Peter Cooper Obituary

Psychologist and pioneer of focus groups in Britain

Peter Cooper, who has died suddenly aged 73, was a psychologist who pioneered the use of the focus group in market research in the 1960s. His company, Cooper Research and Marketing, advised many large companies on consumer behaviour, helping them to understand the market in relation to leading brands.

Peter also recognised the potential of market research to empower disadvantaged groups by breaking down traditional structures in society, such as the doctor-patient relationship, and even ventured into the imbalance in equality between men and women, thus seeking to make market research an integral aspect of the democratic process. His work in the last years of his life was preoccupied with the needs of consumers caught in the recession.

Born in north London, Peter was evacuated during the second world war and, after his parents separated, he was brought up principally by his father, a professional trumpeter. In 1959, he graduated with a first-class degree in psychology from Manchester University, where he stayed on as a postgraduate to work with his mentor, John Cohen, on aspects of the psychology of risk.

A significant element of his research involved children's understanding of war and peace, based on studies carried out in Japan, Germany and the UK. His work took him to the Sorbonne, in Paris, and to the universities of Oslo and London. During this period he was also actively involved in the Workers' Educational Association.

In the mid-1960s Peter studied in France, where he was intrigued by new approaches to understanding consumerism. People would be taken away for a long weekend in order to be observed as they expressed their relationships with different brands and products. Peter recognised that equally effective results could be obtained by bringing consumers together for three-hour sessions to explore emotional, as well as practical, responses to a range of issues relating to consumerism, from product attributes to advertising, packaging and brand identity. During these "extended creativity group" sessions, respondents were asked to draw, model with clay and role-play their feelings and emotions. In time, this method was to become recognised globally as the alternative to the more narrative-centred groups that predominated in the US.

In 1963 Peter became one of the first academics to apply his research to the marketplace and, in 1966, with his then wife, Jackie French, he set up Cooper Research and Marketing (later CRAM International). In 1968, the company moved from Manchester to London where, over the next four decades, a string of major companies sought Peter's advice on consumer behaviour, among them Guinness, BMW, the Financial Times, British Airways, Persil, American Express, BP, GSK, the BBC and Nokia.

From understanding marketing techniques to helping pharmaceutical companies better understand patients' needs, Peter gave an intellectual rigour to market research. Furthermore, he was fascinated by the need to develop different techniques outside western markets. From the early 1980s, he was in the far east, introducing his methods to Japan, China and south-east Asia.

He was also acutely aware of the importance of new technologies. A fellow of the UK Market Research Society and the Royal Society of Medicine, Peter conducted pioneering work in ethnography and also on the quantification of qualitative research data, which he called QualiQuant. He wrote many papers and was active right up to his death, highlighting key issues in contemporary marketing, market research and communication.

A byproduct of Peter's love of psychology was his passion for phrenology. While he acknowledged the flawed science behind it, for him phrenological busts were things of beauty, and over the years he amassed a significant collection of phrenologica. He sought to revive interest in the subject, and in the early 1980s commissioned a limited edition of Coalport china phrenological heads.

Peter and Jackie divorced several years ago. For the past 10 years, he lived with his partner, Claudia, also a psychologist, in Gloucestershire. They were brought together not only by their interest in psychology, but also good food and fine wine. They shared their lives with two horses, two Shetland ponies, three cats and six chickens. Claudia survives him, as do his three children and five grandchildren.

• Peter Cooper, psychologist and market researcher, born 26 November 1936; died 12 February 2010

(From the Guardian Thursday 8 April 2010) Simon Patterson

LIP DUB

LIPDUBing is a combination of lip synching and audio dubbing. I hadn't come across it until John Richer, a family friend from France, sent us one, that he had directed for his college in Lyon. John, by the way, is the cool one in the shades at the beginning.

Local Wine Lingo

Almost two-thirds of us are apparently baffled by wine speak. To make vino more accessible Spar is using local dialects on its wine labels. Their Merlot with the label written in 'Scottish dialect' for example, above. And here are passages of the article in the Guardian about it:

Bewildered by talk of "blackcurrant top notes"? Baffled by "bouquets"? Unsure if "long legs" are a good thing in a glass of wine? Retailer Spar is claiming today that 64% of shoppers are intimidated by the labels on the back of wine bottles.

So what is it doing to help confused consumers get the perfect wine to complement Sunday's roast dinner? Relabelling the bottles with plain English versions? Offering definitions of common terms to buyers? Umm, no. It is slapping on labels written in "local dialects" – and yes they are as bad as they sound.

Fortunately, just one of its wines – a £4.99 Merlot – is getting the treatment. The descriptions have been "translated" into eight different local dialects, including geordie, Brummie and scouse.

Geordie wine label: 'A canny Merlot ableeze wi succulent blackcurrants'. So instead of a straightforward plain English description of what you might find when you pour yourself a glass, if you are in Somerset you get this: "Alright my luvver, eers one helluva Merlot. Be stinkin hummin a sivvies thar be bleddy ansome wi yaw croust or oggy. Purfect ta share wi yaw pardy as i' aiin ta eavy. Mygar be a purdy wine! Churs!"

While in Liverpool you are promised: "A totally boss bottle of Merlot which smells o' blackberry, choccie, a brew and toffees. Juicy and complex like, this bevey is top wi most scran 'specially me ma's scouse. Tellin ye, this is deffo a bevey that will leave youz and youz mates made up over yez Sayers pastie."

As well as being borderline unintelligible, the descriptions also include what might be considered baffling wine-speak, albeit with a regional accent. In Newcastle consumers are told the wine has "legs leik a thoroughbred", while in Scotland the label describes "a youngane's colour wi cherries an black fruit on the nose" – if you can't understand that in English, is it really any clearer now?

A spokeswoman for Spar denies the labels are patronising. "Local shopkeepers and suppliers came up with the dialect – it's not come from central office or from a computer," she insists. "We know that people don't really talk like this – we just wanted to make wine buying accessible and fun." She says the wine is genuinely on sale at 50 stores and could be rolled out if the reaction is favourable.

Spar's wine controller, Laura Jewell, adds: "Ultimately our wines will speak for themselves, but in the meantime it's time to speak people's language." Let's hope they don't have too many bottles in the cellar.

This is not the first time a company has tried to harness local accents to attract attention – earlier this year, ATM provider Bank Machine launched cockney cash machines.Fingers crossed it's the last.

I think it rather amusing, and ironic that impenetrable wine lingo has been replaced with impenetrable dialect speak (which I am not sure is for writing anyway!).

Get Out Of My Face

I don't like it when brand represenatives try to make that extra sale when I don't want it.

I don't like it when the server at Starbucks asks me if I want a blueberry muffin with my cappuccino even though I am standing in front of them and quite clearly haven't asked for one with my order.I like it even less when a group of "volunteers" from Friends of the Earth, a brand I previously had a lot of time for, were virtually patrolling the pavements on Victoria Street, accosting pedestrians, some of whom were clearly not interested, and trying to get them to sign up. When I approached one of them with my camera phone pointing in their direction they scarpered and hid. I suggested to them they were not doing their brand any favours by engaging with the public in such an aggressive way and would be better off having something which 'gave' to the pass public; music, some speakers, etc.

I like it even less when what is being fostered on me seems to make no sense. I went to the gym yesterday for a quick lunchtime swim. I gave the receptionist my gym membership card and a pound deposit for the towel before going through the turnstile when the receptionist turned to me and said "Would you like a drink?"

Now I understand why, even if I don't care for it, the server at Starbucks would ask me if I would like a muffin when I order a cappaccuino, or a shoeshop salesperson would ask me if I would like some polish or a shoe tree when I buy a pair of shoes, but I asking me if I want a drink when I going to have a swim, well that is a bit of a stretch. I didn't like it. I told him I didn't want a drink but I would like a swim.

These brands just don't do themselves any favors by trying to make that extra sale. Perhaps the numbers DO add up. It would interesting to find out if these staff prompts actually generate enough sales to justify the little bit of sales training required to push today's hot sell AND overcome the level of negativity they will be building up around the brand.

In contrast, I was walking through St. Pancras/Kings Cross station a few days ago. There were a few Gt. Ormond St. volunteers dotted around the station concourse (never more than one, not a pack like Friends of the Earth folk) holding a bucket into which they wanted passers by to put their cash. They didn't make a sound. They stood still and just waited.

I immediately put all my change into one of the buckets and told him of my encounter with the Friends of the Earth "volunteers" in Victoria. He replied, sagely, "they are probably on commission".

Signage

From NJ. A very old-fashioned way of addressing young-fashioned people. I suspect it was not the best way to get this message across to this target group.

Account Planning Group Article

Another article I tracked down. This one is from 2002 and appears on the Account Planning Group's website.

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Media-neutral planning - what is it?

Christian Barnett, Board Account Planner, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R
This paper focuses on three key areas for discussion: firstly, what an agency delivers to ensure a media-neutral campaign, secondly, what the optimum agency-client structure to make integrated campaigns a reality, and thirdly the implications for the agency team composition.

What the Agency delivers

It is important to deliver more than just the written definition of the 'creative idea', and the advertising campaign. There needs to be an entire 'brand language' which includes definition of the idea in a conceptual, linguistic (literally examples of headlines and copy) and a visual way. The last is particularly important as many integrated campaigns rely on a visual synergy to hold them together, especially in media such as packaging, trade merchandising, and other in-store design.

The best approach to developing a 'brand language' is by means of a specifically tailored 'style guide'. This ensures that an integrated solution can be implemented not just sold. The style guide contains examples of how the campaign is intended to work in various media (TV, outdoor, print, on-line, trade, in-store, etc.). The idea, the visual look, the language and other executional elements are dissected and explained so that they can be easily reproduced.

The skill lies in being able to produce an integrated campaign that has an idea and a look. An idea with no look is difficult to replicate in many of the static media. A look with no idea becomes hard to execute in a dynamic media such as TV.

As a result, a clear distinction is made between the integrated campaign style guide and a traditional graphic designer's brand book. The latter may establish a visual look but can be very difficult to create advertising to.

What is the optimum Agency-Client 'Structure'

Some agency-client structures are more helpful than others at facilitating media-neutral campaigns. The least helpful scenario is that where a client keeps its agencies in separate 'silos'. The different agency disciplines are kept at arm's length, thereby stacking the odds against integrated thinking and solutions.

On the agency side, the least helpful scenario is one in which the agency develops an idea, shows how it works in advertising and hands the execution back over to the client. It is then up to the client to make it work in other media. Often the idea will not have been rigorously road-tested inside the agency and collapses as soon as it is taken to another media, either through insufficient skill in the transportation or because another agency has its own ideas and scuppers the 360 solution. A more typical scenario is when the client selects a number of specialist agencies. This way of working enables the client to pick 'best of breed' agencies, but it is reliant on the different agencies working closely together, something which at best requires considerable managing. In addition, best of breed agencies with their own client contract will want to impress so it is only natural that conflicts arise. This form of client-agency structure can have huge pluses; genuine integration from best of breed, but can easily go off the rails.

Another favourable scenario is the client who wants a genuine one-stop agency solution. A good example of this at RKCR/Y&R is the LEGO account. The LEGO Company had too many agency relationships around the world and saw a one stop global agency as a way to create totally integrated campaigns coming from one brand. Their brief included an integral role for media planning as part of the central creative function even though they already had regional media planning in place. They recognised that to speak with one brand voice throughout the world a one-team solution was the best way forward.

To get truly integrated ideas it is preferable to have all the disciplines under one agency roof, all working for the same agency team and pulling together. This ultimately means creative teams from different disciplines being briefed and working side by side, inputting ideas into each other's discipline in campaign development.

This thinking carries over to media planning: account planners and media planners work side by side to produce creative briefs and media shapes and then work together with creative teams to develop the best creative route.

Ironically, this structure is like a return to a full service agency, as it works better when all key parties are in the same building. The LEGO account pitch saw the RKCR/Y&R team working with the interactive specialists (2.1), the communications planning team (TME 360), and so on. All the constituent parts of the team were literally a stone's throw from each other so it was easy to 'roll' ideas on in real time rather than have lots of lumbering set piece meetings which can confuse and impede progress.

Implications for composition of agency team

Inevitably, the above has implications for the agency team composition. Creative teams need to be open to other creative teams, from different disciplines, working with them. Media planning needs to be brought into the process earlier as a 'guide' for the media shape. Non-traditional, non-silo thinking is essential and can be generated by including non-traditional, non-silo people. There is likely to be a big visual component, so significant art direction /design is required. But above very clear strategic and creative direction is required to keep the creative development process on the rails!

The Wall Street Journal Superbowl 2007

Another one of those "if I don't keep this here, I might not keep it anywhere" posts. I was interviewd, with Jill Applebaum, for the Wall Street Journal coverage of the 2007 Superbowl. The game itself is on a Sunday, but we were shown the ads and interviewed on the Saturday at the WSJ offices in downtown Manhattan. I remember it being very cold and very windy

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Advertising Super Bowl Advertisers Play It for Laughs --- Anheuser-Busch, Nationwide Seen as Hits With Humor; A Big Fumble by Flomax
By Suzanne Vranica 1,809 words 5 February 2007 The Wall Street Journal B1 English (Copyright (c) 2007, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Slap-happy men, a celebrity bad boy and a feel-good Coke ad won the game within the game during Super Bowl XLI, impressing ad-industry pros and consumers, and showing once again that humor is the best way to grab viewers' attention during the gridiron classic.
Anheuser-Busch Cos., in particular, produced a series of ads that resonated among a group of ad executives and consumers who talked with The Wall Street Journal after seeing the Super Bowl ads. Among the most popular was a Bud Light spot, crafted by Omnicom Group Inc.'s DDB, showing a string of men slapping each other. The ad was "one of the favorites of the game," says Greg Yeadon, a 28-year-old student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill., who was watching the game with a group of 36 students and faculty.

"It is something I can imagine catching on like other Bud ads have in the past, like the 'Whassup' stuff," says Kristi Bridges, creative director at the Sawtooth Group ad agency in New Jersey, referring to the popular Budweiser ads that ran in 2000.

Despite the standouts, this year's Super Bowl ads overall didn't live up to the hype surrounding them. Even a surprise CBS Corp. promo managed to outshine some of the big-spending advertisers. The spot showed Indianapolis native David Letterman, wearing a Colts jersey, and Chicago resident Oprah Winfrey, sporting a Bears jersey -- snuggling on a couch. "It is one of the best things I've seen so far," says Christopher Celeste, a 41-year-old who works at a technology startup in Cleveland.

About 90 million viewers in the U.S. were expected to watch the game on CBS, an audience far bigger than any other television broadcast attracts. Advertisers paid as much as $2.6 million for 30-second spots, confident that viewers would pay special attention to the commercial breaks. More than half of U.S. adults who watch the Super Bowl do so as much or more for the commercials as for the game itself, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. for Hanon McKendry/The Brand Consultants.

While Anheuser-Busch is an old hand at producing winning Super Bowl ads, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. catapulted into that territory for the first time with an ad starring Kevin Federline
-- wannabe rapper and singer Britney Spears's soon-to-be ex-husband -- as a worker in a fast-food joint. The idea: Be prepared with an annuity if life throws you a surprise blow. "I loved it. Insurance and pop culture together -- now that's an accomplishment," says Jon Bond, cochairman, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. Interpublic Group's TM Advertising created the ad.
Successfully tying into the country's obsession with celebrity, Nationwide's ad managed to generate millions in free publicity over the past three weeks.

Early polling on WSJ.com had Coke ads and Bud Light's classroom spot leading the pack.
Coca-Cola Co., returning to the Super Bowl after an eight-year hiatus, was the clear winner of a much-anticipated matchup with its archrival and prolific big game advertiser PepsiCo Inc., ad executives said. "Coke was brilliantly done --superb," raves Christian Barnett, an ad executive at Brand Buzz, a unit of WPP Group's Young & Rubicam.

Even though Coke's ads have aired in recent weeks on Fox's "American Idol," and lacked the advantage of surprise, they still captured the attention of advertising experts and viewers last night -- good news for Coke, which has struggled with lackluster advertising in recent years. One, made to look like a videogame, showed an ominous looking do-gooder character passing out Coke to the people he meets while the other whimsical spot reveals what happens inside a Coca-Cola vending machine. "It made me feel good," says Steve Archer, a 52-year-old vice president at a financial firm in St. Louis, Mo. Both spots were crafted by Wieden + Kennedy.

In contrast, PepsiCo's ads promoting Sierra Mist brand were seen as generally missing the humor mark, though one, featuring a man with a freaky-looking beard comb-over, did leave some chuckling. Pepsi sponsored the half-time show.

User-generated ads -- those created by consumers, rather than ad agencies --created a buzz. Maybe the biggest winner of the night was 21-year-old Dale Backus, an amateur filmmaker who won Doritos' contest for a member of the public to produce a Super Bowl commercial. Doritos are made by Pepsico's Frito-Lay.

In the latest example of how the user-generated content trend has swept Madison Avenue, Doritos revealed the winner publicly only when the ad aired. The high quality of the spot, featuring a guy getting into a car accident, had some on Madison Avenue a bit nervous. "It's kind of scary that a consumer can come up with stuff that good," says Simeon Roane, executive creative director at the New York office of Publicis USA, a unit of Publicis Groupe.
Doritos seemed to agree. Yesterday, the company announced that the top five finalists in the contest would run on national television through March. The company also decided at the last moment to air the runner-up in the contest -- a funny ad showing a supermarket checkout girl
- during the Super Bowl broadcast. Also tapping into the user-generated phenomenon was General Motors Corp.'s Chevrolet, whose ad originated with an idea proposed by Katie Crabb -- a freshman at University of Wisconsin. But the spot was a bit more polished than that of Doritos, because Chevy's ad firm helped to produce it. The commercial featured a group of girls in a Chevy HHR, a retro-style miniwagon, enjoying watching their car being washed by a group of half-naked men who can't seem to take their hands off the car.

All Super Bowl advertisers, though, had a tough task trying to drown out Anheuser-Busch, which aired a total of nine ads for Budweiser, Bud Light and Bud Select. The brewer's Super Bowl ads are routinely among the most popular with viewers and this year was no exception among the group of advertising executives. Among the spots generating a positive reaction was one heartfelt spot featuring a dog making his dreams come true and another funny ad showing a game of rock-paper-scissors. Another spot showing Latino comic Carlos Mencia teaching English to a room of immigrants was a particular crowd-pleaser.

"I love the spot, it was hysterical," says Holly Ross, a 39-year-old who was watching the game in Cincinnati.

One spot that is likely to generate much water-cooler discussion today is Mars Inc.'s ad for Snickers, featuring two mechanics sharing the candy bar -- in what is a somewhat bizarre spin on the famous scene from "Lady and the Tramp," where two dogs simultaneously eat the same strand of spaghetti.

"Its very funny but also disturbing on so many levels," says Mark DiMassimo, CEO of DiMassimo Goldstein in New York.

General Motors won the battle of the automotive titans. Its ad, via Interpublic's Deutsch, featuring a robot that dreams about losing his job, got high marks from advertising executives for using a different approach to the typical car ad that shows cars speeding around curvy roads. Many said the ad was "epic" but some predicted the spot would rub certain viewers the wrong way. "How many folks in Detroit were put out of work because of robots?" asks Rob Feakins, president and chief creative officer of the New York office of Publicis USA.

The hype surrounding Super Bowl ads has raised expectations of viewers about what they will see -- making it difficult to please audiences. And overall, this year's crop of ads fell a bit short. "The game is better than the ads for a change," says Michigan State University advertising professor Bruce Vanden Bergh. Ad folks blame the lackluster output on the larger number of marketers who jumped into the game late in the process and either ran ads that had been seen before or ran new ads that weren't designed specifically for the Super Bowl. "If you are going to pay that price tag, you better go big," Mr. DiMassimo added.

Honda Motor Co., for instance, ran two ads that have aired before. Revlon Inc. jumped into the game only in recent weeks, producing a new spot starring singer Sheryl Crow -- but one that wasn't designed specifically for the Super Bowl. Some ad executives gave the company credit for entering the male-dominated arena --its ad promoted a new women's hair-coloring product.
Also disappointing were several advertisers that have previously scored big in the Super Bowl, including FedEx Corp., Careerbuilder.com and E*Trade Financial.

FedEx, which scored strongly last year with an ad set in the Stone Age, this year went for a moon setting. But the ad, created by Omnicom Group Inc.'s BBDO, didn't measure up. "It was a big ad but it doesn't pay off," says Brand Buzz's Mr. Barnett. "Last year's dinosaur ad was so much better." Still, the package-delivery giant didn't entirely flame out.

Another ad that exaggerated the saying "it's not what it seems" managed to get some points. The spot was "amusing and fun," says Jeff Kling, executive creative director of the New York office of Havas SA's Euro RSCG.

Also drawing some grumbling this year was Careerbuilder.com, the online job site jointly owned by the newspaper publishers Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. It has pleased viewers in recent years with Super Bowl spots showing offices where monkeys sat working at desks, but this year the company left its monkeys behind in favor of such spots as one showing office workers fighting hand-to-hand over a promotion. "Where are the chimps?" says Mr. Roane.
But the biggest fumble of the night come from Flomax, the prostate drug from Boehringer Ingelheim Corp. The spot, which described the drug's side effects as including a "decrease in semen," showed men competing in a bike race. Ad executives questioned whether such ads should run during the Super Bowl. "Call me a prude but there are kids watching the game," says Mr. Feakins.

The company is required to list the drug's side effects in ads. The drug maker recognizes the personal subject matter in the spot and told The Wall Street Journal last week that it elected to run the commercial late in the game to avoid younger audiences.

The Best Place To Work

Le Chateau de Touffou is one of the best places to work I know. I have had the good fortune to go there twice to work and both times have been magical. It is not the grounds and the magnificent architecture and art or the sense of history, but the long meals (4 course lunch and dinner, with wine that go against modern day work practices) and most importantly Madame Ogilvy who has lived in the chateau for almost 40 years. It is her home and that it is a home makes all the difference to people's ability to get on with one another and to work productively, at least in my experience. Every company should have one (or for smaller companies, a slightly less grand one).

For the full set of pics, click here, and go for the slideshow in the upper right.

War and Peace

It's a monumental read. I started in February when we were in ski-ing in The Alps and it has taken me almost until our summer holidays to finish it. There were periods where it was unputdownable and other periods where it was almost unpickupable. My favourite storyline/ character set were the Old Prince, Prince Andry, and Natasha. There was real verve and pathos in that story, especially when Andry was dying.

The big idea in the book? That history isn't just about the story of the leaders, and leaders are not the makers of history. It is the stories of many many many people and that history is created by movements beyond individuals. And if history is that way, so is society in the present.

The huge array of characters and the length of the book reinforce that. It is the stories of the peasants and the infantry as much as the story of two kings. (Look at the thickness! Here it is compared to my Mac Book Pro)

I have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina in the last couple of years. My grandmother gave them to Jill and I went we got married and it was for her that I embarked on them. To my mind the climax of Anna Karenina is one of the most gripping pieces of fiction I have ever read. I preferred it as a novel to War and Peace, though the themes developed in War and Peace are more interesting to me.

Brand Design

Some notes I made on brand identity and brand design that I wanted to keep a hold of:

"In its earliest form, when animals were branded with a hot iron to demonstrate ownership, the resulting mark was to give the animal a distinguishing and recognisable identity: in this case identity meant ownership.

The way we talk about brands today has evolved but they still need a distinguishing and recognisable identity.

We often talk about having a differentiating idea at the core of a brand but that core idea still needs a differentiating identity; a way to bring the idea to life.

In today’s fast paced, multi-media, multiple branded world sensory shortcuts that carry meaning are more important than ever. The most obvious of these in the branded world are the visual cues: the associations with a logo, the power of colour, the rich meaning of visual brand equities. But, increasingly, smell, touch, sound and the ‘feel’ of a brand space or brand experience are part of a brand’s identity.

What brings all these elements together is the notion of brand design. We believe that great brand design is fundamental to having a great brand. And the philosophy of design runs deep, deep into the DNA of the brand and is manifest through every expression of it. Think about Apple. Their identity is expressed through brilliant, coherent design again and again. Across products, packaging, website, retail environments, communications, time and geographies."