Top Qual Tips 1: the generation vs illustration dichotomy

It’s time to post something actually useful – I hope – about qualitative research. After a long hiatus with this blog in 2015 for technical reasons – WordPress somehow produced an unbreakable security loop which prevented me and my IT guy accessing it for several months – I’ve managed a couple of ultimately quite self-indulgentContinue reading “Top Qual Tips 1: the generation vs illustration dichotomy”

Julia Holter: lucidity by the shore

Since I branded my qual consultancy Shore in 2010 – the ‘shore’ idea being qual research as a liminal, in-between place between communicators and the public – I find myself regularly awash with cultural references to shore-related stuff. I think it’s like when you buy a new Toyota Avensis and suddenly start noticing how manyContinue reading “Julia Holter: lucidity by the shore”

Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan

Kahneman discusses Thinking Fast And Slow at LSE with Evan Davies and Paul Dolan For those interested in psychology and behavioural economics, here is a quick link via Prof Paul Dolan’s site to an hour’s discussion between Evan Davies, Dolan and Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow, which took place a while back when theContinue reading “Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan”

Creative Qual Provides Fuel, Not The Chequered Flag

Start The Week: Creativity, with Jonah Lehrer and others A fascinating Start The Week this morning dealt with the subject of creativity, with that prolific interpreter of science for the masses, Jonah Lehrer discussing his new book. (OK, my bookshelf is now officially going to collapse with all these tomes I need to read). AboveContinue reading “Creative Qual Provides Fuel, Not The Chequered Flag”

A Nice Throw-Back: Ads That Are Actually Funny

I had a week in the USA this month and caught this series of ads in between my son’s Lego Ninjago cartoons. There are several in the campaign and nearly all are laugh-out-loud funny. Great job by Grey New York. The acting is spot on. What also makes it is the director having an acuteContinue reading “A Nice Throw-Back: Ads That Are Actually Funny”

Public image limited – and metrosexuals’ kindly uncles

Stuffed like a museum coypu with fieldwork last month, January was a vintage period for methodological learnings for me: new experiences and new twists on familiar ones in front of the Great British Public. Unlike the coypu, I’ll be living off the experiences for a while. The first one to muse on is this: howContinue reading “Public image limited – and metrosexuals’ kindly uncles”

Boiling it down should make you sweat

Diane Abbott‘s twitter controversy last week was something of a storm in a teacup (white or black tea, it certainly could have done with some more sweetener in it). But what interested me was her defence: that it was hard to capture the context – discourses about the legacy of colonialist thinking – in 140Continue reading “Boiling it down should make you sweat”

Hewlett Packard: Stick to Plan A for Plan B

I enjoyed Drum’s ad for Hewlett Packard, featuring Plan B doing She Said, which I caught a couple of weeks ago before the Tintin film: It’s a 21st Century truism that for every artefact created, there must be a “the making of” film (because we can’t handle anyone being behind the scenes any more). EvenContinue reading “Hewlett Packard: Stick to Plan A for Plan B”

Choice as a barrier to change – from RSA Animate

Just passing this one on, really: it’s one of those lovely RSA Animate illustrated talks, with Prof Renata Saleci’s views on how the proliferation of individual choice keeps us all from asking bigger questions (or at least, from doing anything about the answers). It’s the other side of the coin of personal empowerment – personalContinue reading “Choice as a barrier to change – from RSA Animate”

Angelic Upstarts: Lynx Turns Boys Into Men

I notice the Lynx Fallen Angel tv ads now have a comedy addendum (see above). What better way to seal the deal with the target audience than some irreverent visual gags with our now familiar fallen angelic lasses? Rule No1 of British popular culture is that where sex goes, comedy must surely follow – titterContinue reading “Angelic Upstarts: Lynx Turns Boys Into Men”