Let’s Talk Data

Each May, the mad rush begins.

As the rest of the world stops to smell the growing roses, the demographic data vendors of the world are all working feverishly to be first to market with their latest and greatest updates and projections.

What exactly are updates and projections, and why do they all start coming out about the time when the last snows have melted (at least in Syracuse!) and spring fever hits?

Keep in mind that the major vendors all work with the same base for their calculations: the US Census. They all add in various sources of data to make their own flavors of demographic soup. Each year out from the Census, 2001, 2002, 2003, etc. the data for small levels of geography really gets stale. So these vendors make their money by creating “estimates” for the current year. Most companies in this business have a fairly rigorous model that involves lots of local source data plus additional current population surveys. Add to that list counts from large list brokers and you have a pretty decent formula for estimating the current population.

Projections on the other hand can range from 5 years to 10 years out, and some brave companies (Woods and Poole for example) produce projections for as far out as 20 years. So much can change in five years — much more so in 20 — and it is widely acknowledged that it is difficult to produce projections with great precision that far out. However, for some companies, a very, very educated guess is well worth the price — and so, long term projections are essential data points.

But the question remains, why May? Why not January? After all it is already 2006, why do they wait until the middle of the year to get out new numbers?

I’ve always been told that it takes a long time to gather all the required information into the models, tested, then released. I think that with the 2010 Census changes, we’ll see a very different update schedule in the coming decade. Data can be transformed so much easier, workstations have incredible power, too, and therefore numbers can be crunched and tested so much faster.

Perhaps some day, we’ll be saluting the new numbers with the champagne left over from New Year’s festivities?

“So what exactly are you working on now?” people say to me when they learn that I am a market researcher.

I explain that we’re pretty tactical (and practical) researchers. We have a lot of fun solving data related problems in ways that give us what our clients need.

My team considers good data to be the “prey” if you will, and the game is all about hunting for it, using all and any means possible.

And, right now? We’re in the middle of our largest game!

Let me explain. I haven’t had much time to blog in recent weeks, as I have been actively involved in a big project for one of our favorite clients — a big technology company. They are fun to work with because despite their size, they are incredibly flexible and imaginative and let us really work without being shackled by some old time practices.

We are collecting primary data for this client — (I hate that term, client — because we’re all like one big team — but some of us are internal and some are external.) Primary data is just what it sounds like — first hand information — collected in this case, with a massive, industry-wide survey effort.

We’ve thought through the process carefully, and have really spent a lot of time setting up the “net” for the data. Better yet, the project that we are working on allows all of the participants (and respondents) to get access to the results — which makes it even more rewarding — and challenging.

Writing surveys to collect specific data is probably the most difficult task market researchers have to do. Ask too much and you lose respondents. Ask too little and you don’t get enough information to make good decisions. Follow the rules too closely when recruiting respondents and you get low response rates. Be too avant-guard and people think you’re trying to scam them. And the questions — oh the questions. Can’t be leading, but can’t be too vague. Must anticipate all the options, yet be sure to leave room for the ‘other’ that someone is sure to think of! Writing surveys — while seemingly simple, is a deceptively difficult task.

We are also of the mindset that information is power — and one of the best things about this project is that we’ve created an online community to serve the people that surround the industry we are researching so that we can share the information. We hope to empower businesses that use the equipment we measure by letting themselves benchmark their practices against others in the community.

Our focus is on specialty printers — (what you say??? ) These are printers designed for particular tasks such as high volume mail addressing, labeling, barcoding, etc. While we’ve spent most of our time over the last several years focusing on inkjet — we’re learning about all the different types of printing technologies out there and it is facinating.

Sometimes, I sit back and laugh. Here we have The Catosphere — access to demographic data in any shape and form we wish — plus mailing lists, too, for just about any consumer target you can dream up. But with our printing community project ThinkPlaza, we need to be more like “guerilla marketers” — because the equipment we are measuring doesn’t follow any particular firmographics (like industry, size of company, etc.) and there are very few lists that contain the right people for our surveys. Kind of like being in the ocean and not being able to drink the water!!! Not that I’m complaining — I’m fortunate to have a team that LOVES challenges like these. Keeps it interesting. Makes me leap out of bed some mornings at 4:00am with an “aha” moment…

Anyway, that’s the scoop.

(My first love is demographics and visualization of patterns on maps. So, soon, we’ll be starting our “Let’s Talk Data” newsletters..and hopefully, we’ll be able to demystify all kinds of things about demographics, geographic information systems, and yes, research.)

Night!