Insight development is based on gathering information, then data integration and analysis. However, organisations often find this challenging due to multiple sources, formats and time scales. Do you?
Many companies struggle to benefit from all their data and information because they don’t know how to turn it into insight, or their insights remain interesting but not actionable. There are many reasons for this.
From data quality issues to technological limitations and resistance to change, organizations must navigate a complex landscape to unlock the full potential of their data.
This comprehensive guide delves into the ten most common challenges in insight development, offering detailed analysis and strategies to overcome each obstacle, ensuring your organization can harness data for strategic advantage.
What an Actionable Insight Really is
I get so frustrated when people refer to numbers, data, or the findings from research projects as insights. None of these are!
In addition, developing actionable insights from a single survey is rare.
The reason is that insight development, getting to that “aha” moment that everyone immediately understands and wonders why no one thought of before, needs a 360 perspective of the challenge or opportunity under investigation and uses information from multiple sources.
There are many definitions of insight, but the one that I use, and that resonates with my clients, is a statement that impacts the attitudes or behaviours of current or potential customers/shoppers of a brand or category based on a human truth that results in an emotional response.
At first glance, this may seem like quite a mouthful, so to simplify retention, I refer to it as ABCDE:
A = Attitudes and Actions
B = Brand or Category
C = Customer, consumer, client or shopper
D = Deep human truth
E = Emotional response
To fast-track your understanding, here are some great examples of the insights behind some of the best-known brands:
- Heineken Jillz: I want to drink alcohol on a night out, but I don’t like beer and wine is too variable in quality.
- Kraft Philadelphia: Food is delicious, but I don’t want to eat too much fat (butter versus cream cheese).
- DTC Diamonds: I want to stand out (shine), but as a modern woman, I also want to be seen as gentle and feminine.
- Unilever Dove: I want to be admired for my beauty on the inside, not for what I look like on the outside.
- AXE (Lynx in UK): I (young men) want to attract as many beautiful and sexy women as possible.
- Haribo Starmix: There’s a child inside every adult.
- Dulux sample paint pots: I love to decorate my home, but I don’t want to look stupid by choosing the wrong colour.
You’ll notice that most are written in the first person as if the target audience is speaking. This makes it much easier to understand and resonate with the reader without much effort since we can immediately put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.
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