Drowning in data? Here's 5 simple concepts you can apply to turn it into insights.

We love reaching that heureka moment.

The moment where everything falls into place and you feel in your gut "I've found it!"

In The Mine Group we support our clients and their teams achieving that. Wether the ask is relating to internal communication, product development, media strategy, market trends or something entirely different our ultimate goal is delivering relevant, applicable insights.

There's always a huge upside to reaching the heureka moment, and while it often requires a little bit of luck, below are some solid thought processes you can apply yourself.

1/5 Look for patterns

Things that are recurring, things that are cyclical, reaction/counter-reaction, etc.

Example A: Lately, when you've run one-to-ones with your employees, they've seemed happier. Especially interviews on Wednesdays leave you with a positive feeling, and you attribute it to your strong efforts. Little did you consider that the cantina recently started serving delicious danishes on Wednesdays.

Example B: When working on VELUX's Indoor generation campaign I noticed a sort of see-saw pattern on the CTR. I couldn't fit it to anything until I matched it with larger social accounts organically sharing the campaign. It turns out there was a fairly strong correlation between social accounts sharing and the CTR, the effect was just delayed about 3 days.

Patterns are a good indicator of what happens and what you can expect, WHY they occur help you answer your key questions and find the right idea.

2/5 Cross reference and examine

Work with multiple sources, think laterally, employ knowledge from alternative fields, look beyond your personal expertise, etc.

Besides the eureka moment, it's incredible how much you can learn by changing perspective.??

As an example, a carpenter may solve a growing heat bill by insulating the roof better, a plumber might optimize the furnace and a financial advisor might alter his loan structure to have more liquidity. Each of them have a viable solution to the problem, learning from all of them yields an even stronger result.

People naturally see problems through their lens of expertise and subsequently solve these problems with the tools they have available. While this is great for a highly specialized task, it’s rarely good when looking for general insight.

Example A: I once worked with a client who had developed a custom-made digital ecosystem for their employees. Data rightfully indicated 85% usage of that system. However, when asking the employees directly they primarily used the system to check their calendar, and by digging it was found that critical information delivered through the system was only seen by about 30%. Turning to a different source in this case revealed a completely different truth.

Example B: I supported Sandvik and Forsman & Bodenfors on the campaign “the smash-proof guitar” with demographics intelligence and media touchpoints. Engineers generally over-index in almost everything but one key issue is that it is very difficult to explain engineering feats to the public due to their technical nature. Sandvik and F&B combined engineering, rock music and guitar building in one campaign that beautifully put a difficult technical feat into a completely different context.

Flipping something upside down won’t always give you the answers, but it will help you consider alternatives and often leads to interesting insights.

3/5 Outliers

Anything that falls out of the norm, seems out of place, etc.

It is often said that the line between genius and insanity is a fine one, both have in common that they fall outside of the norm, and indicate something to be aware of in a person.

Outliers are often forgotten in marketing research or brazenly used to prove a point that isn’t valid. For us they function as a sanity check and I highly suggest skimming through them to look for key input.

Example A: While working on VELUX’s campaign indoor generation I noticed an unusually high amount of blogs covering indoor air quality solutions. At this point it was mostly scientific discussions and didn’t belong in that type of media. It turned out that a small parenting segment had realized that indoor air quality was becoming worse than that of outside air, and was heavily discussing and engaging with content that covered how to keep their kids safe from this new danger. This outlier went on to form the base for recommendations relating to a global campaign.

Example B: Sometimes when tracking a campaign's social response you will notice ridiculous social reach numbers for a few accounts. Often social tracking tools end up tracking the same post multiple times due to edits, changing of timestamps, etc. this can quickly add up to millions of impressions which are double-counted.

4/5 Confluence

Cultural, economic, behavioral trends, etc. sometimes point towards the same learnings as they are naturally connected. If you notice this, pay attention. It is often indicative of important changes and can lead to great insight.?

In Danish there’s a saying that roughly translated goes “lots of small streams, form a large river” meaning lots of less important things, can form something with substantial impact.

Look for trends across different fields that point in the same direction

Example: Doing research for an international cleaning utilities company we noticed several trends that all pointed in the same direction:

• Cleaning guides and tips were becoming centered around how to switch to eco-friendly cleaning products.?
• Lifestyle blogs focused on DIY, and natural remedies and recipes earned huge engagement.?
• Global trends suggested sustainability communication was expected to be more specific, focusing on subsets of sustainability such as eco-friendliness, recycling, etc.
• Audiences in general felt that brands should involve them more in their campaigns and solutions
• Cleaning hacks earned high engagement on instagram, pinterest, etc.
• Review data indicated a focus on longevity of products
• The green cleaning products market was expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.8%

All of these pointed towards audiences looking for ways to clean effectively, without impacting the earth and signaled a shift of mentality. This in turn meant there was room for a new line of communication and a product opportunity.

Following various streams of information that end up converging is a great way to figure out core insights.

5/5 Look behind the scenes

Ask why, who benefits, analyze, etc.

Lots of people know 'what' happens, few people know 'why' it happens. Think about wildly different things such as the moon landing, Kanye's anti-Semitic tweet, Patagonia giving away their company. In most cases you have an idea of what happened, but often the 'why' is too complex to answer in a simple way.

With the absolute insane amount of content we're exposed to, ads alone are estimated between 5-10.000 a day, it's no wonder that we tend to just read headlines. Finding insights requires an attempt at both understanding who, what, when AND why.

Example A: In multiple global campaigns we've experienced that the perceived success and failure of a campaign is not actually a question of performance, but rather how key stakeholders perceive it.

Example B: A study we did for a larger computer peripheral brand indicated a very impressive increase in their brand attention, especially social media. This seemed off, as the main campaigns were not driven through SoMe. By looking deeper it turned out their gaming department drove huge social media attention, both earned and through giveaways, and it was later found that gaming was a very strong vehicle for communicating brand quality.

Sometimes in a hectic workday there isn't time to dive deeper, but it usually leads to great insight when going beyond the surface value.

These are the thumb rules we work by when striving for insights, but please enlighten us if you have additions.

If you're interested in learning more about our work in The Mine don't hesitate to reach out to either Mads Bols Linnebjerg or Troels R. .