Don't try and understand the consumer. BE the consumer

Many companies spend millions trying to understand the consumer,and much of this often seems wasted. Hours, days and weeks are still spent watching eight strangers drinking cheap wine trying to remember which brand of toothpaste they bought 3 weeks ago, and give twenty reasons why (can you even start to remember?!). And a lot of brand teams still make the mistake of using research like a drunk uses a lamp-post: for support not illumination. They rely it on it to give them an answer, rather than relying primarily on their own intuition and judgement.

I've come to conclude that many of these problems stem from marketing people being too far divorced from the brands they work on. I've seen people working on beer who prefer wine. People without kids promoting Pampers. And far too many people working on food brands  who never cook.

Contrast this with Nike's policy of only hiring people active in sports. And by active, I don't mean watching every match in the 6 Nations rugby from the comfort of your couch, like yours truly. No, active means taking part and being really into the sport. This is why Nike don't spend a cent on pre-testing their communication with consumers. Its made by consumers.

Another great example of this approach to insight is the Harley Davidson brand. In an interview with the Mack Collier from Marketing Profs, the grandson of the company's founder revealed how their main form of insight is riding with some of the million members of the Harley Owners Group (HOGs for short).

5-minute workout: take a look at the team working on your brand. Where do they sit on a scale from "Category heavy users" through to "never use the product"?

 

Comments

[David Taylor(from Where'sTheSausage)]

Jason

You're right to point out the more "immersive" forms of insight, such as observation, ethnography and the like. Indeed, Nike do a lot of this sort of research to understand their cinsumers.

You're right to say that with curioisity and immersive insight you can develop a brand strategy and campaign without being a consumer of the brand. Like you, I worked on a baby brand without having kids, as a young P&G brand manager working on Milton sterilising fluid!). But the type of insight I have now being a dad is ten times more vivid...its visceral, emotional insight. And so I still stick by the principle that its even better to have people who are the consumer on your brand; as a minimum they should be passionate about the category and the consumer. You should be able to "aspire to and want to be the consumer"... not as in some cases, live in a totally different world.

[Jason Lonsdale]

I agree with some of what you're saying -far too much research acts as a rearview mirror rather than a headlight.

Not to say all research is bad, but marketers do seem to lose sight of the fact that the goal of consumer research should be to better understand the people that you are hoping to communicate with. Focus groups are such an artificial environment that they are often a really crap way of doing this. What about going and watching them shop? Or going somewhere where you can eavesdrop on their conversations. Visit their homes. Give them cameras and have them document their lives for you. Read their blogs. Talk to them with groups of their friends.

In essence, engage with them and understand them as people rather than "target markets".

Russell Davies mentions mentions the British philosopher Alan Watts, author of the The Wisdom of Insecurity; “if you want to study a river you don't take out a bucketful of water and stare at it on the shore. A river is not its water, and by taking the water out of the river, you lose the essential quality of river, which is its motion, its activity, its flow.”

To your main point -I'm not sure that having category users in your brand team is that important (I once developed a very successful consumer-insight-driven nappy strategy despite not having any kids of my own).

What I'd rather see is a brand team full of curious people who want to really understand their customers and thus have the well-honed intuition to do their jobs well and without leaning on lamp-posts.

[David Taylor(from Where'sTheSausage)]

Alan,
Thanks for this, espcially the "hocus-pocus group" idea!

I also think you're right about the odd nugget of insight coming from a focus group, especially when the team watching are using it to provide colour and depth to their existing insight. i.e. using it for illumination, not support.

[Alan 'Brand' Williamson]

The Focus Group is fast being re-branded as The Hocus-Pocus-Focus Group.

Sometimes, however, the Focus Group does throw up a gem of an insight as when I was involved with a major UK city, one of the participants said "I want to go somewhere 'specific' and not to a 'general' area". Translation: Brands need to focus on a single big brand idea and become known for something rather than trying to be all-things-to-all-people.

Alan 'Brand' Williamson
Destination Brand Developer
http://brandopia.typepad.com