The Guardian this week carried a story about a simple but brilliant piece of hospital research.  The researchers wanted to know if an incredibly simple modification to what people in hospitals do when working with intravenous drips could cut infection rates.

Please don’t give up on me at this point - there is a real marketing issue here - and this is not about some complex medical procedure.  All the researchers instituted was a tick list.  The research set out to prove whether there were less infections when the medical team had a tick list covering all the basics - such as wash your hands, put on the gloves, and so on.

The result of the research was amazing - in a period of 18 months the level of infections dropped by 75%, 1500 people lived who (by the results being obtained before) would have died, and over £100 million was saved in terms of further medical intervention.

All from a simple tick list reminding people to do the obvious.

Now in marketing we don’t deal with saving people’s lives, but we do have to deal with money.  Just imagine what impacts we could all make through such tiny changes as this.  

There is just one problem.  While, in the medical sphere, there is a tradition going back hundreds of years of experiment and  research on the job starting from one principle and working out.  Of course I can’t talk about your work, and I’ll be delighted to receive your comments telling me I am wrong, but my experience in general is that very few marketing people do this type of research.   Certainly the great gurus of marketing tend to give little analogies, and check lists of do’s and don’ts.  No one encourages simple, but well thought out experiments outside of university departments.

Maybe its because “research” sounds too grand.  But as the tick box story (which is quite real - page 16 Guardian, Feb 23) shows simple ideas can be tried out to see what effect they have as long as the results are measured. 

20 years ago I sacked a designer and copywriter from the publishing company I was running because they had taken a promotion I had devised as a one colour one side piece on bond paper, and turned it into a two colour 3 fold item with tear off strip by the order form.  They didn’t go because they had done the research - that was fine.  It was that they produced a further 10 such pieces without waiting for the results of the first.   The results showed that my simple design cost half of theirs to produce, and brought in 8 times the level of orders.

My personal view is that we could all make a huge difference to marketing if we just said to ourselves - I wonder if things would work better if we did this….  Let’s try it for a week, and measure the result and it was that thinking that led to my creating [1] www.theory.bz which draws together a lot of the research that has taken place.

If you ever do feel moved to try some research - or indeed if you have done so - and you would like to share your results, please do get in touch -  01536 399 000.   Tony Attwood