Growing the Insights Budget
It’s been a wild ride these last few months.
The March - May 2020 European lockdowns had a massive impact on business confidence and many research investments. The situation has improved steadily since.
Until the second wave of COVID-19, which is now impacting many European countries, inducing a second wave of lockdowns.
Germany has imposed a four-week lockdown light, France is more strict, the UK has banned non-essential shops from opening and more.
What about research? Insights budgets are often vulnerable.
I’d argue that we need to fight hard for research budgets to be maintained, even boosted.
In such time of such extreme change companies and societal stakeholders need to invest massively in the humble but critical understanding business of listening to their customers.
Here’s my take.
Masses has Changed...
...in almost every aspect of our lives.
Shopping patterns have changed for example. All sorts of behavioural patterns need re-assessing – decision journeys, communication preferences/ habits and more. Digital ethnographies as a pre-cursor to mini-foundational category studies are very do-able and eminently in order.
Many research companies are doing a great job in pivoting to digital to ensure empathy from a distance.
We need to keep this empathy-momentum up. And and ideally go down a gear or two in terms of turnaround times.
Faster-cheaper-better was the pre-COVID normal. It needs building back better ;)
Micro-research is most likely in the ascendant. Fine if it’s really about capturing moments-of-truth. But if it’s more about speed-to action I'm not convinced. Context counts in the quest for actually understanding something or someone.
You can’t speed up if you don’t really know how the world around you has changed.
New Emotions, New Intensity
Things are getting heated.
Price is still a temperature raiser of sorts, and will likely stay that way for as long as economic uncertainty abounds.
But the emotional states caused by lockdown (and the politicisation of everyday life) are changing, likely intensifying. The extremes of feeling seem to be increasing.
So: is the 1990s Eckmann model of seven basic emotions still relevant given the current societal sea-changes we have witnessed and are still going through? Time for a revisit.
There are also plenty of "sub-groups" that probably both get ignored by marketing and stretch the Eckmann model under COVID-19.
Elderly people living in single households without social contact. People living in small, over-crowded spaces. Younger people worried about their futures. People with mental health issues. Marketing concepts anyone?
"Selling" in this environment is fraught with pitfalls, being insensitive not the least of them. Hitting the wrong note is only one step away from a PR disaster.
Getting tone and language right, "purpose" if you like, requires an in-depth exploration of all the above.
Again an unabashed plea for more research executed by skilful professionals. Investing in expert qualitative research in particular is a good idea.
Occasional What?
COVID 19 has wrecked most of the Ps of a marketing plan - and a few Os, including Occasion.
Our yearly calendars have been turned upside down and emptied. Christmas 2020 anyone? Zoom doesn't quite cut it.
This is a challenge for many marketing strategies tuning into meaningful-moment occasions – weddings, parties, sport events, birthdays, conferences, trade fairs... all have been downsized or virtualised in some form. The emotional pazzazz is gone.
Some marketing companies seem to be slow in grasping the de-occasioning of our lives. Last year’s plan and campaign likely won't work when people are celebrating smaller-digital-inward. If at all.
Some brands seem to have lost their bearings completely. Take this mobile ad that lit up my android screen recently – from a cruise company in northern Europe suggesting now is the time to experience the sea. Really - in early November?
The challenge of an "ocassion-light" calendar, of an everyday amorphousness that COVID-19 has introduced is devastating and hugely consequential. Clothing companies selling occasion wear – for which occasions?
That having been said: the future surely cannot be neither a party dress nor a oncie ;) We need to understand the work-around strategies, how people are celebrating differently, what their adaption modes look like.
How? Ah, maybe research can help.....
Outlook: Staying Attuned.
Times of flux and extreme stress pose existential challenges beyond consumer-centricity. True - no cash-flow, no nothing.
But: staying in touch with customers through all this is essential for the future well-being of brands and companies. Lose touch for long and the disconnection process may be hard to repair - especially when people's sensitivities are heightened, memories may not fade so fast.
So: investing more in research understanding makes sense. There will be a post-coronavirus situation, much as that seems hard to believe currently.
And if that research has a shelf-life beyond a few weeks, all the better.
Balancing the tactical with strategic research is an ongoing challenge for research budget owners and their bosses.
Too much of one and the other fails. Currently, the risk is to underinvest in the strategic - and to let speed dominate, particularly in tactical research.
Even tactical research can resonate positively if done by experts, with skill. But not in the matter of 10 minutes. Insights aren’t like instant coffee – pour on water and enjoy.
Where digital and automation can help automate intelligently and at speed, great. But we need to use the time to dive deeper, sifting, interpreting, so that outputs and recommendations are potent.
Fast shouldn’t become the default mode in somebody else’s planning schedule.
Curious, as ever, as to others’ views.