Quality qual builds ‘brands for life’

Still others were concerned that agencies would have to shell out up to £2,000 to nominate a candidate to be vetted, yet accredited researchers might find themselves quickly poached by rivals leaving firms out of pocket and out of work.

The hue and cry reached such a pitch that senior members of the Unilever consumer and market insight team have agreed to discuss and answer quallies’ concerns at the Association of Qualitative Research’s upcoming – and fully booked – summer lunch.

Ahead of that, Research managed to secure an interview with one of the accreditation programme’s architects, Manish Makhijani, global consumer insights director (food).

Research: What led you to develop the idea for the accreditation programme?
Manish Makhijani: This whole thing started with looking at Unilever’s mission to create ‘brands for life’ and with Unilever wanting to be the best marketing company with the best marketers in the world. We realised that you can’t really be a good marketer and have great brands unless you have a great amount of consumer intimacy and that you understand the consumer really well.

Qualitative research is an integral part of getting consumer insights and getting better consumer understanding. So unless we raise the bar on qual research, unless we raise the bar on the quality of insights we’re getting, we’re not going to be able to achieve our ambition.

So three things are happening: 1 ) accreditation – which looks to find the best qual researchers in the world; 2 ) to train the insight managers in Unilever on what good qual research is and how to spot it; and 3 ) training our marketers in how qualitative research can be used most effectively.

It works beautifully for Unilever but it also works well for agencies too because they get to have better conversations with us, and it works for researchers because there is a sense of acknowledgement and achievement that the best marketing company in the world will only work with you.

The accreditation process at a glance

• Researchers will be accredited at two levels: ‘research leads’ and ‘moderators’.
• Applicants are given a mock brief for which they have to write a proposal and a discussion guide and to recruit one live group of six respondents for an hour-long discussion.
• Independent assessors are sent to meet the researcher to talk through the brief, watch the group to discuss afterwards how the researcher might analyse the findings and plan for the debrief.
• The process should last approximately three hours.

The scheme is already in place in countries including China, India and South Africa, where there are already more than 50 accredited researchers. Some would argue there is a need for it in those markets, the newer research markets, where quality can still be an issue – but surely not in places like the UK and US?
MM: We saw a growing concern within Unilever about the quality of qual research that we were using across the world.

What is the nature of those concerns?
MM: One is the quality of insights and debriefs that we get. It’s not very consistent. Sometimes you would get a debrief full of ‘a-ha’ moments that would inspire people to take action, but sometimes you wouldn’t. There is this lack of consistency even when you are using the same agency or similar researchers over a period of time.

The second issue was that there was a whole lot of qualitative research that was being done to evaluate things like advertising or concepts, which we thought was a little odd. That’s not qualitative research, that’s quantitative research. Qual should be about building the concepts or the communication ideas rather than testing the communications ideas.

So, yes, there were concerns like that, and yes, they were bigger in the developing markets. But we realised over a period of time that unless the whole bar is raised, within Unilever and among the researchers we are working with, then things are not going to change dramatically. It had to be a systemic overhaul of qual research.

Are you frustrated to have to take this move? Were you disappointed the industry hadn’t tackled the issue itself with its own form of accreditation?
MM: When we started thinking about it we were surprised to realise that there wasn’t an industry-standard system or process that you could look at. We also realised that a lot of times we – and other companies in fact – look at qual research in a very quantitative manner. In quant, we have alignments with agencies for forecasting, ad pretesting, product testing etc., because of the database they have or the experience they have. But we can’t do that with qual research. Those are not the factors that give you a consistently great output. What matters in qual more than anything else is the quality of thinking that you put on the table. Therefore, unless you identify researchers that are capable of thinking in the way you want them to think then you can’t make any changes.

What’s the success rate in terms of numbers applying versus number of accreditations?
MM: In the markets we have been to so far we have been able to get the number of accredited researchers that we wanted, and a little more in certain cases. So we’re happy with the success rate in that sense.

There’s not a shortage of quality out there, then – it’s just a case of finding it?
MM: It’s finding it and knowing exactly what to look for in order to get good quality.

The accreditation system uses a panel of practising researchers to assess those applying for accreditation. Do you see a risk there for agencies that they are putting their best people forward who might then get poached by any competitors sitting on the panel?
MM: If you want to judge a craft you have to use a skilled professional who is a craftsmen himself.

And I think agencies would fully understand that. But how do you stop them just cherry-picking the best Unilever-accredited researchers to go and work for them?
MM: The situation is very similar to researchers working on a brand and helping us work out a strategy for that brand. How do we stop them going to the competition and telling them what we are doing? There are agreements in place and ethic codes in place to prevent that happening. It’s a similar situation here as well.

Staying ahead of the curve

Keith Weed (pictured), Unilever’s chief marketing officer, has thrown his support behind the accreditation programme. “It’s absolutely fundamental to the success of our sustainable growth agenda that we have a deep understanding of consumers wherever they buy our products,” he says. “Whether it’s in our developing, emerging or mature markets, consumer behaviour is changing so rapidly that if you dare to blink, you’ll miss the latest trend.

“To stay ahead of the curve we need the very best researchers who have the skills and experience to generate the real-time consumer insights we need to create great marketing campaigns for our portfolio of household brands. This accreditation scheme is a really exciting opportunity to help Unilever on its way to becoming the best marketing organisation around the world.”

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