Editor’s note: Rob Volpe is CEO and founder of consumer insight firm Ignite 360, San Francisco.
What value do you provide your organization? This is the hardest question to answer. What accomplishment can be pointed to that adds value to the company? For that matter, what is the actual value of the entire insights team? Are corporations just throwing good money away? What does the function contribute to the business results? If leaders can’t put a dollar figure on it, how can a CEO or CMO justify the function’s seat at the table?
I’ve been having variations of this conversation with clients from around the world. Challenged with flat to shrinking budgets and head count, the insights/research/market intelligence function is having to show its worth at some organizations. I find this ironic as we are also in a time of declarations of focus on consumer-centricity. And the best way to do that is to cut the investment in connecting to the consumer?
Consider some of the headwinds the client-side researcher faces today. The quickening pulse of cultural change, such as macro trends of authenticity, personalization and generational shifts is raising the pressure on traditional brands to keep up the pace. That’s compounded by demands for faster, cheaper, better insights delivered by an injection of new technology, big data analytics and a measure of story in order to make it all stick. The results can leave client-side professionals going in many directions all at once. In Quirk’s recent Q Report, 47 percent cited lack of resources (money, time, personnel) as the biggest barrier to the organization improving its understanding of consumers/customers/users.
With so many demands, it should be a no-brainer that the internal team that knows the consumer best should sit at the right side of leadership. After all, without that consumer buying goods and services, where would the company be?
Yet insights isn’t always in the inner circle or in the conversation acting as the representative of the consumer. Beyond the dynamics of corporate organizations and org charts, insights can be challenged to quantify the value that it delivers. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on the mistakes that good insights can help a team avoid just like it’s difficult to point to what an insight, the foundation of development and decision-making, is actually worth. Would the $100M new product launch have been so successful if it wasn’t grounded in great insight? The insight certainly contributed, as did the product development, packaging and marketing teams. Yet insights often go first, building empathy with the consumer’s problem, which allows the rest of development flow from there. Same with how you use insights in the development and evaluation of communication. Yet the function remains challenged to show its value to the company rather than just being a cost center.
Strategic partners
Coming on the heels of these conversations, I was delighted to see a presentation at the Quirks Event London on this exact topic. BV Pradeep, global vice president, consumer and market insight – market clusters at Unilever, presented an ESOMAR study looking at 20 different insights organizations that are strategic partners to leadership and are doing it right. The presentation explored what it takes for insights organizations to thrive in today’s environment, and how to answer that age-old puzzler, what is the ROI on insights?
The presentation dove-tailed with the Q Report as well as takeaways from several other presentations at Quirk’s London. Combined, here are my four big takeaways from the presentations. The full ESOMAR report is being made available in the coming weeks to ESOMAR members and, based on the Quirk’s London presentation, it will definitely be worth taking a look.
1. Be a consultative, strategic partner. Too often, a researcher shares out a report with prescriptions of what to do, rather than using the learning to start a conversation. Today’s successful insights organizations act as consultants to their marketers and other stakeholders. In a separate presentation, Hayley Ward, Marks & Spencer’s head of insights partnerships, shared in conversation with James Wycherly of Insight Management Academy how she leads a team that sits imbedded within the business units of the U.K. retailer. The result is more strategic conversation that’s based on shared understanding of business challenges and objectives. This arrangement, according to Ward, came about as the retailer has reimagined how the insights function is integrated into key parts of the business. I’ve seen several clients pivot to this method with varying degrees of success. The benefit is a much stronger relationship with the business team. The challenge is to make sure the team has the skill set to not only be sensing where the data is going and using intuition to frame decisions but also to be able to be the influencer that can partner with the business team.
2. Focus on foresight rather than hindsight. Too often research is brought in to help explain what went wrong or insuring against failure. Valuable to know, certainly, but it is prescriptive in nature. The suggestion from the ESOMAR study is to move toward seizing opportunities that drive growth. Hindsight’s “told you so” tone doesn’t help teams move together in forging the future. Unilever’s Pradeep encouraged insights to help their organizations future-proof themselves by bringing “thought grenades” into presentation in order to spark conversation that incorporates thinking on data, trends and where consumers are heading. According to Pradeep, this creates lasting value and a situation where insights isn’t just about the numbers.
3. Share the stories, creating organizational folklore. How do you energize people to take action? Through well told stories. In today’s world of massive amounts of data, finding the story becomes so much more important. Even when telling the story of big data, it’s the individual stories of the consumer that can change minds and influence decisions. The power of the story of one person who represents a larger group can make an empathetic connection that combines with cognitive understanding and will inspire action. Make sure your team is delivering the story the right way for maximum effect.
Begonia Fafian, Coca-Cola’s Western Europe knowledge and insights director, shared how her team, with help from Lucy Davison of Keen as Mustard Marketing, identified the delivery methods that most successfully reached and engaged Coca-Cola’s broad range of stakeholders. The outcome was more engagement in the insights and the projects underway. Now that they have their audience’s attention, they can further engage on insights.
4. Don’t get boxed in as a cost center. In the ESOMAR presentation, Pradeep talked of several companies that participated in the study who aren’t as focused on ROI, recognizing that there is a combination of hard and soft metrics. However, the study also revealed that successful insights organizations are shifting the focus toward the future-sighting and strategic partnership, which helps increase their perceived value. Additionally, sharing the success stories broadly, including finance and procurement to educate them on how insights helps. That can foster a key alliance when the time comes and the real ROI of insights is assessed.
So, what exactly is the ROI of insights? There doesn’t appear to be a perfect formula or marketing mix analysis that can deliver the answer. While researchers everywhere might breathe a sigh of relief, it doesn’t mean we, as an industry, should continue to sit back and rest on our laurels. The future is an insights team that sits at the right hand of leadership, providing perspective and wisdom on the customer through stories that are excitedly shared throughout the organization.