What a Lamppost Uses a Drunk For.

A friend of mine told me that, though he received his law degree from Vandy, he had to do extra study at Harvard before he became a professor. I asked him why he had to go to Harvard and he explained that his bosses wanted to make sure that in a courtroom he could correctly identify who was the plaintiff and who was the defendant. So now you have your highbrow humor for the day. The appropriate reaction is a slight snicker.

My own education had its own gauntlet of sorts, though I imagine nowhere near as perilous as an LLM from Harvard Law. For me, it was two research classes required of all who studied psychology at the University of Georgia's very research orientated psychology program.

I took the first class, Research Design, in the summer, when I had quite possibly the sweetest living arrangement in town. I was a couple blocks from the building where I would be taking my one class for the summer, not paying for utilities and the cost...$50. No, that's not per month. That was the cost for the whole summer. And when you're saving that much money in rent, you have excess funds to spend on other college activities, like taking your best girl to the picture show and singing festive songs at the local orphanage. Yeah, right. We partied like the members of Motley Crue only wished they could.

The professor was one of those laid back PhD candidates who basically promised you'd get an A anyways, but please show up so his review board doesn't get suspicious. Despite our encouraged lackadaisical attitude, however, designing research was interesting. Between rising at the crack of noon and raucous summer bashes, we learned how to create studies, control variables and make comparisons. I wished my entire education would have gone just like that.

But then came the second class, Research Analysis. Our teacher was nice enough, although a bit strange. He was a PhD candidate who didn't really seem to like or be interested in people, an odd characteristic for a psychologist. The class was at dawn and by that time I had moved into a house miles away, meaning I had to fight the other twenty thousand students for the apparently 30 allocated parking spaces. And the class was horrible. With the analysis of research, all the energy and enjoyment of designing research was drained out into the nearby Oconee River. Instead of using research to investigate and solve problems, we now seemed to be finding ways to use research to create new problems, which solved very little. Except we could now point at the amazing complexity of the process we used to say nothing.

As I yearned for the summer days where we pontificated confounds and null hypotheses, I questioned why we were taught the process in two parts. It would seem more logical to teach the design and analysis of a research method, in addition to teaching a variety of methods, rather than break the process apart. Yes, to do that would have been logical. But to put windows in the psychology building with some regular pattern would have also been logical. Instead, the university asked professors if they wanted a window and if they said yes they got one. If they said no, no window and the resulting building looked like it was designed by 8 year-olds who just floated a keg of soda. Logic has nothing to do with it.

And so it often goes in the wild world of marketing research. The design of studies and the interpretation of results too often seem disjointed. And if that is not enough to question validity, many studies start out with no real defined subject, only to follow up the act with an ethereal interpretation designed to support a pre-existing notion. As the late, great David Ogilvy said, marketers often use research like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.

I routinely see studies designed to measure broad and barely defined aspects with a tiny population of participants with obvious confounds, such as an Internet survey to study people who don't use the Internet.

Now for the record, I have worked with some of the most fantastic researchers in the marketing business. Yet even with great research, I have seen managers cherry-pick the results and ignore a huge swath of important data. I have sat in the room and watched my friend Jim Nelems tell a company's leaders to their faces what the issues are, only to watch said leaders either try to discount the findings or ignore them altogether.

I am no research expert. But I am practical and I don't commission research unless I have questions I want answered. And when I do get data, I don't reengineer the questions to fit the results. In the studies I have been involved with, I have observed some amazing technique and skill and, while I could detail all the things I have liked, I think this subject is best addressed by the strongest lessons I learned. These few tidbits stand out to me either because they were not what I was expecting or because they fundamentally shaped the role I see for marketing research.

Better road map than treasure map.
One particularly terrible mistake marketers make is assuming research will predict the future. Sure, we test products and flavors and advertising and that gives us directions for where to put money, time and effort. But what research cannot do is control all the variables. In the lab, a consumer can tell you they prefer a flavor of cough drop. In the real world, you don't know how far the distance is from their house to the drug store that carries your cough drop. This is not to say the research is incorrect. You asked the consumers if they liked the flavor and they said, "Yes". There is a considerable difference, however, between liking the flavor and buying the product.

In my experience, research does a far better job of defining the problem rather than offering the solution. This notion should affect where marketers place the role of research. In at least a few efforts, I have observed marketers develop a product and then attempt to use research to affirm certain notions. Instead, well conducted marketing research should have informed the creation of the product to put it more in line with consumer preference. While some companies do this, the vast majority do not.


Better fairy godmother then magic genie in a lamp.
The genie gives you three wishes and goes back in the lamp until the next wisher happens along. Similarly, plenty of marketers rub their researchers and ask a few questions only to stuff them back in the bottle. Research, however, can advise and inform on all phases of a product's life cycle. Research can flush out attributes most desired by the consumers. It can test positioning strategies and communications. Why put the genie back in the bottle when it can grant all these wishes as well:

Allows benchmarking and testing of strategies in development.
Strategy testing all along the consumer marketing spectrum.
Verifies that strategy from research is aligned and has not skewed.
The better idea is to use your research as a fairy godmother. She exists more like a counselor, helping to inform decisions and granting the occasional wish when needed. Just don't ask for the world and then ignore her advice. She might turn you into a pumpkin.


Doesn't always have to be in a room with one-way glass and lots of M&Ms.
The best researchers can pull data out of anywhere. They can read the b-roll from your corporate videos. They can make inferences from the distribution of your brand magazine. The can diagnose issues from past efforts. I have seen focus groups take place at a customer's house. I have sat in a restaurant and observed customers for an upcoming in-store promotion.

The belief that research must always look like research is a self-imposed restriction. While the controlled setting has its value, one should not eschew the whole other world that is out there.

In today's marketing world, boundaries are falling. Sales and marketing departments have not only signaled a cease-fire, they are beginning to work together. Finance and marketing are beginning to teach each other a common language. And so, the world of research should drop the curtain and begin to better integrate into the whole workings of an organization. Research is a primary window into the life of customers. For the customer-led firm, research is not just an expense or luxury. In fact, a lack of research can be a liability.

They still teach Research Design and Research Analysis separately at the University of Georgia, despite plenty of complaints. I told them that methods should be taught alongside data analysis. I think I made a decent case for connecting the means of getting and understanding data. I put all my concepts on a survey of the course.

A survey, I imagine, nobody ever read.

Put it in a pot

I have to admit that it is not so uncommon for Maura and me to find ourselves without food. I’m not talking about famine from the African plain, but for people who are used to either following a well scripted recipe or heating up Digiorno, finding yourself with a block of cheese, a nearly picked bare baked chicken, four thousand different condiments and two cans of cheap domestic beer means that there’s no food. One with MacGyver-like skills might boil what’s left of the chicken with salt to make a broth, and then combine with the beer and cheese to make a very excellent beer cheese soup. If you have some leftover celery sticks or carrots (ours are often from an order of chicken wings), cut up the veggies and add them as well. This end result has made Maura and me a decent meal when we unable or unwilling to trek to the grocery store.

Other popular fun gourmet includes fried rice made with any frozen vegetables we can find and very interesting salads made with grapes, shallots, whatever cheese is hanging around and the combination of a condiment like hot sauce and a dressing such as Caesar.

But the result is not always so appetizing. We once made a bread pudding that came out more like a quiche. I tried to season venison with tea leaves one time. I know, it sounds nasty, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. The venison smelled so awful that we didn’t even try to eat it. I threw it to the dogs and they refused as well. We even have had the occasional beer cheese soup go terribly wrong. Our first attempt was made with a skunky import and Gouda. The result was so stringy that we nearly suffocated trying to eat it.

The thing about a leftover gourmet is that sometimes you get lemonade from lemons. Sometimes you just get lemon juice. Sure, I occasionally amaze Maura and myself, but you are really taking a chance when you commit to making dinner out of whatever you didn’t eat since you went shopping too long ago. It is more our habit to do the opposite and go to the store nearly everyday. I know it horrifies diet experts and financial gurus, but we simply enjoy the ritual of shopping together for the night’s meal. We like good eating and that you cannot always leave to the chance of leftovers.

I like having a recipe at work as well. I hate having to hodgepodge whatever is in the fridge when it seems the guest I’m serving wants me to throw it together in a pot and have it come out like Emeril himself cooked it. The entrée which I am talking about is a marketing plan. I have cooked them up with the recipe and received five stars. I have cooked them up with whatever I had in the fridge and the consumer critic found it an interesting delight. But other times, when the plans are laid sans recipe, my dogs wouldn’t eat it even if you smothered it in gravy.

I am not entirely certain what motivates people to commit large sums of money to a plan that has hardly been planned. A typical excuse is “we already know what our strategy should be,” to which the reply to my further inquiry is “we believe in innovation.” Sure, that’s real strategic, differentiating stuff.

Another justification for failing to plan is similar to Maura’s and my oft-used excuse for not going to the store. With Maura being a social worker and me spending my time doing things like writing this to you, we often complain we just don’t have the time. Marketing planners should find the time. Maura and I are changing our perspective as we have committed to eating smarter and healthier. We no longer just eat whatever is there. If I eat yogurt for breakfast, I need my granola and if I want my granola, I need to go buy it. I just can’t substitute breadcrumbs or allspice for granola. A desired outcome requires a commitment.

Not having the time to plan for marketing is not a marketing problem, it is a corporate problem. If marketing is truly concerned with how the product or service is delivered and compensated in a particular corporation, then it should be at the heart of corporate planning and not some tertiary concern regulated to whatever resources are left over after the donation to the zoo is made. Sure, go ahead and laugh. I know a $30 million company in a marketing-dependent industry that doesn’t even have a marketing department. That’s how important it is to them. How’s it working? Well, they only closed 50% of the number of locations they grew by last year. Some strategy.

So what exactly is the type of planning I am talking about? What kind of recipe from what type of book and where on earth are you going to find the ingredients? Well, I’ll tell you, and if you are in higher elevations, you might want to adjust your oven.

The list of ingredients.

One part fresh and high quality research.

Sure you could use that 20-year-old research and the result might come out alright, but considering how much the wrong research could ruin the rest of the ingredients (which you paid for), you might as well get the fresh stuff.

As for quality, don’t look for foie gras at the dollar store. If you are going to tack major efforts to the suggestions of the research, be willing to spend what it should take to get it right. This is not time to skimp and get a crack team of juniors or interns. I have said it before, cheap stuff ain’t good and good stuff ain’t cheap.

Season to taste

It sure would be something if marketing plans could be developed with consumer research and then be directly implemented without modification. But this is the real world, and you have to cook with what you got. Once a plan has begun to develop, it is best to consult with all facets of the company that will touch said plan. Production, distribution and field sales are critical; however, they should not be the only ones.

Careful, you want to let others taste a nearly finished dish, not consult on how to cook it. Too many chefs in the kitchen spoil the pie along with the ad campaign.

Let it simmer

My favorite part about a campaign is when we know we got it just right and then we let it simmer to think about what might go well with it. Time away from the problem helps enliven new contiguous concepts like promotions, new products and all myriad of in-strategy maneuvers. It is worth it to let it simmer. As for the beer cheese soup, don’t just eat it, serve it with some fresh French bread if you have it.


You never burn a good roux.


I use a roux in my gumbo and etouffée but I also use it in soups, sauces and red beans and rice. For those who have never made it, a roux is simply flour fried in oil. You want to get a nice chocolate brown, but if you overdo it, it will be bitter. You should charge into marketing with no less discipline (perhaps more, considering that gumbo doesn’t cost you $2.5 million). Take your time. Know the characteristics of the equipment you are using. Use high quality ingredients and don’t be afraid to ask advice from someone who has made a gumbo you enjoy.


Successful marketing is a combination of elements you buy and elements you already have. When done haphazardly with carelessness, it is simply not worth the effort. When done correctly the result is always better the sum of the ingredients. When the preparation is thoughtful, you can taste it. I like to think that the proof is in the beer cheese soup.


Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com