Halp! (dissertation interview woes) - The Bear and Badger

EvilRedEye

Hey guys

I'm in the middle of doing my marketing dissertation and having committed myself to interviewing peeps from small-to-medium-sized businesses I've realised too late that I'm actually not too great at the whole arranging interviews game. I've had the most success using IRL contacts and thought it'd be worth seeing if anyone on here would be able to provide any assistance since getting just one interview out of it would be a win.

I'm basically looking to interview owners or marketing staff from businesses of less than 250 employees (through Skype unless they happen to be around Manchester). I haven't limited the project by sector although I've already spoken to a couple of SMEs that were solely business-to-business and I think I'm going to just get identical responses if I do any more (unless they provide marketing-related services like an ad/design agency working on consumer-facing stuff). If that is, like, a description of you, or you have a contact you can share etc. then please let me know.

Anyhoo, not sure if anyone'll be able to help but if you don't ask you don't get!

poprock

What will the interview involve?

Q&A over email, phone call, face to face, etc? And how long, what time of day, etc?

I can ask some folk, but they’ll need to know what the time/hassle commitment is from their end before they’ll agree to anything.

EvilRedEye

The project's about advertising regulation so it's basically a discussion of the business' marketing capabilities/activities, what awareness they have of advertising regulation and discussion of some past examples of cases that have been considered by the regulator. It would just be a straightforward one-off discussion and there would be no need for follow-up/further bother afterwards. The data will be anonymised in the final report to protect confidentiality.

Remote Skype/phone meeting is absolutely fine. Face-to-face would be ideal for anyone around Manchester but not neccessary. Email isn't ideal (I don't think the marker would be keen on it). Length of time would ideally be an hour, I did manage to do a shorter half-hour one for a guy that was short on time. I can be really flexible with time of day etc, whenever's most convenient for them really.

cockbeard

Sorry I think my firm is too big, though the marketing department itself is less than 250, good luck though

poprock

Okay, so to be helpful it’ll really need to be a business who do advertise. I’ll have a think, if anyone comes to mind I’ll let you know.

EvilRedEye

poprock wrote:

Okay, so to be helpful it’ll really need to be a business who do advertise.

It depends - social media and digital stuff counts as advertising for my purposes. I wouldn't necessarily expect many potential respondents to do a lot of traditional comms - from the SMEs I've spoken to or know of, they either don't have the budget for traditional comms or have found digital provides the best return on investment. For some respondents I've asked some of the question from more of a 'if your business grew' or 'as a thought experiment' basis and that's worked out fine. But if it's a business based entirely on contacts and word-of-mouth then yeah, I suppose they perhaps wouldn't find it applicable.

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