Consumer Insights 2.0

In 2002, I did a customer insights study for a client who was looking to differentiate his business from the competition. I combined telephone interviews and surveys of his current customer base. They weren't online at the time - most of them didn't even have mobile phones, let alone internet. Of the 50 surveys we mailed out, an outstanding 28 were filled out and returned. Almost all of the 20 customers I phoned spent a good amount of time on the phone with me (there were only two that didn't return my call). For a business of his size, 48 interviews and surveys provided fantastic feedback. There were enough consistent answers ("He's such a nice guy, so I go as often as I can, but his inventory is limited," was repeated in at least 1/3rd of the responses) and helpful ideas to build solid insights that could significantly help him grow his business, and when I checked in with him 6 months later, he told me that the surveys and interviews were "marketing in itself" and increased trust and loyalty with his customers, who felt valued and heard. Research was a great investment for even his small business.

The downside of this was that the study took me over 4 months and way more hours than I could ever charge him for. I'm pretty sure that my rates today would not match his budget.

Today, we have an amazing array of data and information sources available to us - almost too much at times - and rarely ever use a survey or an interview (and when we do, it's almost always digital) to get incredibly rich results:

I believe in insights more than ever and with the growing complexity of marketing, customers and added complexities like globalization, personalization, predictive analytics and AI, it's going to be more important THAN EVER to invest in understanding your customers.

So, this is why I found myself highlighting, underlining and yelling "yes!" as I read every page of Andrew Grenville's "The Insights Revolution: Questioning Everything." In fact, I got so excited reading it, the book started to look like this:

As I read through The Insights Revolution, I started to wonder why it took so long for a book like this to come out. Written for a peer audience of researchers, I think there would be value for any executive looking to innovate, solve big business problems and growth.

Andrew interviews research leaders from around the world - from companies like Virgin Australia, Pfizer, Nestlé India, Telstra Australia, and US Bank - talking about the evolution of the research department from being "the people you ask to deliver reports that will help you sell your idea to the CEO," to having a seat at the table and driving business innovation.

He also covers the important history of consumer research and insights, the rise of behavioural economics, and importance of agile and emerging skill sets, such as anthropology, which we are particularly focused on (we call a big part of what we do "digital anthropology"), and digital marketing. It's a wealth of great history, information and case studies in a very readable package (the entire book is just over 120 pages!).

Andrew knows, I know and all of the research leaders he quotes know that insights are essential to driving real business value. Unfortunately, the practice has been devalued through shoddy, lazy, corner-cutting practices. Thankfully, through an evolution of thinking about insights and a worldwide wealth of professionals, there is, indeed, an insights revolution taking place!

Thank you Maru/Matchbox and Andrew for sending me your book. It's given me even more hope for the future of insights-driven strategies and taught me a great deal about the history and state of research.