Saturday, January 19, 2008

Are we running out of INSIGHT?

I have attended several research presentation sessions where research firms come to present tables, charts and graphs in hundreds of slides as findings to an identified marketing issue. The firm’s representative also speaks thousands of words to validate this output with a list of recommednations that are often non-actionable.

However in the midst of these haystack of data, I just cannot find the “needle” of insight that can trigger meaningful marketing thrust. No intuitive spark, no magical ignition!

I guess "Insights" have become commoditized. Basic product truth and research-generated conclusions are wrongly termed as insight.
I believe the essence of a creative distillation process is to arrive at an out-of-the-obvious spark that positions the brand at the core of consumers' heartbeat!
Insights must be deeper as the true intermediary between the logic and the magic of the brand symphony.
Adapting a non-related scenario, I have developed what I call Bayo’s matrix of consumer insight (chart above) to define INSIGHT as “what consumers don’t that they don’t know.”
Go find the INSIGHT that exposes the INSIDE of the consumers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Insightful Bayo
Always excited at your depth and enriching perspectives
I fully agree we need to upscale what we call INSIGHT
This is like a warning to those of us in research but the blow was rather too harsh

dremak said...

In other words, can we conclude that INSIGHTS are not very much "in sight" as they appear to be......