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ARF President asks why is listening so scary?

In: listening
Comments Off on ARF President asks why is listening so scary?

True listening is scary, that’s what’s up. It’s a big change from our traditional way of thinking. So, the single biggest opportunity in the history of consumer marketing lays dormant.

Marketers, take note: the curiosity impulse can lead people to discover and engage with your brand. Curiosity short-circuits the linear funnel from awareness to interest to desire, blah blah. Curiosity leads to purchases that are serendipitous and often spontaneous.

In a long-tail world of choices that are sometimes not very functionally different, perhaps “interesting” is the new “better”.

Six big wakeup calls in 2009 are doing the marketing research profession a favor; refocusing us on what it will take to conduct trustworthy research, find unexpected feedback, provide anticipatory insights, measure media in a way that people now choose to experience it, and properly rebalance our understanding of how people choose brands by placing more emphasis on understanding the shopper.

Internet research has some huge advantages. It is not only faster and less expensive; it offers an environment that is more native to our digital, interconnected world. We must not shy away from finding the best way of harnessing the more realistic environment that internet research can offer.

Listening reveals insights via social and open-book approaches. Listening is about studying the change-makers (people) in a way that is native to how they are increasingly living their lives. We must learn how to add listening to our survey-based approaches for generating anticipatory insights.

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