On research and insight…

In reviewing our strategy model at Traffic Integrated recently, we spent a lot of time discussing the often confused connection between research and insight in crafting strategic responses. Before your eyes glaze over, consider for a moment how much importance strategy and creative platforms place on insight to gain fresh perspectives on brand environments. Without insight, creative and idea platforms are rudderless.

The previously clear waters between the definitions of research and insight have become muddied, as so they so often are by marketers. So let’s be clear – in my books, research is a process of gathering and evaluating information regarding consumers’ perceptions of or preferences for products and services. It involves qualitative and quantitative processes to analyse and collate data into a form that allows marketers to turn that information into insight, that can be used to drive strategy.

Insights on the other hand, are those nuggets of what I can only call ‘actionable understanding’ – fresh and not-yet-obvious truths, that are developed through more creative and deliberate processes of filtering research results. Many people don’t take this critical step, choosing rather to blindly put raw research data into presentations as a method of ‘showing the client we’ve done some research’ without actually extracting the value of that research into actionable insights to create creative and idea platforms.

Research has to be viewed through a prism of different elements that all make up an answer to the brief, starting primarily with a very clear definition of the marketing problem. It’s always concerning to see how much quantitative research is presented to clients which has very little, if any, bearing on the actual marketing problem. The raw qualitative and quantitative research data should be used as stimulus for the insights process, along with many other stimulus elements such as technical staff interviews, competitive retail walk-throughs, etc, to provide a bank of inputs for an insights workshop.

To be relevant and valuable, strategic and creative concepts have to be based in true customer insight. Reporting on raw qualitative and qualitative data is rarely insightful. To know that 400 people think that your product is ‘great’ is not an insight. To know that 75 of those people use your product in a way that is different from the way you intended, which leads you to enter discussions with your technical teams to develop a brand extension which develop vast new markets for your product, is.