Stepping out of the shadows and leading businesses towards a consumer-centric mindset

Businesses have been realising for some time, that the only way to develop their edge is by genuinely putting their consumers at the centre of their organisation. However true consumer-centricity is more than a buzz word, it’s a philosophy. Something that is genuinely embraced across every area of the business – from Marketing, through to Commercial, Sales, Digital, and Finance.

The Insight function are the group best positioned to lead this evolution as they naturally have the closest connection to consumers. However to do this, they need to step out of their comfort zone. They need to move away from being back office experts and start leading conversations and developing initiatives that place consumers at the forefront of business decision making. They need to find new and engaging ways to immerse stakeholders into the lives of consumers enabling intuitive and tangible bridges to be built. Shifting from a rational, often product-centric, at arms relationship, to an instinctive, emotional connection with those who matter most, their consumers. That is Insights 3.0.

The greatest challenge is that in its current form, insight work rarely captures the attention of the business. Too long-winded or too simplistic. Too academic without a clear link to commercial implications. Often it leaves business stakeholders emotionally cold and strategically lost. There has been developments in this area – with working debriefs and workshops becoming the norm, but more is required. Something simple, easy, inclusive and accessible. Something exciting, new, colourful. Something that connects on the most human, intuitive level. Something that makes you feel your consumer, be on their side, want to help them…not just sell to them.

Transforming insights into experiences

“A researcher is a brilliantly cultured and nosy creature who sometimes places higher value on knowing, than on the need for this knowledge. This is our strength as well as our weakness, our nerdish perception, our misfit, our superb inquisitiveness.”

ANON

I love this quote – it is so true. Our nerdiness (perceived and actual) keeps the consumer at arms length from the business and this needs to be addressed. How? By transforming insights into experiences. Why? Because:

1. People are hard work

They don’t mean what they say, don’t do what they should and trying to get below the surface and unpicking their behaviours is hard work. Our inner nerd loves the intellectual rumination, but most just don’t. Especially stakeholders who feel their role is far away from the end-user.

2. Less thinking – more feeling.

As Maya Angelou famously said:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Insight sharing, in its current form (by this I mean the much hated, but still expect 100 page PowerPoint presentation), leaves most feeling what? Confused? Overwhelmed? Not sure where to go next? Rather than just words, insight delivery should be an experience. It should touch you, engage you and leave you feeling…something.

We need to rise to this challenge and make people less ‘hard’. Encourage organisations to feel its consumers, rather than think about them. We need to use our inquisitive nature to discover new and different ways to encourage stakeholders to build a connection with consumers. We need to be brave. Show a willingness to step up and out of our comfort zone, own our insights and elevate them to trigger a real commercial impact. We need to break free from the Stockholm Syndrome type relationship with Marketing. Where we love them for transforming our work into something relatable, desirable, impactful, but hate them for rarely recognising us in the process. We need to create our own opportunities to show how powerful our work is.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. It is in our hands to transform consumer-centricity from a populist notion into a reality. For those that have, there is no doubt it creates a significant competitive advantage. Top of mind, is The Four Seasons hotel. Whilst considered generic luxury for some, the consumer dialogue around this brand is extraordinary. Never a bad word have I heard in 10 years of working the luxury hotel category. You hear stories of hotel staff enquiring about the nap time of a baby to avoid a poorly timed visit from Housekeeping, the running of a bath for a travel weary business person. Small, deeply touching gestures that show consumers that the business at the most grassroots level is thinking about them – have taken the time to listen, know them, understand them and subsequently building an intimate connection with them, expressed at every touchpoint.

Emotional Modernism + technology – the way forward

There are many ways to skin a cat – but my inquisitiveness and nerdiness led me to the concept of Emotional Modernism (the capacity to elicit emotion through design) and technology as a solution.

Design is powerful and without a doubt, having a moment. Its capacity to elicit deep emotions and build strong connections is unquestionable. For the world of insight, this is the antidote required for over-intellectualised reports or over simplified insight statements. It translates the esoteric nature of these and breathes life into it. It can take people from saying ‘that’s nice…but now what?’ To getting stepping into the consumers shoes, all neurones firing. Neurones that push stakeholders to build better strategies, communicate better and bring better innovation to market. Generally it inspires the whole company to focus on better meeting consumers’ needs.

Technology is sexy. It is the modern, engaging shot in the arm needed to attract the masses to the world of consumer insight. It creates the opportunity for people to easily connect with them, from the comfort of…well wherever! No late-night groups, no depth interview observation in the ass-end of nowhere. Plus, there is an element of play. Buttons to press, models to manipulate, portals to explore. The limit is often just our own imaginations.

What a combination – powerful and sexy! This, underpinned with the powerful and directive nature of human truth results in provocative, immersive, influential consumer experiences.

Building Immersive Consumer Experiences

The concept of bringing insight to life is not new. Over the last decade (give or take) clients have been progressively attracted to agencies offering creative services. Taking the tomes that are U&As, consumer data and qual reports and translating them into something beautiful, tangible, relatable, experiential and most importantly usable.

To date – it feels that much of the focus (and budgets) has been towards fleshing out the brand experience rather than focusing on the consumers, whose world these brands inhabit. Whilst there has been some great work bringing to life consumer insight via infographics and evocative consumer films, it feels we have been a little on back foot in leveraging the design/technology power punch.

However, the pendulum is swinging. With the idea of consumer-centricity gaining momentum, the Insight function is having their positions elevated within a business – less back office, more front and centre. They are leading conversations on how to better meet the ends of their end user, elevating the value of Insights in the process. As a result, new briefs are landing on my doorstep, challenging me to find new and creative ways to connect the consumer to the whole company.

This shift has meant, I have spent the last few years focused on building various immersive consumer experiences for clients. Interactive travel itineraries, 3D consumer worlds – all using space, environments and scenarios to bring to life different consumer segments. This is done on multiple levels – visual, sensory, kinaesthetically, allowing business stakeholders, to choose on what level theycan connect with consumers – that is, the one that is most emotive for them. In some cases, real life consumer content is also woven into the experience – bringing a sense of tangibility to a virtual world.

Making the marriage work

Taking insights to the next level requires close collaboration between Insight and Design. The role of Insight refers to both client and the Insight Specialist they engage. The client brings with them a deep knowledge and intuition for their consumer, powerful ideas on how we can connect with them, existing content, as well as a good understanding of how to engage the rest of the business (or at least raise a flag to the challenges we face).

The Insight Specialist brings; executional ideas, an intuition for design, a curiosity to get under the skin of the segment(s) in question and inspiration for new, thought provoking content. Together with the client they build the design brief – focused, inspirational, and a blend of visual and written. They also guide the process, ensuring integrity and expression accuracy of the consumer voice at every touchpoint.

A strong benefit of a visual and written brief is that it removes the subjectivity often associated with design work – helping to keep the process lean and agile. Less time (and budget!) is spent on conversations about colours, fixtures and fittings as we are not seeking visual perfection, but rather intuitive connection.

The designer is there every step of the way – blending natural human empathy with curiosity – taking their own journey to step into the shoes of the consumer. Using their skill to express the emotions, character and personality of the brief. Thinking about elements such as light, texture, colours – the mood we want to convey – so they can tell the consumers’ story evocatively – successfully transforming a two dimensional brief into 3D output. 

They are also the tech gurus. Drawing on their experience to provide executional options, suggesting design optimisations as well as consulting on how to seamlessly integrate the output onto the client’s portal.

This partnership brings many benefits:

• Motivates connection – makes it simple to step into the world of the consumer
• Provokes emotion – breathing life, colour and emotion into insight – helping bring the business on side and motivated to really try and help them
• Stimulates action – the business so deeply ‘gets’ the consumer, that innovation across product, pack and comms is simple. Effortless even.

Final thoughts

The Insight function is evolving. It is genuinely being recognised as a source of competitive advantage but to leverage this some changes need to be made. We need client and organisational bravery to allow us to show not tell. Challenge us to make our audience feel, not think. Untether us from the written debrief (which we know few will ever fully read) as the only expected deliverable.

With leaps forward being made in the field of creative insight – we can more readily help them step up to this challenge. Show how we can help immerse all stakeholders into the world of consumers and genuinely start building consumer-centric organisation. The net result being a deeper more enduring brand loyalty because – ‘they get me’ – because at the end of the day, we all liked to feel we’ve been listened to…and understood.

If you are struggling to get your stakeholders to really connect with your consumer. If you want to stimulate stronger brand loyalty, more intimate consumer experiences, better NPD or more effective comms development, I would love to talk to you more about creative insight and immersive consumer experiences. You can drop me a line at sasha@radfordinsight.com