This is an excerpt from the newly published book, Insights on the Brink: Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry
By Brett Townsend & Tim Hoskins of Quester
Consumer insights are needed regardless of the economic situation: in good economic times, CI is needed to drive relevant product innovation and expansion; in slower economic times, CI is needed to deliver the right products and effective messages so that consumers spend their precious dollars on our products and brands. Yet it never fails that when the economy slows down, CI is one of the first areas that gets cut by senior executives, effectively shutting down the figurative bank from which they could draw their money. Why has CI become so expendable?
It seems virtually every industry has been significantly disrupted in one way or another, and companies are searching for anything to give them a competitive advantage. Yet even in this climate, many insights departments aren’t only facing budget and head count cuts but also the fact that their leaders don’t feel their organizations are insight driven. Because of this, many of them are now outsourcing insights to the consulting giants. It’s not that leaders don’t believe in insights; they believe in outcomes and that’s what consulting companies give them.
CI professionals who are excelling aren’t doing so based on methodologies but in their ability to analyze, interpret, and tell impactful, actionable stories about the results that lead to profitable outcomes. In the resource-constrained world of CI, not only do corporate researchers need their agency partners to be better at this, but it’s also what they need them to be focused on, not how the research is done. That doesn’t mean corporate researchers shouldn’t care about how the study is constructed because the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is so true. If we don’t have data integrity or sound research construction, then our research is pointless. But with few exceptions, insights agencies do a good job of building research projects from a sampling and methodology standpoint. The separation of agencies comes in the analytics and reporting, and the separation of insights leaders comes in the impact of the work for their companies.
We’re dealing with enlightened consumers who have all the power, and the best insights professionals are those who find a way to navigate and make use of all the relevant insights at their disposal. They learn as they go. But most importantly, they’re curious. We’re the ones who should dare to question established tribal knowledge, fixed “insights" and "facts" about customer behavior, the market, trends, and competition. Curious insights people constantly question internal “truths" or assumptions and seek more understanding on multiple levels, see things that others don’t, and build successful products, brands, and companies.
Of the many attributes of a great CI professional, empathy is toward the top of the list. The ability to feel our consumers’ conflict and be motivated to find ways to help them is a key to our jobs. Therefore, the first lesson we must learn is that there is no empathy in data. No one in your company can “become in some measure the same person with” the consumer through charts, graphs, tables, and advanced analytical methods. And we can’t create empathy in our organizations by talking about the generic “consumer,” listing their demographics, or even telling general stories about the collective consumer. We need to make it personal on an individual level. We can’t generate empathy about hunger in Africa by giving statistics about malnutrition and deaths, but we can by talking about an individual mother’s daily dilemma of whether she or her young son gets to eat. About how Julie is a working, single mom, who is so distressed she doesn’t have time to cook nutritious food for her daughter. Or about the working-class Johnson family who must decide whether to pay the electric bill or buy food that month. That is the type of empathy that drives real solutions and actions.
It’s a simple, hierarchical progression: if we have consumer empathy, we understand consumer needs, desires, and behavior; if we understand their behavior, we can create products, services, messages, and ads that make it easier for them to purchase our brand or products to solve their problems. If we teach our organizations to have consumer empathy, the product developers can develop relevant solutions, the marketers can craft the story to tell in ads, and we can shift the focus of the highly compensated senior executives who have a constant eye on the balance sheet instead of the consumer. Without consumer empathy driving an organization, there will be no long-term success.
So much of our profession focuses on what our industry does that we spend little or no time thinking or talking about what our industry can be. We do research, we do analytics, we do projects, etc. We shortchange ourselves, our work, and our industry if we only talk about what we do. This could be for a lot of reasons: we’re intimidated, feel undervalued and underutilized, or we feel the need to prove ourselves or feel we must justify our jobs. Instead, we need to focus and talk about what we can be: revenue drivers, the voice of the consumer, the drivers of consumer-centricity, culture changers, strategists, consultants, change agents, and trusted partners, just to name a few. What we can be has nothing to do with methodology, numbers, or process but everything to do with being leaders in our companies, no matter our job title.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Brett Townsend
As SVP of Strategy at Quester, Brett is future-focused by offering clients consulting about Brand and Innovation Strategy, always focused on building muscular brands and organic growth. Before joining Quester, Brett established extensive experience on the brand side of the business with senior executive roles at such companies as PepsiCo, Electrolux, and Lowe’s. He long served on the Insights Association Board of Directors and remains active in the organization.
Tim Hoskins
As President of Quester, Tim oversees client services, strategic consulting and spearheads the innovation pipeline, vowing to keep Quester at the forefront of deeply understanding people.
Since joining Quester in 2011, Tim has been instrumental in the development of Quester’stechnology, products and services that provide a new and unique research approach for Fortune 500 companies globally. Tim serves on the Insights Association Board of Directors, as Co-chair of the national Corporate Researchers Conference, and on the Collaborata Board of Advisors.