Quirk’s January Issue

Google now processes, on average, over 40,000 search queries every second; this translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. The way people engage with brands and online content is constantly evolving. No single day of digital behavior is the same as another. If I want to learn about the newest fitness gadget, I search it online. By the next day, I may be over fitness and want to know how to convert my home to a “smart” home, so I search it up. Later that same afternoon, I may want a new refrigerator that can build me a shopping list. Or, I may just want to buy something mundane like shampoo (you know the kind that makes my hair that cool silver-purple color) , so I simply look it up on Amazon and click “buy now.” If brands want to stay competitive, they need to able to keep up with radical, fast-paced changes in consumer online behavior.

Brands have a great appetite for understanding how people behave and make decisions online. They need to understand their customer’s purchase influencers beyond demographic and attitudinal data; passive tracking data captures how consumers move across the digital world, allowing brands to keep up by tracking their customer’s digital journeys – in real-time.

Adopting a passive metering strategy is not without challenges. The challenges range from technology implementation and respondent adoption to understanding of the data. There are oceans of it, and it is totally unstructured. Despite these challenges, more and more clients are diving in and having success finding those nuggets of “data gold” they would never have uncovered with surveys alone. Brands need to start somewhere, and rather than trying to uncover the holy grail of all that Passive Metering can do, simply looking for trends in the data at a high level can deliver those unexpected “aha moments” brands want.

Keep in mind, consumers are complex. Passive Metering is a super effective starting point to understand what people are doing without disrupting or influencing their behavior. However, there is no one simple research formula or methodology that is all-knowing. Blending methodologies has been — and will continue to be– crucial for brands to really understand their customers. The opportunities for connecting digital behavioral data with traditional survey data, 3rd party data or even longitudinal data available through other innovative research approaches such as Insight Communities, translates to in-depth, actionable insights brands need.

We keep hearing Passive Metering is coming as the next “big” thing in research. Truth is, it is already here. It has been here for years. I encourage researchers to stop overcomplicating it. Take the risk of not knowing everything in advance, find great clients to experiment with and dive in. Remember, you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

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ISA Marks 35 Years

Watching the next generation of ISA flourish has been fun. Many were born in the 1990’s, and soon we will have the first who were born in this century.

After 35 years at ISA, and almost 40 in market research, what keeps me motivated and looking to the future? Technologies that once seemed like science fiction are now an everyday occurrence. It’s not just the growth of the company and the expansion of our offerings that excites me, its seeing our clients and employees flourish.

When I began my career at Suburban Associates at the Bergen Mall in Paramus, NJ, everything was completed on paper. The company did not even have hand-held calculators! Tabulations were done with punch cards. Move ahead to 2017 — where paper and pencil are considered the dark ages and where ISA completes projects involving passive metering, insight communities, our own MySoapBox Mobile app, projects in Somalian, Urdu and Hmong and large complicated automotive clinics. Diversification is part of our business culture. Our offerings will continue to change and grow in response to dynamic changes in the industry.

We have amazing clients and employees. It would be great to acknowledge all of them by name, but that would take 25 pages. You know who you are. Several of our clients have been with us almost as long as I have. There are ten employees who have been with us for over 25 years and four of those for over 30. It has been a privilege to watch many of our employees meet their significant others here, (or while employed here) and have children. I met my wife, Taylor, at ISA.

Reflecting back on the 35 years of our growth and accomplishments, I am pleased with our ability to continue advancing our expertise in multicultural research. ISA has completed projects in 67 languages, to date, and has been awarded three Researcher of the Year Awards by the Asian American Advertising Federation. (The 3AF) Our four divisions, ISA, Q-insights, SoapBoxSample and icanmakeitbetter, all continue this tradition by offering their services in multiple languages.

Watching the next generation of ISA flourish has been fun. Many were born in the 1990’s, and soon we will have the first who were born in this century. Viewed through the lens of five different decades of being in market research, I feel very fortunate to be a part of this growth and change.

By my rough estimate, in 35 years we’ve conducted around $400 million dollars in research for our clients. That’s not a big number when you look at the entire industry but it’s significant to us.

None of our accomplishments were done in a vacuum. Alongside me were accomplished, supportive partners; Arnie Fishman, Dave Sackman, Tony Kretzmer, Michael Liebergall and Sy Lieberman. They need to be acknowledged as well. ISA would not have thrived without them.

It’s been a great ride and it’s not over yet! I can’t wait to see what our team has planned for tomorrow, next week, next year and into the future. With warmest regards and respect to all our friends, colleagues, current and former employees, thank you for allowing me to join you on this journey.

 

Michael Halberstam

Chairman, ISA

SoapBoxSample Adds Industry Specialist to Team

Anthony Bean Joins the Sales Team as Senior Account Executive

March 14, 2017, Los Angeles, CA – SoapBoxSample, part of the ISA family of companies, announced today an expansion of their sales division. Anthony Bean will join the team as a Senior Account Executive. In this role, he will manage client accounts and build relationships with key industry players to achieve aggressive sales goals for 2017.

Bean says: “I’m thrilled to be able to join the SoapBoxSample team. The company is well-regarded within the market research industry making some bold moves over the past few years to lead the way in new methods to solve client problems. I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to work with SoapBoxSample’s expansive portfolio of products and services to deliver world-class solutions to our clients.”

Anthony is a result-oriented team player with 12 years of experience under his belt. Most recently from Toluna, Bean’s background includes positions with Harris Interactive and J.D. Power and Associates. He has distinguished himself in the Market Research industry with his extensive expertise across automotive, financial, film industry sectors and his community solutions awareness.

Jacqueline Rosales, SoapBoxSample Chief of Operations, added “We require talent who can ask the tough questions of clients and really understand the core of their business to recommend the best approach and combination of methodologies. We are super excited for Anthony to join the team. With the changing landscape of research, our clients need forward-thinking thought partners and Anthony has had great success building relationships on this premise.”

SoapBoxSample’s continual staff expansion allows the company to focus on optimizing new products and services while continuing to provide high-quality, customized solutions for their clients. In 2016, the SoapBoxSample and icanmakeitbetter (ICMIB) operations were integrated following the acquisition of ICMIB by SoapBox’s parent company ISA. With the addition of insight community platform capabilities, SoapBoxSample now offers an even more diverse portfolio of products.

Last year SoapBoxSample added multiple new capabilities to its product lineup. MySoapBox Meter seamlessly collects behavioral data from PC, mobile and tablet devices, gathering a holistic view of a consumer’s path to purchase. SoapBoxSample also expanded their mobile missions’ features last year, by enhancing their mobile app MySoapBox Mobile. The app captures respondent’s digital journeys in real-time. Respondents can upload photos and videos securely through the app, to a cloud-based storage solution. MySoapBox TV stores respondent’s photos and videos, which clients can easily view, tag and edit.