Making insight critical

Our experience suggests that the key to getting your colleagues to interact with insight is to ensure that it is critical to everyday decision making. The vast majority of research becomes obsolete remarkably quickly. If you compare research to packaging or advertising, which live, breath and determine the success of a brand on a constant basis, research is an inactive inert part of the success of a business.

Consumers make decisions about price, product, packaging... They don't make decisions based on research.

Of course, we all know intuitively that the better we understand our consumers, the more our products and services meet their needs, but that simply doesn't have the same urgency as the parts of the marketing mix that influence purchasing and brand relationships every moment of every day.

So when you develop your segmentation, conduct your U&A or analyse your tracking data, ask yourself that crucial question, what about this data is business critical and how can I communicate that to the business. Instead of the thinking about research as a project, think about it as new news.

Imagine you are contributing to the BBC news site. What's the headline, what do people need to know? How should it influence their actions? What do you want them to do today?

Of course, that begs the question - how do I do that? What tools do I have at my disposal to engage and inform on a daily basis? The answer is simple - a digital people insight hub of course!