Editor’s note: Joe Baumann is president, JNB Brand Growth Consulting, Cincinnati area, Ky. This article was written with assistance from Alex Hunt, president, the Americas, of market research firm BrainJuicer.

The World Federation of Advertisers and BrainJuicer, a London-based marketing research firm, recently published results from The Future of Insights Project, a study which reveals gaps in how insights and a primary stakeholder – senior marketing – view our function. Having recently retired from a career in consumer market knowledge at Procter & Gamble, I have a passionate belief in the importance of the insights industry and its place in companies aspiring to grow.

With the gaps identified in the study in mind, this article, in collaboration with Alex Hunt, will outline a series of actions to help the insights profession take a hard look at itself, address our biases and craft a new branding strategy for our function.

Using Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 framework, I will take a traditional and modern approach to understanding and addressing the perception gaps raised by the study. Briefly, Kahneman’s model describes two thinking modes: System 1 is fast and effortless; System 2 is slow and effortful. Both systems are replete with biases.

First, using our traditional, effortful System 2, let’s recap the future of insights study data. I encourage you to read the full report, but in sum the study revealed client-side marketing and insights organizations have gaps in expectations of insights’ ideal role, delivery and in perceived value of many insight methods. Comparing the role marketing stakeholders want vs. what they perceive they get (Figure 1) from insights is disconcerting, though if our industry is honest with itself, unsurprising:


So what’s behind the gaps and how can we close them?
 
Still using the effortful System 2, here are three steps insights professionals must take.

1. With marketing, categorize current and desired insights work into five roles. Understand the roles, or portfolio of roles, marketing teams expect from your insights team. Are you librarians, caddies and judges, or are you explorers and consultants? Explore what activities insights is and is not engaged in, what deliverables are desired but missing and decisions or actions marketing expects to take based on these. Long-held assumptions about who owns what pervade all organizations. It’s necessary to consistently reappraise and realign with stakeholders on the role our function plays. Ultimately, all departments own business growth.

2. Critically assess how well insights delivers against marketing’s expectations. With marketing, determine the proportion of your insights team’s work in each role category and assess the quality of that work against expectations. Ask if final product quality is right and explore any failures. Identify work that insights values but marketing sees differently: Is it underappreciated or non-value-add work? When underappreciated, onus falls on insights to re-craft delivery to demonstrably contribute to business growth. Conversely, the terminal decline of continuous, bloated brand trackers exemplifies how insights can have a delivery gap and continue to provide a rear-facing deliverable making minimal contribution to future growth. Close the delivery gap by letting go of work that neither aligns with stakeholder needs nor drives business growth.

3. Move the conversation from tool value to what tools enable. Many conversations with marketing start with, “Which tool is most valuable?” That’s akin to asking a carpenter which is more useful, a finishing hammer or a miter saw? The answer depends on what job needs to be done. You must give more than is asked for when moving toward a consulting role. For example, marketing may ask for research to provide a volume forecast but the full task of assessing business potential requires fast-cycle prototyping of the entire go-to-market proposition, including retail outlets, advertising, brand name, shelving and placement. Going beyond the “run my test” request to guiding the business decision process increases the value of insights contribution and often involves more than one tool. It’s OK to start with a tool in isolation, just ensure the conversation ends with the underlying business imperative.

 
Next, minding our fast System 1, let’s reconsider the study’s data. In this context, score gaps reflect inherent group biases. For example, over-characterization of the insights function’s work results from ego-centrism and availability bias. There are also hints of a backfire effect – a divisive “marketing doesn’t get it” perspective serving to protect an insights professional’s self-esteem. Of course, marketers have biases too.

Where does this leave us? I propose we’re in familiar territory but in need of a modern framework. This is a brand problem. Insights is the brand. Marketing is our customer. How do we move from librarian to consultant?

A “fame, feeling and fluency” brand growth framework is one place to start:

  • Fame: Does a brand come readily to mind?
  • Feeling: Do I feel good about the brand?
  • Fluency: How recognizable are the brand’s distinctive assets?

How will the insights function fare if we to turn this model reflectively onto ourselves?

How readily does the insights team come to mind as a solution?

Asked more simply, what is the insights function famous for, and is that what we wish to be famous for? Insights used to own connecting an organization to the consumer. Given the recent democratization of that objective, what problem does insights now solve? And is insights the first solution that comes to mind? For us, availability bias operates: we live and breathe insights 24/7. But for our marketing stakeholders, what is their full set of questions, and does insights come to mind as the solution?

Insights is about accelerating business growth, and often brand growth. We’ve all listened in envy as marketing and creative agency counterparts have been lauded for building brands by creating famous five-star ad campaigns, yet insights departments and companies are rarely synonymous with a direct driver of business growth. It is imperative to set business growth as insights’ overarching objective.

How does marketing feel about insights?

Insights teams have lost focus on how marketing feels about the function. We’ve focused on the numbers, science, data and tools, leading marketing to disproportionately see us as a librarian. System 1 suggests that changing behavior is about changing feeling. Our profession is recognizing that growing consumer brands requires changing consumers’ feelings about brands. Growing our brand requires changing our stakeholders’ feelings – and that requires different skills, forms of communication and even locations. For example, stakeholders sitting closer to insights report stronger happiness with insights contribution.

In many ways a change in feeling can only be accomplished informally, by ensuring our function pays homage to this age-old rule: how an audience is left feeling is 10 percent the result of what was said and 90 percent the result of the way in which the story was told. An understanding of ways to change feeling can also be achieved quantitatively; it’s strongly recommended that any function ask their clients for feedback. Many ways exist to survey stakeholders for their feelings about the insights function but the important point is that any insights brand strategy places how we want stakeholders to feel at its heart, not technical mastery.

 
How easily does marketing recognize insights as a brand?

It’s essential that insights teams build distinctive assets that make it fast and easy for stakeholders to recognize their work and even the work of individual insights people themselves. We’ve become too good at the former while still struggling with the latter. Many insights departments provide deliverables consistent in look, tone and branding – the challenge is to ensure that familiarity does not supersede the requisite need to introduce new thinking and tools. Where insights departments fall short is in the consistency of other human touchpoints that greatly impact our function. For example, while the study revealed that marketing teams perceive the role of their insights function as that of librarian, it’s likely a portion of the same group may follow such sentiment with, “but our insights person is invaluable.” For insights to grow as a brand, or an organization perceived to drive growth within a company, consistency across all touchpoints, including collective dedication to a growth mission, is required.

In sum, we must better align our function with the needs of a key stakeholder – senior marketing. Start with a table-stakes conversation to identify, quantify and close the gaps. Diagnose your insights team’s current situation: How does marketing perceive your role in the organization and what role do they want you to assume? Move to System 1 to build your insights brand, getting beyond the biases we carry about ourselves. To succeed in the effortless, quick System 1 world, our function must better brand itself and measure success in terms of being marketing’s business growth partner.