At Face we don’t like standing still; partly because we are always looking to improve and do things better, and partly because as the world changes we need to change with it. 2010 will be no different, and we are bursting with new ideas for products, communities & projects. Here are our predictions about the research & innovation business in 2010, and a sneak preview of some of the things Face will be up to.
1. 2010 the year when research goes truly mobile as smart phones become commonplace and research on the go starts to catch up
Face will be developing a smart phone application that allows us to conduct research more effectively on the go and in real time
2. The year when the research industry embraces & empowers consumers as researchers, to truly reach the parts that researchers cannot reach – peer2peer research shows what the industry looks like turned inside out.
Through our communities Headbox & Mindbubble we are training consumers to act as researchers within their own peer groups going undercover and asking the questions we didn’t even know we needed to ask.
3. The year when Tech Research & Innovation begins to learn from FMCG research in terms of innovation and product development. Why? Because the consumer is now the subject & not the object of technology.
Face is launching our own tech community in 2010, aimed at engaging tech leaders in insight and innovation work
4. The year that social media & the web as a source of insight is finally taken seriously. Everyone wakes up to the fact that the greatest source of data is around us all the time – it’s just a case of harnessing it. No more excuses.
Face launches 2 new real time research products – Pulsar Snapshot & Pulsar Tracker – designed to monitor and analyse conversations and interactions around brands & categories in real time.
5. Co-creation & communities go east – increased confidence in the methodologies takes them firmly out of the west and into Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia & South Pacific
Face is launching community platforms & co-creation projects in India & Australia, building on existing platforms in China, Russia, Thailand, Philippines & Indonesia.
6. Death by Powerpoint becomes death of Powerpoint, slowly, slowly. One day soon. We won’t be crying.
Face will be emphasizing visual clarity & simplicity in terms of outputs and making more and more of our debriefs / output material available online as an ongoing treasure trove for clients
7. The year that the industry embraces communities in their ongoing insight, innovation & planning cycles, enabling them to work in the real world as their brands become as social as the people consuming them are!
Face has developed an adaptive brand planning process that helps Insight, Planners & Marketing people to keep their brand planning dynamic, organic and always on!
8. The year of the rebirth of insight. Researchers realise that processes like Co-Creation, Communities & Crowd-sourcing are not just there to play with, but are serious methods of getting better result, especially in the day in day out job of getting clients closer to their customers.
Face is doubling the size of its insight teams and putting actionable insight at the heart of everything we do
So, 2010, some big challenges & quite a journey ahead but a truly exciting time for us and the industry as a whole. Look forward to going on that journey with you.
