On 30th March 2022, GreenBook published an article written by FlexMR’s Chief Marketing Officer, Christopher Martin. In this article entitled Does Market Research Need a Slow Revolution, Chris explores the concept of the dangers of quick agile research, the concept of the Slow Movement, and how this all translates to market research and insight generation.
The Slow Movement is a quasi-philosophical and counter-cultural belief system, and it has a range of tangible impact on human and commercial activities. It has been applied to a number of industries from technological innovation to parenthood, and sparks two very particular questions: can and should it be applied to market research?
Chris poses this question in his GreenBook article, by saying that “what will a deliberate rejection of speed achieve?”
While quick, agile research has its place in the market research experience, the insight industry’s intense focus on fast research has allowed dangerous habits and challenges to form. Would an industry-wide rejection of the pursuit for even quicker research experiences make way for more thoughtful research, filled with the technologies and methods gained by agile research but more deliberate insightful actions?
Chris explores the benefits of embedding the principles of the Slow Movement in market research strategies. The best explanation for Slow Marketing comes from Simple & Season’s Slow Marketing Manifesto:
“It’s about making a business based on genuine human connection, it’s about marketing ourselves and our business in a way that doesn’t feel like we’ve sold our souls, it’s about building trusted, long-lasting brands. It’s about being valuable, about using our knowledge and intuition, and about picking the most efficient ways to utilise our time so we can do some living too.”
There are several practical benefits that could emerge from embedding techniques from the Slow Movement into research designs, such as, reimagining the customer-centric cultures in businesses, developing key programmes without the influence of cultural contexts, and targeted research task design for better insight generation.
With insight experts operating in commercial environments for the most part, it’s impossible to reject the structure of performance and target achievement, however slower research can operate in that environment too.
To find out more about the Slow Movement and to read the full article, visit the GreenBook website here.
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