Banality - the Elephant in the Insights Disruption Room
I try to keep track of what's going on in the MR world - which means taking the time and making the effort to read e.g. e-newsletters, trade publications and attend conferences/events.
Conferences offer networking, but with emails and articles, on or offline, it's sadly often not worth the effort.
The "learnings" are often banal, too many #tbrr moments (too boring, regret reading).
Two examples from a current MR trade magazine.
A company specializing in biometrics shared its learnings over 2 pages on what online portals need to do to optimize the user experience, based on a quantitative assessment. One "insight" - there are different types of users, one of which prefers face-to-face contact to digital help, so that option needs to be clear on the website. Contact options need to be prominent. Log-in options need to be possible across all devices,so mobiles, tablets and desktop.
Feeling excited as you read this? Strap yourself in....
The second article talks at equal length about the drivers and barriers in B2B marketing, publishing results from a large-scale multi-country quant study. Some key learnings - that emotions are just as important as rational facts in the b2b decision making process. Trust is important. As is confidence. An excellent customer experience, good omni-channel presence and more….
It's all very true but.....very basic.
Single-source stuff, classically presented - masses of text, low impact visuals. Neither of the articles inspire, provoke, suggest something counter-intuitive.
These are pretty typical, leading to me to ask: if it took market research to find out that, why bother?
The problem likely exacerbates itself if, as seems the case, data providers at the lower end of the data value chain have the largest marketing budgets to ensure their voices are heard strongly.
Research needs to provoke, inspire, so that marketers are compelled intuitively to think and behave differently.
The world of consumers and users really is fascinating. So it's a bit ironic if we don't capture that, and come across ourselves as something close to banal.
If we reflect the intricacies of behavioral and attitudinal complexities, broadly and in public, then insights come alive.
If we publish stuff that is little more than common-sense and give it a research tag, banality will become as big an MR disruptor as digital.
Content marketing deserves better - as does the word "insights".
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.