We spend millions of dollars to find them. We sit through hours of conference calls waiting, listening, wondering, taking notes and scratching our heads. We search and we hope all this stuff will lead us to an idea, a breakthrough, an insight. But it rarely does.
We are taught by our industry that real insights are rare, like an albino Bengal tiger or gold in the pan of Sam Brannan in 1849. But I’ll be a contrarian and argue that insights are everywhere. We just need to learn how to spot them.
Here are six approaches that will help you find insights faster and easier.
1. Ask “why?” And ask it a lot.
Ten years ago I was complaining to a friend of mine about something going on at the office. He asked me, “Why do you think that situation happened?” I gave him my answer. He asked me again, “Well, why do you think that happened?” I gave him the next answer. He asked me “why?” a few more times, and with each “why?” we got deeper. In about 15 minutes of honest conversation, we identified the root of my issue. At the end of our talk, he told me that anyone can figure out most problems by asking “why?” 10 to 12 times. Next time you want to gain a helpful insight, try asking “why?” until it gets uncomfortable. Tell the moderator to try this in your next focus group. It works. Try it with your marketing team. That works, too.
2. Consumers should not get all the attention.
Insights come from everywhere, not just from “consumers.” To get well-rounded insights, find out more about your company. A lot of the time, the story behind the founding of the company and the creation of the brand is rich with insight and inspiration. Consider the product, too, and how it was invented and how it is made. Insights even come from the assembly line. And especially think about your insights when considering your media choices. It is a cliché to say this, but worth repeating: media is fragmented. Big time. With consumers using so many ways to be entertained and informed these days, we have hundreds and thousands of opportunities to gain insights about consumer media consumption. So go beyond the consumer. But don’t forget them, either.
3. Believe how people act. Not what they say.
Ask people what is important to them about choosing a brand or a product. Then cross-examine them about why the brand or product is important to them. Typically you will discover that what people say they believe is important really may not be. The classic example is the research study conducted many years ago during which the researcher asked respondents in focus groups about their eating habits. The respondents, wanting to appear healthy and responsible, talked about how they and their families consumed only healthy food. But when the researcher secretly collected the respondents’ garbage, he found something completely different: empty packages of very unhealthy food.
4. Live like your target.
Anthropologists believe that to truly understand a culture, we need to live among them and do what they do. Consumer segments are the same. Consider this next time you want to do focus groups. If you have eight people in the group and 120 minutes to talk with them, you will only get 15 minutes of each person’s time, assuming the moderator doesn’t speak and there is no silence. That’s not much time at all to base communications or innovation strategies on. Another way to get insight is to take the anthropologist’s approach: live with your target audience. Literally, if you can. Get to know them. Have them let down their guards so you can discover who they really are and how they think, feel and live. We do this for Sonic Drive-In by simply hanging out on the lots for days at a time. We watch the customers, talk to them, watch where they park, what they order and eat and who they are with. This approach may seem a little hokey. But only if you think things like customer acquisition and retention are hokey.
5. There is insight in numbers.
On the flip side of conversation are numbers. And typically the qualitative has been at odds with the quantitative. But this should never be the case. The two can feed off one another. And the qualitative can benefit from the quantitative side. The most famous example of this is Heineken. The brand was suffering on many fronts and needed to boost its sales and image. The qualitative research revealed nothing significant, and the attitude and usage study gave the brand team little to work with. Except for the single attribute of “refreshing” that scored well. With only “refreshing” to go on, Heineken, admittedly taking a chance, built its marketing around the idea that “Heineken refreshes the parts other beers can't reach.” The idea worked, sales spiked and the brand image improved. All because the brand team found an insight in a single data point.
6. Insight from confusion.
Great insights are as much about people correctly understanding a brand as they are about people misunderstanding a brand. A recent example is Barkley’s work with the March of Dimes. When we were asked to help resurrect March of Dimes from low top-of-mind awareness and increase participation and contributions through a repositioning assignment, we discovered one very important thing in our research. People thought the March of Dimes stood for a problem: birth defects. And they did not connect the March of Dimes with solving birth defects and standing for a world of healthy babies. This was a subtle discovery with significant implications. Because we looked at this simple misunderstanding as a launching pad for the brand, we knew we had to overplay the mission of the March of Dimes. The result was a rallying cry called “Wonder” that helped transform the March of Dimes not only for consumers, but also for its staff, researchers, corporate partners and volunteers. Additionally, the Q1 '08 top-of-mind awareness numbers are in, and the March of Dimes is enjoying a double-digit percentage increase.
These six approaches are just a few of the ways we can look for consumer insights and business challenges. Give them a try and let us know how they work for you. We are always interested in hearing how ideas help people and finding new ways to gain insight.
After talking to moms and mothers-to-be, we were struck by their sense of wonder. To see how wonder comes alive in the work we created for March of Dimes, click here.
