Respondents ring their own bells

In retrospect you can see where the rot started: when we stopped writing down what respondents said and started filming and photographing them. It was but a short step to giving them digital audio recorders, cameras and camcorders and asking them to capture their own lives and reflect on what they took.

Then we were really in trouble because they wouldn't shut up. What had begun as a happy few hours of analysing groups turned into a multimedia nightmare with no end to the richness of the data they were willing to provide. Even worse, lots of them enjoyed advertising and watched documentaries about how to build great brands thus making them marketing savvy. Yet still we thought we could get away with it - even when they asked the dreaded question: "Are you asking if I like the advertising or if I think it's any good?"

Of course, the old school researchers never put up with any of this: 'just ask - interpret - and debrief the client'. As long as nobody was required to go back and check with respondents whether we had fairly represented what they thought, we knew we weren't going to get caught. But as soon as those trendy internet start-ups began to build online research panels our troubles really started. Clients then saw no reason why they shouldn't build their own customer panels, capable of interacting with them 24 hours a day. Yet, damn it, that's exactly why you need the objectivity of the researcher as gatekeeper. Have you any idea how contaminated these respondents are? The longer you interview them the less reliable they are. That's why we catch them fresh every time and throw them straight back in if there's a hint that they've been talking to other researchers. Honest guv!

The world has moved on - at least in terms of trying to find new respondents. Customers (I can't call them consumers any more - because there's nothing passive about them) have never been so determined to engage with the products and services they buy and the companies behind them. Most, if not all, of the new communication channels have interactivity built in - and these are buzzing. Bits of existing channels which still buzz, meanwhile, do so because they have found a way to add in interactivity.

This puts pressure on the conventional research model where we create a theatre set apart magically from everyday life. Are the outputs from this that much superior to channel surfing where our customers talk back to us through diaries, blogs and bulletin boards? As if this were not enough, one of the most startling developments in all this interactivity is that we now have even less idea about who's doing the interacting. Not only do people have different telephone numbers and different email addresses, they can also take on different identities.