The lean 1990s have turned market researchers from gurus offering detailed forecasts of the future into consultants who provide marketers short and snappy advice they can act on.

Stephen Tile, president and COO of Goldfarb Consultants in Toronto, says when he started in the business in 1980, market researchers were still seen as "gurus, future tellers whose techniques were somewhat mystical." But technology and other realities of the '90s have "turned the research community upside down," making researchers into consultants.

These realities are that consumers now hold the ultimate power, that consumers and marketers alike are bombarded with more information than they can digest, that companies are downsizing and that their brands are their most valuable assets. And these developments are changing the role of the researcher from one who measures the effect of things --whether products or marketing plans-- to one who helps develop these things in the first place, explains Tile.

"It used to be (that a marketer would) brainstorm, build the program (marketing program or new product), have a hypothesis about how it should work, then go and, on a limited basis, execute somewhere and evaluate how well it did," Tile says. But this method is expensive and risky. So researchers offer what Marion Plunkett, president of Plunkett Communications Research Services of Toronto, calls "success insurance"­research done upfront to help develop a successful program or product in the first place.

Companies are buying into this by doing more homework before they make an offering to consumers, say both Plunkett and Tile. The Co-operators Insurance Co. of Guelph, Ont., for example, did extensive research before launching its DirectProtect home and car insurance, which is sold by phone, says Ken Solmon, vice-president, consumer insights at the Toronto direct marketing agency Wunderman Cato Johnson.

A Cooperators TV spot addressed the worry, revealed in research, that buying insurance by phone is impersonal

First, The Cooperators worked with WCJ and Creative Research International of Toronto to evaluate response to the idea of buying insurance by phone. They discovered that consumers liked the convenience and time savings, but also found it somewhat scary because of its impersonal nature.

To offset this concern, The Cooperators and WCJ created a TV launch campaign featuring tiny insurance salespeople coming out of telephones, showing there really is a person on the other end of that line. Jeff Contant, president of HB Group of Toronto, a division of The Cooperators, says DirectProtect agents have been swamped with calls, leading the company to boost the number of its agents from 50 to 140 since the campaign's launch in late 1995, and to plan to hire another 100 by this fall.

Part of the reason market researchers are taking on more of a consulting role is due to corporate downsizing. Some of the research departments they used to interact with no longer exist, so instead they're dealing directly with the top executives of their marketing clients. And Tile says those executives and decision-makers don't want 300-page reports: "They want guidance for decision-making, and that's all."

Solmon says WCJ in effect acts as the research department for its clients, pre-testing and helping refine the products and services, as well as how they are marketed. For example, WCJ worked with Canadian Tire Acceptance of Toronto on a 1995 relaunch of its Auto Club so that it offered coverage of vehicles rather than individual drivers.

Solmon says research showed that many families with more drivers than cars didn't want to buy extra auto-club memberships for their children, yet still wanted them covered when they were driving the family car. Auto Club director Geoff Brock says the research provided the confidence to go ahead with the new product. And while he won't give away membership numbers, he says he is "very happy" with the success of the product.

Marilyn Sandler, president of Creative Research International of Toronto, agrees that the role of researchers is changing to an interpretive one of taking all the information and boiling it down to a few suggestions on what the company should do. She says that's the niche her company aimed for when it was founded in 1971, but it is a more common role now.

Although Sandler isn't sure there has been a widespread change from evaluative to upfront research, she says she would applaud such a move. And she does say that more companies are doing research in general, and that research is playing a bigger role in their marketing strategies.

Technological changes are also playing a role in altering research. Tile points to virtual-reality programs that allow companies to have consumers evaluate a virtual prototype without having to build the product first. And the speed and capacity of computer technologies means there is a lot more information to be interpreted, says Sandler.

Information overload doesn't just happen with research: technology means there are more ways to send messages to marketers and consumers, and to more of them. Marketers need help understanding the large amounts of data that can be gathered in order to create a message that breaks through the clutter and is understood by the consumer.

Such intense competition is putting a premium on strong brand equity, so companies are doing more research to understand their brand and its core values, says Plunkett: "As a company, we uncover the core brand values and how to leverage those values to keep the brand relevant in the '90s."

Tile defines a brand as a promise that must be kept. He says in the classic case of the launch of New Coke, "if your promise is that Coke is the Real Thing, you can't change it­even if the new product is better, because you've already said Coke is the best." A brand combines tangibles and intangibles, and, Tile says, in this case Coca-Cola fixed a tangible without considering its effect on the intangible promise.

Breaking a brand's promise can be deadly. "If you've advertised and sent out the wrong message, or if you've gotten someone to try your product and it fails to meet the expectation you've set up, you've alienated those customers," Sandler says.

Central to sustaining the strength of a brand is understanding that customers now hold the ultimate power. Plunkett says the traditional pyramid of manufacturer over retailer over consumer has flipped, with consumers now on top. This, she says, is mainly because of the incredible choice consumers face. "I think the '90s have been and are about making choices in every area of our lives," she says.

And where are there more choices than on television? YTV hired Creative Research International to help it decide who to target and how to target them. The Toronto-based specialty TV service is two-thirds of the way through a three-year study of tweens (children nine to 13), says Julie Look, director of research.

The first two years of the study revealed that many tweens like to watch television with their parents, so this spring YTV launched a prime-time program block for tweens and adults called "YTV Shift." It chose the slot of 6 to 9 p.m. because the research showed that its prime time is earlier than the traditional 7 to 11 p.m. This program block, including shows like Goosebumps and ReBoot, was advertised in a magazine and radio campaign targeted at adults.

The key role that Creative Research International played in developing this programming time block is a sign of the times, of researchers' growing role in helping marketers make decisions. Tile sums up this shift by saying that it is "bringing researchers to the boardroom table.