A few people have asked, so here is the talk on Insights I gave at the Google Firestarters event.

1. In looking at consumer insights, I’m going to tackle these 3 questions

2. Let’s start here: Do we over-rate them?

3. Well we certainly rate them – don’t we? Consumer research used to be called market research but now it’s called the ‘insight industry’: mighty Kantar call themselves a ‘data
and insight consultancy’, Flamingo are a ‘strategic insight consultancy’, Hall & Partners describe themselves, amongst other things, as ‘insight journalists’ and even the smaller
ones like Join The Dots call themselves a ‘full service insight agency’
And Synergy recently launched the first ‘Consumer, Insighting & Storytelling Conference’, deftly turning the noun into a verb.
Of course we are all familiar with this on the right – the typical creative brief with the inevitable ‘insight’ box – as though there will always be one.
All that implies that we simply can’t do wonderful work or build strong brands without them, and yet…
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
Data and insight
consultancy
Full service consumer
insight agency
Strategic insight consultancy
1
What is the Brand’s Purpose?
What is the Benefit and RTB this brief is offering to its consumers?
Who is the consumer target audience?
What is the consumer Insight?
How should agency be using media, devices and content?
What is the Creative Task?
What is the key challenge to be solved?
Insight journalists

4. ...it’s pretty obvious that successes both great and small have arrived without leveraging an ‘insight’ – the best known…

5. …is the iPad – no ‘insighting’ was done to discover a gap in opportunity between the laptop and the mobile; as with pretty much
everything they do it was more tech and ‘hunch’ that drove that.
And sales way outstripped analyst predictions.
Not just Apple – Yakult and probiotics – fastest growing areas in self-care didn’t come from an insight – came from science and what
we need to maintain a healthy gut

6. PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
Tim Clark, Emirates President.
We know what
customers want
“
”
SirTim Clark,EmiratesPresident.
This is Tim Clark – now Sir Tim Clark, president of airline Emirates and the force behind its spectacular growth – from the early 90s when it was a single
Airbus to its status as the world’s most valuable airline brand (worth $7.7B according to Brand Finance)
I don’t know if these days the team rely on insights, but I do know in early years they certainly didn’t – in fact, Sir Tim always said he wasn’t interested in
what research had to say – so he never commissioned any – he refused – why? Because he said he knew what their customers wanted…

7. It was clear – what they want is – ”a 4-poster bed and lobster at Economy prices”.
And he knew, as they knew, that they couldn’t have it, or anything like it – so the genius was to close the gap even for turn-right passengers – he got
them just a little closer to their fantasy within the realms of reality, with what was viable – and he did it in multiple small ways…
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS

8. Remember back in 90s Emirates were the first airline in the world to put personal video all 3 cabins, and they did other things too:
Choc ices with the movie
On board Polaroids
And the tiny thing of a pull-down footrest in Economy – not an ‘insight’, but didn’t come from nowhere either – Tim always said that the
closeness of cabin crew and customer was all that was needed to discover these small needs – so there’s a lot to be said for…

9. …proximity – a closeness that is an important help to weave an intimate web of understanding

10. That is exactly how the footrest addition came about – cabin crew noticed that people tended to put their feet on bags – a bit more comfortable, so the
airline added that small note of comfort

11. Apple and Emirates are substantive successes, at the level of the product itself – but the same approach can happen in communications too:
so GE have the challenge of recruiting the brightest and best – but GE itself is not that well understood
They didn’t go for a killer insight – but a ‘web of understanding’ that really resonates with their audience that led to a well observed
beautifully crafted campaign – and I will now show you 2 spots
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
‘Web of understanding’
An understanding of target as
complex, rounded people
Not a single ‘killer insight’RECRUITMENT

12. This work is based on a ‘web of understanding’ and I think that is something we can do when there isn’t a single point of insight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcZHGonRF28

13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW_7Q_tAk9I

14. BUT if a box on brief demands one – as they often do – you’ve got to hope that you can do better than these… these are worse than nothing – just
platitudes really
And there will be times when we really do need an insight, not because it’s mandated, but because it’s the right thing to do, and when that’s the case…

15. …let’s raise the bar

16. Which brings me to my second question – do we under-define them?

17. We most literally do – look around at top insight agencies – no obvious definition, upfront in their comms – nothing at all – they talk about them as if we all
know what they are
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
DEFINITION OF CONSUMER INSIGHTS FROM TOP INSIGHT AGENCIES
“ ”
“ ”
“ ”
“ ”

18. There are one or two interesting definitions out there – first two are from an APG event on the subject. The last one is interesting –
because it’s true – they are precious but hard to find – but what ‘little secrets’?

19. At Passionbrand we do have a definition, and it’s a high bar
There are quite a few points in this definition – so I’ll pick them off
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS

20. Here’s the 4 areas that make up a great insight

21. Revelatory – it needs to tell you something non-obvious

22. I’ve seen this as an insight on a brief – not revelatory

23. When they are revelatory – they do this, they make you think…
at the same time…
‘Of course!’ – because it works with your prior understanding of human nature… but it’s also surprising, seemingly non-obvious,
because it often cuts across your current category accepted knowledge

24. A good insight is directive – immediately know what to do

25. Across the business – it needs to support not just comms but product development or user experience

26. If you work in the beauty or personal care category you might well recognize this?
It’s not an insight because you can’t do anything about it – it’s a fact but not a very interesting one

27. About them not us – this seems really obvious, I know, but sometimes we sort of force an insight to make it convenient for us…

28. You see this sort of thing quite a lot – it’s the insight we would like

29. Finally an insight should be currently unaddressed and therefore a ‘new way’ to serve customers better – not something we just
play back – it’s a tough ask
One example that covers all this is P&G and what they did on Pampers

30. It was first presented at the ANA conference in Orlando 4-5 years ago….
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
Marc Pritchard

31. The category is nappies, diapers

32. And the category were all competing on same thing – leakage and movement – the generic benefit of the category.
So when P&G did focus-group research they got the same thing – this is what people look for in diaper
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
Leakage and movement: the torture test of the category

33. So in Pampers case they tried a bit harder – this is what they did:
Diaries – so non-participant
Proper ethnography in homes with a new baby
And what was completely obvious…

34. …was this – everyone in a home with a baby craves sleep – including the baby. And wetness was often the reason they didn’t get it.
Revelatory? You wouldn’t think so if you’ve been a parent, but if you look at it through category eyes it is, it came at the category from a
completely new angle – it was revelatory in the category
But they didn’t just play it back – they did something substantive…

35. Innovation

36. New diaper with extra dryness layers – designed for comfort at night

37. Obviously backed up in comms
Sales rose immediately by 54%. P&G estimate it has added $1B in revenue over 2 years

38. Ideally an insight would have all these characteristics
It’s a tough ask

39. And as with any strong definition, it means true insights are going to be rare – it reminds me of the brilliant Detectorists series
You rarely unearth treasure, and you are really lucky if you do. You often get ring-pulls – we collect a lot of those when we search for
real insights – they still tell you stuff, but you will have to do quite a bit more work to make them useable….

40. So: true insights are rare – we won’t always find one – but can we work around them?
I think we can

41. We can do it by working at the intersection of two forces – on the one hand the consumer (working with facts, observation, our web
of understanding) and then something interesting happens when that understanding collides with external forces such as the
category, wider culture or even an academic take on the subject – you could call these external forces ‘outsights’
Let’s take a look at some of those ‘outsights’ examples

42. Looking at the category for ‘outsights’, a good example is girls’ dolls in the1990s and the launch of American Girl

43. Founder was Pleasant Rowland – she was a teacher, so she already had a web of understanding of girls and mums.
She was apparently sitting on a park bench in historical Williamsburg thinking about the fact that she needed/wanted to buy a doll
for one of her nieces, and it struck her that…

44. There was an Imperfect choice – dominated by clichéd role models – baby dolls always rendering women as carers, or Barbie and
Bratz – with their impossible image of idealised femininity.
And she felt that this choice was doing nothing to help the young girls of today make their mark on the world.

45. So, she started American Girl with the view that: ‘if we can get girls excited about history, we can inspire them to create history’,
and therefore the first range was dolls of historical women and their stories of achievement
At the heart of this story is…

46. …this question – ‘How is our category currently letting people down?’ She didn’t ask it in those words, but she responded to it.
We should ask it – it can be revealing and powerful

47. The second route to ‘outsights’ was to examine the wider culture. I’ve always thought this and this is a quote from one of my columns
But I’m not alone

48. US academic Grant McCracken wrote a book about it – he deconstructed the famous Unilever Dove and Persil cases to show they
couldn’t have happened without the intersection of both consumer and cultural understanding
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
Grant McCracken

49. A great example of marketing activity leveraging culture is something IKEA are doing in Canada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w58LmNZ0ACs

50. Finally we can use academia as a source – it never looks inviting, but it is an amazing treasure trove of inspiration if you dig into it –
start with Google Scholar, check citations, look for the 4-star journals in the area
We did this for Avon on their anti-aging skincare
PASSIONBRANDGOOGLE FIRESTARTERS
ACADEMIA

51. We found a study about Scandinavian twins, how they looked and how they lived and it gave us inspiration for the brand

52. So, to summarise…
Consumer insights are, by definition, rare.
But there are other ways through – especially working from a ‘web of understanding’ of your consumer and combining that with
the intersection of ‘outsights’, from the category, culture or academia.
Thank you.