What Will Graduates Think of Market Research post AI and Automation?
How attractive will market research be as a graduate career option once automation and AI have impacted significantly on our small industry?
Attracting high calibre graduate talent is important if we wish to continue to thrive - so it's actually a very relevant question.
There is no cause for MR complacency. Findings from a study published in 2013 by independent organisation Fringe Factory (1.800 graduates surveyed across 9 countries) make for grim reading: only 13% of graduates would consider MR as a career. It didn't make the top 10 of possible professions. You can find the full findings here: Is Market Research Really a Career.
Digital disruption has continued apace since - agility, DIY software, Big Data, AI/ automation are changing the roles and responsibilities of a typical research manager.
If we set aside present-focus bias and apply foresight aptitude to our own business area - are the pushes to AI/ automation going to free up space for highly valued, evidence based MR consultancy - or.... simply make the space we play in smaller, our ability to make ourselves heard diminished?
A conversation I had recently made me wonder.
It was with a seasoned research professional who highlighted the motivational impact of having highly efficient, automated quant tools on his more senior staff. The freedom to have an impact, shape was minimal - that was his take - due to the financial logic of higher-margin standardization. The result: demotivated senior MR staff.
It's fine saying that automation can free humans up to do higher value tasks - but is that is what is actually happening? I'm sceptical.
More specificially: I think we need to kick back hard against over-hyped robotics, automation and AI in MR - to protect the space for people understanding, and to ensure that talented graduates can see roles and tasks within MR that are worth aiming for.
Standardization can easily become the terrain of robots and VC plays - and lead unwittingly to a commoditization of MR. That path has few winners, many losers.
Here's my take:
1. Effectiveness beats Efficiency, People Create more MR Value than Machines.
There's no doubt that using standardised approaches appear attractive when examining the ROI of MR expenditure - costs go down radically, allowing companies to greatly expand the number of say ad pre-tests they engage in on a lower budget.
Cheaper, faster, standardised MR can reach smaller brands and companies due to the lower cost - across the globe. Evangelical MR stuff.
But there's a limit to this - if we get too fixated on efficiency, extending scale and scope, using a cost-lens rather than value, then the danger is we neglect effectiveness and in-depth understanding.
Detailled diagnostics suffer - helping creatives optimise an integrated campaign isn't easy from a range of quant KPIs and a couple of open-enders, whereas say a more robust quant-qual approach is more useful.
We shouldn't fall for the DIY volume trap - churning through concepts, campaigns at low cost. That's sausage-factory stuff. It's also arguably not what many of us enjoy about research: curiosity, people understanding.
Lets fight for the space, argue against the long-tail (!), suggest that we need to avoid the volume-traps that DIY MR offers, and focus on making fewer things even better. Look forward to dissent on this one ;)
2. DIY - Disservice to Industry Youngsters?
The arguments for DIY are seemingly cogent - democratic, involving, lower cost, demystifing.
The results are often sadly shocking.Think back to the last quant. survey you took part it as a participant- was it a good experience? More likely it was long, boring, repetitive, lacking relevance.
I don't wish to sound like King Canute in Luddite central, but I do believe we can do more to highlight and showcase good MR: yes, it exists and we need to celebrate more in our daily lives, at the weekends, at parties.
Informed by social science, robust/valid, connecting authentically to how audiences feel and think. And celebrate authentic intelligence - AI.
Alexa: are you listening?
3. The re-birth of craftmanship.....
A look at trends and adjacent markets suggests a push back against machine powers - longer copy in prose areas, hand-made in clothing/artefacts, mindfulness as a concept, slow food.
Something for market research to ponder? Highly individualised, specialised consultancy commanding a high price tag maybe. If the large consultancies can manage it, why not us?
Lots involved here - bigging up areas of expertise from data mining to psychological savvy in qual, ethnographical know-how, and yes, branding and marketing to capture the value better.
Nostaglic, wishful thinking? Maybe, but there is room for high value consultancy in our area, we just need to stress it, package it, communicate it, de-nerd if needs be.
So coming back to my original point: when we read about opportunities of the gig economy in our industry, of platforms linking buyers to sellers, when we read about wonderful automation options that free our time for more valuable tasks, we need to ask ourselves: who really benefits? Is that the future we wish to embrace - or by saying nothing, simply accept what IT and VCs have in mind?
Graduates already live in a more uncertain world - they're looking for challenges, meaning, autonomy, fulfilment. That's possible in our industry - but we need to make it true in more areas, not less.
Which means pushing back against bogus machine promises, the siren calls of efficiency.
Effectiveness, provocation, inspiration - those are the concepts that are going to capture the imagination of the next cohort of researchers, not the prospect of administering something, managing timelines.
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.