Technological innovations; emerging values and behaviors; changing economic, environmental and political conditions… All can lead to significant impact and potential disruption of an industry.

Is your company prepared to face the future, no matter what it brings? Would you be ready to respond to threats of disruption? Would you be able to anticipate emerging customer needs and address them ahead of your competition? Are you prepared to continuously innovate and avoid obsolescence?

The number of ways to advertise spans the gamut from very expensive Super Bowl TV ads to simple tweets. Clearly both of these extremes will be seen by vastly different audiences. However, even inexpensive advertising has the potential to go viral if the right conditions exist. By extension, monitoring and improving ad awareness and effectiveness may help small organizations reach large number of potential customers.

It is always nice to get together with peers and client's to regroup, generate discussion, and get perspective. This week at Net Gain 2015 hosted by the MRIA we had that opportunity. The day was filled with great speakers and authors discussing innovative technology and offerings in the MR industry. A common sentiment throughout the day was the importance of mobile technology and the fact that all research is mobile research, even if you didn't intend it that way.

IVR data collection continues to surprise me. Before explaining why, let’s take a step back and let me quickly explain what data collection via IVR looks like. An IVR survey consists of a series of pre-recorded  questions, administered via phone. As an example, a “likelihood to recommend” question could be asked as follows:

How likely would you be to recommend [brand X] to a friend or family member on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means “Not at all likely to recommend” and 5 means “Extremely likely to recommend”? Please press any number between 1 and 5.