The other day, I learned the hard way how dangerous it is to rely on people's prior conceptions to deliver a new concept.
I presented HiveSight as a new kind of tool for market research. Unfortunately, the "new" part was lost on the person in front of me, and instead he chose to focus on the "market research" part. The term "market research" conjures in people's minds images of surveys, questionnaires, and the all-important representative sample. HiveSight has none of those.
Naturally, it doesn't matter that HiveSight has none of those, because it's a very different kind of tool. We're not in competition with surveys. Surveys require you to arrive with preconceptions and compel you to look right under the lamppost. That's perfectly alright of course - if you know what you're looking for. We're not in the business of providing a representative sample of the population either. Why bother with such samples when you can cover over 50%, and in some cases over 80% of a population?
Note that I said a population, not the population - if you're marketing diapers for the elderly, HiveSight can't help you. If you're in electronics, entertainment, fashion, food & beverages, beauty products, or any other industry where younger people, or social network users in general are your target market, then you'll want to check us out.
Back to my protagonist, I just couldn't get him to leave behind his preconceived image of what market research must be and see how we could provide value for marketers via different methods.
The takeout? I don't refer to HiveSight as a market research product anymore. We're a consumer exploration tool - we help marketers discover new insights about their consumers. Same meaning, different image.
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