By J. Walker Smith
In this moment of widespread change and mounting uncertainty, the Insights Association debuted the Insights Imperative last month at its annual Corporate Researchers Conference (CRC). This imperative calls upon the insights industry to embrace and champion the shared responsibility of ensuring that ‘the human’ continues to sit at the heart of business, especially insights. Three days of keynote presentations and breakout sessions explored this imperative across many fronts. Five things stood out as critical takeaways to carry forward.
1. Human-centered truth.
Incoming IA CEO Anita Watkins put a stake in the ground on day one of CRC. The fundamental promise of insights is “human-centered truth.” What humans think, what humans want and need, what humans choose, what humans do—this is the value that insights organizations deliver to business and policy leaders. The IA’s Insights Imperative states this unambiguously: “[T]he core purpose of marketing remains unchanged: to understand and connect with people as people— complex, emotional, contextual, and evolving. Insights are the discipline that ensures this understanding does not get lost.”
Yet, this purpose needs a renewed commitment. Threats to the integrity and focus of insights are intensifying as changes in technology, quality and organizational investment multiply rapidly. AI is coming fast, so insights must double down on its commitment to human-centered truth. Insights must not allow expediency, efficiency or immediacy to compromise human-centered truth.
2. Make room for more.
With so many new things on the horizon, a big issue for insights leaders is finding room for everything. There are more capabilities and more tools alongside more challenges of data quality and company commitment. It adds up quickly to too much. So, less must be done in some areas to make room for doing more in others.
To be the agent of influence that is central to Anita’s call to action, insights leaders must make some hard choices. What methodologies have outlived their value? What tasks are better done by smart systems? What are the highest value priorities for smart humans to tackle? There are no ready-made answers to these questions, but whatever the answers, insights will need to do less to make room for more.
3. Always-on.
A phrase heard repeatedly throughout the three days of CRC was continuous intelligence. Meaning a start-to-finish insights workstream that functions fluidly without stoppages or pauses. In other words, a flow that is seamlessly integrated, not a concatenation of projects. Much of this is about speed and the ability to draw answers on demand from an ongoing flow of intelligence.
It raises a question about the point at which insights professionals add value. Is it merely in coding or developing a workstream platform or is there still a point at which human judgment matters and is sought by decision-makers? Industry experience with AI to date makes it clear that, for the foreseeable future, human thinking will continue to have value. Nonetheless, new skills and new consultative savvy will be required. Insights leaders will have to be more assertive to a wider audience than ever before.
4. Synthetic. And human.
Sessions on synthetic drew big crowds at IA’s CRC. One of the best attended was an overview session that reviewed the many types and use cases for synthetic applications. Balancing synthetic opportunities with the need for human input and validation is sure to be one of the bigger challenges ahead for the insights industry.
Some synthetic applications are old school, such as upweighting and look-alike modeling of rare, hard-to-reach samples. But most synthetic applications push the boundaries farther, like panels of digital twins for early-stage concept and ad testing or for pretesting questionnaires. Personas can be brought to life as agents answering questions. Missing data can be estimated for databases fused together from separate sources. Answers can be imputed instead of asked in order to keep questionnaires short. And so forth. It’s a weighty challenge for insights—staying true to human-centered truths while sharpening the edge of relevance and impact with synthetic applications.
5. Business decisions, not research projects.
A perennial grumble among insights professionals is not having a seat at the table. But this issue becomes much more important as technology takes over operational and analytical functions. If AI can do it, tabulate it and report it, what then of researchers? AI will not substitute for everything, of course, and hands-on experience is showing less replacement of jobs than initially feared. However, whether AI takes jobs or not, AI will certainly change the way jobs are done by insights professionals.
The conversation now is about shifting focus and training to strategy and consultation. In short, more about business, less about research, yet with big implications for research. This could mean more specialization and less full-service research. It could mean an uptick in immersive qualitative methodologies to stay connected to human truths. It could mean looking for ways to preserve the outliers of innovation if new analytics put more emphasis on means and consensus. It definitely means mentoring the next generation in new ways as old jobs and old communities give way to the future.
These are all big challenges, but the payoff is big opportunities. Insights professionals must continue these important conversations, all of which sit at the heart of the IA’s Insights Imperative.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Described by Fortune as “one of America’s leading analysts on consumer trends,” J. Walker Smith is a student of the American consumer and a strategic advisor to senior business leaders worldwide. Walker’s experience includes President, Yankelovich; Executive Chairman, The Futures Company; Chief Knowledge OLicer, Kantar Consulting; and, currently, Knowledge Lead, Kantar. He also speaks and consults as Founder/Principal of Paradigm Edge. Walker is the author of four highly regarded books, a blogger, a MediaPost columnist and a former public radio commentator. He has been recognized by his peers with the Market Research Council Hall of Fame, the N.C. Journalism and Media Hall of Fame, three WPP Atticus Awards, a Kantar SPARK Award, and the AMA’s Charles Coolidge Parlin Award. He was a director of Premiere Global Services (NYSE) and President of the Foundation Board for the U.N.C.–Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media, from which he holds a doctorate.