I always remember starting in the research industry in the 80’s and recall names of researchers that everyone was talking about – almost a sort of buzz. Bill Neal, Kevin Clancy, the late Robert Schulman and Dr. Harry Heller. Dr. Heller has been in the industry for 30+ years. It would take too long to list everything he has done, but it is very safe to say he has accomplished a tremendous amount. I hope you find this interview with Dr. Heller interesting and appropriate to your business. I know I did.
MD
How much did it mean to you when in 2003, your peers at the Market Research Council elected you to the Marketing Research Hall of Fame?
HH
It was one of the most exciting things that happened to me in my career. It happened about 40 years toiling in the business I love. Starting at ad agencies and clients and then on to research companies, the final one at which I was CEO. I always tried to explore how research can be improved by designing new ways and approaches of collecting data and analyzing results. We utilized attitude segmentation when it was an emerging technique, developed ways to “derive” importance in addition to asking respondents to report on what is important (often biased,) and became interested in what makes a brand successful. While our clients liked these approaches and succeeded using them, it is hard to know what your expert peers really think. That is because a lot of research (especially on the supply side) is conducted in silos — we know what our team does, but not what everyone else is doing. So in the MRC are a majority of the 85 top researchers telling me they think I belong in the Marketing Research Hall of Fame. One benefit, my rookie card is selling for $1,000 on EBay.
MD
Who are some of the people you look up to in the market research community?
HH
There are two types of people I respect, those that exceed on the technical aspects of research and those that exceed on the business side. On the technical side are some people many researchers may not remember. Let me reintroduce Russ Haley who developed the early approaches of attitude segmentation using factor analyses of items and people and Ernest Dichter practically invented qualitative research. (I once had a 3-hour dinner with him before an AMA meeting he was speaking at and I was chairing. His creativity blew me away.) Ted Dunn probably contributed more to measuring mass communication than anyone else in the industry. On the business side two of my peers jump out. Jay Wilson took Roper Starch from a company in trouble to one of the big success stories and he became a leader in our industry and on of my mentors, Seymour Lieberman, had his own small company in New York City, but when he had employees that were entrepreneurial, he would fund them and help them manage a division of his company. After Sy retired his successor companies have gone on to greater things – now known by their Lieberman Research acronyms, LRW and LRE.
MD
What do you believe is the number one issue in the research industry today?
HH
This might seem strange, but I believe the biggest issue in the industry is that doing research has become cheap – cheap to start a business, cheap to interview “people” (notice I didn’t say a sample of people), cheap to get tabs and charts from the tabs. It means (and has led to) everyone being able to do research. And everyone is doing research, making up their own questions, convincing companies that you can do a lot for less, not knowing the scientific basis of the survey business, interviewing the same people over and over (and not even knowing they are doing so.) I’ve heard some disquieting stories of brand and marketing managers just sending out a survey using such programs as “Survey Monkey” and not even discussing their findings with their research department. I sat in on a briefing of a new Internet research tool and the briefer gave as an advantage that you can survey up to 50,000 per survey! There is no survey that needs 50,000 respondents (unless it is a quota sample of the world.) This has led to reduced respondent cooperation, respondents getting angry with us, surveys done without standards of conduct and privacy. We have to rein all of this in; otherwise our clients will not be able to discriminate between research and good research.
MD
What are your thoughts about global outsourcing?
HH
I have mixed feelings. I recognize the need to control costs and I have heard reports that although there are issues setting up off shore outsourcing, once the bugs are ironed out there are cost savings, recognizing that some research will still have to be conducted “on shore.” But here is the flip side. It takes the research farther away from the research analysts. It takes the interviewer farther away from the respondent and it ultimately takes the results farther away from the client. In my days running studies we would spend a lot of time looking at the results as they are coming in. We even changed questions mid-survey if an initial data probe indicated that something was coming up that we didn’t expect. Some of this is impractical when research is conducted off shore. Finally I worry about the respondent. No matter how much training is done among off shore interviewers, you can still tell that the person you are speaking to is not a native. Maybe I yearn for the days that we had 85% response rates because the interviewer was a neighbor and when she came in she was offered a cup of coffee and the study was an enjoyable break in the day. But that’s when all interviewers were women, most respondents stayed at home, and maybe, like Mark Anthony, I still recall and praise the Caesar that was.
MD
What is your fondest memory of your research career?
HH
I can recall the bonds and lasting friendships that occurred when we all were faced with time constrained challenges that required “all-nighters.” § Doing the strategic research when the first multiple blade was introduced by Gillette (TRAC II) in 5 months from idea to national introduction (and it went to a 60% market share.) § Conducting my first attitude segmentation research for Milk Bone Dog Biscuits and being able to do communication to the mass market of dog owners as if we were talking to them one at a time. § Being the first one to see the results of an important national study – the first one in the U.S. to have this information.
All of these reflect my passion for our business. I do not consider myself only a market researcher; I am the ombudsman of the opinions of the public, representing its needs to my clients.
MD
What would your friends in the industry be surprised to know about you?
Not all of them know my other passions.
- I consider myself a pretty good chef.
- I collect Rose Medallion China – Chinese export dinnerware dating from the 1800’s to 1912. I learned about this collectable from a research client while doing focus group sessions in New Orleans.
- I am a collector of French advertising posters and art from one artist, Jules Cheret – the person who taught Toulouse Lautrec the art of the poster and printed Lautrec’s posters. Imagine my delight when my wife, Annette (quite a good researcher herself), bought me his rarest poster – La Loie Fuller. Imagine my surprise when at the Smithsonian exhibit last year, three of my posters were in the show.
- And many of my friends know that from 1988 to 1999 I actually had a snack food company (Harry’s Premium Snacks) while doing research. Harry’s Sourdough Pretzels can still be found at fine stores. “A Lawyer that does his own legal work has a fool for a client.” Translate that to marketing and marketing research and you’ll get my point.
MD
Do you recall the first research project you ever worked on?
HH
Yes. While at the old Ted Bates Agency [known as the agency that believed in finding the Unique Selling Proposition ( I was asked to do a concept strategy study for a brand of dog food called Burgerbits. I designed quite a good study, interviewed 200 dog owners and came out with the conclusion: In marketing and advertising Burgerbits we should concentrate on the crunch ability issue.
The night before my presentation to Rosser Reeves, famous advertising legend, I reviewed the study and told my wife, Annette, that I was prepared to defend the crunch issue as the USP. Annette looked in my eyes and asked, “Is this what you are going to be doing for the rest of your life?”
MD
Since things have changed in the industry since you started out, what skills and characteristics are important today that might not have been as necessary when you began your career?
HH
When I started, the U.S. marketing challenge was that of mass marketing. Many researchers came out of the humanities and there were a few “techies” that did all of the statistical and tabular work for the English and history majors to write-up. We also had three media that we used for marketing, TV, newspapers and magazines. People were available and willing to be interviewed. There were three major auto brands that had 60% market share, Chevy, Ford and Plymouth, Two major brands of toothpaste (Colgate and Crest), three major airlines (American, United and TWA), etc. The world wasn’t flat, it was umbrella shaped with everything made in the U.S. over all other countries. You could be a good researcher if you devoted a larger part of your brain to creativity because the marketing structure was easy to comprehend.
In the 21st Century we have to give our brain over to figuring out where people are getting their messages from. Something that is interesting on TV shows up on YouTube. How do you define the target audience? If I am interested in buying a camera, I can “Google” 35mm Cameras and see brands, reviews, prices, retailers, etc. The time between communication and advertising and the purchase decision is shorter, sometimes simultaneous. Borders between countries no longer exist in marketing.
So I think that we require several skills and they rarely coexist in the same person. We need those that understand the channels of communication, distribution and sales. We need those that can deal with the technology of reaching, sampling and interviewing the complex target groups involved in these interactions. And we need those creative people who can develop insights and strategies that bring the people and channels together to market. It is the most exciting time to be a market researcher.
But don’t lose sight of what our basic mission is. In the end we must always remember that we represent the voice of the public. If we misuse our respondents and treat them like vessels to generate our own profits, our industry will be in peril.
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I was so impressed with Dr. Heller’s answers and point of view I asked our entire senior team to read it. Dr. Heller, thank you for giving so much to our industry for such a long time.
I look forward to any Dr Heller stories or comments that you would like to share.
About Harry Heller
After 30 years of founding and managing the Heller Research Group, Harry Heller has become president of research consultancy, Research Consulting Agency since 2003. The company gives advice and support in design, proposal and management of research and works with clients to identify new ways of making it actionable.
Dr. Heller was one of the first professionals to conduct studies that combined attitudes, occasions, personal images and product characteristics to define consumers and position brands. He introduced and advanced the concept of derived importance which has now become widely used for a variety of applications. He was among the first to use are need-state segmentation, he developed the power brand index for Conde Nast, and has conducted research using multi-dimensional correspondence mapping. On a personal level, Harry is a PhD In psychology (NYU), served the industry as president of AMA-NY, was chairman of both CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations) and CMOR (Council for Marketing and Opinion Research), and president of two honorary organizations — the Market Research Council and the Copy Research Council. He also spent 5 years on the board of the ARF. In 2003 he was elected by his peers to the Marketing Research Hall of Fame.
Paul Kirch says:
This was a truly a great interview. I really enjoyed learning more about Dr. Heller and I was thrilled to see someone really touch on the issue facing our industry. The points about it becoming cheap to conduct research were very insightful and it has really changed the face of this industry. I guess that why so often people view what many of us do as a commodity. It has become so price driven, that many sacrifice quality to save a few dollars. Dr. Heller’s comments about the respondents and cooperation rates was also dead-on and I hope more people start to see what an issue this is becoming since it impacts us all.
joan treistman says:
It’s been my pleasure to know Harry Heller and work with him in marketing research industry associations. My first memory of Harry occurred when we were both participants of an American Management Association marketing research course. Very few attendees knew anything about marketing, much less marketing research. Harry was very effective in describing the importance of knowing the target’s needs and wants using a door to door salesman’s success as the key to uncovering marketing strategy. It was a wonderful anecdote –and I remember it to this day (while there are so many other things I’ve forgotten). Interestingly, Harry was able to take the door to door analogy and transition it to “mass marketing”. The attendees learned alot from Harry, as many clients and associates have learned from him through the years. As Harry mentioned in distinguishing between the 20th and 21st century it looks like we’re back to the door to door/one on one approach through all the media technology available to marketers. Of course there aren’t too many who remember door to door salesmen. But none of us, after meeting him once can forget Harry Heller, and that’s a good thing for us and the marketing research industry.
Ace says:
It is interesting to hear from an expert that the ‘offshoring of research’ is effecting the research industry in many of the same ways it is effecting other industries. But, it will always be difficult to offshore creativeness and ingenuity. – Ace
Sybil Stershic says:
Great interview. I always knew Harry was well respected within the marketing research & marketing communities, but it’s fascinating to learn about his other interests. I met Harry sometime in the late ’80s at an AMA event (Leadership Workshop?), and I remember the pretzels … they were delicious!
Steve Schlesinger says:
Harry – it is great to hear your words again. You were one of the first researchers I met in the industry 20+ years ago. I always appreciated hearing your stories about the industry, your view on research and talking to you about the salty snacks business. The potato chips were my favorite – which you were kind enough to give me a case of one time. Thanks for sharing your viewpoint once again!
Michael Braunberg says:
Merrill asked Harry Heller “What are your thoughts about global outsourcing?” Heller’s answer was part recognition of financial practicality and part nostalgia for the way things were once upon a time. That is well enough, but this issue of off-shoring is probably the most salient question for any American who makes their living adding value to information. I suspect the question is so anxiety provoking that few have the courage to think too much about it. In the global economy information flows wherever value can be added at the lowest cost within whatever parameters of quality and timing are acceptable to the end-client. That is why a radiologist in India is evaluating the chest x-ray you had yesterday. I am on the data-processing end of this business, and have a former client who ten years ago was managing a bustling department of perhaps two-dozen programmers for a full-service company. I would visit from time-to-time for face-to-face meetings, and there was a veritable sea of cubicles outside my client’s office door housing programming staff. That sea of programmers was a simmering pot that would often over-flow into my shop. The last time I visited with this fellow he was working out of a lovely but very quiet office with clocks showing the time in various parts of the world. Several times a year he travels abroad to check on operations at the fully-owned off-shore subsidiary his company has established. Domestically, his company has consolidated space, and the sea of cubicles is gone. I never visit anymore because he is constrained by corporate edict from outsourcing work to domestic providers. Talk about nostalgia!
John Heakin says:
Dear Merrill,
Perhaps it was beyond the scope of this interview(which was excellent), but I want to amplify the credits Harry got at the end of the interview for his long-time service to the Marketing Research industry as a tireless worker on behalf of Research, and especially for his many contributions to MRA. I had the pleasure of being a vendor to Heller Research for many years, and Harry was a featured speaker at the 1981 MRA National Convention in Chicago that I chaired. There are not too many Research Supplier Presidents that spend a lot of time with MRA, but Harry did, and that was all to our advantage. Thanks Harry, and you also Merrill for bringing this interview to us.