Viewpoint: More seers, fewer craftsmen

Anthony Tasgal

As a practitioner, user and part-time gamekeeper, part-time poacher, within the research world for over 25 years I’ve long come to a rather depressing view. Namely, that unless the industry undergoes forcibly some cultural surgery it will just not attract the people it needs to thrive and adapt in the 21st century. Let me elaborate.

The market research world does not lack craftspeople. The dedicated breed who carry out the work at the coalface day in, day out; the Boxers (Boxer is the name of the workhorse in Orwell’s (2004/1946) Animal Farm.) who keep the machinery of the industry lubricated. But I can’t see at the moment how the research world is going to breed the next generation of seers.

As a former Classicist with etymology still coursing through my veins, indulge me some word origins. In a world where ‘insight’ has been the holy grail for some years now, words such as ‘idea’ and ‘theoria’ have at their heart the Greek word for ‘seeing’ or ‘watching’. (Theoria is the root of the word theatre.)

With every agency eagerly offering its clients the prospect of more insight, and every brand searching for The Big Idea or A New Vision, I’d like to argue that we are not building a culture of seers or visionaries that is genuinely visionary itself.

To make an analogy: Thomas Kuhn (1962) is probably best known for creating (or at least popularising) the term ‘paradigm shift’. He also used the term incommensurability, but let’s pass over that. However, his core argument, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the seminal analysis of the sociology of science, was that science proceeded in one of two ways. ‘Normal’ science is the basis for scientific advance, until anomalies accrue and more adventurous scientists look to create a new model or paradigm. This then becomes ‘revolutionary science’ as everyone scrambles to create new evidence around which to build the new paradigm.

My point is that the world of marketing, communications, media and the ‘consumer’ (a word that I use only with the greatest reluctance) is undergoing a paradigm shift. Just witness the recent outpouring of scare stories claiming that ‘Facebook Gives You Cancer’. The new media is threatening the old, we are all living increasingly in a wiki world where all is flux and blur, and involvement and collaboration are changing the landscape of creativity and consumption. And what is the market research world doing to attract the talent to create an industry ready to work in this (and the next) paradigm?

Now, a personal anecdote. (I have heard the story that the plural of anecdote is not data, but bear with me.)

Imagine a 13 year old. In fact, here’s one I made earlier. My middle child is 13; perhaps five years or so from pondering seriously what sort of career he might want, and which form of working culture will best suit his emerging aspirations and lifestyle. Now, as it happens, he is very interested in magic, as many boys of his age are. But he is a member of the Young Magicians’ Club (part of the Magic Circle), and with a friend decided to look at importing magic tricks from a website based in the US to sell (for a profit, naturally) over here. So, two 13 year olds (actually barely 12 at the time) set up a small import business and made a handsome profit thanks to the wonders of the internet and a bit of entrepreneurial chutzpah. Add to this the fact that thenet has enabled my son to expand his interest into the cognate fields of psychology, manipulation, illusion, change blindness and rationalism, and to find much of his worldview from the websites of Derren Brown and Penn and Teller.

Now to my conclusion. Here is someone who, at age 13, runs a small business, relentlessly scours the net for
new areas of personal development, and expects to unearth new interests and aspects of his identity for this voyage of guided serendipity from very unconventional sources of authority. Forget the artificially hyped-up world of Sir Alan Sugar; what sort of market research industry would appeal to him? Would he even think of working in this industry as it stands, obsessed as it is with techniques, the need to rely on asking people questions to gain insight, and a dearth of generalists?

But I think there is hope that the world of market research can change, and I will end with a final piece of etymology. Our industry is fond of looking down on error. Awards, such as the IPA’s Advertising Effectiveness Awards, tend to reinforce the postrationalised view of ‘it was all so obvious’; managers are usually penalised and lessons rarely learned when mistakes do happen.

But if we go back to the root of the word, ‘Errare’, it is linked to ‘erratic’ and ‘aberration’, and means ‘to wander’.

So, I would advise those who arecharged with constructing the next version of the market research World to attract the next generation of seers by building companies, cultures and an industry that allows people to ‘wander’, to be as diverse and eclectic as possible and appeal to those bright, non-denominational products of the wiki world.

So send your people out now to art galleries, take them to the cinema (for example, the Phoenix Cinema,
Britain’s oldest, which offers corporate days), give them non-marketing books to read, and allow them to turn their wandering into wondering. Then we may be able to sit back and wait for the next generation of ideas and theories, and evolve.

References
Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Orwell, G. (2004/1946) Animal Farm. New York: Penguin.

Anthony Tasgal is Principal and Head Insighter at POV, a strategic brand/communications and training consultancy specialising in creating ‘insightment’and storytelling.

International Journal of Market Research 51(4), 2009

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