The Art of Finding Consumer Insights that Drive Real Business Impact

• Consumer & Market Insights

Have you ever watched a TV commercial where a brand is trying to instruct the target group to use a product in a particular manner (rub it inside out, brush twice daily, have this much cereal for optimum effect, have cereals in this type of bowl, and so on)?

Ever wondered what made the brand communicate this to the audience? Or taking one step back, what made the brand decide what their consumer looks like? Or how did they even know what to say?

The answer is “Consumer Insights.” But what exactly is an “Insight”? To better understand that, let us first understand what it is NOT.

Insight is NOT DATA – Data is Data, it can be and needs to be interpreted.

Insight is NOT OBSERVATION – Observation is the “what” that lacks the “why”.

Insight is NOT A CUSTOMER WISH OR NEED – It still lacks the “why”.

So what then is an INSIGHT? In a nutshell, an INSIGHT is “a less apparent, intangible, latent, or hidden truth revealed through obsessive digging and sharp perceptivity.”

Some manifestations of an “insight” can be –

• An unrecognized fundamental human truth that reveals the inner nature of things
• A new way of viewing the world that causes us to reexamine existing conventions and challenge the status quo
• A penetrating observation of human behavior that results in seeing consumers from a fresh perspective
• A discovery about the underlying motivations that drive people’s actions

The common factor in all these examples is the “UN” – the “UN-SEEN,” the “UN-SPOKEN,” the “UN-EXPRESSED,” and the art of “UN-COVERING” all these emotions to derive ways of reaching the “Target Population” in an effective manner.

Why are “INSIGHTS” critical?

There are times when everything seems “OBVIOUS” and it becomes very difficult to cut through the “CLUTTER” as there is little to “DIFFERENTIATE.” This is when insight comes in really handy. It becomes critical to listen to what is unspoken and see what is unshown. This is what provides the differentiation in a standardized world.

And when it comes to the world of MARKETING, it is ALL ABOUT DIFFERENTIATION and CONSUMER CONNECT. So it is absolutely critical that MARKETING TEAMS work with ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS.

To add more perspective, in our example of why there was communication from the brand trying to make consumers use their product in a particular way, there was first an insight. The brand would have realized, through observation and analysis of consumer behavior, that the lack of using the product in a particular manner was leading to reduced effectiveness, causing high attrition. In order to prevent this attrition and ensure that the product is able to work effectively, the brand needed to “EDUCATE” consumers.

In the case of the brand indicating a serving bowl of a particular size, the insight was that the consumers may not be using the product in a measured manner but more as an estimate. Hence, the brand needed to FACILITATE the “exact measurement” of the product to maximize benefits.

These and other examples demonstrate the strength of INSIGHTS in building successful products. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”

A corollary to this statement is that it is important to not stop at finding out information. Facts and observations about consumer needs and wishes can only make a difference when they are interpreted and analyzed and converted into “ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS.”

Hence, generating insights becomes an imperative part of the entire consumer insights/analytics exercise. Findings, without interpretation, have little meaning and little value to add.

How do we find these “actionable insights”? The answer lies in “FOCUSED INFORMATION SEEKING”. Be it primary research, secondary research, meta-analysis, or social listening, it is absolutely critical to seek information that is aligned with business needs. It is imperative that the time and resources invested through business decisions are spent well and not wasted on unnecessary or unproductive data.

Clients appreciate good findings but they are delighted with “ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS” or insights based on which they can decide their budget allocation for marketing activities. In order to ensure consumer insights are actionable,

• What is the genesis of this ask? This essentially means asking the requestor about the problem/need statement based on which they thought of running a research activity. This helps us understand the key issue to be addressed and helps us design the entire research around that. This means identifying the right research mix, understanding the right target respondents, and proposing the right hypotheses. In essence, this will make the efforts far more focused and less wayward or diffused.
• How are the results going to be used? While this may look like a corollary to the above question, in essence it has a very different purpose. This gives us direction on whether the research purpose is already pre-determined or it is open to results from the research. This again is a key factor in developing a focused research strategy.
• What kind of time and resources are available to conduct this research? This is critical in optimizing the research specifications.

Once the answers to these questions are clear, it becomes very easy to put together a robust research plan that will answer the key business question/s.

By now the major share of the work is done, which includes decoding the business problem, designing a robust research program, and gathering data/information from various sources. Now we are sitting on a pile of data from which we need to draw INSIGHTS that will then be translated into ACTION to create IMPACT.

Going back to the definition of an INSIGHT – “a less apparent, intangible, latent, or hidden truth revealed through obsessive digging and sharp perceptivity” – this part needs a lot of persistence and critical evaluation as one is often not even aware of what they are looking for. It’s about obsessive digging with sharp perceptivity when you know: “I’m missing something, I’m just not able to put my hand on it”!

From the above, it is evident that to develop an actionable insight from data, there needs to be deep tunneling into gathered information/data, which is not possible with information in silos. Everything needs to be looked at as one huge data set that needs to be interwoven into a story.

The best way to gain insights is to start with the basics and keep an open eye for counterintuitive findings. Every time we encounter a counterintuitive data point, we should make a note for further exploration using all the different sources of data, donning the hat of Sherlock Holmes in a non-criminal environment.

Secondly, it is very important to build hypotheses around the counterintuitive findings and validate them using the gathered data and information.

Last but not the least, we cannot stop till we reach a EUREKA moment. We need to keep tunneling into the data and finding interlinkages till we reach that moment of “This is it!” This needs to be coupled with a keen sense of interest in other consumer and market trends, keeping abreast of the latest developments in the client’s business domain, which comes through regular reading.

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