We always have talked about how best to
approach a host of business challenges, such as segmentation, branding and
innovation. But we all recognize as the name of our company suggests, that
conducting great research is only part of the answer. If insight is not managed
and presented in a way that encourages positive and presented in a way that
encourages positive change and business growth, then it’s a waste of time and
money for all concerned.
So how do you ensure that insight
encourages positive change that can really lead to business growth? While
agencies can and certainly do help with this (some perhaps do it more than
others), previous research suggest that it is client-side insight managers who
spend most of their time focused on this. Many agencies spend much of their
time focused on the delivery of the research itself. So those at the sharp end
asked some client insight managers for their thoughts on this crucial issue How
do you drive your research through the business so that is an effective driver
of change?
Is
everyone on Board?
It clearly implies that stakeholders,
particularly the senior ones, need to be engaged with the research upfront to
maximize the chance of success. One or two clients said that it was really not
a problem they faced. These were not people with especially large egos. Rather,
these fortunate insight managers were in particularly consumer focused
organizations that had consumer-oriented brand goals hardwired into their
business planning. As a result, insight was highly thought of and closely
integrated into business and marketing decisions.
There
is nothing like meeting the customer
We all work hard to convey the opinions of
consumers and customers to our stakeholders. But clients say there really is
nothing to rival having stakeholders experience the customer for themselves.
The more that stakeholders life experiences diverge from consumers, the more
this holds true. There are many ways to do this, from making engaging videos of
customers, to co-creation sessions, and having actors share their in character
thoughts and experiences with stakeholders through to immersing stakeholders in
the customers world. This immersion can take several forms, whether virtual –
via blogs, online diaries and direct online interaction, to consumer diaries or
collages or simply spending an hour, a day or a week with a consumer.
Some
ways to “deliver”
This is all well and good. But at some
pint, and in some way, we still need to share insight in a way that drives
action over a period of time in a series of meetings, a presentation, a
workshop, a document. It is clear that a lot of thought needs to go into
working out what will work best. Clients mentioned a range of elements that can
help to move the organization from insight to action. First of all, clients
suggested getting stakeholder to thing upfront about their pre conceptions and
what they expect the research to say. If the results are different, this
encourages stakeholders to understand why things look different and to dig into
what that implies for their next steps.
Clients also cited workshops, often run by
external people. Workshops can mean different things in different businesses,
but they are mentioned frequently as a key method for driving action. Many
clients recognize that a number of different meetings are needed to get from
insight to action. Rather than sharing masses of slides with everyone, some do
one short overall presentation of the headlines to the full team and follow
this with a series of smaller, more focused workshop style sessions with the
relevant team members for specific brands or products. Having a broad mix of
people at the larger sessions such as people from different internal functions,
and partner agencies (design, PR, web, media planning, advertising, etc) combined
with very clear, tangible goals for the meeting, leads to greater creativity.
Instead of thinking in terms of research
driven workshop, some clients work hard to embed insight teams into the broader
business processes. So that research simply becomes an automatic and integral
part of what is done. Sometimes a short one to one with a key influencer can
have as much effect as a longer workshop. Finally, some things that may seem
incidental at the time of creation can make a massive difference in the long
run like nicely printed, highly portable summary documents that actually get
taken to meeting.
Pic:
http://brandmediastrategy.com/tag/consumer-insight/
Source:
http://brandmediastrategy.com/tag/consumer-insight/
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