Advanced Moderating Skills 2010

Pocket-Sized Presentations

AQR’s Advanced Moderating Course promised such a wealth of topics it might have needed five days – but managed it in just two, says Billy Holland.

When I first signed-up for the AQR’s inaugural Advanced Moderating Skills course, I was largely unsure of what to expect. Mindful that there would likely be numerous attendees with significantly more experience and wisdom than myself, I wondered whether I might be entering into a kind of researcher X-Factor: young hopefuls shoved onto a stage to perform in front of a room full of learned old-hands and promptly cut down by a hail of Cowell-esque quips.

Potential tearful scenario

While being informed ‘you have a tendency to ask leading questions’ or ‘your respondent rapport feels a little stilted’ might not have left me in tears (poignantly edited to a soundtrack of Snow Patrol or Leona Lewis), it was nonetheless a scenario I was hoping to avoid. Thankfully, it quickly became apparent that this was a very different kind of training event.

Less a course per se, more an expertly-crafted collection of talks, presentations and exercises, this was a fantastically insightful and memorable event, providing a raft of interesting thoughts, theories and anecdotes.

I was struck early on by the itinerary. The schedule for the two days featured sessions on a range of topics which I doubted could be taught in anything less than an intensive week-long course. They included semiotics, behavioural economics, NLP, clean language; all seemingly fascinating but surely all far too dense and weighty to address in two-hour sessions. Not so.

The course provided concise glimpses into these topics which left the gathered minds with a clear outline of the thinking behind them as well as practical guidance on how to begin applying them to our everyday role as researchers (not to mention an exhaustive reading list for those wishing to immerse themselves further).

Highlights included a session on artful questioning from Tina Berry, based largely on NLP theory; a fascinating introduction to the world of semiotics by Alex Gordon of Sign Salad, and a new look at how we use projective techniques presented by Julie Davey. The latter example featured a film of several research clients talking about their feelings towards the use of projective techniques, highlighting some gold standard examples and voicing their bugbears with them.

This was a fascinating exercise and at certain moments – hearing clients speak honestly about researchers’ performances – I suddenly empathised with the marketing clients or creative agency folk who so often sit behind the mirror at groups and have to listen as consumers rip apart their ideas so gleefully. The video did highlight some important considerations though, principally the importance of remembering that just because we have promised a projective to a client as part of a methodology, we shouldn’t feel hidebound to use it.

One interviewee described a horror moment when watching a moderator flounder with a projective and rather than admit defeat gracefully, she watched as they persisted, only to sink deeper and deeper into awkward respondent apathy.

A personal highlight of the course was a session on behavioural economics delivered by Matt Dobbin of Discovery Research. Matt spoke passionately about this burgeoning area of study and delivered some truly fascinating theories. We learned through some clever examples about the difficulties humans inherently face when attempting to make ‘the perfect choice’ in modern life, with the most revelatory learning being an exploration of the fundamental role that comparison plays within human decision making.

Consumers’ ability to make choices, we heard, is aided immeasurably if they are able to draw a direct comparison with something similar. This thinking was illustrated by an anecdote involving that most ubiquitous of modern father’s day gifts, the bread-making machine. The manufacturers who pioneered the home bread-making machine had identified a fruitful gap in the market. Once launched, however, the product failed spectacularly to sell.

The conclusion was soon drawn that consumers were struggling to take to a product that felt so new, and crucially so unique. In an attempt to overcome this, a ‘decoy’ brand was created to join the ‘category’; deliberately conceived as a less attractive proposition and sold at a higher price. The impact was unequivocal as the original products begun selling like hot-cakes (or hot-loaves…possibly).

Beyond simply acting as an amusing anecdote and case-in-point, this story immediately resonated with some of my own experiences in NPD research. Earlier this year I worked on a project, testing a new cooking product that had – unexpectedly – struggled within quant concept testing. This product was already a mainstay of cooking behaviour in much of Europe but was a completely alien concept here in the UK. Even though it fared more favourably in our qual research than in earlier quant, there remained significant resistance.

The theories presented here suddenly seemed absolutely fundamental, with the product such a new concept and with nothing to directly compare it against, perhaps it was inevitable that it was going to struggle to some extent in research. I then began thinking about the possible implications for future product testing. Should brands reconsider the way they evaluate and launch new products, possibly thinking about creating a portfolio of rival brands – a mock category if you will – whenever testing a new product concept? It was certainly a highly insightful talk and left me with a great deal to think about.

Fantastic event

All in all, it was a fantastic event and we owe a great deal of thanks to all of the AQR members involved in making it happen. Given that it was making its debut, the course excelled in providing some fascinating tuition and theory, all in a slick and enjoyable format. It certainly didn’t fail its audition.