Marketing and Research Consulting for a Brave New World
Subscribe via RSS

Marketing research and insights professionals must flip the switch…instead of starting with “The Project” we should start with the digital river. Now we live in a world where there is a river of information that pre-dates the marketing question and flows continuously as it is fed by digital tributaries from social media, search, navigation pathways.

Management intuition based on past behaviors and preferences are becoming increasingly inaccurate predictors of the future, which makes a future-focused marketing research/consumer insights function more important than ever. Use a full range of listening tools to guide the marketing organization based on anticipatory insights.

True listening is scary, that’s what’s up. It’s a big change from our traditional way of thinking. So, the single biggest opportunity in the history of consumer marketing lays dormant.

Six big wakeup calls in 2009 are doing the marketing research profession a favor; refocusing us on what it will take to conduct trustworthy research, find unexpected feedback, provide anticipatory insights, measure media in a way that people now choose to experience it, and properly rebalance our understanding of how people choose brands by placing more emphasis on understanding the shopper.

Listening reveals insights via social and open-book approaches. Listening is about studying the change-makers (people) in a way that is native to how they are increasingly living their lives. We must learn how to add listening to our survey-based approaches for generating anticipatory insights.

MORE »