I've been advising clients to exercise skepticism when evaluating anything positioned as a "best practice". What works well at one company is sometimes counterproductive at another.
Today, I received an email promoting excerpts from a study titled, "Developing the High Peformance Market Research Function: Study Excerpt".
Aside from providing no criteria against which the practices described were evaluated, the premise of this report seems to defy logic. The report is essentially a derivative of research performed by the sponsor on behalf of its clients, which begs the following question. Why would client firms knowingly handover proprietary secrets (their best practices) for publication to the world?
For those readers who are concerned about this, you need not worry. Here's an example of a best practice cited in this report. "Competitive intelligence stands out as a research activity that many benchmark partners seek to integrate within their market research organizational structures." Here's another, "Benchmark partners were aligned in their aspirations to turn market data into intelligence that can grow the business."
There are other best practices, which border on the comical, such as one suggesting that when companies invest tens of thousands of dollars in focus groups someone from product teams should actually attend the groups.
There is in this excerpt no acknowledgment of the lowly perceptions of marketers, and particularly marketing researchers, among CXOs (see my earlier post, "There's an Elephant in the Room"). There are no new prescriptive methods described outside of similar platitudes that were uttered decades ago.
As catalysts of strategic adaptation and innovation, we have a sacrosanct obligation to our colleagues, employees, our shareholders and our customers to get it right. Getting it right starts with an open mind accompanied by critical thinking and a good measure of honesty. If we're really honest with ourselves, do best practices like these have a place in our communal dialogue?
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