Customer insight critical to success says Vodafone’s Fielding

Describing herself as a “passionate advocate of customer insight” as she spoke at the ISBA annual conference in London she told the assembled marketers: “You need to identify your purpose and essence – what do you do that’s different and clear?”

“On both the agency and manufacturer side I’ve seen the most atrocious insight, sometimes waiting for the insight of a product about to be launched,” she added.

And she went on to explain what she meant by insight. “I mean fundamental, human truths that would be there even if the brand didn’t exist. At Milka we got to the insight through ethnography, and that was that people used chocolate as a stress relief, it was the idea that chocolate is therapy and it became the founding insight,” Fielding said. “It took us two and a half years to get Germany on board with this insight and direction.”

At Vodafone she said that it had been more about empowerment, “do more, be more and get more with the technology from smartphones”.

She pointed to the nature of communication being: 7% spoken word; 55% body language and 38% tone of voice.

“Marketing is so obsessed with USP and the main message and in truth it’s the other stuff that’s working for you. At Vodafone we talk about conversations that work. Also with the call centre and retail staff the whole notion of tone is very important.”

She said she was fed up with the endless conversations about the latest paradigms in marketing, from storytelling to data to content. “Get over the notion it’s all about one thing, it’s all about being bloody complicated,” she said. “It’s highly complex and a rapidly changing universe.”