Powerfeedback by Scott

“The UK’s Advertising Standards Association has ordered consumer product manufacturer Procter & Gamble to pull a TV advert for Clairol hair dye, which makes misleading claims about the results of a survey.”

I hope for Procter & Gamble’s sake that they outsourced this survey. If not, and it was done internally, some people will be added to the jobless rolls :-(

Hmm, maybe P&G will start returning our phone calls now ;-)

“Gender discrimination still prevails in organizations around the world, but is now behind closed doors, preventing women from entering executive ranks from the earliest days of their careers, according to new research from Development Dimensions International.”

Though no earthshaking news offered here, this is still a worthy read for women, HR managers, and anyone else who cares about making improvements in the workplace.

“Aggressive marketing was the subject of sessions at the recent Fifth Biennial Childhood Obesity Conference held this week at the Westin-Bonaventure in Los Angeles.”

While programs like this are well worthwhile, like most marketing campaigns, they forget an important link —- market research.

Rather than waiting years to see the actual impact of results of reducing childhood obesity, or the target of any other marketing campaign, you must tie in a program to measure success of the actual effort.

As an example, if you run an education program, conduct an ad campaign, change your branding/logo, offer new services and products, or, anything else that involves marketing, if you don’t measure its effectiveness, you are essentially shooting arrows into the air with no target in sight.

In these economic times, gut instinct is not enough to risk large sums of capital (financial or otherwise) on.

Have you heard about all the companies cutting marketing and market research budgets? Apparently the fine folks at Walmart are even smarter than we initially thought!

“The company has invested heavily in market research, polling more than a million customers monthly directed to its website from its stores. “I’m proud of the story here, because I think it’s showing how marketing is making a really big difference to a company that maybe didn’t take it as seriously as they do today,” he said. “I think marketing is at the forefront of championing the customer internally and doing something about it.”

Wow! Even though Walmart is profitable, expanding, hiring, and overall doing well, they are still making the investment to better understand what does, and does not, motivate the customers!

“Walmart has worked extensively to retool its marketing effort, Mr. Quinn said, noting a new customer-segmentation model in recent years, a step up in marketing analytics and building up the talent pool in the marketing department.”

Think that your company can’t afford market research? Perhaps the better question is; can you afford not to conduct market research?

“LONDON - More than 70% of market research agencies believe that the market research industry is being hit hard in the current economic crisis, according to a survey.”

I don’t mean to be cruel, but very frankly, the aforementioned link, as well as this report prove how much useless information is made public.

Did we learn anything new from this report? No! Is everything mentioned overstated? Yes! Could the reported findings be applied to virtually any industry in the current economic downturn? Yes!

I hope that whomever wrote this story, as well as the person who reportedly conducted this research are “rookies.” This would be the only acceptable excuse for this waste of the written word.

Very interesting survey results. Kudos to the folks who conducted it :-)

“The Partnership for Public Service released its fourth “Best Places to Work” survey last week. The study, started in 2003 and conducted every two years, tracks employees’ satisfaction with their agencies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission once again is the top-rated large agency — it led the pack in 2007, as well — and the Surface Transportation Board is first among small agencies.”

I applaud President Obama for this initiative-

“The Obama administration plans to use a biennial survey of employee satisfaction and morale to shape the 2011 budget process, according to Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget.”

As we encourage all of our clients, this is a key element of success for employee satisfaction surveys.

While I salute agencies such as tourism groups who are attempting to counter the recession with aggressive marketing plans to draw visitors to their area, they should proceed cautiously.

Simply stated; without market research to help understand what potential visitors either want, and/or don’t in their experience, the “plan” is lacking.

Put another way, if a tourism agency draws 50,000 people to their area this weekend, and when the people arrive they don’t find what they are looking for, and what they were expecting, there will be much more long-term harm than the short-term benefit afforded to the region.

Do the research and you will have sustained success.

“In a downturn, employees’ concern about their own performance is greater than ever, even among the star performers, says Lila Booth, a Philadelphia-area management consultant. In the face of silence about performance, she warns, people are apt to think, “I’m next in line for the ax.” Employees need ongoing feedback on performance and on the financial state of the company, she says, to avoid “the fear and fury” such anxiety can cause.”

I could not agree more! We do work in this space every day, and this gives even more credence to what we say; now more than ever, employee feedback and assessment is vital to the short and long term health of a company!

Last week I wrote a blog post regarding American Express.

Today we learned that they are firing 4,000 workers.

Despite receiving $3.4 billion dollars of taxpayer money, American Express is putting workers out into the cold.

I don’t understand it. The Federal Government keeps giving Wall Street, Banks, Detroit, and Trucking Companies money as they are “too big to fail”, yet, they are terminating employees. What exactly is the point of the bailout?

American Express was once a great company. Based my own experiences, they have fallen badly. Mastercard, Visa and Discover are much better options, and they don’t charge for their cards!