Editor’s note: Scott Fiaschetti is director, consumer insights, of Questus, a New York digital advertising agency. He can be reached at scott.fiaschetti@questus.com. This article appeared in the September 24, 2012, edition of Quirk’s e-newsletter.
Researchers are caring by nature. We worry about many things during a project. We make sure every last detail of the survey is perfect. We write - and rewrite - questions, thinking about that one person who might not understand what we mean. We continually test the survey and monitor it all very closely as the completes start coming in. Are we going over quota? What is the drop-off? Is the survey too long?
But then, finally, it is done. The data is collected and we dig in.
Over the course of writing the report, we develop a keen insight into all the subtleties and details of the data we are examining. Because of this, we want to make sure clients (internal or external) know about every last interesting difference we find. This typically results in a 50-plus-page report with hundreds, if not thousands, of data points and a variety of graphs, charts and tables. We of course sum it up in a concise executive summary, hoping that it will interest a senior executive just enough to dive into the rest of the immensely interesting minutiae of data.
And that is our problem: We are hoping that someone is going read it.
No matter how compelling
In my almost 20 years in the field, my experience has been that no matter how compelling we make the deck, no marketing manager or senior executive wants to read half of a report to find out why his new product idea sucks and how to fix it. They don’t even want to read half of a report if it’s good news. In fact, the typical experience is that they are going to take the three or four key ideas talked about in the presentation and make them their talking points. They rarely go back to the deck.
So what does that mean for us?
We need to become strategic storytellers. While this is not a new idea and you may be saying, “I am already doing this,” the new economic reality of shrinking budgets, tighter deadlines and fewer in-house research resources has made it more important than ever that we change how we tell our stories and who we tell them to, as our clients are more frequently not researchers themselves anymore.
Inspire our clients
Stories are engaging, they take us places, they inspire us - and that is what we, as insight professionals, need to do: inspire our clients to take action. A few bullets in an executive summary with a colorful bar graph just aren’t going to cut it anymore.
More and more clients just want to know the three things they can do right now to fundamentally change their business, especially senior executives whose time is already spread thin. They want it in a quick, easy-access format that is engaging (and dare I say, fun) to read.
Yes, the client has paid for answers to all the questions they asked but we need to become a lot smarter about how we tell these stories. We should not be afraid to leave results on the cutting-room floor if they start to dilute the main thread of the story. Only focus on a handful of questions that truly tell the story of the data, rather than worrying about making sure there’s a chart or graph for every question in the main deck.
Clients will actually be more satisfied because it is easy to understand the story and make decisions based on the results.
More about insights, less about data
The benefit of all this is that we truly become more about insights and less about data - ultimately elevating our role from data jockeys to true thought leaders and consultants.
Trust me. It can be done, no matter how long the questionnaire or how many different inputs there are. All it takes is a different perspective on not only how to put together a report but how we look at ourselves as research professionals.
My company has done it with segmentation studies, brand health studies and especially with many of our tracking studies. A great, and maybe somewhat extreme, example of this is a recent brand health study we conducted for one of our automotive clients. The survey itself was almost 20 minutes long. Each banner book was more than 700 pages. And there were three of them. Needless to say, there was a tremendous amount of data. In the end, we were able to distill the data down to 20 key slides that strategically told the story. Our work was well received - and socialized - by the client.
Starting at the finish line
The single most important aspect of doing this is what we call starting at the finish line. We often use this term with our clients to get them talking about the business objectives of the study. What problems are they trying to solve? How is this data going to be used in the decision-making process? Who is the ultimate audience?
If the client can’t answer these initial questions, we push them to go and find the answers within their organization. If they still can’t come up with answers, we ask them to think about the end presentation. What five or 10 things would they like to stand up and say based on this study? Once these are established, we have a great sense of the true goals of the project and can start working toward developing the story based on this foundation. We often are also adding secondary data and competitive assessments that go beyond the study itself and help support the story.
Even more reflective
Don’t get me wrong. It is not easy. I am not implying that we only selectively analyze the results. What I am suggesting doesn’t actually make report development easier or shorter. It, in fact, makes it much harder. Very tough decisions need to be made on what stays in the deck and what goes in the appendix - or is even jettisoned - but the end product will be even more reflective of our caring nature.