Saving the Marketing Insight: A White Paper

Insights are SO hot right now. Pitch rooms around the globe are filled with communications agencies touting their ability to uncover, mold and deliver them every day. Lately, however, a few of these presentations have fallen on less attentive ears. A handful of Fortune 500 companies are losing interest in these “daily insights”, moving budget to other pots, and shifting marketing campaigns to internal teams. If insights are the next big thing, why have they seen a decline in marketability?

Redefining an Insight

A major aspect of this drop in interest has been due to the way the marketing industry has broadly defined an insight over the past few years. No, the definition hasn’t been twisted into some shiny, pitch-able jewel (as the marketing industry tends to do). Instead, the definition has been broadened and flattened into unrecognizable monotony. No longer do agencies tease out the difference between insights, learnings, or observations. And it’s this idea that’s at the root of the problem.

Let’s get back to basics. The definition of an “insight” according to Merriam-Webster reads as follows: the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively. The key word here being “inner.” When we consider the advertising term “insights” (generally referring to what is called a “consumer insight”), it certainly cannot be referring to a mere demographical statistic. Uncovering a consumer insight, rather, is understanding the inner thoughts, attitudes motivations, etc. of a particular audience in order to build a better resonating marketing strategy. In the words of K Stern, account planning is meant to give a “face to piles of demographic and psychographic research.” It’s a crucial piece of campaign development, as the agency learns about consumer motivation and how that plays out in the consumer’s daily consumption, affinities, and ultimately purchases. Without account planning and the discovery of a true insight, campaigns often work on hunches, assumptions, or stereotypes (and we know how dangerous that can be).

Realigning Insights with Agency Deliverables

Today, what’s often raised as an “insight” is simply an observation or a fact. Facts don’t consider the inner thoughts of the consumer at all, but rather the statistical results. This is exactly why agencies are able to deliver these daily. Though they proudly email out a daily newsletter packed-full of industry “insights”, they aren’t insights at all. They’re facts. Facts can be delivered in large quantities as they require only a Google search to find, while insights take hours of research and care to create. If what is called an insight doesn’t get to the core of a consumer’s behavior, it shouldn’t be labeled as such. Below is an example:

Observation: Our customers are only finishing our weight loss program 30% of the time.

Insight: Our customers struggle with losing weight because their fear of failing becomes debilitating and insurmountable.

True insights come from synthesizing observations, getting down to the “why” of the matter, and ultimately arriving at something that makes you go “ah ha!” It affects where you advertise, how to convey your message, and the advertising creative. The results inspire and direct the creative department as they build their initial concepts. So, naturally, if it’s this traditional definition of an insight the client is familiar with, a basic fact will not appease them. Only getting down to the underlying consumer behavior – and how to shift advertising accordingly – will do that. Similarly, and more commonly, labeling observations or campaign learnings as insights will lessen the impact of true insights when they’re actually uncovered. A real insight can completely alter a client’s marketing strategy. And if you want to receive the credit you deserve for such a discovery you don’t want to be caught crying wolf.

Knowing this, if you’re hoping to be able to deliver insights on some sort of regular cadence, you misunderstand their use. The consumer insight is used most often for big dollar campaigns, new business launches, and re-branding. If you’re not executing one of these three things (keeping in mind “big dollar” can be relative to the agency’s revenue), it’s most likely unwise to run major account planning exercises. I say “most likely” because of the time it takes to do this well. Depending on the number of employees you’re able to dedicate to this kind of work, one could expect this process to take anywhere from two weeks to two months. From sifting through data to primary research to the art of putting it all together, it’s a slow, but important process. Nothing should start until the account planning team has reached their desired insight(s) and can deliver a presentation to the internal team.

Notice the writing here is not vague. This isn’t a recommended practice. This isn’t something that should be seen as a nice-to-have when a deadline gets pushed back. And this certainly isn’t something you back into after building out an entire creative strategy based off someone’s shower idea. When setting a start date for the campaign with the client, build this time in. Even if you’re only able to dedicate one week, make sure your other teams stay patient during that week. Because once the planning team gives that presentation, you’ll find it was worth the wait as the creative process begins from a point of inspiring direction as opposed to an ambiguous gut feeling.

Uncovering the Consumer Insight

Now that we’ve thoroughly discussed the concept of an insight, let’s dive into how these insights are actually uncovered. Account planning has been around since the days of Ogilvy, and was once viewed as the most crucial part of the advertising process. Jon Steele, author of ‘Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning, wrote, “The best and most effective advertising is that which sets out to involve consumers.” Advertisers shouldn’t be trying to speak to the consumer, but with them.

In order to do this well, advertisers must intertwine the behavioral psychology that drives the actions of an audience (art) with the abundant statistics available regarding that audience (science). While this takes years of practice to do masterfully, there are many available tools and exercises that aid the process. Even someone who has never attempted account planning can still uncover an insight about their audience that provides foundation to a campaign. And a campaign based in true consumer insight immediately has an edge over one based on a creative hunch.

To begin, one must first gain a statistical knowledge of their audience. While Leo Burnett had to hire market research agencies in order to obtain meaningful data about a group of people, advertisers today must filter through mountains of information. What used to be a practice of building a statue out of the few stats available is now an exercise of chiseling away useless data in order to uncover a masterpiece. Thankfully there are a multitude of tools that can help them do this. Below are three tools in particular that provide excellent consumer information:

• Simmons Research: Boasting a hefty database of consumer data powered by the renowned National Consumer Study, Simmons Research allows the user to build a custom audience using demographic, psychographic, attitudinal, and behavioral data. This allows the user to deeply understand what their audience believes, prioritizes, and even acts on throughout any given day.
• Iconoculture Consumer Insights by CEB: Taking a slightly more qualitative approach, Iconoculture is best known for the incredible roster of industry experts they keep on staff and their catalog of articles about consumers trends. If you ever need to know more about an audience, simply schedule a one-on-one call with one of these industry-leading experts and ask them any question you like.
• Facebook Audience Insights: Lastly, if your campaign has a social component, Facebook Insights is an incredible resource to use when trying to round out an audience persona. While this is certainly a much more pointed resource, it allows you to understand demographics, purchase behaviors, and tangential interests that are crucial to the understanding an audience on social.

After condensing this information, a persona should be constructed. Who it this person? How do they think? What is their day like? This is a step that requires a great deal of empathy, delicacy, and practice. While there are certainly proven ways to go it, the most important thing to do is try to honestly put yourself into the shoes of your audience. Not the shoes you want them to fit in, but the shoes they actually wear. That said, here are a few industry exercises that can help:

• One-on-One Interviews: While this may seem obvious, it can be a surprisingly rare tactic in today’s ad scene. After analyzing your data, think of who you know that might fit that mold. Interview those people and ask questions that get to their underlying fears, beliefs, and feelings around your campaign’s topic. Why do they have certain thoughts on that subject, etc.?
• Focus Groups: Similar to the one-on-one interviews, you can learn a lot getting facetime with a group of people within your target audience. Just make sure to parse out the honest feedback from the inevitable group think.
• The Five “Whys”: An exercise that can be done solo or in a group, the Five “Whys” is a classic account planning activity. Choose one of your foundational statistics, and ask “why” that stat exists. For example, if your stat was around participation in adult sport leagues, ask why people join those leagues. Perhaps it’s because they enjoy competitive sports. Why do they enjoy them? Perhaps it’s because of the comradery. Once you’ve asked your fifth “why”, you’ll hopefully find yourself deep in the mind of your audience.

Complementing Insights with Not-Insights

To conclude this deep dive into the consumer insight, I wanted to look at other important learning opportunities that don’t involve account planning. Remember that account planning is usually only completed for the major executions, and only as a first step. Getting smarter as a team and optimizing active campaigns are all still crucial parts of being a successful marketing partner. So let’s round out this insights picture by providing examples of three client-loved deliverables you can deliver on a regular basis: weekly optimization reports, monthly content recommendations, and quarterly consumer trends.

• Weekly Optimization Reports: Working in social media means working in a world of real-time data. If your campaigns have been designed with testing in mind, they will get to benefit from weekly optimizations – both manual and automated. Sending a report to your client about how and why a campaign was optimized during the week, and how KPIs have increased accordingly is a great way to show your value as an agency.
• Monthly Content Recommendations: Purposefully offered on a monthly, not weekly basis, these recommendations can advise the client on how different content pillars are performing. By tweaking the visuals, messages, or executions of your advertising portfolio, you’ll ensure budget is spent in the wisest ways. Using week-over-week data, however, can be a dangerous game to play as that’s generally not enough data to make smart decisions.
• Quarterly Consumer Trends: As the first two deliverables are more granular, focusing in on the success of a particular campaign, it’s just as important to take a step back and think about the bigger picture. Providing a short list of applicable consumer trends, how they affect your client, and how you suggest altering overall efforts to take advantage can be incredibly impactful. Marketing is both a real-time and long-term game, and making sure you stay on the cutting edge of both is a key to success.

Consumer insights are an important part of building a campaign that resonates with your audience, but the desire to constantly learn is crucial to keeping that campaign profitable. Advertising is an incredibly creative, fast-paced medium, and allowing creativity to flourish is a big reason people love working in the industry. Return on investment, though, should always be the end game. Making sure the conception, design, and execution of your campaigns are done in a methodical and data-driven way is an easy way to make sure numbers stay in the black. Advertising is fun. Now let’s make it fun and smart.

In conclusion, returning to advertising fundamentals can be just the grounding an agency needs in a constantly shifting world of marketing. Traditional account planning and the art of uncovering true consumer insights is arguably one of the most defining advertising practices, and one that can differentiate you from your competitors if done well. But if definitions aren’t made clear, and corresponding expectations aren’t appropriately set, that positive differentiation can quickly turn into a frustration. An insight can be, and should be, a powerful marketing tool. And it’s up to agencies to return it to its former glory.