Marketers need more insight

The recent publication of Future Foundation’s The Future of Insight report1 argues for a more prominent role for the insight function. This includes creating more senior champions and demonstrating a return on investment.

The natural assumption about marketing and insight departments – given a common focus on the consumer/ customer – is one of harmony and working together towards a shared goal. To a considerable extent this is the case. But digging beneath the surface in the 40 or so interviews that were conducted for that study reveals a less rosy picture. This article looks at the tensions and challenges that exist and explores how the functions can work more effectively together. Marketers should ask themselves if they are making the best use of insight across the entire marketing function. A serious review of the relationship might pay dividends, particularly in exploring how insights might be more effectively distributed and communicated.

We distinguish between the desired impact of insight delivery – the ‘Aha moment’, as many survey respondents described it – and the process of generating this through the insight function. This process uses many sources beyond traditional market research to generate fresh perspectives and translate these into actionable intelligence about consumer needs and behaviour. This distinguishes it from the market-research department of old, whose job was largely to measure and report, rather than anticipate and predict.

 Getting closer to customers

The report argues that the creation and empowerment of the insight function can be traced to the publication of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s seminal work In Search of Excellence in 1982.

Their in-depth analysis of successful businesses identified that one of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the truly excellent companies was that they were close to their customers and cited examples such as HP, Disney and Walmart (then in its infancy).

We highlight how, through the evolution of advertising planning, as well as a number of other key shifts, the modern insight function has become the means by which companies and brands create and maintain customer closeness.

 Why not a part of marketing?

Surely this is a seminal starting point for all modern marketing. Marketing has also been transformed over the decades from a command-and-control process – albeit slowly and imperfectly – to one that is increasingly dictated by customer needs and preferences.

Doesn’t this mean that the insight function should best be treated as a subset of marketing – rather than attempting to raise its own profile on the board, or maintain a clear line of independence, as some of our respondents reported?

We estimate that 60% of insight teams report into the marketing function, but that leaves a hefty minority that don’t. The interviews reveal that insight teams report to a plethora of other functions in organisations – including directly to the CEO, also strategy directors, commercial directors, CRM directors and knowledge directors.

The question of where the best reporting line might be can’t be answered without a detailed analysis of where insight teams are judged to be the most effective and influential – which we will do in a future exercise. But perhaps in those companies where it isn’t placed in the marketing function, marketing directors should be thinking about why that is the case and whether or not they could be using insights to greater effect. An important clue that many marketers are not getting to grips with internally generated insight comes from an online survey of 172 companies2 to quantify key issues from the interviews.

The survey found that just 55% of marketers are regularly using the insight that specialist teams provide in their day-to-day jobs – a lower proportion even than senior managers.

Despite the commonality of purpose, the use of insight has not permeated the activities of the marketing department to the degree that it should. If this is the case, it is worth asking why. Surely marketers should want to be exposed to every possible source of inspiration and ideas available.

 Good communication

One of the hallmarks of good relationships is good communication. A striking finding from The Future of Insight report was the degree of time and effort that the newly empowered insight teams invest in communicating their material to the wider organisation and in engaging other teams to use it.

This shows the value that is placed on insight across the wider organisation beyond marketing, but also the need to find ways of condensing complex thoughts in a way that inspires creativity.

But the impression we got from our interviews is that this is still a work in progress rather than a done deal. Most insight teams are continually experimenting and exploring new routes to improve integration and application of their outputs. This is a critical area for skills development for the future.

While 60% of the survey respondents distribute insight outside their department on a weekly basis or more frequently, there could be more and better use of the resources. The key component to this is not just the sharing of knowledge but the interpretation and creation of actionable insights – ideas that can be readily implemented to improve marketing planning, communications, sales and results.

Our analysis is that more can be done in this area to create shared processes and methods of improving the return of investment on the insight-generating process. Insight teams are keen to make sure that their work is properly used and marketers need to know how to demand what it is they need in terms of frequency, format and terms of engagement. It may be time to explore this together.

 The drive for innovation

In the interviews, we heard a rallying cry to marketing and insight teams to collaborate effectively. Meeting the pressure to innovate relies on the fuel of good insight, the insider knowledge of the brand and its distribution, provided by the marketing team, plus the structure and creativity provided by excellent innovation processes.

Increasingly, insight teams are being required to take on board the innovation brief in companies where this hadn’t been a function. This has simplified the process, but still requires the cooperation and engagement of the marketing team. A growing number of Future Foundation’s clients are called ‘insight and innovation’ managers and 70% of survey respondents use this internal resource in their innovation work. But that leaves 30% who don’t, and we occasionally hear of marketers engaging external innovation consultancies without involving internal insight teams – although this is rare and reflects a disappearing fault line.

It is time to bring insight and marketing together in the common cause of maximising the organisation’s innovative capacity, irrespective of the nature and structure of the reporting lines. We believe that all businesses will benefit from a re-examination of how the two can be more effective together.

As management guru Peter Drucker said in 2002: ‘Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two – and only two – functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.’ Regular presentations and workshops already seem to be a key part of the solution among many companies, which highlight the importance of face-to-face engagement. Of these, 55% say they use workshops in some way – although what this means must vary and best practice standards are not clear.

A project at Innovation RCA (Royal College of Art) is sharing workshop practice from across the college – the workshop of workshops – and finding much commonality but also significant differences too. This area might benefit from a brighter spotlight in many organisations, not least because workshops are becoming ubiquitous and are delivering real value.

Strategic contribution at the most senior level The Future of Insight report found that insight is used strategically in the majority of organisations. Only a quarter say that it is used more tactically than strategically. This again points to an opportunity for marketing to make greater capital from the insight function.

In the battle for greater boardroom influence for marketing directors, this is an area in which the perception of insight as leading to the strategic high ground at the most senior level could be of value.

Interestingly this points to a source of tension, since one of our principal recommendations in the report was for the insight function to be represented at the most senior level on the board – fielding its own champion, as it were. We talked about the possibility of chief insight officers becoming the essential conduit for intelligence about the wider world to be represented at this level. Nick Howarth Pullen, strategy, planning and insight manager at Aviva, had an intriguing suggestion: ‘I would like to see insight as absolutely central alongside the marketing director, maybe even a research or intelligence person in the boardroom in the way you would have an intelligence person in your war room if you were conducting a military campaign.’

We presume that many marketers see this as their role and would not necessarily welcome the elevation of the insight function to the lofty heights of board membership. However, these issues should be reviewed and debated. If, as we have argued, both have a common interest in ensuring the organisation is focused on customers, it makes sense to work together as closely as possible.

 Develop effective partnership

Despite the positive reports from many respondents about the greater contribution of insight to marketing and other key functions, there are still many other ways to increase the value of a working partnership. More than two-thirds of respondents believe that insight is being taken more seriously than it was three years ago.

In companies where the insight function does not report to marketing, the reasons for this should be examined and the marketing team should ensure that it is getting regular access to the insights needed to enhance the operation. The onus in this case is on the insight team to communicate more effectively throughout, but marketers can play a part in specifying outputs and engaging in creative idea-generation processes, particularly in the design and delivery of workshops.

It is from this common ground that it will be possible for functions within an organisation to form a stronger, mutually beneficial alliance.

 Melanie Howard is chair of the Future Foundation. [email protected]

Notes: 1. The Future of Insight report, November 2010, can be requested from www.futurefoundation. net/page/view/The_Future_of_Insight 2. Drawn from the Future Foundation’s database of clients and prospects, the IPA Strategy and Planning Group and the Marketing Society’s membership. Research was conducted in September and October 2010.