The Insight Revolution: Question Everything – by Andrew Grenville – Book Review

Posted by Ray Poynter, 25 November 2018 If you work in a client-side insights team, then this is a ‘must read’ book for you. This relatively short book is based on interviews with leading figures from the industry and highlights the need for change in the way insights is conducted. Indeed the message is ‘change or die’. The book starts by setting the scene, briefly recapping the history of insights, highlighting that what we did in the past was correct in the past, and showing why it is wrong now. The second chapter is perhaps the most important in the book; it exposes the weaknesses in the way that insight teams relate the rest of the business. The book shows that insights teams tend to be order takers, rather than being proactive. To summarise, a stakeholder asks for the wrong thing (because they are not aware of all the options), the insight team delivers it, the stakeholder is disappointed because it does not help the business take an action, and the insights team are disappointed because nothing is done with their research. As a consequence, more decisions are made without insights, and the insights team are seen as a cost centre […]

5 key steps to creating a Modern Approach to Market Research

Guest Post by Caroline Frankum, 19 November 2018 Today, everything and anything is Digital. It’s a way of life that’s core to the DNA of what we think, feel, say and do. With 3.6 billion Global internet users surpassing half the world’s population in 2018, digital devices are getting better, faster and cheaper. There are now more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs, which makes mobile a very powerful enabler of digital content, accounting for 69% of media access and 80% of social media access. Voice searches are also soaring: 2 in 5 say voice activated devices are ‘essential’ to their lives, and voice activated search has grown at exponential rates (up a whopping +3400% over the last 9 years), and are predicted to represent 50% of all searches by 2020. No surprise then that brands and businesses who are both increasingly embracing tech to make peoples’ lives easier and using digital media to revolutionize global communications in more engaging, personal and meaningful ways are the fastest growing brands in the world. But the best relationships are also a 2-way street. Good news then that many time-poor consumers want to provide brands their feedback (70% of bloggers […]

Do you know how to assess innovations in market research and insights?

Posted by Ray Poynter, 1 November 2018 We are surrounded by new approaches to understanding customers and markets, for example: behavioural economics, automated facial coding, neuroscience, chatbots, passive tracking, Artificial Intelligence, and of course big data. However, evaluating these new options is becoming ever harder, because there are so many of them, and because they make claims that are based on technologies that are hard for non-experts to understand. In this post, I want to share some of the techniques I use to assess innovations in market research and insight. In essence, I look at the following issues: Can it be provided by multiple suppliers? If an innovation can only be utilised via one supplier, it is much less likely to be successful, and I am much less likely to recommend it. Good innovations benefit from competition, prices come down when there is competition, and the diffusion into a market is accelerated if several solutions are available. When online surveys burst on the scene, we could use several different platforms to write the surveys, and choose between several difference panel companies for the sample – this promoted adoption, and cost reductions. Does it increase speed and/or reduce net price? In […]