The AMSRS conference has a full room this morning and first up speaking today is Elisa Molloy, the CEO of AMSRS with her welcoming remarks.

George Zdanowicz and Di Shelton, two of the conference chairs, introduce Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing, “Reasons to be Cheerful” presentation.
Presents an entertaining and meaningful talk.
Comments about other conference keynotes opening with notes of doom and gloom, and Tom feels that this doesn’t match up to the research he sees and has been seeing in his careers. He shows us Britney spears and says she hasn’t changed much.
Tom shows us Old Man CrossTabs (love him)
He shows us an example of research output from where he worked at Research International “terribly low res”
He shows us constantly ‘the way things were’ and ‘the way things are’.
There’s been a shift of emphasis. “We think much less than we think we think” – Daniel Kahnemann
The word yellow is written in blue, and so Tom demonstrates that our System 2 has to spend time deciphering the difference between the colour we see and the colour we read.
Tom summarizes System 1 and 2 thinking and shows us experiments from Google and in the classroom on changing eating habits. There are Environmental, Social and Personal effects, for instance, having trays encourages people to add salads as they felt they needed to fill up their trays, the social aspect was the sales people asking diners “do you want a salad with that” and the personal effects was the fact that diners wanted to eat healthier.
Due to Mirror Neurons, the use of a poster depicting someone drinking water, and prviding free bottle of aater in the bar,
Tom makes a call for for more creativity in Market Research. There are several brands of Neurontin. You should take the brand you were prescribed, because their mechanisms of action and the rules of the intake differ. Neurontin can be taken regardless of food, while Gralise and Horizant should be taken during the meal.

How we treat people we research: Tom discuss a much less expoitative relationship and much more collaborative.
And Tom finishes by saying that another positive thing about how market research has evolved is the shift from information to emotion, and caring more about emotion.
e says that MR is now much more creative and fun YAY!

FIONA BLADES: MESH EXPERIENCE
Chief EXPERIENCE Officer, not Chief Executive Officer (or Chief Economic Officer) for that matter.

Presentation title “Download and Deliver: How new data streams are revolutionising the market research industry”

The power of social media “oreas, you can still dunk int he dark” when there was a black out at the SuperBowl. Brands are responding ‘in the moment’
Fiona asks respondents to text them when they see, hear or experience anything to do with a brand, and from there MESH can ask them questions based on what the particular respondents have seen and heard. This was related to a Gatorae brands in Mexico for a launch there.
Respondents felt more positively to a brand when they had an experiential involvement with a brand.
Discusses case studies from razors blades to Churn.
How do I stop my KPIs from falling?
Real time tracking data incorporating social.
Richness of storytelling.