Why now is the right time to gather insight
April 17th, 2009 by Hugh Kennedy
In my earlier days at PJA, I used to call research ‘planning’ or simply ‘research.’ These days, thanks to an inspiring conversation with a planner who was laid off for about six weeks and then snatched up by Saatchi New York, I have begun to call research by its appropriate name, at least for the advertising and marketing world: insight work. I’m not attempting to field this term as a euphemism; rather, to point to the essential task that insight about customers, markets and marketing performs, especially during downturns like our Great Recession.
I have to say I wasn’t surprised that our insight work has been growing at a rapid clip over the past six months, nor am I surprised to hear that every potential creative we interview these days asks about our planning department within the first five minutes. Just as you can’t differentiate yourself these days without outbehaving the competition (to borrow a term from Dov Seidman), you can’t differentiate your marketing presence without great insights.
Even if the national trend shows anemic growth in research, there are several reasons why insight work makes sense right now:
1. The economic slowdown has radically changed the consumer’s sense of value and order of priorities. Are your customers and targets thinking differently or looking for a simpler offering from you? How else would you know unless you went out and asked them?
2. Social media is changing the marketing equation on a daily basis. PJA clients who didn’t know what Twitter was six months ago are Tweeting daily to growing groups of followers about their corporate philanthropy and point of view. How do you know which channels are relevant now unless you go out to the market and look for these insights?
3. Just as the companies that lead the way out of the last economic trough (Google, Salesforce.com, Juniper, Trend Micro) were actively plotting and innovating during the nadir of 2002 and 2003, tomorrow’s leaders are plotting today, identifying new audience needs, markets and attitudes that will lead them to develop the next break-out medical device, router, or killer app. Unless you can intuit what your audience wants, you’re traveling in the dark without a flashlight.
Today’s glimmers of recovery may be illusory or short-lived, but you always want to be ahead of the trends rather than following them. And you can’t get there without insight.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hugh,
I really like the phrase you’ve coined, “insight work.” It’s self-referential, too, in that coining the term is born out of insight in to how particular words carry meaning which will shift with context and be more appropriate for certain times and places.
Your conclusion, “You always want to be ahead of the trends rather than following them. And you can’t get there without insight,” is spot on. We’ve been thinking about this quite a bit at Newfangled. Being a smaller company can be a powerful thing during times like these, as it’s easier to adopt new processes and see results quickly; being nimble can be what keeps you alive. Trends can also be deadly if you’re just following them. If you put everything (or even too much) into following a trend that ends up being short-lived, you could be sunk. These issues are what I tried to focus on most at our recent company retreat when I spoke about Three Necessary Disciplines to adopt as a company- you can check that out here: http://www.newfangled.com/3_necessary_disciplines_for_technology_companies.
Chris