Foreword

Listening is hip! If you are a marketer and not doing it, you are likely to be criticized by somebody. Or do you look in the mirror and think you see someone who is out of it? So, what do marketers and agencies do? They put “listening” on their to-do list. And then they go off and do some listening. Good. It's a start.

But the problem just begins here, because there are so many easy ways to check “listening” off your list. Take a look at Google Trends, talk to some companies about sentiment and brand analytics, set up a community or two, or get IT looking into software solutions.

But is this listening? Is this consistent with the historic opportunity to hear your customers talk honestly about your brand? Or recognizing, as one pundit said recently, that “Twitter is free mind-reading!” I think not.

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) convened its first of four Listening Workshops in November, 2009. Listening is exploding, right? Well, it is, if you count all those projects that are started to get listening checked off the list. But the disturbing thing to me was that many speakers seemed to be preoccupied with the obstacles to effective listening—no budget, nobody in charge; where is the statistical rigor; is it projectable; tough organizational issues; hard to sell internally; ROI difficult to determine; legal has major issues….

So, what's up with this? True listening is scary, that's what's up. It's a big change from our traditional way of thinking.

Consequently, the single biggest opportunity in the history of consumer marketing lies dormant. The singular opportunity to tap into the brain of today's newly empowered consumer in such a natural way—that it gives us the purest “research” ever—is buried in naysaying.

The purpose of this book is to change that, to get you so excited about the promise of listening, the essentialness of listening, the unequaled power of the insight potential of listening, that you will not go another day without taking your important first step.

That little first step? Implement a continuous listening program in your company. Tomorrow. Not project listening; that's checklist stuff. This book will tell you how to do that, well. Welcome to a new world.

—Bob Barocci, ARF President

Bob, I agree. Listening changes the game for people and brands; it brings the promise of people centricity forward. As the IT sector learned, the “tyranny of the installed base” slams the brakes on modernization and innovation, because it is not compatible with existing systems, or because it may require new ways of working and people with new skills or training, or shift power toward customers. Let's hope that our readers will not cower before the “tyranny of the installed market research base” and that they figure out how best to discover, listen to, and act on the conversational “dark matter” that is all around them, and influencing the futures for their companies, products, and services.

—Stephen D. Rappaport, ARF Knowledge Solutions Director