Perfect Crowd

The Other Half of The Equation: with Virginia Valentine

Perfect Crowd is extremely pleased to welcome Virginia Valentine to Prague! Virginia Valentine pioneered the use of semiotics in UK market research. She is a fellow of the Market Research Society a multi-award winner and speaker at conferences worldwide. Virginia will lead us through a one day workshop on semiotics (19th of March 2009) more here

Third pill

Slavoj Zizek : Lacanian-Marxist, philosopher, "Elvis of cultural theory" and the greatest contemporary Eastern-European thinker:

 

In the Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo choice between red pill that would reveal the truth of the “Matrix” and a blue pill that would let him go back to the illusion. Zizek comes in at this point and expresses the need for a third pill. “What is the third pill? Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill which enables a fake fast-food religious experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive not the reality behind the illusion but the reality in illusion itself.”

The influence of illusion - fiction, movies, advertising, brands - over our daily lives is much stronger than the influence of the non-symbolic (and inaccesible) reality.  Illusion - and movies most of all - says Zizek, is what teaches us how to desire...Clearly, the task of (marketing) research is to tackle directly the reality of illusion rather than trying to get to it through interrogation of consumers. We need the third pill. 

American Dream on the (Semiotic) Couch

The work of  Greg Rowland has been a great inpiration for me and for many people in Unilever. Here is Greg's analysis of the "American dream":

American Dream Election 2

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Warm Vodka and Sweaty Women

Esomar held a conference on Consumer Insight in Milan last week. Greg Rowland and I have presented a paper called "Warm Vodka and Sweaty Women". The paper describes development of new communication strategy for Rexona in Russia.

We have picked up a nomination for award from Esomar (Esomar Award Nominations), which is great.  I think and hope that we got the nomination because of our focus on the end product - the communication itself. Consumer insight seems meaningless on its own, it is just a mean to an end -the end being new products and communication. I thought that too much time at the conference was given to discussion as to what consumer insight is and what it isn't...But that is the way of market research conferences, I guess.

It was good to see some old friends and colleagues and meet new and interesting people such as Virginia Valentine and Malcolm Evans who run the workshop on semiotics in Milan.   

Here is the presentation:

Download esomar_presentation_30_4_07_jc_gr_pdffin.pdf