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Turning Insights Into Foresight

Last week, The Advertising Research Foundation hosted the inaugural meeting of its Research Transformation Super Council.  To be certain, it was a thought provoking meeting of the minds. Many key points, way beyond the scope of this post, were made during the meeting. My focus here is on the question of how to make market research more germane to the executives and others who utilize the information. Naturally, getting beyond the data to valuable insights which can then be turned into recommendations are critical ingredients, and perhaps stating the obvious at this point.

Throughout the discussion, I kept wondering if the real challenge lay in the simple directive “tell me something that I don’t already know.” Accomplishing that goal captures attention, provokes thought, and creates the perception that there is value in funding and listening to the research. This, of course, does not imply that there is not value in research that validates what the stakeholders already believe. In fact, most market research should be on target with existing positioning and messaging, aligned with the consumer’s current needs and motivations.

The insights get really exciting, however, when the market research can point to evolving or undiscovered needs, beliefs, or motivations. So, how do you turn insights into foresight? To a certain degree, it’s serendipity. And, you clearly won’t find those nuggets every time. Nor can you rely on stumbling on them. Rather, I think it comes down to asking the right questions, following hunches, and not being afraid to follow interesting paths in the conversations.

Social media is an ideal vehicle for getting to those insights which can be considered foresight: it’s conversation not prompted by you, nor does it answer your direct questions. It’s not grounded in a need to validate. But, to use social media for this goal requires going beyond the quantitative measures. It’s about identifying which dialogue is likely to have the themes in the posts, following interesting threads, and using what you find as the basis to ask additional questions. When we tell our clients “something they don’t already know” through the insights we extract from the dialogue, it immediately captures their attention and everyone feels rewarded.

Posted by Michael Maziarka on May 13, 2010 at 10:10 AM | Email this post Permalink

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