This past Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013, marked the end of another NFL season and it was a day where a new World Champion was crowned. Albeit begrudgingly, the Baltimore Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers 34-31, which ended the reign of my New York Giants as champions of the NFL. We’ve spent quite a few posts talking about the NFL on our blog using market research tie-ins and it seemed like we were due for another.

Here are some other RMS Bunker Blog posts, which touch on the NFL:

So what can the 2012-13 Baltimore Ravens teach us about market research?

Here are a few takeaways from their season:

1) Stay calm, cool and collected like Joe Flacco. Is he elite or is he not elite? It’s a question all NFL analysts were asking for the entire five-year career. He faced the critics and went out and had one of his best games of his career in the biggest game in sports. He seems unfazed when he’s playing QB and maybe some analysts misread that as a lack of passion and confidence (see: Eli Manning). Nonetheless, when you watch him play quarterback, it’s hard to tell whether it’s the first minute of the game with the score 0-0, or the last-minute of game with the Ravens down by four points and needing a touchdown to win the game.

#MRX Takeaway: Fieldwork in market research can often be a bumpy road. Sometimes it feels like it never runs smooth and hitting your quotas for difficult segments can be tough to reach whether it is online surveys, qualitative recruitment or even telephone surveys. You may need to adjust some parameters on the fly or rethink your screener criteria, but keep doing your daily checks and remain focused on quality. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture and objectives for the client; the fieldwork is just one piece of a larger market research puzzle.

baltimore ravens market research

Baltimore Ravens QB Joe Flacco

2) Loyalty to an organization, like Ray Lewis and the Ravens, pays off.

Ray Lewis spent his entire career with the Baltimore Ravens and has become the face of their franchise. He won two SuperBowls with the team, one early in his career and one at the book-end of his career this past season. While he played, the Ravens were always considered at or near the top of the NFL in team defense. They had a system in place, surrounding themselves with talent, and worked as a team.

#MRX Takeaway: At RMS, we have the pleasure of working with many of our clients on a retainer basis. Many of our clients come back to our team time and time again throughout the year to conduct market research. The benefit of this is the more work we do for them, the more our team learns about their organization, which makes the objectives of the market research more clear. By understanding a client and their needs, we can mold a better methodology, manage the process better and deliver targeted results. Loyalty to RMS and RMS’s loyalty to our clients pays dividends.

3) It’s okay to celebrate like Jacoby Jones sometimes. The Ravens third WR (wide receiver) came to play on SuperBowl Sunday. He returned the second half kickoff for a 108-yard touchdown, which gave his team a huge cushion, which they almost gave away. His catch and run in the first half may have been more impressive. He adjusted to the ball in the air to catch a long bomb from Flacco, fell on his back, got up (untouched), made a few moves on defenders and curled to his left into the end-zone. Then came the celebration dance:

Click here: http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-highlights/0ap2000000135691/Super-Bowl-XLVII-Jacoby-Jones-highlights

#MRX Takeaway: Market research can be a daily grind of one project to another. Oftentimes the research team gets so caught up in moving onto the next priority that we don’t take the time to celebrate or admire the project that was just completed. As market researchers, we all may not be able to dance like Jacoby, but we should take some time to enjoy the work that was just completed.

Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) is a market research firm located in Syracuse, NY. We are a full-service marketing and market research firm providing a wide range of custom-tailored market intelligence services for many diverse industries. RMS offers custom research using both the traditional and online methodologies. RMS forms partnerships with clients by functioning as a seamless extension of their marketing departments.