Saving Market Research: An Interview with Brett Townsend, SVP of Strategy, Quester Stephen Shaw 1 month ago <span data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start amp-wp-32ab865" data-amp-original-style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;"></span><span hidden data-amp-original-style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-heig</p> <p><strong>ht: </STRONG> 0;” data-mce-type=”bookmark” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span><span style=" class="amp-wp-2cf7910"> <p><strong>ht: </strong> 0;” data-mce-type=”bookmark” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></p></span><span data-amp-original-style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-heig</p> <p><strong>ht: </STRONG> 0;” data-mce-type=”bookmark” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span></iframe></p> <h3><span style=" class="amp-wp-9530d27"><strong> Brett Townsend is the SVP of Strategy at the research firm Quester and co-author of the book “Insights on the Brink”.</strong></span> <p>Once upon a time marketers would not hesitate to invest in market research before launching a new product or taking a gamble on a Big Creative Idea. Loads of time would be spent up front conducting focus groups and sending out surveys. Weeks would go by as data was collected and turned into voluminous slide decks. The research sponsors would then gather expectantly to hear what the consumer insights people had found. Invariably the audience would get lost in a dense maze of charts and graphs, left wondering: “So what is all of this data telling us we should do?”.</p> <p>The consumer insights professional would feel they’ve done their job: delivered the project they were asked to lead. Whether they were being asked to do a brand tracking study, conduct concept testing, decipher consumer usage and attitudes, define market segments, or measure brand equity, they faithfully followed a methodical and proven process that was usually lengthy and involved and expensive. As far as they were concerned, however, that’s what it took to produce statistically reliable results. Yet those intimidating slide decks, once presented, often became single use artifacts. Whatever new knowledge had been gained would be filed away and forgotten. The researchers would just move on to their next project. </p> <p>Today many marketers have concluded that the traditional research function, wedded to its rigorous methodologies and practices, has become too slow and costly in an age of real-time marketing where speed and agility are favoured over deep analysis. Traditional research budgets are drying up. Entire research departments are being shut down. Marketers are now doing the work themselves, using do-it-yourself research platforms. And increasingly, insight generation is being handed over to data scientists whenever first party data is abundant.</p> <p>Roughly a decade ago a deluge of clickstream, CRM and social media data began flooding internal “systems of insight”. The Era of Big Data had arrived, and it changed the insight function forever. Marketers realized they could extract more immediate and relevant insights just through direct observation of consumers, using sentiment analysis, voice of customer feedback or individual behavioural tracking. Pockets of insight began to spring up in organizational silos, eroding the authority of the consumer insight group and snatching away research dollars. However, this fragmentation of the insights function has come at a cost: no one is in charge of assembling all of the bits of knowledge and insight into a unified picture of the customer. Marketers see consumers – the CX group sees customers – the digital team sees users – sales sees buyers. Splintered views of the same customer. </p> <p>Like everywhere else these days AI will have a profound impact on market research, transforming the industry by swallowing vast amounts of unstructured data at scale, sourced through social media, consumer reviews, and community forums. AI can conduct surveys through conversational chatbots. It can process and interpret qualitative data like text answers to open-ended survey questions and video feedback. It can speed up ad testing – testing of any kind actually. And it can generate synthetic insights by simulating the probable voice of a customer, creepily indistinguishable from a real person.</p> <p>If the consumer insights function is to regain any credibility amongst marketers it must evolve from being order-takers to serving as the undisputed organizational expert on the needs and behaviour of customers: not simply describing how people feel, or what they think, but offering an explanation as to “why”. Answering that one question – “Why” – is what leads to breakthrough insights. And that is a strategic role, not a specialist function, according to Brett Townsend, who heads up strategy at the research firm Quester, and is co-author of the book “Insights on the Brink”. In the book Brett offers a rescue plan for saving the industry – showing how consumer insights professionals can go from being “order-takers” to strategic partners, working shoulder-to shoulder with marketers to make better business decisions. </p> <p>I began by asking Brett, a onetime sports broadcaster, what drew him to the world of consumer insight.</p> <p><strong> Brett Townsend (BT):</strong>: I think like most people who are in consumer insights or whatever, the road that we’ve taken to get there is a, is a little through back roads and not a direct route. So, I made the decision after a few years that I did not want to do broadcasting anymore. So that kind of started the process. And then I had a friend at the time who was working for Nielsen Media Research, the Nielsen TV ratings company. And given my broadcast experience and some things there, they were interested in hiring me for a role. And once I got there, I really got into the marketing part of it. There was a lot of consumer observation we did and interviewing we did in their homes about TV habits and things like that. So that started exposing me to qualitative work, behavioural work, things that we were observing about TV watching that didn’t really just show up on the ratings as far as what they’re watching. So that was where it started. And then I think it just evolved through from that work in insights for a publishing company for a brief spell and then really got into the bigger world of consumer insights when I started at my first agency.</p> <p><strong> Stephen Shaw (SS):</strong>: Well, what’s interesting about this, and you’re not the first person that started their career in journalism and worked their way into marketing. My most recent podcast actually was a person who did exactly that as well, got into though the behavioural science as opposed to market research. But I would imagine the juxtaposition of those two professions is simply that success is driven by a strong sense of curiosity, of wanting to know why. Would you agree with that?</p>
