Insight is dead

Nick Johnson is so over insight. He wishes researchers would stop going on about it and start thinking instead about what businesses actually do with it.

Hands up if you think the word ‘insight’ is overused. It has become so prevalent that it has lost all sense of its real meaning. It’s like the word ‘luxury’ when applied to an Ikea bathroom suite or ‘executive’ for a motel bedroom.

For an industry obsessed with insight, the funny thing is that we’re not short of it. In fact quite the opposite – we’re tripping over it. Most professional, consumer-focused client companies have been commissioning research for decades. They’ve spent millions on it. They regularly segment their target audiences, then revise their segmentations to keep them up to date. They do innovation research and advertising research, they subscribe to the relevant industry reports and monitors. They probably have an agency on retainer to monitor web chatter about the brand. They may even have a Facebook group to get them closer to their peeps.

In fact, most organisations are now suffering from a serious case of insight indigestion. Insight managers now have so much information coming at them that insight itself has ceased to be the issue.

At the end of a successful project, the agency comes in, does their debrief and makes their recommendations. It’s at this point that one of a number of factors kicks in:

  • The debrief came too late and the end client has already made a decision
  • The debrief contradicts the last piece of work, so is met with doubt
  • The debrief gives bad news or contradicts an idea that was popular internally, so findings are ignored
  • The debrief gives good news and everything is hunky dory – so much so that everyone wonders why they bothered with the research in the first place

None of this is about the quality of insight, it’s about what happens to it once it has been unearthed. Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, once said that if he left IBM’s strategic plans on an airplane seat they would be useless to any competitor, because business success is not about grand designs, it’s all down to how you execute your plans.

The same holds true for market research – we all obsess about finding the breakthrough insight, the idea or the angle that no-one else has thought of and that will drive brand differentiation and desire. No-one, at least on the agencyside, seems to spend much time thinking how these insights are going to be executed and how the agency and insight manager are going to get the end-user of the research to actually use them.

“Insights have zero intrinsic value. They need to be applied to the business and used to change something before the value is realised”

Insights have zero intrinsic value. Knowing that your target consumers behave or think in a specific way is not immediately of commercial value to an organisation. The insights need to be applied to the business and used to change something before the value is realised. Too often, as researchers, we are guilty of sweating over a project and then, once we have come up with some smart consumer insights, we sit back. Job done, aren’t we clever. It still leaves the end client having to make sense of the research findings and work out how to apply them to their business.

Consumer insight managers face a constant challenge to engage with their end customers and demonstrate the power of research to the business. Finding killer insights isn’t the issue any more (and anyway, if it’s a decent insight, you can bet that your competitors have also come across it). The challenge is to find ways of enabling the insights to be immediately put to use.

Many clients can be somewhat cynical about attempts by agencies to ‘get closer’ to their business. Suggestions to run an ‘insight workshop’ instead of a conventional PowerPoint debrief are often rebuffed on the grounds that there is not enough time, or that it won’t add enough value. There is something comforting about the controlling environment of a debrief – debates are not opened up, there’s no risk of things that have already been agreed being discussed again and un-agreed.

But a two-hour meeting that consists of a researcher reading a deck of 80 PowerPoint charts and then fielding a few questions is a very poor way to turn research into decisions. Debriefs are like university lectures – someone stands up at the front and the audience sits and listens – it’s very ‘broadcast: receive’ and as such it actively discourages discussion. When done properly, a two or three hour workshop can be a more effective way of actually carrying ideas into the business and turning them into something that end clients can immediately use. If your clients are sceptical and you think they might drop the workshop in order to save some budget, offer to do it for no charge.

A good workshop helps to set the research within its wider context, both historical and forward looking. Key project stakeholders are invited (it needs to be a small action-oriented group and not a wide audience of anyone who is vaguely connected to the project). These key stakeholders can bring vital context to the findings. How do they compare to previous research findings? Do they fit with what the business believes to be the correct way forward, or do they challenge those beliefs? Has the business moved on since the research was conducted? Are all the insights still relevant?

The researcher’s job is to actively engage with the stakeholders, getting their input into the insight process. This can lead to arguments of course – while they know more about the brand or product than the researcher does, the researcher has come fresh from the insight coal face. These arguments are in fact a crucial part of the process – they make sure that any recommendations coming out of the research have been properly debated and understood. They not only reflect what the research said, but also the realities of the business.

At this point some of you will be throwing your arms up – the purity of the research has been corrupted by the evil client. Who cares? This is about using research as a conversation that enables the business to reach the correct decision. It isn’t about the researcher coming down from the mountain with ‘the truth’ and pointing the way that the client has to follow if they are to succeed.

This approach is not without its risks and it requires clientside insight managers as well agency researchers to stick their necks out a bit. But the benefits can be huge.

By allowing the discussion to encompass not only insights from the project but also a discussion that sets these within the context of the business, the research is able to see the bigger picture and take the business to a higher level.

“In any discussion the final and most important element must be a debate as to what the insights mean for the business. This is the part most researchers feel uneasy with”

In any discussion the final and most important element must be a debate (sometimes heated) as to what the insights mean for the business – what should the next steps be? This is the part most researchers feel uneasy with. The further away they get from the project insights, the more naked they feel. Yet despite the risk of saying something foolish or just plain wrong, this is where researchers need to go in order to really deliver.

Researchers get marginalised precisely because they refuse to engage with the realities of business. We need to move beyond insight if as an industry we are to demonstrate the value of research, value that comes from using insights to deliver sustainable competitive advantage to companies.

This isn’t just about engaging with the consumer, it’s about engaging with the end-user of research. This is where the battle should be in the 21st century. Insight is dead. Long live diffusion!

Nick Johnson is managing director of Volante Research

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25 Comments

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Anon

Almost but not quite....I think Nick is missing the point. Most so called insight projects don't deliver any insights at all. Insight is just a nice way of rebranding 'research' to try and make it seem more relevant. But in reality nothing has changed ....most research produces endless powerpoint decks of facts and data. There's no insight to be seen! An Insight is something that by definition suggests an action, that points to the way forward. Ironically it is what good researchers have always provided...unfortunately as in many professions these are the exception not the rule, and some how the industry has got it into it's head that new processes or techniques are the solution. Yes they can help, yes they allow a researcher to get closer to the consumer, but they are no substitute for a good researcher who knows what a real insight is.

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Diego Maria LLaneza

This article is nothing short of amazing. In my 20+ years of retail marketing and research the series of teams I worked with have clashed their good share of times within different areas of each company we belonged to. Having had this mindset this clearly stated before ... life would have been easier! It's time to move forward in this direction .. and ease market research insights within our organizations to achieve better business results. Let's go ... share!

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Anon

I enjoyed Nick's article very much. As a clientside research manager I agree with his comments about what happens at a debrief!

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Paul Hutchings

I just grappled with what to call myself in my work with a digital marketing agency and finally settled on Head of Insight. I struggled because Insight seems so disconnected, isolated, a gem to be held up but not part of a bigger picture. I still like Head of Research! What a timely article this is for me. Yes we provide insights but we need to get involved in the execution of that insight, what to do with it. This isn't new. Every research conference I've been to has been saying the same thing for years. Fact is the research industry continues to fail at helping with implementation, execution, delivery. That's why collaboration with people who do makes so much sense.

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Anon

Great article. I was immediately captured by the headline, and I agree about the abuse of the i word. But I don't think researchers can take on the responsiblity for 'making it happen' or even just diffusion within the client organisation. That would require quite profound change in the relationship, not just workshops instead of debriefs.

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Jo Shaw

Yes, yes, thrice yes ;-) One of the reasons that research still - after all the MRS papers, after all the calls to action, after all the pleading by clients - fails to have a place at the top table in business is because the industry lacks the confidence to do what Nick is advocating here. People can come into the industry, become talented and competent researchers, yet never really gain a grasp of business issues. Of what the client needs to DO with all this insight, and of how, as Nick says, insight is worthless unless it comes with a mechanism to help the client actually DO something. Training and exposure are key. Young people in our industry should be spending time in marketing departments, learning commercial realities. This doesn't mean that they should lose sight of what their chief role may later be - nor that their entire career should be spent borrowing the client's watch to tell him the time (as Management Consultants are prone to do), but they will gain a grounding in the context and puropose of research. Too many MR people remain too isolated, and become deskilled because of it. There is another factor here though. Client companies are not always blameless. There can be a certain complacent comfort in resisting attempts by research people to energise their findings into the organisation. The positioning of research with a client culture can be to blame, but it can also be an unseen, almost institutionalised attitude. "He/She's only the researcher...). And at a structural level, there may also be problems of knowledge transfer - Knowledge Management issues... We need to earn the right to be heard (how many times has that been said?), but client companies also need to truly ask themselves if they are really ready to properly listen.

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Chris Forbes, Insight Marketing Systems

This is one of the best, most refreshing articles I have read in research-live. The number of responses would also suggest it's really hit a Research Industry nerve. It also highlights one of the great ironies of the industry- that while we make a living from creating or gathering facts on how different customers use what our clients make, we really have no facts on how our own clients really use what we make.

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Tim Lloyd

Great article, Nick. I see something similar all the time in my role, looking at digital engagement opportunities. Agency X produces a range of fantastic ideas for using social media in an innovative way, but fail to account of the resource, knowledge and timescales available at Client Y. Equally, Client Y is guilty of demanding 80 slides, instead of making their limitations clear and basing an ideas session around these.

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Brian Jacobs

This is exactly right - so much so that a group of us, all like minded people are well advanced in starting a business built around using a wide selection of innovative research companies commissioned by senior business analysts whose task is to address and solve defined real-life client issues. Anyone want to join us - contact me at brian@bjanda.com

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Ola Fagbohun

"Too often, as researchers, we are guilty of sweating over a project and then, once we have come up with some smart consumer insights, we sit back. Job done, aren’t we clever. It still leaves the end client having to make sense of the research findings and work out how to apply them to their business." OMG! Are you living inside my head? I cannot agree enough. Too often while a client researcher I have tried to push the "we've done the research now how do we apply it to the organisation?" But often find myself battling not only other researchers but a marketing department who believe it is not my job to worry about implementation. I laugh with cynacism everytime I read a marketing article about how insight(s) will be the saviour of business, when the truth is many organisations like the idea but as another comment mentioned are afraid to let the appropriate people have the time to focus on the implementation. Is it dead, my question is was it ever truly alive?

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John Clay , research4

Great article. From my days as a client side research manager I used to get two general responses from my internal client to a market research project debrief. Either 1: Yes all very good and is sort of telling us what we already know ---- ( arrggh that is like fingers down a blackboard to me - ) or 2: Well the results arent telling us what we think so therefore they must be wrong/not respresentative, mis-quoted , etc etc etc ) . It is an inconvenient truth but in my experience to win hearts and minds in an organisation you have to find out what the answer is that the internal client wants to hear then make sure the research gives them that answer. ( or at least make them think thats the answer they want to hear) That is the skill of the client side research manager. That way market research gains traction amongst the people that counts, and secures budget in next years planning process. Also for research/ insight to be relevant it needs to be done at 100 miles an hour to make sure that you capture the attention of the marketing or exec team before they get bored and move on to the next "big thing", leaving your beautiful research project sitting on a shelf gathering dust. john@research4.co.uk

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Margaret Roller

Thank you, Nick, for this article. Your cry is most welcomed. It reminds me of a white paper I wrote back in 1993! based on research I conducted on the research function within the major telecommunications companies in the U.S. In addition to organizational & budget issues, the paper discusses how to raise the perceived value of research within the corporate environment. And isn't this what "engaging with the end-user" is really about? Much of what I suggest boils down to the integration of researchers & the research function in the corporate framework - If more integrated, wouldn't we all be more engaged & more productive? To this end, I talk about raising research within the organizational structure, establishing career paths for corporate researchers, marketing training for researchers & vice versa, developing matrix teams, creating cross-functional job descriptions, etc. And this was back 1993. Let's keep talking.

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Nick Johnson

Wow, when I wrote the article, l didn't realise how many people thought the same way that I did about this! perhaps there is hope for market research (cough, sorry Insight) afterall. Here's to making things happen!

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Iria Lopez

Sorry, I don't see the point. The word "insight" is overused... yes. Just because it's overused or even badly integrated into an innovation process, doesn't mean it should be dead. Insight (=latent need) will allways exist, and will allways need to be identified. Another thing is how, why and what for those insights are used. If companies are not capable of transforming insights into actionable business or design guidelines, that is another problem. If companies focus the insights research in a classic "marketing and market research" way, that is another problem. Therefore, the problem is not the word "insight" but the coventional processes used around discovering and applying insights.

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Trevor Godman

It's not that insight is dead, just that too many of us had too narrow a definition of it. I know of at least 2 clients who have formal insight generation processes that are absolutely explicit about the fact that 'insights' are only insights if they generate competitive advantage or opportunities for growth. This recognition makes it much easier to accept that an insight is a much rarer thing - not every piece of work will provide one. But lots of value and interest should still exist in all the work we do - some of it will be part of an insight one day.

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Michael Hollon

This is one of the best columns I’ve read in a long time. (But I’m not too concerned about whether the word “insight” should be used or eliminated) Instead, it’s a great article for examining the reasons market research studies often do not truly impact the client as much as the market research industry would have everyone believe they do. In all my years as a client side research manager, I always favored hiring research agencies that wanted to talk to me about what a study would have to do to actually get my internal clients to pay attention. Client side researchers and agency researchers need to use the word actionable about 100 times when setting objectives and designing studies.

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Mark Westaby

Isn't this just stating the bl**ding obvious or am I missing something here. There isn't and never has been anything wrong with insight (a) if that's what is truly delivered and (b) it's actionable, ie genuinely helps the business or organisation to achieve its objectives (well said Michael Hollon). The fact that, too often, research fails to deliver isn't down to whether it's called insight or anything else for that matter. Some people will always jump on a bandwagon and this is no exception. No, there's nothing wrong with insight. The problem is whether or not that's what's really being delivered; and, if so, whether it actually achieves anything.

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Anon

I don't even work in the research world (I got to this article serendipitously while researching company awards!) but it seems that the words 'insight' and 'information' are being used interchangeably. Researchers may be getting marginalised because they don't know the difference between the two.

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Tim Johnson

Insight: Knowledge about behaviour that helps a firm to generate a competitive advantage or growth opportunity. Information: Facts and figures, leading to knowledge.

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Tim Johnson

Implementation: Challenging the business to make sense of insight in order to learn, change and grow.

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Tim Johnson

Innovation: Successfully making sense of an insight to create a competitive advantage or growth opportunity. Question: What can help an organisation use use insights to innovate and change their business for the better? See http://bit.ly/cy0qQh for a Linkedin discussion on this topic.

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Laura Morris, Brass

I agree entirely with the sentiment conveyed in Nick Johnson's article. From the agency researchers point of view, the goal should always be to deliver the kind of insight that, ultimately, inspires action. There's a number of ways we can go about this, not least stepping away from the comfort of PowerPoint to communicating research more creatively and boldly. Working with our clients in partnership to understand their businesses and the constraints and parameters they have to work within is also key if we're to avoid coming up with pie in the sky recommendations. Luckily, I am part of a research team that sits within a wider marketing communications agency where actionable insight is a must. Drawing on our design and marketing skills, we have the luxury of being able to translate our research findings into readily implementable ideas for our clients. To use an example, why spend 2 hours telling your client how to change their pack design to improve consumer perceptions justifying how you've gone about deriving your 'insights' and going through them one by one when you can simply show them a visual that helps them make that mental leap that much quicker! Obviously the client has to accept responsibility for implementation in equal measure but as an agency partner it is our job to do all we can to help them ... whether that's in very practical ways such as outlined or through communicating research insights more effectively.

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Cynthia DuVal

I hate to subscribe to the idea that insight is dead because there is great value in insight. For one thing, insight is one of the experiences that inspires passionate action. Insight if properly communicated, experienced and shared can and does ignite creative thinking. I understand what is being discussed here though, that insight in the consumer insights "profession" have been commoditized and delivering insight as a commodity is not inspiring. So how does insight inspire? I will give an example, you've had the insight that insight is dead, you've communicated your idea in a way that inspired action at least in the form of responses from people who read your blog. Now what we don't know is how each of these respondents is taking what I think we recognize to be a "shared inspiration" into there world to change the purpose of the consumer insight experience from gathering insight to applying insight to business possibilities. There is broader set of skills involved to achieve this and an openness to change on the part of the audience. I don't think that insight is dead (insight is a natural aspect of human thinking and experience) but I concede that consumer insights as a marketing tool has commoditized insight and the value as well as the meaning of the word has been diffused in this context. What's more the creative application of insight is 1) hightly coveted by institutional insiders 2) plays a role in igniting power plays 3) threatens beliefs. Dealing with all of these things is a higher level role and expertise than what consumer insights researchers may have. I know I experienced this many times as a design researcher bringing knowledge of customers and potential users to engineering and design teams. So there is something amiss in the context as well as the practice as you all have been saying. So what I propose, is that for insight to thrive and ignite creativity in others, we need to embrace it for what it is and understand as you say that the insight must be tranfrormed through applied action to goals and opportunities that the business will benefit from. Insight need to be applied yes but how do you do that? You plan concept design sessions into your consulting agreement, you bring the talent in to facilitate creative collective thinking meetings and you set the stage for even more insight to occur among the participants. In this way the original iinsight which may not be particularly inspiring, can become so as it is applied to business goals and opportunities. By the end of these sessions you may have several insights that may have far more intrinsic value that the originals but they could not have come to be without the original. Use insight to set collective creative thinking in motion and generate even more insight, apply it to real business problems and goals, don't be afraid or stop fresh new insights that from in this process, let them have a life, air, breath; watch for the insights that ignite passionate feelings among stakeholders, probe deeper into these, explore them further;. Insight isn't dead but maybe consumer insights as a practice is; don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I so agree with you that different companies will come up with very similar insights when they use the same set of tools to discover them; differentiation comes from how the stakeholders in the room who apply and iterate insight to meet the needs and open up the opportunities for the business.

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Nicole Adriance

I love this article! I worked for a company where the weekly client deliverable was called an 'Insights Report." While this name was appealing a few years ago it now seems passe. When conducting research on a weekly basis you are more apt to come across 'findings' than you are 'insights' ... especially when it comes to research that is more straightforward (e.g. product tests, ad testing.) I agree with the poster who said as an agency it is hard to ensure the 'insights' are acted upon in the agency. There are so many layers the findings.insights must get through (research - marketing - head of strategy - product - etc....) in order to have a true impact on the end user.

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John Aitchison

Great article, thank you and lots to agree with. Even after 20 years I still find a 2 hour results presentation as "agency researcher" really taxing. We might not like to think of it like this but we are essentially 'performing' in that context. It is our one chance to give the findings the right voice, and look good ourselves, of course... Adrenaline is released and by the end of it we're, frankly, a bit drained. Often we're keen simply to leave and have some mental down-time - that material has become rather too familiar and we need some air! So, whilst it's nice that some researchers are also exceptional performers I think we'd see more, and different, and more relevant, talents emerge in a workshop environment. For example: maybe we don't just bring along our data analyst for the ride, and those awkward stats questions, but actually promote the idea of her being in on the wider de-brief 'conversation'. Researchers would certainly be more relaxed knowing they didn't have to be on their feet, as well as on their toes. And yes, as a result I'm sure we'd have more chance of translating whatever "insight" we do have into actual marketing strategy.

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