Ferris Bueller has a point on the pace of life – and researchers are taking notice 

As former Unilever executive Andy Porteous said at last month’s TFM&A event: “It is true that brands keep repeating research, and at great expense, when they may have the answer already.” 

Talk Talk has worked with tech start up LivingLens to get senior executives engaged with research as they can search its database of insights on the brand. 

LivingLens helps brands and consumers create videos – and look at the film content they already have – which they can then search by keyword and it has also worked with Carphone Warehouse, Reevoo and insight consultancy Boxclever.

Meanwhile, Sumo Insight offers a real-time mobile market research platform to capture opinions and is currently working with brands including Unilever, and brands through research agencies such as Intrinsic Insight who have all identified a need to get closer to their consumers. 

Former Nokia researcher and strategist Tina Newport and former EE technology marketer Colin White set it up to tackle the issues of getting fast, quality research.  

Westfield also gain instant feedback from shoppers via mobile, the shopping centres work with marketing technology company nFluence, which built a mobile app to allow shoppers to give retailers an ideas of what shops and brands they liked or dislike. 

Instead of letting that data grow old, the app creates profiles of the shopper that can be updated according to their preference changes.  

The point here is that marketers can avoid repeating research by using the content and data they may already have. 

As LivingLens says on its website, borrowing from the 1980s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”