Marketing R&D

A BusinessWeek article talked about the makers of the YouTube sensation Lonelygirl15. They are coming out with a new web-series that is going to be funded through a whole slew of nonconventional revenue sources (ad, sponsorship, work-for-hiring, licensing, and tech platforms).

Greg Goodfried, one of the producers, had an interesting quote:

"What we do is the R&D side of marketing, and everyone is cutting that in the short term."

I liked the idea of marketing R&D. How many marketing companies have R&D? Should they? New York Times might be able to use it.