I have been involved in marketing and market research since I was a child. My father, Willis Duff, came out of the media world after working as a morning disc jockey when he was 13 and working his way to the top of one of the biggest media companies of his time, Metromedia. he was 30 years old.

He got tired of working for others and decided to start his own market research company called Entertainment Response Analysis (ERA), one of the few companies using a modified version of a lie detector, GSR analysis, and real-time attitudinal response (RTR). ). dials, both together and independently. This was in the early 1970s, and coincidentally, the company he now worked for was doing the same type of research in Burbank, California, and in fact pioneered much of the early research in this methodology. Unlike ASI Entertainment, ERA initially focused on television and radio news and on-air talent and recruiting research.

Many summers while in middle school and high school, I worked with ERA drilled data, working with the Mini Computers, learning assembly language and basic survey design and then Basic Programming and rubbing shoulders with pioneering market researchers and pioneering tech employees who dad hired.

After college I went to work in Silicon Valley and wielded many different skills as a sales application engineer, direct sales representative, sales manager, marketing manager, director of product research and development, and later as vice president of sales and marketing for a wholly owned subsidiary (at the time) of the Acer Group called Dyna Micro. My father helped me understand how to apply market research to my job as VP of Marketing and how to gather information about which ads and which ad placements were generating sales and I was able to use my programming skills and database experience to develop implementations of CRM. I became involved and invested in a company focused on state-of-the-art software-driven monitoring and control systems and data acquisition related to HVAC, security, power systems, and other industrial systems during this period with a company called SourceNet and Wisdom Electric.

All of these diverse experiences and relationships eventually led me to ASI Entertainment and I have been here for 15 years working with data acquisition hardware and software and market research methodologies.

What I want to talk about in this article is the role of real-time market research as a constructive tool in the content development cycle. One paradigm that has held market research back is the view that it is primarily a diagnostic tool. While it is a diagnostic tool, I feel its greatest potential benefit is as a feedback mechanism during the creative phase of content development. This is particularly true of the type of research ASI conducts, which typically incorporates real-time response (RTR), audience research, and development methodologies.

ASI has the ability to perform detailed audience feedback on content that looks at the nuances of audience response to content such as character relationships, dialogue, plot, action levels, comedy, drama , pacing and everything creative content producers are concerned about. While most professional content developers are highly skilled and extremely talented in these areas, methodologies such as those conducted by ASI allow for early concept testing of critical elements of a pilot or episode and can provide writers, directors, and even actors information that can help. they streamline important nuances of their creative process to prepare content to be optimized for research before it goes through routine traditional diagnostic testing through the various diagnostic testing systems and subsequent rating metrics.

My question to creative teams at large content producers remains “why not use real-time testing at all stages of content development?” While there are clearly time and budget constraints, it seems to me that the value of having content already optimized before it reaches the normal diagnostic stage of market research testing is likely to provide substantially higher success rates for content developers. content and could also save a lot on costly content strategy course corrections at a later stage. I think this is even more true for ad agencies. Real-time content analytics of advertising gives agencies and advertisers a platform to really get ad concepts and specific content elements and optimize the flow for the target audience before a large amount of money is spent to produce the content. finished and even more to place the content. An ASI test and data can be started and completed with just a few days’ notice and actionable data is ready the day the test is performed. With so much money being spent on advertising campaigns, it makes sense to me that research and creative teams can work in a more constructive and proactive relationship with each other. I guess I’m just an optimist, and yet I’ve spent most of my adult life wondering about this.

While an increasing number of creative content companies are applying this approach, it remains a mystery to me why this real-time market research app isn’t being applied much more widely. I think part of the problem is that there has been an unfortunate and long-standing tension between the roles of market research and content development in most corporate cultures. That’s very understandable to me, and yet I think commercial and creative developers are losing out because of this unfortunate paradigm.

I’m a rock and roll music composer and my band “Pure Light” is quite sensitive to having our work judged and, until recently, would have been quite reluctant to have it tested through market research. That is changing for me now.

Now I just post rough cuts on the ReverbNation website under my band, Pure Light, and if it gets hits and positive feedback, then I know its good and if it doesn’t, I go back to the drawing board, rewriting, cutting and then re-editing. . Sometimes I get really good constructive criticism from my “fans” and other “artists” who are subscribed to “Pure Light”. Their market research is cheap, but I’ve learned the value of this kind of semi-real-time response.

I am a hobbyist musician but an accomplished lead guitarist and as a hobbyist I regularly post rough cuts on the internet and almost entirely for my own market research purposes. At some point I would like to bring my music for RTR tests and focus groups among my target audience. At this point, I don’t think I’ve developed my songwriting and singing skills enough to warrant this. However, if I ever become a full-time professional songwriter, producer, or band member, I will definitely be directing RTR on my songs. Of course, doing gigs provides its own form of real-time feedback, doesn’t it? I may be too experienced to start touring right now, but maybe after my daughter leaves for college, I’ll create a band called “The Old Guys.”