PHD Perspectives: In Search of Insight - Judy Vogel & Ed Castillo - MediaBizBloggers

PHD Perspectives
Cover image for  article: PHD Perspectives: In Search of Insight - Judy Vogel & Ed Castillo - MediaBizBloggers

Aside from "ROI" perhaps the most overused, misunderstood, and misapplied term in our industry today is "insight." The need for and importance of meaningful consumer insights in the media and communications business is more critical than ever. The constantly changing landscape in which we work and live demands that we understand consumers at a deeper, more nuanced level; communications planning requires a robust understanding of consumer behaviors, attitudes and motivations.

But do most communications professionals even know what an "insight" is?

Much of what passes for a consumer insight seems to be anything that describes a consumer. Dictionary definitions of "insight" vary but include:

1. The capacity to discern the true nature of a situation; penetration.

2. The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of perceiving in an intuitive manner.

3. An instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, esp. through intuitive understanding

4. The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

Based on these definitions, insights -- real insights -- have a few fundamental requirements:

· Insights requires depth

· Insights require uncovering something that may be hidden, not easily seen

· Insights require making inferences; going beyond the mere deductive thinking.

Too many facts about consumers are being served up as "insights." I would suggest that things like: "John is a heavy television viewer who goes to bars/nightclubs and is the first in his group to try new things" are all excellent descriptors of what John does and thinks but they lack some of the critical requirements that get to true insight. These facts provide a good context for thinking about John, but they do little to understand him, to discover something new about him, to appreciate the depth of who he is.

The good news is that there are many techniques we can apply to get to true insights.

Depth is the first criterion of the Insights definition. At PHD in the past year we have applied an exhaustive range of approaches. This includes the more traditional - consumer surveys, ethnographic observations, one on one interviews; as well as more truly emerging methodologies – crowd sourcing, monitoring via mobile logs, Web-based tagging, sentiment analysis, and buzz volume. Applying this range of techniques provides us with the complete consumer portrait we are seeking and believe is necessary to arrive at a true insight.

Which takes us to the next criterion; the uncovering hidden aspects of a target's worldview. A true insight should reveal something new, something previously unnoticed. While empirical facts will help us unearth something we may not know, to discover that which is otherwise hidden requires the third criterion – inferential reasoning.

By going deep, unearthing something, and relying on inferences, we can develop hypotheses (which, in turn, can probe further; we can "fix the frequency and distribution of said hypotheses" in a population, to use researcher speak).

The art of developing an insight consists of pulling together all the deductions, inferences and learned experiences into a cohesive awareness, a complete understanding, a real grasp of what makes this person tick. By being empathetic markers we can align our thinking to theirs; we then arrive at what can truly be called a "consumer insight."

The search for consumer insights is a complex and involved process. It is not the result of a simple cross tab or an exhaustive data mining of the latest brand health tracking study, or a new survey that probes desired areas of learning "not covered elsewhere." It requires immersion; the asking, observing, talking to, and monitoring of non-claimed behaviors and attitudes. And importantly, it requires hypothesis; the application of inference to data, which is a skill often overlooked in this increasingly numbers-driven business.

Judy Vogel, SVP, Director of Research at PHD Media, a Division of Omnicom.

Ed Castillo, SVP, Director of Account Planning at PHD Media, a Division of Omnicom. You can follow Ed @xandnotx

Read all Judy and Ed’s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at PHD Perspectives - MediaBizBloggers.

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