XDay 2022 - Research's Real Role, and Outputs for Inspiration

Welcome! This month, Matt was invited to speak for QuestionPro again, and this time, it was for their Spring XDay 2022 event! This event spanned through a course of three days with Research Monday, Customer Experience Tuesday, and Workforce Wednesday. Of course, as a researcher, Matt presented on Research Monday and delivered a wonderful presentation on how market research is the muse to great marketing. 

In “The Muse: Research’s Role, and Output for Inspiration”, Matt dives into the role of research, which is ultimately to inspire. Market research can inspire all types of marketing, whether it’d be before a marketing campaign, or even during an existing one. 

And there are several ways to present great insights! From journey maps to personas, creative briefs, dashboards and more, market research outputs must inspire. Simply creating a general report isn’t enough to absorb the information. As researchers, we must be the match to the explosion of great marketing.

View the full presentation below for more insights! (Matt begins speaking at 16:39)

Data is Beautiful: A Compilation of Our Favorite Charts and Statistics

Greetings! We hope you had a great Valentine’s Day and wonderful February so far! To celebrate, we’d like to share our love of our favorite part of our jobs; data.

At S2 Research, we believe that data is beautiful! With every report we work on, we constantly refine and improve our data visualizations because it’s what helps tell the story.

And there is an abundance of data out there in the world, but presenting that data is an art within itself, which can be crafted beautifully if done well. We decided to collect data that we think is beautiful and reveals meaningful and unique designs. Here are our picks for our top 10 favorite pieces of data visualization!

How Probable is……. By Gradient Metrics

For our first data visualization, we’d like to share this graph from a survey that presented a list of words to describe probability and asked respondents to indicate what percentage of probability is associated with those words. This one is important to us as market researchers, as we frequently ask questions revolving around likelihood. Verbiage is crucial to make sure we capture the most authentic responses of our respondents within our market research surveys. For the most part, we agree with how probable each of the words mean. Although, it’s interesting to see how ‘never’ is more probable than pigs flying. 

Gender Gap in the Olympic Games by Leniolabs

The Olympic Winter Games are currently taking place, so this chart is a perfect one to share! Over the years, the Winter Games have added several new sports to its catalog. However, during the early days, the majority of these games were male-only. In fact, out of the 11 sports in the 1924 Winter Olympics, only one sport was for women (that was figure skating). As the years passed, women started gaining more of their own sports, and this graph, created by Leniolabs, depicts the gender gap throughout every Winter Olympic event. As of 2022, men and women now have nearly the same amount of categories (with women being short of only one sport).

We love this data viz because it easily shows how the gender gap in the Winter Olympic games has significantly narrowed. With their live graph, you can also see which sports were held by year. If you’re into the Olympics, definitely give this one a look.

Global Annual Gaming Console Sales from 2002 to January 2021 by PieChartPirate

At S2 Research, we love gaming, so we had to share this one with you! This chart presents the total sales of gaming consoles throughout the years, showing the market share of the most successful ones. There’s a ton of insights to extract from this one, like how the PS2 took an overwhelming majority of the market share for several years, or how Nintendo consoles either thrive with massive sales, or come very short among other consoles. We hope we didn’t add fuel to the console wars, all of them are great!

In terms of data visualization, you can never go wrong with pie charts to depict the size of the share. This one is easy to gauge and observe the evolution of the sales of video game consoles.

Breakdown of Hires and Separation by Bit.io

Next, we have an interesting set of data. A common topic of discussion is “The Great Resignation” and how many people across the US have quit their jobs and not returned to them, and this graph aims to answer the question as to whether or not it’s true. The first thing that pops out is the layoffs and discharges section. Because of the pandemic, several people were laid off from their jobs, causing a staggering dip within this chart. A short time after this, the number of hired workers significantly peaked. What is interesting, however, is that this peak is not as large as the dip from the layoffs and discharges, which could mean there is a large portion of people still unemployed. The good news is that aside from the peak, the number of hired workers is the largest it’s ever been, and layoffs are decreasing as well.

This data viz caught our eye for a number of reasons; the area line charts along with the color combination allows us to easily determine how many workers were affected in each category, allowing for easy comparisons. What other insights did you pull from this chart?

Number of Social Media Users Since Launch by StaDaFa

What’s your favorite social media? We have an interesting graph depicting the number of social media users for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. While each platform has millions of users, each has their own growth rates. Twitter, while being one of the older social media platforms on this list, actually has stagnated with the slowest user growth out of the bunch, and hasn’t even peaked over 500 million users. In contrast, TikTok has the fastest growth rates for users out of all social media platforms, having significantly more users at Year 4 (and reaching 1 billion users!) Facebook, despite being the oldest social media platform on this list, remains to be the most popular social media platform with almost 3 billion users! Let’s see how this graph looks in 10 years.

Walt Disney World Ticket Price Increase vs Wages, Rent, and Gasoline by PieChartPirate

Inflation has been increasing for many products and services in the US throughout the years, but none of their price increases compare to that of Walt Disney World’s ticket prices. What started off as an affordable ticket, has now skyrocketed in price. This graph shows the price increases of various services, which include rent, wages, gasoline, and of course, Disney World tickets. 

Since 1977, the price of Disney World’s admission tickets have increased by a staggering 3,871.4 percent! This is huge, considering that wages and the price of rent and gasoline have only grown just under 1000 percent. This is a cool graph because not only does it show the significant differences between their price increase, it also includes various financial crises which have impacted the economy. 

Why do you guys think Disney World tickets have increased so much? Let us know in the comments!

Color Composition of Red-White-Blue Flags

Now we’d like to share a unique graph that comes in the shape of a triangle, and this one breaks down the percentages of the color composition among countries with red, white, and/or blue flags. What stands out immediately is that the majority of flags have more red than any other color, and many countries have over half of their color composition to be red. What’s interesting is that France is not completely in the middle. This is because France’s flag color proportions are not equal : there is 30% blue, 33% white, and 37% red! Pretty cool, huh?

The Population of Manhattan, Hour by Hour

This next one is a live 3-D chart of Manhattan displaying the population of various locations throughout the city. It also has a timeline of its population throughout hours of the day. It seems that establishments, especially in the heart of the city, typically peak around 12-2pm. What is surprising, however, is the fact that the population on the weekend didn’t peak higher than the weekdays as anticipated. You would think with tourism that the city would be more populated during these days. 

 Next time you’re out there, make sure to stay away from the red areas from 12-2pm if you’re in a rush!

Record Music Industry Revenues

This one's for you music heads out there! Throughout the years, music has come in several formats, ranging from vinyl (which is slowly making a comeback) to streaming, which is now emerging among all formats. Despite its increase, it still has a ways to go if it wants to reach peak levels like cassette tapes and CD’s in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. 

As music fans ourselves, we love how the area chart easily shows us the dominance among the different music formats. It brings back good memories of all the ways we used to listen to music.

The Most Commonly Rated Shows on IMDB and Their Lowest Rated Episodes by Bo McCready

For our last data viz, we’d like to show off this chart, which compiles popular shows and collects the rating for all of their episodes, highlighting the worst ones in red. There are many shows this graph includes, ranging from Game of Thrones and Breaking bad, to comedies like the Office and Friends, and even includes famous cartoons like the Simpsons and Family Guy! 

This is by far our favorite chart of the list. It’s intriguing to see how some shows have consistently good ratings until the very last season or episode (what went wrong with Game of Thrones and Dexter?) Because of the red highlight, it’s much easier to pinpoint which episodes were the worst. The full version has many more shows, so definitely check this one out!

Wow, data is beautiful, isn’t it? Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed these cool data visualizations and learned something new! 

Have your own data visualizations you’d like to share? Email us and we’ll put you on a future blog!

Top 8 Books to Read as a Marketer in 2022!

It’s a new year, which means some of you are beginning to read to accomplish your New Year’s Resolutions. That is why we decided to compile a list of some of our favorites to read in 2022!  

As market researchers, we constantly strive to seek out new insights to help others, and reading books is no exception. We’ve selected books that have not only helped us with our marketing and market research efforts, but have also helped us in our personal lives. Some of these books have even inspired Matt to write his book, The Creative Catalyst. So if you read that book, you’ll definitely dig our Top 8 picks for books to read in 2022.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

We’d like to start off with the book that is crucial for anyone wanting to improve their lives. Accomplishing your New Year’s Resolutions requires you to form new habits, and that may be difficult depending on what your goals are. But Atomic Habits breaks down how to create good habits and eliminate bad habits in an efficient and a relatable way! 

This book provides evidence-based strategies on how habits are developed, and how you can turn your habits into your advantage. To make it short, a habit is formed by:

• making it obvious

• making it attractive

• making it easy to do

• making it satisfying

And there are several tactics that can help you do each! For example, one way to make a habit easier is by using the “2 minute rule”: simply do a task you want to make a habit for only two minutes then stop. This allows you to build consistency faster, as you’re only devoting two minutes of your time. The more you keep doing it, the more you’ll realize that starting the task is no longer a barrier, and you can continue doing the task much longer. 

Habits may be hard to develop, but if you slowly work on them day by day, you’ll be able to develop a consistency that will be hard to break. If you want to make reading a habit to continue this list, make sure to pick this up!

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

As a marketer, it is important to understand that we are in an infinite game; that is, we are essentially competing to succeed in the business world with no finish line in sight. Businesses and other “infinite games” have no predetermined lifespan, and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek dives into the concept of having an infinite mindset when running a business with his book, The Infinite Game. It’s not just about meeting a sales goal; it’s about building something week after week with a vision for the future.

In order for your business to succeed, it is important to have this infinite mindset, as it allows you to build for the long term rather than the short term. To do this, one must create a sense of purpose, and advance a just cause. This allows you to build a team that you trust, as they will feel connected to your purpose. Analyzing your competitors is also crucial for long term success, along with preparing for any sudden changes in the market. Finally, accomplishing these tasks requires you to have the courage to lead the time.

 This is an incredibly motivational book with great insights  that is a must read for any entrepreneurs and team leaders. As an entrepreneur, Matt can attest to this!

This is Marketing by Seth Godin

As the name suggests, This is Marketing is a book about the fundamentals of marketing! This is one of the books that inspired Matt to write The Creative Catalyst! Marketing Guru Seth Godin provides his thoughts on marketing in general. He has a different approach to marketing, defining it as “generous act of helping others become who they seek to become”. 

Godin dives into the foundation of marketing, breaking it down into simple steps. He also stresses the importance of understanding dramatic market changes due to technology, and helps you understand and adapt to these new changes. This book also discusses various strategies on how to build trust within your target audience, how to position yourself as a brand, and how at its core, marketing is all about storytelling. 

This book is a great refresher for the fundamentals of marketing, and will provide you with a fresh new perspective to help you in your marketing efforts.  You don’t want to miss out on this book!

“The heart and soul of a thriving enterprise is the irrational pursuit of becoming irresistible.” - Seth Godin

Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

This is an odd pick and quite different from the bunch. Unlike the other books in this list, Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles is told through a fictional story diving into the concept of customer service! This is a classic business book that still stands the test of time. 

A newly hired manager feels pressured to provide exceptional customer service for his company. He feels stressed to live up to his expectations, until suddenly, a “fairy godmother” comes to his aid, providing him with insights on how to create “raving fans”, or repeat customers who create a sense of loyalty toward a company. This is done by deciding what you want, deciding what the customer wants, and giving them something that exceeds their expectations. 

Throughout the book, several fictional examples are discussed that can be applied to real life businesses. Read the book and see if you can determine which real-life business inspired these examples.

For those of you who are busy like us, this is one of the shorter reads off this list; you can finish this book in one night! While silly, this book is a great read and will truly help you stand out through your customer service. 

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

An economics book for marketers? You bet! 

This New York Times bestseller explores a new perspective on the world around you, blending economics into real-life. Throughout the chapters in the book, authors Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner pose a series of odd yet intriguing questions that challenge you to think differently about the world around you. They may sound like ridiculous claims at first, but the book provides strong evidence backed up by economic statistics, revealing unique insights not found in any other book.

While this book is more economics-focused, it changes the way you see how the world and people function. What you think affects an outcome may be completely different from what truly does, and as a marketer, understanding this can influence your efforts for the better. 

This is a great thought-provoking book that will help you see the world from a different angle. Matt definitely recommends this book!

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

This book is a personal favorite of both Matt and Eric. Everyone loves a great idea that sticks with them, whether it comes from a commercial, a marketing campaign, a book, etc. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, helps you develop such sticky ideas for any of your messages. 

A sticky idea is composed of six elements, which includes

• Simplicity: This isn’t in the sense of “dumbed down” it’s more of a concise idea that anyone can easily understand and process in a short amount of time. 

• Unexpectedness: People are more likely to remember something that catches them off guard because it’s different from what they’re used to.

• Concreteness: Ideas and messages that are concrete are more memorable than abstract ideas, as it allows people to recall the idea and picture it in their minds better.

• Emotion: Tapping into the emotions of others with your message allows them to connect with it on a deeper level.

• Stories: Stories are the last piece to make your idea sticky, as they get your audience to act.

This book provides great examples of how other businesses have utilized these various elements to communicate their ideas. From Southwest Airlines to Nordstrom, many organizations big and small have succeeded with sticky ideas. 

As marketers, we are constantly tasked with creating messages for others, and having a sticky message helps increase brand awareness for businesses. We strongly recommend this book to you. This is especially a great book to read right after The Creative Catalyst!

Indistractable by Nir Eyal

This next book on our list will hit home for many office and at-home workers. In this day and age, we are filled with distractions that sway us from completing our work as efficiently as possible. With the amount of distractions that arise from our smartphones and computers, working may be a disaster for some. Because many of us work from home now, these distractions only get worse! To combat these distractions, we’d like to recommend popular author Nir Eyal’s book, Indistractable! 

This book dives into the in’s and outs’ of how to manage your distractions and work more efficiently. The keyword here is manage, because you don’t want to get rid of your distractions; others would simply take its place. Instead, you want to master your internal triggers, looking deep down as to why you’re getting distracted. Once you acknowledge this, that is when you deal with your distractions in a healthier way. For example, do you find yourself using your phone to distract yourself from work often? Change how you use it; instead of using it in bursts, use it as a reward for doing a full-hour of uninterrupted work! 

There are several tactics presented in this book and even have sections tailored to other portions of our lives. From the office space to relationships, this book empowers you to focus on the present moment (for those with kids, there’s even a section on how to raise your kids to be indistractable). As office (and home) workers ourselves, we definitely recommend this book!

Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra

For our last pick, we wanted to add a bizarre book full of ideas for you to explore this year. Marketing is all about attracting the audience to your business, and the best way to do that is to be outrageous with your efforts. Doing things that are against the norm are more than likely to attract your audience and even create interest, and the following book does just that.

Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra goes over 17 rules to make your marketing efforts more ‘outrageous’ and interesting. These rules involve taking the extra step to stand out from the competition, helping you develop ideas and executing them no matter how ridiculous they may actually be. One of the things this book teaches you is to do the thing that you’re good at and that you’re passionate about. Letting yourself and other employees do things that they are more passionate about leads to a significant increase in idea generation, leading you and your company to becoming ‘Idea Champions’.

We love wacky ideas, which is why we love this book. It pushes us to do more market research because we discover insights that give us the boost to be creative with our work. This is definitely worth the pick-up.

Of course, there’s one more book we have to mention on this list! 2021 saw the publication of Matt’s first book on marketing research, The Creative Catalyst! If you haven’t had a chance to read it, be sure to check it out!

There you have it! Our 8 must-read books for marketers in 2022! We hope you gather new insights and grow your arsenal of marketing potential.

We are also open to reading new books, so if you have any recommendations yourself, be sure to drop them in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll include your book in the next list!

Market Research and Marketing: Two Peas in a Pod!

Welcome! At S2 Research, we love sharing our insights and opinions with fellow marketers and business leaders from around the world, and recently, we connected with a brand who has made a major impact on the market research industry. 

Matt got the chance to speak with Dan Fleetwood, the President of Research and Insights at QuestionPro, a survey building software company that we love! This one hits home for us, as we build surveys for our clients on the daily. 

On this podcast, Matt discusses the essential role that market research plays on marketing, marketing strategies and advertising. Learn how to tie in market research research to your current marketing tactics to assess performance and overall effectiveness in order to maximize your audience reach.

Tune in for a half-hour full of new insight and a great conversation!

Happy New Year's! 2022 Resolutions Dashboard

Hello marketers! Happy New Years! 

2021 has been a wild ride for all of us; since the previous year, we’ve been dealing with the pandemic (which is seemingly never-ending), facing a variety of challenges and new norms we were forced to adapt to. But this is what makes us stronger! And with a bit of disaster we also share a bit of success.

S2 Research had a wild and interesting ride in 2021. Despite the recovery and hardships dealt, we’ve continued to provide valuable insights to those in need using market research! As a result, we’ve significantly grown this past year! We’d like to take a moment with you to recap our 2021.

• We’ve worked with several new businesses, both national and international.

• We’ve hired 2 new employees, Eric and B.

• S2 Research won the Research & Data Analysis pinnacle of the Public Relations Society of America Las Vegas’ 2021 Pinnacle Awards for the second year in a row!

• And Matt published his first book, The Creative Catalyst! (Congrats, Matt!!!)

It’s hard to believe that last year flew by so fast. It still feels like it is 2020!

But now it’s 2022, and we must be ready for any new triumphs, challenges, and any sporadic and odd things that come our way. As market researchers, it’s time to venture into the world of insights, seeking out data using the thing we do best: asking questions. 

And for our first question of the year, we ask you:

What is your New Year’s Resolution?

Pretty neat, huh? What insights did we pull from this?

It seems like you guys want to earn more money this year. Man, we are there with you! That’s why we made it a goal to triple our sales this year. It’s a daring task, but our minds are set on it.

What is also set is our resolution to reduce stress - this was your guys’ top personal resolution, and we all agree. Stress is a killer, and we’d love to leave it behind. 

You guys are awesome! Thank you to those who took the time to complete our survey. You gave us amazing data, and we’re grateful for you.

For those of you who missed the chance to take the survey, IT’S NOT TOO LATE! The survey is still open, so if you’d like to share your resolutions with us, click the link here! We’ll keep updating the data regularly for the next few weeks. 

Until then, we hope you have a wonderful start to your year! Pursue your goals and resolutions, because you WILL achieve them! We believe in you.

- S2 Research Team

How Market Research Supercharges Your Marketing Campaigns

powered by Sounder

Welcome! Matt got the opportunity to speak on the Innovative Agency Podcast about the importance of market research to successful marketing. He dives into this concept, along with strategies to move past marketing roadblocks, how agencies and clients evaluate ROI, methods to strengthen their market research ability, and more! This was a great discussion, be sure to check it out here!

"Market Research and Marketing: A Love Story", Presented at the American Advertising Federation

Last week, Matt got the chance to speak at the American Advertising Federation’s Western Region Conference in Las Vegas. AAF is a national organization dedicated to connecting advertising professionals, and Matt provided some insights to the table.

At the conference, he discussed the importance of market research to not only marketing, but to advertising as well. Knowing your audience through market research gives you a tactical advantage, allowing you to tailor your advertising and make it more attractive.

Be sure to check it out! You don’t want to miss any insights!

The Purpose and Benefits of a White Paper!

Hey guys! I got the chance to speak on The Loudspeaker podcast, hosted by Publicize! Here, we discuss the in’s and out’s of white papers, and how to write an effective whitepaper that adds value to your audience! 

White paper has always been thought of as only a content marketing piece, but it’s actually an important piece to your overall marketing strategy that assists you in more ways than you think! 

Check out the podcast to learn more about whitepapers!