Great conversation with Andrew Marr on Radio 4 (of course). Hockney on about the craft and poetry of the artist – what can and can’t be taught. Reminded we have to be able to research both aspects of ads without letting the craft of research stimulus get in the way – and without letting over rational consumer critique get in the way of the implicit poetry.
Merry Christmas from all at COG
December 23rd, 2011 by Rob
The office is closed now till January 3rd We are having a well earned rest after a great 2011. The year finished on a high with us winning the coveted New Consumer Insight award at the MRS awards dinner. That was for our breakthrough work on how to get evidence of the way the purchase process actually works.
Have a wonderful holiday – and enjoy the 12 day break!
Ask yourself ‘what can cat videos do for your business/”
November 16th, 2011 by Rob
We just got distracted by a lovely spoof from John St agency
Chisato Kusonoki Concert in aid of Changing Faces
November 7th, 2011 by Rob
Works by Schubert, Liszt, J S Bach-Siloti, Rachmaninoff and Liadov will be played by Chisato, regarded as one of the most talented pianists of her generation.
The Concert will take place on Sunday, 27th November, at 3pm in Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, NW3.
More info at http://www.changingfaces.org.uk/Support-Us/Events/Chisato-Kusunoki-Concert
Tickets available on the door: suggested donation £10, with concessions.
All proceeds go to Changing Faces.
This will be a wonderful way to spend Sunday afternoon and such a good cause
PHD and Global triumph at Media Week awards
October 28th, 2011 by Rob
Congratulations to our clients Global Radio and PHD for their showing last night http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1101128/phd-global-celebrate-media-week-awards-2011-winners-revealed/
We have worked with them both on producing evidence of how relatively small media campaigns are producing big effects on how consumers feel. We expect the IRT evidence helped win them the Gold for Research Insight. It is so encouraging to see new techniques help prove that innovative approaches really do work – and to be responsible for providing the evidence to prove it.
COG Digital Ethnography up for an award
October 5th, 2011 by Rob
Join us at the Awards Dinner!
Dave Trott Blog
August 2nd, 2011 by Rob
I was sent a link to a blog titled ‘if the Greeks had social media’ and straight away thought this was going to be about how the economic crisis would be better or worse.
A part of me thought ‘hang on, they do, don’t they?’
But I was intrigued – wanted to find out more
And now I am sitting in a Sheffield Starbucks reading the whole series
I commend them to anyone who hasn’t already found out about them
Here is a good place to start
http://davetrott.campaignlive.co.uk/2011/07/19/liking-it-isnt-the-job/
I think we need poking with a sharp stick on a regular basis – but maybe I am a masochist.
Never mind, I am in right job anyway……
Keeping the doctor’s appointment – Behavioural Economics in action
July 29th, 2011 by Rob
Great new story emerging about using simple nudges to improve appointment keeping. They have managed to reduce Do Not Attends by 30% in the test area. We are working on getting people to fill in some Government forms at the moment – my only challenge is that we hate doing these so much that nudging may not be enough!
Good coverage on Radio 4 Today programme – nice to see a positive B E story in the media. More details here:
http://www.mindspace-online.org/
Implicit mind helped Darren Clarke win the open
July 18th, 2011 by Ali
Yesterday Darren Clarke won the Masters. Interestingly he worked with a psychologist who said he had taught him to putt ‘unconsciously’. Interestingly 20 years ago a study was published showing why this would have worked.
A psychologist called Prof Masters taught two groups of people how to putt. One group he gave a set of explicit rules to learn, and the other he told to just putt and also got them to generate random letters whilst learning.
He then tested both groups by making them putt under pressure, i.e. said they would get paid if they made the putt. The group that had explicitly learned performed poorly whereas the group who had to generate random letters while learning to putt did considerably better. Why was this? Masters thought that, as with many things, our implicit mind is better at learning these tasks than the explicit mind. As such teaching people explicitly will force people, in times of stress, to go back to what they are aware of and try and ‘over-ride’ their more effective implicit system. The group who had learned explicitly were prompted to ‘over think’ and try and adopt all they had been taught, hence their explicit learning actually led to worse performance. However the other group who generated random letters while learning to putt had nothing to go back and consciously recall how they learned and just letting their implicit minds do the work lead to a far better performance.
Clearly Darren Clarke’s psychologist taught him not to over-think and instead trust his implicit feelings, hence his implicit mind helped him win more than his explicit mind.
Mobile Eye Tracking A Live Show
June 30th, 2011 by Rob
FaceTime, our Events Industry Client has just uploaded a lovely film of the findings of our mobile eye tracking research. If only all presentations were this engaging