Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Long Live Insights – Its now time for “Outsights”


It’s the time of the year when its fashionable to ring out the old and bring in the new. So here’s my two bit for the market research industry – its time to ring out Insights and embrace a new idea called “outsights”.

The market research industry, indeed all of marketing, has been obsessed with “consumer insights”. Look at the stupendous increase in the mention of the term consumer insights in books since the beginning of the 1990s.



However, the market research industry needs to pivot away from insights for three reasons
  1. With signs of the global economy faltering, growth will becoming increasingly difficult and will be predicated on truly differentiated insights
  2. Big data has done wonders for the industry but has “dehumanized” the data. We need to “feel the consumers” rather than read about them.
  3. With growth becoming difficult, we need to go beyond insights to ideas that could translate those insights to growth

It is my submission that the research industry needs to pivot away from Insight to Outsight. Humor me and read on as I give you three good reasons (good in my judgement 😊) for my view

1. "Confusion over what is an insight” – Probably the most common question asked in any job interview in the market research industry – client or agency side – is “What is your definition of what is an insight”. Look at the search trend for the term “what is an insight” and it shows a steady increase. 


These two facts put together would suggest that there is a level of confusion as to what exactly is an insight. This is manifested in many a discussion around “what is the real insight” or “is that really an insight”.

As a consequence of this lack of clarity on what is an insight, “Insights” have a tendency to be “obvious” or in other words “in plain sight”. This makes them unactionable. Here is one example that was floating on LinkedIn over the holiday period.
Disclaimer – I have cropped out the name of the agency since this is about quoting an example and not debating the individual case.



Is it an insight that disruptive brands are “different from the others in the category”? If you use the definition wherein an insight involves a causality then yes it is an insight. 

Is it not obvious i.e in plain sight that to grow you need to be distinctive? It’s a good example of why we need insights that are “out of sight”.

The fact that disruptive brands are different is an “insight” and not an “out of sight” but the real question is how to achieve differentiation (more later).

2. Market orientation – The whole aspect of “trusting the gut” is based on the gut being in tune with consumers and the market. However, being in tune with consumers cant be basis purely reading research reports, which are a reflection of the questions that have been asked. See the tweet below as an example of how the questions asked can reveal a lack of “empathy” with consumers.



We very often fall for the trap of projecting our lives onto consumers without realizing that we are not representative of the population.

Lets look at the UK ad industry whose disassociation from the “general UK public” is well documented. See the following statistics on lack of representativeness of the advertising folk
  •  80% of people in the advertising industry are based in London. 87% of UK population does not live in London
  • Over 50s account for 47.6% of UK household expenditure. 5.6% of the ad industry in UK is aged 50+
  • 51% of UK population are women. Only 12% of creative directors are female.
This results in a completely warped perception. See a few examples on media consumption

Ad people estimate
Actual data
% of people TV viewing is live
49%
87%
Time spent watching TV per day
161 minutes
215 minutes
% TV watched on other devices
37%
2%

As a market researcher I fully understand that it is normal for people to not remember exact amount of time spent on various activities like watching TV or watching VOD. Hence, consumers overestimate the time they spend watching VOD (for instance). What is troubling is to see the extent to which ad people overestimate the time being spent by ordinary consumers on VOD.



If you have any doubt about the fact that this just a case of self projection look at the chart below. Clearly advertisers and agencies spend a lot of time listening to spotify compared to radio and so project that onto the population, incorrectly of course.



It is critical that the market research industry develops a closeness to consumers and the market – for itself and its marketing clients. This is something that should be cultivated. Go out. Experience the products.

We need to experience things out of sight of our office. Hence, “outsight”.

3. Insights to ideas – The research industry has evolved from data to information to insights. The next stage of evolution is moving towards ideas. I referenced earlier how the need for the research industry is not just to provide insights but ideas on how those insights could be acted upon.


As a student of economics, I am firm believer in Karl Marx’s theory of dialectic materialism. Very simplistically put (I am oversimplifying it for the purposes of this blog) “every thesis will be met with an anti thesis and the collision of the two will result in a new synthesis”. 

What it means for market research is that we need a multitude of perspectives to collide to get to ideas to move from insight to action. The different perspectives can only come from different experiences. 

It needs us to go “out of the office”. Even in a country like Singapore I like to go out to the HDB food courts of Toa Payoh and Hougang and smell the coffee, listen to the conversations, look at the menu. Personally, I find it gives me a very different perspective. It’s a perspective that needs you to get outside and see things “out of sight”.

RIP Insights. Its time for Outsights.

7 comments:

  1. Yep agree. Going out if our Ac offices and interacting with people in their natural habitats is the key to discovering something that is not obvious. My definition of Insight is simply "Motivations underlying human behaviour". To truly understand why a human being puts in an effort to do something.

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  2. Very relevant points, Vijay. Over the years once has seen the extreme ennui that accompanies the use of the word ïnsight" as it comes up in a client conversation. We clearly need to evolve with the times and provide something of real value.

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  3. Agree, Vijay. We are so used to "Stated" vs. "Derived"... now it's high time for "Insight" vs. "Out of sight".

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  4. Nice blog Vijay, vert thought-provoking.

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  5. Agree, While we are looking insights, we could lost simplicity. In Russia we know that such a channel as Hard Discounters is growing very quickly. And there are huge numbers of local players, who don't have nice package or cups, not aired on TV, but their share is rapidly growing. Thus we also need to have more simple bottle, formula, smell, that will give us possibility to have lower price. "Almost the same product from well known trusted brand!" . We, CMI together with Marketing, just need to see Hard Discouners with our eyes - JUST VISIT and see the shoppers and products inside - to be OUT of OFFICE.

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