A conference should ideally be about the topics presented. Relating solely on this is a risky business, as todays sessions at ESOMARs qualitative conference in Istanbul revealed more clearly than perhaps ever before. We interviewed one of the clearest favourites and brightest stars and came a little bit closer to the secrets about good presenting.
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The day consisted of eight paper presentations, one panel discussion and a set of round table discussions at the end of the day, but the tone was set already at the first paper of the day. Not surprisingly, as the presenters were from H,T,P, Concept in Germany, a company we have praised on and on before for their well rehearsed, well thought through presentations. We took a moment with one of the partner/managers of the company, Sven Arn, who told us how the culture in the company and the way they look upon the relation with their clients, give them a head start in terms of ESOMAR presentations:
It is worth noting that Sven was accompanied on stage by Müge Balta, a young Turkish woman employed by H,T,P, after finishing her university studies in Germany, who made her first major presentation today and was quite nervous before it. Once on stage, there was not a trace of that and she matched the experienced Sven perfectly. Here we have a role model for many presenters and a star researcher for the future.
For those who have kept an eye on the ESOMAR scene in recent years, the "big" names were plentyful this day and they all delivered as expected, whereas the not-so-famous sadly enough didn't lift themselves. The only surprise to me was Jens Lönneker of rheingold institute in Germany who gave a very thought-provoking and insightful tour of how complex the issue of food has become in recent years. It is almost as if sex is less of a private and shameful matter than food these days, at least when you talk about the "wrong" kind of food. What made this presentation stick out, was also that it was pleasantly free from brands and company names, to the extent that I thought this was the work of an academic institution. It turned out rheingold is indeed a commercial company, but that they had financed this piece of research with their own money, which makes it even more commendable.
Among the big names was, to our surprise, one of our all-time favourites, Kristin Hickey from Australia. She has spoken at many ESOMAR congresses, and won a couple of prizes, but this was her first time at the qualitative conference. It was also her first presentation since she and two partners had broken off from The Leading Edge to form a company of their own with an even better namn: Ruby cha cha! It isn't easy to point out what Kristin does so right, but whatever it is, it makes me wake up, listen hard and get enormously interested in whatever she is talking about. Right now I am very curious about part two of Ruby cha chas research on Anticipation marketing - if their newly found understanding of why people go crazy about iPod, Harry Potter and certain brands of bags, can be used to create überdemand in less spectacular brands.
Last but not least of the big names this day was Greet Sterenberg, also a former awardwinner at the big congress. A long way into her presentation about the contents and symbolic of womens handbags, I was wondering if this was a truly serious presentation or just a smart way to get a free ticket to a conference. Greet didn't do much to reduce my fears either, when she openly told the audience how her team hadn't even started researching anything by the time they got accepted, six weeks before the conference, and didn't even have a budget! Just when I was ready to write off the entire presentation, Greet shows what a pro she is and draws the exact right conclusion in the exact right moment. Instead of doing like most other speakers, focusing on the results of the study, she points out that this piece of research have been done through an international network of friends and colleagues in a rather informal way where everybody has been given maximum freedom to set up their own method within a given problem frame. The result was a very rich material that would have been impossible to obtain in the usual strict top-down format generally used by the large transnational research groups. May we guess that this was a message directed in part to her former employer, Research International?
There were other interesting presentations during this day, even if not all of them reached my criteria for a conference presentation, but it was still obvious how the lesser known speakers failed to glow. This puts conference arrangers all over the world, and ESOMAR in particular, in a difficult dilemma. The simple recipe for arranging a good conference would be to just rely on the tried and true speakers who have performed well historically, but how shall we then manage to get any fresh blood up on the stage at all? And think of all the great thinking and smart conclusions we would miss, just because some people are not so skilled at presenting them to an audience! I guess we just have to keep urging new speakers to prepare themselves thoroughly and to rehearse well.
Henrik Hall
SMRN