Greater Insight: Round table

As budgets tighten, disciplines in all sectors are being challenged to justify their worth to win support for the work they do, and the insight industry is no exception.

Market research agencies are the traditional owners of insight, but they are being squeezed at the top end by management consultants and CRM providers, and at the bottom end by online polls, which allow DIY researchers to pay a small fee to put a question to a panel. The issues of the industry's image, the role of online and social media, and how to define insight are all raised by industry experts during a lively Greater Insight round-table discussion, hosted by Marketing.

Sarah King, managing director of The Futures Company, kicks off proceedings by dating the birth of insight to the mid-90s, when advertising agencies sought to hone their briefs. 'It was giving people a central truth that they could hang something resonant on, and making sure the core was sharp,' she says.

Mystical promise

She adds that information is not insight unless it leads to something practical happening. 'The epiphanies give some way of connecting. It's about foresight and understanding where you are going.'

As the only person at the table with the word insight in his job title, Pat Thomas, head of insight at Premier Foods, agrees that insight has to be actionable. 'Insight in general business means any fact, information or data that is useful to someone. But there is no point finding things out if nothing happens,' he says.

Labels are important, says Matthew Harrison, director of B2B International. 'We have a client who insists on the words market research and insight being replaced by "validation" through-out a document, as this makes a decision more likely.'

The reality of insight is that it is often hard to live up to the mystical promise of the word, says Doug Edmonds, managing director of 2CV. 'We can't always be offering amazing insights. That would only be the case if people knew absolutely nothing about their brands or categories. Insights come along fleetingly and rarely.'

Caroline Hayter, co-founder, Acacia Avenue, says it is probably worth distinguishing, as ad-man legend Jeremy Bullmore has talked of in the past, between 'lowand high-potency' insights.

Pete Comley, chairman of online research company Join The Dots, says the term is so misused that he is trying to ban it from proposals. He says 'contextualisation' is a better phrase. 'With the evolution of market research, method has become less important. You can concentrate on what the data means. You are not just presenting it, you are putting it into context.'

Junk research

While many researchers feel that some of the pay-per-question polls are junk research, Danny Russell, marketing strategy director at BSkyB, says that they have a place, and researchers need to be less precious about the purity of their methods. 'We have used a US pollster for some work where we've basically downloaded the information from a previous evening's group of 50 people in a room. We've taken decisions based on that, and nobody died.'

At the other end of the spectrum, the rise of behavioural economics, for studying consumers' decision-making processes, is another discipline that market research could end up losing. However, Hayter applauds companies that have launched behavioural economics offerings and says it is down to market research companies to be quicker out of the blocks. 'More fool us (as an industry) for not getting there first,' she adds.

The sector is also grappling with the use of social media. Stakeholders expect researchers to use social media, but there are issues with its professional use, such as obtaining informed consent from users, which have posed problems for the industry.

Harrison says social media has proved useful in highly technical B2B markets. 'We have recruited experts in sewage plant technology in China from forums. They have been delighted to talk about what they do. But you have to be up front about who you are and who you represent.'

However, the attendees at the roundtable agreed that context is everything, and there is a danger of reacting to online chatter that could turn out to be misleading.

'A live feed is noise and it makes you impulsive,' says Edmonds.

If social media tools are important, working methods are also crucial. Agencies and clients have to work together to derive insights. However, research agencies are not always privy to the depth of information they need to make sound analyses.

Russell recognises this as an issue. 'You can't go to an agency and ask for an insight in four weeks. If you compare it with how management consultants work, they are all over you like a cheap suit to provide the context for their work. You can't really get that if you have been given a brief and then get sent back to your offices.'

Premier's Thomas says that this is an argument for long-term relationships. Agencies have to earn trust before they get clients to hand over sensitive information. 'The more information you have, the better job you can do.'

The changing nature of the industry poses the question of whether different skills are required for the future of insight. Comley says the industry needs more analysts and fewer methodology people. Edmonds adds that by outsourcing some of the 'grunt work' in research, agencies can retain the intelligent part and make themselves more interesting places for graduates to work.

Clever people

However, King says it is no bad thing that recruits spend a year or so learning their craft through the 'sweaty labour' of carrying out primary research. 'Sometimes you derive the insight through doing the research. We should be the people who are interpreting the story-telling for our clients.'

While the panellists think that research still commands respect as a business tool, there is a general feeling that the market research brand needs a revamp.

How can this image problem be addressed? One idea highlighted by Russell is that the industry could ape its German peers, who have a 'market research day' to trumpet their achievements.

King contends that the industry should talk itself up. 'We provide incredible insight and perception. The things that clients can act on are incredibly valuable,' she adds.

Like any sector, market research faces challenges, but with the skills at its disposal, it is better-equipped than most to meet them.

KEY FIGURES AROUND THE TABLE
Pete Comley chairman, Join The Dots
Doug Edmonds UK managing director, 2CV
Matthew Harrison director, B2B International
Caroline Hayter co-founder, Acacia Avenue
Sarah King managing director, UK, The Futures Company
Danny Russell marketing strategy director, BSkyB
Pat Thomas head of insight, Premier Foods

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk