of comparing the health benefits of water with Brussels sprouts. The ASA received just three complaints about the product.

William Hill had to pull a campaign recently after the ASA received just one complaint, on the basis of which an investigation was undertaken and the body ruled against the bookmaker.

In the case of Danone, the ASA was not convinced that the scientific research on which the Actimel health claims were made provided sufficient absolute proof that it would improve a child’s immune system.

A very recent ruling was the Stansted Express ad campaign. The train operator running between London’s Liverpool Street and Stansted Express had long run a promotional campaign purporting that the average journey time from the airport to central London was just 35 minutes. It was, at best, misleading. That journey time took the passenger from Stansted to Tottenham Hale which, in zone 3, is still some distance from central London. The journey time is in fact between 45-50 minutes.

As a junior executive at The Guardian one of my jobs was to gather evidence, including research, to defend or challenge advertising claims, reporting to the ASA. Often a complaint had been lodged by just one or two people.

As the general public develops a heightened sense of mistrust, even outrage, we can probably expect more people to complain about what they see as an untrue editorial or advertising claim; even one complaint can trigger a formal process.

So whatever our role in the communications industry, we should all apply our best common sense and research to make sure we uphold our role as guardians of brand honesty.

Source: FMCG News 17.08.11

 

Educating and enlightening through maps: “Mapping London’s Educational Divide”

You can’t beat a map for showing the bigger picture. And creating a map or visual can be a great way to get your research message across. Look at the popularity of ‘Information is Beautiful’.
So here is a new, thought provoking map for you brought to you by University and College Union and courtesy of the Londonist, July 26th 2011.

London constituencies, categorised by percentage of 16 – 64 year olds with no qualifications.

Now you know we have to be very careful in how we interpret data; bandy about comments about educational attainment, or draw conclusions based on from correlations rather than relationships…So….I’ll reproduce what the Londonist has already said on this subject as they have done it so well.

“Last week, the University and College Union found an exciting new way of illustrating the north-south divide. The union’s researchers used government figures to rank mainland Britain’s parliamentary constituencies by the percentage of their working-age population without a qualification to their name. The resulting coverage focused largely on the notion that there are ‘two Britains’: one smart, educated and go-getting; the other, well, not.

But if there are two Britains, there are two Londons, too. So we decided to use the same figures to locate the city’s educational blackholes.
London as a whole is comfortably above the national average – just 9.9% of the population have no qualifications, compared to 11.3% nationwide. All the same, the figures for London reveal a vast educational disparity. In Brent North – that’s the Kenton/Wembley/Sudbury bit – just 1.9 % of all adults don’t have any qualifications, making it the best-educated constituency in Britain. At the other end of the spectrum, over in Ilford South, a whole fifth (20%) are lacking.
Some words of warning about all this. The measure used is a crude one – plotting the number of graduates, say, or coming up with some measure for ‘average educational achievement’ could produce very different results. The figures also say very little about school performance: better educated people tend to be the most mobile, and the figures for, say, Islington probably say as much about educated people moving in as they do about the schools there popping them out.

Nonetheless, looking at the map, certain patterns do start to emerge. Unsurprisingly, the most educated constituencies (or rather, the least under-educated ones) tend to be the plusher areas: the leafy green suburbs of Barnet and Bromley, or the more Richard Curtis-y bits of inner London.
At the other end of the scale, however, the areas with the largest unqualified populations – the darker bits of the map – aren’t the inner city ones, presumably because of the large transient professional populations that have moved in over the past couple of decades. (Hackney South & Shoreditch, where 18.9% of the population don’t have a single GCSE, is a rather uncomfortable exception to this.)

Actually, the least educated areas tend to be the slightly less fluffy suburbs, to the north east and far west. The chunk of the city carved out of Essex does particularly badly: east of the River Lea, every constituency performs below average, and the entirety of the London Borough of Newham is painted black. Some of the constituencies in this area contain some relatively wealthy suburbs – Chingford, Woodford, Upminster; all are solid Waitrose territory – so it’s a little surprising to find them dragging their heels at the bottom of the table.

Perhaps similar areas in other parts of the city are being pulled up the league tables by ambitious immigrant populations, something that’s in relative short supply as you move further east. Or perhaps The Only Way is Essex is having a bigger effect than we thought.”

With thanks to the Londonist www.londonist.com

Not taking the biscuit.

I’m a very keen advocate of using your own resources and data to create valuable insight.

We should always look internally for information before commissioning new research from external sources.

And of course the mother of all ‘internal resources’ is the retail loyalty card database.

Here’s an amusing look at what has recently been discovered from Nectar card holders…

Is your favourite biscuit a pink wafer? Chances are you read The Sun.

Sainsburys crunched Nectar data from around 12 million shoppers between 4th July 2010 and 2nd July 2011 (Note – is that the official start of the silly season?)

If you’re a fan of fig rolls, you could be a northerner. The snack is the second-most popular biscuit in both the North East and Yorkshire.

Further south however the cookie is king; it’s the second most bought biscuit in East Midlands, East Anglia and London.

Jam rings are especially popular outside England, with Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish shoppers buying them in droves.

Enjoy a rich tea? You might hail from the South West, as the snack comes second-place in the area’s biscuit league table.

However, number one nation-wide is the humble digestive. UK biscuit lovers can’t get enough of the sweat-meal dunker, which sells 17 million packets a year at Sainsburys. That’s more than 12 per cent of 141 million packets flogged by the chain per year.

The national top five (starting with the most popular) is; Digestives; Cookies; Jam Rings; Chocolate Fingers; Rich Teas.

Back to newspapers and the data shows Daily Mail readers like a nice Garibaldi, while readers of The Independent prefer coconut creams. Guardian readers have more exotic tastes though, such as ginger and chocolate cookies, amaretti, butter thins and almond florentines.

The above article about biscuits and Nectar card holders is taken from the Drum  20 July 2011,   with grateful thanks.

Ten ways to send the wrong Twitter message

This is not good research in a technical sense which I’m about to share  with you here, being the views of just one person, but what it has in common with the very best research is the way it holds up a mirror to our behaviour.

In fact it holds the mirror up in such an effective way that it made my toes curl a little bit when I saw a few of my mistakes reflected in it….

Of course my fellow Twitterers here at Twelve, especially our dear Digital Prefect do no such things, its only me, and only now and then….Well read on, and you can be the judge!

By Larner Caleb

You don’t need me to tell you Twitter has been a phenomenon in social media, in much the same way you probably don’t need a soshul meedya gooroo to preach about the power the medium has to be a phenomenal sales tool – for the one-man-bands to the big global monsters alike.

But we’ve all seen examples of how the big boys and girls can get it wrong, not least the way Kenneth Cole used the recent troubles in Cairo and its associated hashtag to communicate a sales message.

Similarly, you may remember search engine, bing’s tongue-tied attempt to provide over $100,000 in
aid of Japan’s earthquake victims. Asking for RTs made it come across as a marketing ploy rather than a helping hand.

Not great ways to present your message or yourself. That’s because no matter how much social
media and indeed technology moves on, sales and marketing will always be about communication; more specifically about communicating in the right way and, drilling down even further, about how people people ‘talk’ to each other.

Small jump to how one-man-bands and smaller organisations handle their tweets and it’s easy to
see people forgetting they’re communicating with other, actual real-life people. It’s easy to see because you could transpose anyone of the following genuine-ish off-the-shelf tweets on any number of accounts.

1 The OH-SO BUSY tweet

“You would not believe who I just had to turn down work from. Aghast myself. But only so many hours in the day, & days in the week. Dammit.”

So busy you’re tweeting about it – and have been doing at the same point every lunchtime, every day.
Adding a little jokey, made-up hash tag such as #NotEnoughHoursInTheDay to this kind of tweet does not lessen the impact of the huge smugbag you just dropped from a great height.

2 The NEW BUSINESS PROPOSAL/ OH-SO BUSY cross-tweet

“It’s proposal time –x-platform VoD app for a major UK broadcaster… need a steady stream of coffee for this one…”

Yep, you’re only saying but we don’t need to know. If you said this in a real-life situation, say in
one of those room type thingies with proper people in, could you seriously resist the temptation to measure the cringe factor by counting the number of eyebrows that needed lowering and number of jaws required to be lifted off the ground?

3 The I’M UP WITH THE LATEST TECH tweet

“I’m upscaling – I’m bored with the thickness of the iPad2 – anyone know when iPad3 release date is?”

Okay, it’s a little joke, but any excuse to get across the fact you’re totally tech’d up to the
max, eh. Which brings me onto the…

4 The ANY EXCUSE TO TELL ALL I’VE JUST GOT THE LATEST TECH tweet

“Anyone got any ideas how I can entertain my 4yo Persian cat with an iPad2?”

Let me save you some typing time. Don’t bother with the question mark, replace ‘Anyone got any ideas how I can entertain my 4yo Persian cat’ with ‘Just got’ and it will have the
same impact: self-congratubollox. In spades.

5 The JUST HAD AN AMAZING PHONECALL, TEASE tweet

“Oooh, 3:15pm on a Friday and I’ve just had a phonecall that makes the next 6 months look incredibly rosy”

Yeah, but you’re not telling us why, right? Smug stuff without the follow-through. Impressive.

6 The JUST HAD AN AMAZING EMAIL, TEASE tweet

“Wow. Just WOW. Something landed in my inbox that’s made my week.”

A nice, and very clever, twist on number 5 for anyone who’s hammered the phonecall route too much in one week.

7 The HANG ON WHILE I RETWEET SOMEONE PRAISING ME tweet

“RT @_______: @________
You’re so brilliant we expect nothing less than Best in Universe!”

Sick bag please. These common tweets are made no less vomit-inducing by augmenting the retweet with a preceding ‘Aw, cheers guys…’ If you were at a party and someone said you’re brilliant, would you then tap everyone else in the room on the shoulder and repeat the comment? If the answer is no, avoid social media schmuckdom and follow that guideline on Twitter.

8 The HANG ON WHILE I RETWEET SOMEONE RETWEETING ME tweet

“RT @X: Great blog post up by @Y RT @Y Ten Ways you’re ruining your online presence <link>”

Okay they’ve added a praising comment to your original tweet but why not cut out all that time
consuming and expensive retweeting business by simply tweeting @X just said my
last blog post was great?

Now how does it sound?

9 The I’M A SUPERMAN/WOMAN tweet

“Just did a tenk run before work – 11.25k run to work in just under an hour over 2 big old hills.”

Hang on, while I craft you a medal out of some hardened earwax I accumulated whilst trying to pick my own brain out. And stop wearing your underpants outside your trousers will you– it’s like tweeting every time you do a bit of exercise… oh, you just have…

10 The EXISTENTIAL REAFFIRMATION OF MY VERY BEING tweet

“I’m at Clockwork Creative Technology (Crown House, Armley Road, Leeds) <link>”

Oh… do one will you. If you are actually alive.

Take any one of the above tweets, mix up a few words here and there and I guarantee, if you follow
more than 100 tweeters, they’ll be a regular blight on your Twitter feed. And yep, we’ve all been guilty of trying to oversell ourselves maybe a little too much from time to time – you’ve only got to look at my brown-paper-bag-worthy profile on the right to understand we can’t all be perfect. But if we remember the following few little points we’ll all sell ourselves a little less harder and who knows, a little more easily.

• Have a conversation, not a sales pitch
• Be genuine
• Be helpful
• Be humble

And lastly, because we can afford all that tech on which to read our Twitter updates…

• Be thankful