It's tough to turn on the news or look at anything online these days without being beat about the head with the news that the world as we know it - at least the financial and investment world - is in the middle of a spectacular implosion that will forever change the course of history.  It reminds me of Spiro Agnew's great quote about the press, calling them "nattering nabobs of negativism that have formed their own 4-H club - hopeless, hysterical, hypochondriacs of history."

In my own little effort to create a bit of positive karma, I'm intentionally trying to push out some good news.  Here's our good news:

• We are having a great year - our best ever in both revenue and profit - and this quarter, amidst all of the economic turmoil, will likely end up as our best quarter ever.
• We are setting ambitious, not timid, goals for 2009.
• We have added two staff to our team this year, and they are exceptional people that are off to great starts.
• Our entire staff is energized and excited and ready for an even better year in 2009.
• After years - decades, really - of having far too many research intiatives where the methodology was confined to the same old tools and processes, clients and prospects are more interested than ever in pursuing unique and innovative research solutions.
• Our local football teams are playing great.  The Tennessee Titans are 6-0 and Vanderbilt is 5-2. 
• My family is happy and healthy.  I took a one month vacation with my family this summer that turned out to be the most exciting, fun, relaxing, interesting and adventurous thing we have ever done - five countries, two continents and an unbelievable experience for all four of us.

So, to those nattering nabobs of negativism, I say "take that!"

Sometimes as market researchers, we can feel a bit like armchair psychologists, counseling businesses and helping them try to understand exactly what they want as opposed to just giving them what they think they want.  When we get inquiries, we tend to ask questions such as:

• What do you want to know?
• Why do you want to know this?
• What will you do with the information?
• Why now - what has prompted this?
• Who internally is driving this process? You? Your boss? The CEO?
• What kind of data or information will you need to make your go/no go decision?

Knowing why a client thinks they need market research is critical in helping us define and identify an appropriate research solution.  It is in this initial inquiry and search stage that we are often able to uncover one of the hidden subtexts involved, namely - is this something you are doing because you:

1. Need to cover someone's butt on a decision that has already been made (or is already speeding down the track)
2. Face a serious competitive threat that requires some new strategy or product.
3. Know that good times can change quickly, and you want to saty out in front of the market.

Clients may be able to articulate this at the outset, but more often than not we hae to tease the information out of them.  Like a good red wine, some ideas have to breathe some new air before reaching their peak.

A wine breathes only the air from its own bottle for a while.  Drinking it immediately upon opening it will provide you with one taste.  Allowing it to breathe a bit and mix with the "new" oxygen in the room before you drink it, though, will often provide a taste that has more complexity, depth and character.  And so it is with research, some ideas also need the time and space to breathe a little, to mix with some new air that may yield new perspectives and complexities.  Is your research provider serving up a breath of fresh air or oxygen-starved one-dimensional ideas?

Our clients often ask for "actionable results" from the research we conduct for them.  We understand this to mean they don't want a lot of "nice to know" information - they clearly want insights that will help them make confident decisions about what to do when facing a particular problem or challenge.  Actionable results should ALWAYS be the outcome of any type of primary research you are commissioning.  However, what "actionable results" eventually requires, though, is ACTION.

What that action looks like really depends on your definition.  Some clients just want basic qualitative or quantitative validation that their idea or concept is on the right track before investing any more time or money into the idea.  Actionable results in this case would be data that tells them there is or is not some level of support for the concept.  What they want out of the research is a bearing or heading, and the research serves as a compass indicating that they are or are not headed in the right direction.  Others, though, want a road map, a detailed, turn-by-turn route that will lead them to a specific destination.  Here they might be looking for specific thresholds, price point or price elasticity data, or product attributes that are true differentiators.

Whether you're using research as a compass or a road map, both require a solid plan and both require action.  Actionable insight is only as good as the strategy behind it and the execution that comes after it.  Research done effectively can lead you to the forest, point you in the right direction once you get there, and even take you to the right tree in the forest (with a big enough budget, of course!).  But insight without action is like asking for directions for a trip to the forest that you never intend to take.

Are you ready for "actionable results?" 

Americans often get knocked for taking fewer vacation days or paid time off than workers in other countries, specifically European countries.  I just completed what was by far the longest vacation of my professional life - 25 days, taking me out of the office for a full four weeks.

Here are my observations:

Taking that much time off as a single vacation meant that I was able to cut loose the office strings very quickly.  On a one week vacation, you may spend the first day or two still thinking about whatever unresolved issues you may have left behind, then you spend the last day or two starting to think about the work that is stacking up on the desk while you're gone.  This might leave you four days to really relax and unwind.  But by being out for four weeks, the initial concern of unresolved issues at the office had left my system before my head hit the pillow the first night.  No sense in worrying about things that I wouldn't be able to address for a month.  I did start to think about the work on the last day or two, but with very little contact with the office while I was out, I didn't know enough about what was happening there to think too much about it.

The dollar sucks, and the only way to get over it is to convince yourself that Dollars are equal to Euros.  Adding 60% to the price of everything will just make you angry; lying to yourself and acting as if they are the same will make your trip much more enjoyable - at least it did for me.  Hey, at least the wine was cheap (in Euros and Dollars!).

Despite being 41 years old, it took this trip for the secret of vacationing with our kids to appear to me:  Let them stay up late, sleep late, eat gelato every day, and spend some serious time on the beach.  We all know, more often than not, happy kids mean mom is happy.  Add to that my self-hypnotic-induced charade that Euros=Dollars, and everyone had a great time!

David is on the road in Europe for the next four weeks, but you can keep up with him by following his travel blog:

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/hoosierdjb/

As my kids are wrapping up the final days of another school year, I'm sure their lists of what they've learned this year are long (well, hopefully they are).

In that spirit, here's what I heard from my kids during the year that confirmed my belief that some things never change:

• Being popular and knowing who is/isn't and whether any of it really even matters is still a major source of pre-teen angst.
• Sixth grade dances are still boys on one side of the gym, girls on the other.
• We're sad when our friends move away (in this case, to California).
• A lot of homework appears to be just busy work.
• Acne happens.
• Nobody thinks their own dad is funny.
• It's important to know your multiplication tables.
• Mac and cheese is the definition of comfort food, because you can order it anywhere, anytime, and it will always taste yummy.
• Summer break is way too short.
• Everybody likes The Beatles.

Here's what I heard from my kids that show some things will never be the same:

• Phones are for typing (with your thumbs), not talking.
• Second graders are learning to type.
• And once a week they take Chinese.  And chess.
• Sixth graders are discussing the relative merits of Obama, Clinton and McCain.  And the Jonas Brothers.
• Nobody seems to buy the school lunch anymore (thank goodness).
• Having the ability to check your children's assignments and grades online from any computer at any time can be a good thing or a bad thing.
• This just in:  kids say it is definitely a bad thing.

What have you learned from your kids lately?  Tell me about it - comment@PMResearch.com.

Recession?!  We aren't in a recession - just ask Ben Stein!

Ben is without a doubt my favorite lawyer/writer/actor/economist.  Catch his column in the New York Times Sunday Business edition - always a great read.  He's been maintaining for some time now that we are not in a recession by classical definition of the word.  For that to happen, he tells us, there needs to be two consecutive quarters of negative economic activity.  We've had one, but the data on the second quarter won't be in until July - so there's no way we could be in a recession.

In this article, Ben cites a number of reasons to be encouraged rather than discouraged about the current economic situation, including:

• His faith that the Fed will eventually right the ship
• Unemployment is still just %5, and only 3% have been unemployed for 5 weeks
• 94% of all mortgages are still current

Despite what we hear on the news most nights, there is good news out there.  Ben and I want to know if anyone is listening.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?  comment@PMResearch.com

Gotta have the coffee.  I'm not a six cups a day guy, but I really need those two cups first thing in the morning - apparently just like half of the other people in the U.S.  No sugar, no cream, no vanilla-latte-soy-pumpkin with a hint of paprika or strawberries or whatever - just black.  My oldest daughter (age 11, going on 30) thinks coffee is cool, but she can't stand the taste.  So in her mind, filling it up with some expensive vanilla-latte-soy-pumpkin-paprika-strawberry additive sounds appealing, because she won't have to actually taste the coffee in her coffee.  Plus, the cup might have a cool logo on it.  My position has been that I'll let her drink coffee when she can drink it black. 

She's yet to break the one-sip barrier.

How do you deal with your kids and their caffeine cravings?  I'd love to know - comment@PMResearch.com

It used to be that 97%+ of US households had a phone (meaning a landline), and a phone survey conducted using RDD (Random Digit Dialing) was considered a "random sample" because it gave you access to all those households that had a phone – meaning nearly every house in America. 

But times have changed.  Recent estimates indicate that 16% of US households now have a cell phone only – no landline.  While market research is exempt from Do Not Call legislation, the fact is that with 76% of Americans signed up for it, it has created a somewhat more “hostile” environment for survey calls. 

So we have what researchers see as a decidedly disharmonic convergence – legislative pressure + declining landline penetration – which has led to a now shaky definition of "random sample."  In light of all this, then, what is a random sample?  My answer, really, is that in the strictest statistical definition, it doesn’t exist.  At least not in a practical way. 

So what’s a researcher to do?  Get out the blender.  Mixed methodologies that combine data streams from different sources (phone, online, in person, etc.) is a solution that makes sense to researchers and clients alike.  In this spirit, we’ve teamed with Zoomerang, the the nation’s #1 online survey provider, to provide the on-demand research community with an easy way to reach a broader audience. 

Click here to learn more about how to get phone interviews from your online survey with BETi™, brower-enabled telephone interviewing.

I love birthdays - especially when they don't involve getting older.  Today we're celebrating a very special birthday at PMR - the birthday of BETi™, PMR's new browser-enabled telephone interviewing service.  BETi™ brings the best of both surveying worlds, online + telephone, together in one powerful package for licensed Zoomerang subscribers.

We're very excited about the doors this innovation opens for the on-demand research community, and we're thrilled to be launching this product in partnership with Zoomerang, the nation's #1 online survey provider.  The launch comes after months of logistical legwork - brainstorming a customized solution with our techno-savvy Internet gurus, hiring and training of new staff, installation of new equipment, and many sleepless nights (for me, at least).  Finally, nine months later, we have all the pieces and parts in place to make BETi™ a reality.. definitely cause for celebration!!

Check out www.pmresearch.com/beti or http://info.zoomerang.com/prodserv/services/services.htm and find out how BETi™ can help you boost your response rates, talk to hard-to-reach respondents and survey people who don't have email addresses.