11.1
Why I manipulate research to “prove” the story I want to tell

Imagine a standup comedian preparing his act. He gathers an assorted group of willing listeners, sits them down, and explains his bit. He might strike up an interesting conversation about their thoughts on humor, but he won't be any closer to what he really wants: a laugh.
 

In the decade or so I’ve been in market research, I’ve noticed that the industry treats sales like the standup treats laughs. Researchers ask shoppers for their feedback, not their money. Yet just like a standup’s bit, the only way to determine if a marketing idea works is to put it into words and share it with a real audience.
 

This insight has profoundly influenced how I conduct market research.
 

Early on, while I was employed at an advertising agency, I used online surveys to answer questions such as, "Should we position the brand as a soap bar for men with dirty hands or a hygiene product for women with dry skin?"
 

Whenever I presented data, my colleagues would ask, "So what's your insight?"
 

"Umm, I just told you the insight. 27% of men prefer soap that addresses hygienic needs… " I would think, before repeating the results with different words.
 

Once this scene played out enough times, I learned that I had missed the subtext of the question: Make your data relevant to my needs and priorities.
 

Knowing how to capture my audience’s attention was intellectually liberating. I didn't have to stick to the data so closely, and by “not sticking,” I don't mean I was free to manipulate it. I mean its value was determined by how well I could position it as a solution to whatever problem my audience was trying to solve: I had to craft a story that fit their needs first and then use the data to support it.
 

Eventually, these lessons about presenting data helped me to improve how I collected it.
 

At the time, I worked with brand strategists to test their ideas. They would always nudge me to validate their favorite one so they could convince the client to use it. At first, this felt irresponsible, as if I was being asked to stack the deck (which I was). But I realized that working backward to “prove” an idea meant converting the idea into a compelling story to which respondents in a survey would react favorably. So, yeah, I was stacking the deck. But not to present a distorted view of shopper opinion or fool an academic journal.

I started putting as much 'sell' in the research as would be used in a campaign itself.
 

About a year into the job, I received a brief from a client that sold baby formula and wanted to curb the social stigma that some mothers felt when they used it. Prior to my insight, I would have asked respondents in a survey to react to content (usually an image with text and visuals representing a new concept) given to me by a strategist. Instead, with this client, I wrote a short story urging respondents to consider how the social stigma was harming mothers. I was persuading them, not collecting data from them.

The story was about a working mother whose livelihood depended on formula. It detailed the psychology of pumping at work and the advantages formula afforded to her as a parent. In the survey, I found that the respondents who read the story judged women who used formula more favorably compared to a control group. That was exciting. I got my “laugh” – a finely-tuned message the client could use in real ads.
 

When crafting a story to connect my clients to their audience, I found inspiration in something Steve Martin once said about how he honed his act. "Everything was learning in practice, and the lonely road, with no critical eyes watching, was the place to dig up my boldest, or dumbest, ideas and put them onstage."
 

Marketing, like standup, is just finding the optimal sequence of words. You dig up your best idea and put it on stage.