Insight

Not All Insights Are Created Equal

Debate and opinion on insights in marketing orientates around three topics. One, whether a business or brand is market-orientated at all, and how it becomes it. Two, how to gather insights. And three, debates about whether ‘insights’ are actually ‘insights’ at all or merely ‘data’, ‘observations’ or ‘truisms’ (and therefore somehow of less value). Enough indeed, for a Chapter each in the not-yet-started-or-frankly-needed, Crow Marketing Text Book.

What isn’t discussed is the utility of your insights. This tends to be assumed, but it would be incorrect to do so. A suite of insights that have been developed or identified for the brand are exploitable in different ways and in different degrees. In effect, insights are not created equal – deciding which to use and leverage is the one of the critical transition points between strategy and action.

Start with the brand positioning: if leveraging the insight creates dissonance with the task of refreshing or reinforcing what the brand stands for, then stop – you’re about to waste effort and resource.

Next, consider whether the insight is emergent – too often, it’s easy to be beguiled by a trend that seems exciting and new, but in fact isn’t scalable – at least not yet. Here, have a watching brief and bide your time.

Conversely, watch for being late to the party, when the words “we have to…” are being used around the business. You may have identified an insight whose time is passing and is beginning to recede. The risk here is that you spend resource on something that isn’t ownable and so doesn’t benefit the brand long term.

Discussing choosing between insights may seem counter-intuitive… after all, there’s an almost unstated assumption that insights are semi-mystical entities only capable of being found when you’re in the bath or when an apple drops on your head – neither of which are particularly likely to happen on a Teams call (at least not with the cameras on). And it isn’t true. Insights can be built and developed through being observant, curious, challenging and testing.

That’s when the real challenge emerges in insight: which will best help me grow my brand?

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. For a different take on insights: david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. Copyright 2024

Why Corporate Claptrap is really bad for brands

Whilst doom-scrolling on Linked In early one morning, an article from The Economist caught my eye. It’s a theme we’ve been coming back to over many years – how company employees begin to talk utter claptrap very quickly after starting in the business world, and how, viewing this through a marketing lens, this is really bad for brands (it’s bad, full stop, but that’s for another post). We wrote about in 2018, and the post is presented again below.

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We’ve been ‘peeling back the onion’, we’ve had a bit of an ‘idea shower’ and we’ve got something we want to ‘run up the flagpole’ – something that we’re ‘110% frustrated’ by. This post is about the terrible curse of Corporate Claptrap.

The truth is that using corporate language is almost inescapable and virtually unavoidable given how much time we spend at work. It’s engrained in organisations’ cultures. The first time we hear it we’re confused – it makes no sense – but before we know it we find ourselves ‘road mapping’, ‘shifting paradigms’ and ‘burning the boats’.

However, finally, thankfully, a few organisations are beginning to call it out for what it is: an issue that negatively impacts business and the engagement of those working within it… but we’d go further. We’ve ‘touched base offline’ with brand owners taken a ‘helicopter view’ of the research and concluded that it’s also damaging for brands and brand building. Why? Well as management Professor Jennifer Chatman of Haas School of Business recently wrote, “jargon masks real meaning”. And when it comes to brand building, establishing real meaning is what it’s all about…

The heart of the issue lies in the complexity of the human language. Unlike other animals, our language is more than systematic noise grunted to one another (teenagers excepted). It contains cultural meaning and, critically, spoken words also communicate unspoken meaning. Our language therefore becomes a filter that processes our understanding and influences how we behave beyond our conscious awareness. That sounds high-fallutin’, but consider these three brand-damaging implications.

Claptrap is a barrier to understanding
Claptrap stops us from being close enough to our consumers. As corporate language becomes engrained in a business, the culture of that business shifts with it. With every reference to ‘building a strawman’, every generous delivery of a ‘heads up’ or ‘reach out’, with every meeting that starts with ‘getting people aligned’ and finishes with a ‘hard close’ at ‘the end of play’; for every ‘mission critical’ task, for every concept that gets ‘dropped in the pan to see if it floats’; for every ‘deck of slides’, ‘turd polisher’, ‘clocksucker’ or ‘boiling of the ocean’ and every ‘re-stage’, ‘re-purpose’ or resodding anything… we move further and further away from the people that really matter: consumers.

The key to brand building lies in truly understanding your consumer, their needs, their frustrations, their problems, their hopes and their motivations. When you’re engrained in a business this is tough at the best of times. Why, then, would we accept the use of a language that further divorces us from the world our consumers live in and cements an ivory-tower world- view?

Claptrap prevents action
Claptrap delays action and excuses procrastination. We would never undervalue the need for stakeholder alignment. However, the business language often becomes the hiding place for inaction as the need to ‘onboard decision makers’ is used to excuse the adding of weeks or months of unnecessary delay into business. And as inaction becomes the norm, the business language explains it away: we need to ‘put our foot on the ball’ in order to deliver a plan that will ‘move the needle’ or, we need to ‘deep dive’ further to ensure that the sales team’s concerns are ‘on the radar’. Yes, debate is needed; of course we shouldn’t rush into action without consideration; but great brands never forget that impacting their end consumer is the only thing that counts. Anything that stops that is a waste.

Claptrap creates groupthink
Claptrap creates unwritten rules about behaviour that hinder progress. Next time you hear a presentation from the company owner or CEO, listen out for how many of the phrases that they use quickly enter common parlance. People adopt the same language to show support, to tow the line and to fit in. People naturally shy away from standing out (unwittingly or not). This can be a great and powerful thing. However, if the language used is convoluted and idiosyncratic (Corporate Claptrap) then nobody asks the simple, basic brand building questions for fear of looking stupid.

This is so dangerous for brands because the questions that make the biggest difference in marketing are the childish ones, the ones that are brutally simple and disarming. The language that drives the greatest change is often the Bluntest, yet in Corporate Claptrap Land, people are inadvertently dissuaded from using it.

So try binning the business language, pick up your brand plan and embrace your inner-child. Ask the simplest questions:

Will this make a difference?
Do we really have to do that?
What would happen if we didn’t do it?
Why can’t we do it now?
Why can’t we do it bigger?

You’ll be amazed how quickly you release the ‘sleeping giant’ in your brand…

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If you want help cutting through the B.S. and getting to the heart of it, get in touch.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2023

Nosey Crows!

The Crows are currently immersed in one of their favourite tasks: looking for data and insight that can lead to some sparkling innovation. Cue deep dive into investigating product launches, product failures, insight reports, virtual shopping and some remote Consumer Connections. Piecing together the parts and testing hypotheses. there’s no doubt: Crows love being nosey!

Get in touch if you’d like to know more about our approaches to building rock solid foundations for innovation or brand building Caw!

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#innovation #research #noseycrows #investigation #curiosity

Mining for confusion

It was a point of real frustration, what psychologists call a ‘trigger point’. A client pushing for ever deeper insights. “We need to mine for them, reveal the hidden beliefs and the unconscious needs”, she said.

“But what about all the blindingly observations and truths about your consumer? The ones you already have and have been consistently ignoring for the past two years?”, I retorted, in my head.

The conversation rolled on: how research moderators let their own biases or poor questioning distance themselves from the real truth, failing to uncover the deeper needs. They would prove to be the key that unlocks the door to future prosperity, apparently.

Yet here was a business posting mid single digit volume and profit declines with unrelenting consistency, with fragile to no brand momentum and struggling to create a meaningful vision, a meaningful agenda for their categories. And they want to dig deeper?

A related story. I was once involved in an Ethnographic research project when ethnography was the ‘new news’. A drinks client, dissatisfied with existing research techniques and wanting to be at the bleeding edge to discover deeper, more profound insights. £140,000 later and what we in fact discover is that what consumers really look for in this particular type of (cold) drink…. is that it’s always chilled. Bleeding edge? Bleeding something, right enough. Here was a business that wanted to distract itself from the hard work of doing the basics brilliantly – right outlets, right experience; right serve – to chase the fancy dream of a White Knight in Shining Armour*

Understanding of your target market can come from all sorts of directions – not just down.

I mean, yes, it is possible to find unconscious needs: through gaming or role-playing, through well purposed ethnography and longitudinal studies, through metaphor and story telling. There are ways. But the question at the end of it all is: will it be usable by my brand? Will I be able to plan stuff off it that builds my brand? All too often, seemingly profound ‘insights’ are unusable, and therefore of no value.

Me? I like shrewd observation. I like accompanying harassed parents as they go shopping with their kids, or chatting to a Grandmum about the pressures of feeding their grandchildren ‘the right things’ in the short window of opportunity between nursery finishing and Mum getting home to check. Or talking to a Big Issue seller about their journey from homelessness, from being bereft of hope and opportunity, to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Of sitting alongside someone sifting through their e-mails and all the requests to give or buy. Or the businessman in a forecourt shop balancing a wallet and loyalty card in one hand, with his keys and a bottle of pop in the other, whilst the Assistant asks him if he would like to fill in a customer survey to win a Grand.

And I like collision. Of throwing the observations together. Of seeing what crashes out of the carnage. Of seeing where the ensuing conversation reveals about what we really think, truly believe. The juxtaposition does this: ‘you may think I’m a bit well, weird, behaving like this…but look at them, they use twigs’. Of feeling the energy that arises when apparently conflicting ideas are forced together.

And challenging beliefs. To feel the nervous energy as someone realises that their belief is more of a doctrine and really isn’t supported by fact. But hell, they’re going to believe it anyway and what are you going to do it about Mr Researcher?

Getting real insights is like active listening. Proper listening is hard. To switch off (or at least turn the volume right down) of the voice in your head, and concentrating on what the other person is saying. Of checking their meaning, not challenging. Of listening to the words, not developing counter arguments. Getting real insight is like that: it’s like being a detective or policeman. You’re looking for the things that aren’t said, that aren’t done as well as those things that are. It’s about setting up hypotheses and working through them. And when you’ve found the cause, prosecuting the hell out of it.

Because more than anything else, a good insight is only ‘good’ if it is usable by your brand or your company. If it allows you to do and plan something, not just now, but for a few years at least. How ever you find your insight, if you can’t act on it, or are not willing to, save your time and your money and do something else.

*The armour has to shine, not sure why.

**I don’t, you’re quite normal, trust me

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that discovers and maps the direct route to success for categories and brands. david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670

Insight…and other alchemy

Marketing as a discipline seems to be its own worst enemy when it comes to practising what it preaches. Brands become great by owning a simple thought then ruthlessly and rigourously focusing on establishing it in the mind of their target. Yet with the buffeting of competitor activity, internal discussions, complex planning processes and competing business priorities, that clarity is lost.

One of the most common strategies to regain the focus is to fall back on ‘insight’. An industry has grown up in its own right just based on defining the term. Researchers and research manager wring their hands over new research techniques or picking holes in old, established ones, for finding deeper insights. The insight journey for businesses sees it become at first, central (the research team is renamed the Insight Department), then it becomes a widely-used ‘strategic amplifier’ (‘insight’ is added to other terms to add professional clout – rather like, quite ironically, the word ‘strategy’ itself) and finally it becomes devalued (Insight is dead: ‘Foresight’ anyone?).

It’s a shame. It’s a shame because the reality is that well-grounded insight can be one of the keys to unlock growth. And it’s a shame that an environment of insight alchemy has sprung up around it. Unlike Lord Percy Percy in Blackadder, “a nugget of Purest Green” is not our desired outcome nor is the ancient and mystical art of alchemy our desired process. It can be much simpler.

Trust Your Gut: everyday I’m struck by how human beings are defined more by how similar we are, rather than how different we are. So when looking for insights, write down your hypotheses; go in to looking for insights with a view, a perspective, something on your mind. If it makes you feel better, think of it as Scientific Method because in effect, that’s what it is. If one explanation seems to work for you: capture it; there’s a good chance it could be valid. However…

Be happy being wrong: that’s a geographical expression called ‘equifinality’: different ways of getting to the same result. It happens all the time. Imagine you’re trying to understand why so many shoppers in supermarkets don’t buy fresh flowers. For you, it could be because you prefer the range at Interflora – so you glance but move quickly by. Someone else doesn’t because they’re afraid they’ll get crushed whilst doing the rest of the shop, then they forget. A third person doesn’t because they’re not sure if there’s a wrapping service. Same result: different reason. Stay open to the possibilities.

Being Poirot: no, I don’t mean mince around as if waddling, but be observant, be curious, ask the seemingly blindingly obvious question and use ‘the leetle grey cells’: everything is potentially a clue to help you unlock your business opportunity or issue. Well, not everything – but everything within the scope you have defined. “Chance favours the mind made ready” as Louis Pasteur wrote. Most importantly capture it (Evernote; scrapbook; post-its…you decide) and ideally make it visible.

Crash, Bang, Wallop: perhaps the observations you make above will be enough for you to drive growth. Perhaps you need to look further: if so, look for tensions between what you observe; look for how things jar; look for the possibilities that arise from crashing your data together. These tensions in particular are rich territory: they point to what is missing in people’s lives; what problems you could solve for them; spaces in to which your brand or category can move. Where’s there’s no tension, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree.

Be choosy: this may sound counter-intuitive, but the problem shouldn’t be finding insights for growth but choosing which you can best exploit. Think about which fit your brand opportunity; what natural assets you have which you can exploit the opportunity with; which feel big; which feel different and which solve problems for consumers.

But most of all relax. Finding insights isn’t the only panacea of category or brand building but there’s not doubt that having them builds your confidence in where you’re going and how you plan to get there. And finding them certainly isn’t alchemy.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that discovers and maps the direct route to success for categories and brands. The Crow Flies help clients large and small find insights that unlock growth: for more information on how, drop a line to david@thecrowflies.co.uk; or call the Crow phone on +44 (0) 7885 408367. You can follow The Crow Flies on Linked In (http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-crow-flies-ltd?trk=company_name), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thecrowfliesltd) or on Twitter (@crowflieshigh). Or just send a carrier pigeon and we’ll intercept mid-air.