Marketers seek a new model for insights

The Future of Insights project, developed in partnership with the WFA’s insights partner, BrainJuicer, reveals a huge opportunity for insights transformation and for insights leaders to become drivers of brand growth.

Based on responses from more than 300 senior marketers and insights leaders across 94 of the world’s largest brand owners, representing a total annual marketing spend of US$75bn, it shows how many marketers and insights team are not getting the best out of each other. The results are being presented today at the WFA’s Global Marketer Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

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Though half of the insights leaders surveyed feel positive about their role, 16% expressed negative sentiments about their function citing frustrations relating to too few resources, too many silos and seeing hard work getting wasted, poorly packaged and ultimately ignored.

33% of senior marketers reported that they were happy with their insights function but almost a quarter were negative. Senior marketers who were negatively predisposed reported that methodologies are too traditional, insights derived too obvious and difficult to action, and a perceived lack of passion and real business understanding amongst insights professionals.

However, this is far from the case for all companies. The report reveals that 50% of insights leaders and senior marketers see insights teams as efficient, expert, trusted advisors and educators, who build on ideas and push recommendations.

In these companies, insights and marketing are more likely to work in physical proximity, with a 15-point increase in positive sentiment in companies where this is the case.

Critically, The Future of Insights finds that senior marketers and insights leaders share a common aspiration to turn insights into an internal consultancy that delivers challenging, business-centric views and helps develop a strategic roadmap to achieve that.

For many companies, achieving this insights nirvana requires three practical steps:

1. Closer integration between insights and marketing teams, both physically and organisationally;

2. Broader adoption of new methodologies that create commercial advantage, and a spirit of open-minded exploration and experimentation around those which show promise but whose commercial value is not yet proven;

3. Seizing the opportunity to challenge stale-thinking using the most up-to-date findings of marketing science about communications, branding, and consumer decision-making.

On both sides there is a clear mandate for new methods based on behavioural science and behavioural data, as well as recognition that methods that scrutinise, explain and ultimately influence real behaviour have the ability to deliver commercial advantage.

However while the two groups agree that new behavioural techniques such as ethnography, behavioural science, behavioural data and storytelling are worthy of further effort, marketers are significantly more in favour of biometrics, media monitoring and data analytics.

Insights teams tend to be much more sceptical, particularly where functions such as the social media “war room” or data analytics are separate. The solution is to develop a programme of experimentation, supported by rapid uptake of methods that prove their worth.

The full report can be downloaded here: www.wfanet.org/futureofinsights.