Fishburn Hedges

20.07.2009

Fishburn Hedges director, Marc Moninski, explains why getting an insight into people’s lives is a key part of being a better marketer.

It ought to go without saying to anyone in the marketing services industry that the end audience is at the heart of everything we do. Knowing who they are and what interests and motivates them is a fundamental part of the marketing practitioner’s art. It is the basis on which we challenge client briefs, create strategies, develop campaigns and select media channels.

Yet how often do you have conversations in the office about a soap, or Big Brother or Britain’s Got Talent only to hear at least one person declare – all too often in a sneering and somewhat condescending tone of voice – that they “don’t watch EastEnders”. For EastEnders you can, of course, insert the name of any programme that might not fit with such middle-class pretensions.

Right. They work in marketing. But they don’t watch the most popular programmes on TV in their front room. And they’re the ones being condescending?

It’s a bit like saying that you work in PR and don’t read The Sun. Oh.

I’m not saying that you have to watch or read these things religiously, everyday. But surely having some idea of what’s capturing the popular imagination is important. Especially as it often sets the media agenda and, as dear Gordon ringing SuBo has shown, it even sets the agenda of world-stage politicians.

Of course, knowing what people watch and read doesn’t provide enough insight on its own. It doesn’t tell us why, and it doesn’t tell us what else might be capturing their attention and imaginations, or what might be worrying them (although arguably Big Brother gives us a voyeuristic view of lives we ourselves don’t lead). That’s where research comes in.

But – and it’s a big but – almost always, we conduct research with a defined purpose (‘answer question x’). After all, it’s an expensive undertaking. Understanding context is all too often relegated to the discussion warm-up phase of group research and the results ignored as a necessary but inconvenient step in getting us to the nub of the discussion.

But understanding context is more than that. It’s about getting an insight into people’s lives, and that’s a key part of being a better marketer. It’s one of the reasons why Fishburn Hedges has set up The Front Room – a regular and informal research group discussion amongst what will, over time, be a wide range of different audience types. Talking to people about the worlds they inhabit – rather than just why they prefer product x over product y – will be what really makes us better communicators.