dig essay: effectively communicating insights

by adam wadsworth, dig principal and director

the new york times magazine recently featured an article about north carolina’s democratic governor, mike easley. in american political circles this fellow is an anomaly. while almost every southern political position is now filled by a conservative republican, this progressive democrat has convinced his right-wing constituency to elect him - twice.

in this article, easley credits much of his success to a deeper understanding of the electorate than his fellow democrats or republican opposition. this is based upon his unconventional, yet efficient, way of developing this understanding.

politics is a world in which most decisions are driven by quantitative data. however, while governor easley does not eschew polls, he doesn’t totally rely on them either. instead, he balances the quantitative information he receives from polling with a more fully dimesionalized picture and emotional understanding of his voter.

every week, governor easley makes sure that his assistant records an episode of an american television show that features a character, hank, the classic small-town
american everyman.

governor easley’s research has shown that the show’s primary viewer is typical of a large portion of southern voters who, not surprisingly, resemble hank in many ways. like hank, these voters are open to proposals that challenge their assumptions about the world, as long as those ideas don’t come from someone who seems to disrespect their beliefs.

from the new york times magazine article:
"as hank’s town becomes more built up and more diverse, hank finds himself struggling to adapt to new phenomena: art galleries and yoga studios, latte-sipping parents who ask their kids to call them by their first names and encourage them to drink responsibly. the show gently pokes fun at liberal and conservative stereotypes, but the real point is not to eviscerate so much as to watch hank struggle mightily to a world of political correctness and moral ambiguity (1).” after several years of becoming familiar with hank, governor easley now builds all of his arguments on public issues with hank in mind. in fact, when the governor prepares to make his case in front of a crowd he likes to imagine that he’s explaining his position to hank. so far, it has enabled him to stay in office in a very conservative state for eight years."

now i’m not suggesting that corporations constantly monitor or create their own television shows to better understand their target consumers. this is just a compelling example of how insights from quantitative data can be paired with a thoughtful emotional understanding of a consumer target to create strong and lasting results.

in fact, it’s amazing to me that corporations are putting millions of dollars into market research and the development of consumer insights. yet they neglect to pay the same attention to making sure that those insights are effectively communicated and absorbed by the organization so that they can have the impact that they should.

besides devoting much of their research budget to standard research methods, companies are now dedicating much of their research budget to developing radical new methods to uncover insights. while some of those new methods might be very useful, most corporations have yet to realize much of the problem lies not in how insights are discovered, but in how they are being communicated.

i cannot even count the number of times that i have walked away from another drab power-point presentation having absorbed next to nothing and thinking, "what a waste of
my time."

in february my business partner and i got a call from a bigwig in the research department at a fortune 100 company. she was in a tizzy. her company, like many corporations these days, was gung-ho about developing a deeper understanding of the global consumer in order to improve their global marketing and its bottom line.

with that as her challenge, she put together a proposal, secured a high six-figure budget to fund the project and then hired one of the most respected ethnographic companies in the world, with whom she had worked many times. this group had consistently uncovered incredible insights and delivered thoughtful, well-written reports.

however, several weeks into the project she had to pull the plug. after receiving an initial video summary and a report from the ethnographic company, she realized that this project wasn’t going to have the impact it could or should. the problem, without her being consciously aware of it, was that her expectations had changed.

she had worked with my company, dig, on a separate project several months before to create a documentary film about their most important consumer segment. she had seen first-hand how this film, which brought to life insights from a large quantitative study, actually impacted all divisions of the company with its genuine emotion. until she pulled the plug on her ethnographic vendor, it hadn’t hit her that she now wanted that impact for every project she was involved with.

as someone who in a former life was an advertising creative director, i learned how vital it is for an organization to understand insights about their consumers and how important it is that these insights stick. however, at least one time in my career i have been faced with an office littered with thousands of pages from decks about various consumer segments. i bet that, if i ever had a scale on hand, collectively the decks must have weighed over 100 lbs.

it’s interesting to me how current research methods, including ethnography, can be very effective at discovering consumer truths. however, they are surprisingly inadequate when it comes to communicating them. too often, valuable insights lie buried in lethargic power-point presentations, one-dimensional quantitative data, or sterile ethnographic videos.

like most corporate executives, i have also been subjected to almost every method for presenting consumer truths in order to help me develop a genuine understanding of the target. these methods include, but are not limited to:

the collage/mood board
the smorgasbord of ripped-out magazine pages lovingly purged from such popular periodicals as maxim, good housekeeping and cat fancy and pasted with care by an advertising account planner, junior corporate executive or consumer. these photos are sometimes delicately woven with stock photography of models with plastic skin feigning smiles. proving again that kindergarten really did matter.

the power-point presentation
a glorified slide show derived from a software program that is universally loathed. if you are lucky, the presenter will add sound effects or visual wingdings inspired by children’s cartoons circa 1985 in order to keep the audience awake.

the graph
pie, line, bar. cosmograph, organizational chart, pictograph, flow chart, three dimensional matrices...

the ethnographic video
a camera is a great device for visual note-taking. however, researchers tend to rely on themselves or an inexpensive videographer - which doesn't bode well when it comes time to communicating findings. the resulting videos are the video equivalent of scribbled notes.

the man-on-the-street video
crudely pieced together two-second sound-bites from a hoard of randomly selected consumers. among the thousands of companies who specialize in this is one that includes a clip on their website of a homeless man with one tooth who provides his insights into the latest theater release of the new star trek film. this is about as deep as it gets.

the video diary
the dreaded shaky camera. it's great to get the perspective of the consumer, but not in video form when it makes those watching nauseous. think of britney spears’ self-filmed diary, "chaotic." pass the dramamine.

focus group videos
a columnist in chicago wisely refers to focus groups as “those deadly gatherings in small rooms.”  the resulting videos are as engaging as a surveillance video for a convenience store, but not nearly as great at communicating insights.

the experiential consumer immersion:

this genre has several forms including:
   a. the consumer’s world brought to life (i.e. a stage set)
      all too often, a successful reincarnation depends on the set designer’s interpretation. i went to one earlier this year that was supposed to represent a modern teen’s bedroom. it was sadly composed with elements straight out of 1995 including a couple of posters of "pulp fiction" and
christina aguilera.

b. theatrical plays / consumer reenactments
      my favorite of this subset was a dinner theater, murder/mystery-type presentation where questions were posed and people were “killed off” until we could decipher who the consumer was. the ceo of the company attended and i have never seen someone look so puzzled in my life.

c. the consumer treasure hunt

my friend, who is an account manager at a crm company, had to attend one of these the other day. several hours running around the city in search of clues that provided insights into the consumer. he said the first thirty minutes were somewhat fun, but after four hours, people were ready to shoot  themselves and no one came away with an increased understanding of their consumer.

while i am poking fun at these methods, the biggest questions for a corporation are:
1. are any of these methods effectively communicating
    consumer insights?
2. will these methods enable employees to absorb the insights
    and improve their work?

insights from presentations of research findings should be communicated in a way that forever changes executives’ point-of-view. the executives should then be inspired to apply this new perspective to their jobs and improve their work - be it creating marketing or advertising, developing products, generating business strategies...

when it comes to truly effecting a large group of executives, most of the methods listed earlier are pretty ineffective. they do very little to help the executives to truly identify with the consumer and their situation in life, challenges, attitudes
and values.

i must admit, the methods that just stick to presenting the cold hard data can have an effect on a surface level, and work best with the analytical audience. however, when you’re trying to communicate a consumer group’s challenges, attitudes, values and lifestyle to a broad group of executives, one-dimensional data is pretty limiting. emotions don’t really come through too well on paper or in a graph.

good insights are not like good products — they don’t sell themselves. insights need thoughtful shaping and nurturing before they can be effectively presented and, thus, absorbed by an audience.

my company once did a project for a large retailer whose executives were, like almost every company, predominantly forty or fifty-something white males. because they had seen the data on their target consumer, these fellows truly believed they knew what it was like to be her: an urban, working mother, struggling to run her home with several kids on $75k annual income. after first meeting with them it was apparent that they could spew facts about their consumer, but they had no real understanding of what it was like to be this woman. they had yet to develop a true picture of her or any empathy for her situation. this lack of dimesionalized target consumer understanding showed in their advertising, promotions, store design and bottom line, too.

on the other hand, many methods of presenting insights such as the experiential consumer immersion and its subsets try way too hard to be creative. this desire to entertain the audience often results in a presentation based upon artifice. in trying so hard to be fun and entertaining, these methods neglect the basic need to communicate the insights. those in attendance are asked to wade through the artifice just to find a nugget of an insight.

so what’s the most effective way to communicate insights? how can you take consumer truths uncovered through quantitative and communicate those insights to executives in a way so that they stick and inspire them to apply the insights to their work?

i believe the best method for accomplishing this is to take the broad quantitative truths and pair them with a short documentary film that brings to life and adds dimension to the quantitative findings.

if you noticed, i said documentary film and not "video." there is a valid reason for this. to many, the words “film” and “video” are synonymous. however, there is a clear distinction between the two. while a video is a series of snapshot moments, a film lives in the mind long after it has been viewed. a film can be viewed repeatedly without losing its meaning and can be a never-ending source of inspiration or ideas.

so, with that in mind, can a company turn to their most analytical and rational resources — i.e. their internal research department, an ethnographic vendor or an ad agency planning department — to create a film? as i touched on previously in the presentation methods section, while these folks are great at discovering insights they do not know how to communicate insights well (or to create a film, for that matter). researchers are often adept at using a camera as a visual note-taking tool, however communicating the insights from those visual notes through a well-crafted and thoughtful film is too tough a challenge, as evidenced by their attempts.

there is a reason why even advertising agencies’ creative departments hire film directors to direct their commercials: agencies smartly realize that they can’t execute the same
job themselves.

contrary to what researchers might believe, making a film that communicates consumer insights involves so much more than just a video camera, a subject and an editing program.

besides talent, there are many components that go into creating a film - especially one that will be a window into all of the emotional elements that make up a consumer target’s attitudes, challenges, values and lifestyle.

the following are ten essential pieces in producing an engaging consumer insight film that effectively communicates insights and ensures that those insights stick:

1. the film must be beautiful

beauty is rarely prioritized in business, but beauty is not something superfluous. a film should be beautiful because beauty is engaging to viewers and engagement increases the impact of your insights. beauty also goes way beyond creating something visually pretty. the tone, story and emotion (be it funny, angry, sad, etc.) should also be beautiful. combining visual, emotional and tonal beauty with a compelling story will have a powerful effect upon the viewer touching his heart and mind. it allows the insights to be better absorbed and, thus, applied to all aspects of their work.

when you create something beautiful you don’t have to bribe your colleagues to attend the meeting. when you have something of beauty they will beg you for a copy — that they will actually refer to later.

i will go over some of the elements needed to create a beautiful film beyond something that is just pretty later in this section, so let’s just concentrate on visual beauty for now.

due to budget realities a consumer insight film is shot on video. while your typical video output is usually not the most alluring, there are ways to make something shot on video beautiful so that it is more engaging.

here are a couple of steps i always go through in producing a film to make sure it at least looks beautiful:

• i hire a small, yet talented film crew. the crew is usually comprised of a director, a skilled interviewer, a talented camera person and a technically savvy production assistant.

• i make sure that all of the footage collected is visually beautiful from the way the images are framed to the frame speed of the camera to making sure to shoot in natural light as much as possible to help minimize that glossy,
home-video look.

• i frame all of my shots so that the composition is unexpected or intense so that it adds to the emotion of the story being told, be it humorous, sad, angry...

2. ensure that the respondents to be filmed are interesting
and articulate

i am sure everyone reading this has watched focus groups or ethnographic videos that have featured consumers who are unresponsive and/or bland. they respond to questions with one-word answers and seem disinterested, just waiting to collect their check.

to ensure you are only interviewing the most articulate and engaging consumers on film you have to go through a
simple process.

• recruit three times the amount of primary respondents that will end up on film (i.e. 4 primary respondents x 3 = 12 respondents to be recruited).

• set up short, twenty minute phone or face-to-face interviews with each of the recruited respondents. even the best screeners are not enough to ensure a quality respondent. this part of the process will allow you to find the most interesting and articulate consumers as well as develop a rapport that will enable you to get more from them during your interview.

3. less is more - select only a small group of consumers for filmed interviews

select only a few consumers to film – usually four or five per consumer segment. this allows you to spend more time with each consumer so that the insights brought to life in the film have much more dimension.

4. more is more - interview the featured consumers more than once

make sure to conduct a second interview with each consumer. you might want to cover new ground or follow up on a subject from the first interview. the interview should be at a different place than the first interview (i.e. a place relevant to the topic of the film and to the consumer such as work, a park, coffee shop, health club...). this will add dimension to your understanding of the consumer and his/her lifestyle, attitudes or values as well as improve the story for the film.

5. also interview those closest to the respondent

often those closest to the respondent such as family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers…) can add an important perspective on the respondent and underscore the insights that are being brought to life in the film, improving the
film’s depth.

6. interviews don’t communicate enough - b-roll is just
as important

a sit-down interview can’t tell you everything about a person. capturing footage of consumers lives, possessions and community (otherwise known as b-roll) is just as important as an interview in revealing and communicating consumer insights—especially emotional insights. images of a consumer’s family, friends, community, workplace and memorable moments from his/her life are extremely compelling communication tools and make for appropriate cut-aways, aiding in the narration and dimension of the story.

7. create a paper outline before editing to eliminate surprises and subjectivity

there is an element of subjectivity when it comes to creating a film. many people involved in approving a film get caught up in the color of consumer’s dress or the size of her head in
the frame.

to manage expectations after the filming is finished and before you begin forming the detailed parts of film’s story in the edit room, a simple paper outline of the story should be created and shared with all decision makers. this outline will act as the foundation from which the film’s story will be built.

the written edit outline helps both the director of the film and the decision makers overseeing the project focus on the broader story. the outline also eliminates much of the subjectivity involved in creating a film because it helps everyone understand that each editing choice was made to bring to life the story depicted in the paper outline.

8. when editing, heed the power of restraint

restraint is one of the hardest concepts to grasp and apply - even in life. it is extremely important to keep the concept of the power of restraint in mind throughout the editing of a film that brings to life consumer insights.

even though i’m talking about a short documentary film (around 12-15 minutes), it should still breathe.

for instance, there’s nothing that will disinterest a viewer more or does a worse job at communicating insights than a series of quick sound-bites. i understand why research videos are typically made in this way; the creators are worried that executives have attention deficit disorder, which may, in fact, be true. so the videos are culled down to the most important sound-bites which express the insights literally, often repeating phrases like an annoying parrot.

this method, however, has the opposite effect. it’s almost like watching a power-point presentation with a rapid succession of data points. within few seconds the audience loses interest as the quick sound-bites become a blurry barrage of babble. in the end, no insights are absorbed by the audience enough to stick.

on the other hand, executives watching a patiently paced film will become drawn into the story instead of watching the clock thinking “when is this going to end?!”

patient pacing allows the featured consumers the time to tell their story and, thus, enables the film to present a more dimensionized picture of their lives.

have you ever gotten out of a movie theater after seeing a really great film and then looked down at your watch to be surprised that two and a half hours have passed? with a good short documentary film fifteen minutes will seem like five to the viewer.

9. use music as a tool to communicate and
accentuate emotion

music expresses and underscores emotions in ways that words cannot. music also helps tell a story and sets the tone for the particular emotions being communicated.

i’ve seen so many ethnographic and brand videos that have no conception of where or how to employ music. when these videos do feature music they tend to use popular tunes (often inappropriately energetic, insipidly generic or excessively cute) that are familiar to even those without mtv. the belief is that the video should feature the most popular music with the consumer group. colossal mistake. the audience already has pre-set associations with familiar songs. the goal of the film is to influence perspectives on certain target groups, not to highlight the current #1 hip-hop or adult-contemporary soft-rock hit. moreover, you don’t want a viewer to get lost in associations from his own life when they hear a certain song in the film.

the purpose of music in a film is to help communicate emotion so that insights about the consumer group resonate deeply with the viewer. therefore, the film should feature music that is obscure enough so that no one will recognize it. yet, it should be appropriate to the emotional tone so that it effectively communicates the emotional insights enabling them to stick in the mind of the viewer.

10. avoid “the kitchen sink” syndrome with a paper report

a film that effectively communicates insights while being enjoyable to watch is always focused.

the problem with research videos is that often they are anything but focused. much of the time these research videos feel like video versions of a 300 page research report chock full of everything.

by creating a report to go along with the film, you can include all of the minutiae (the most popular music to the target group, how much leisure time they spend fishing, if plastic surgery is something most are considering...) in your final deliverables (film and report). that way, the film itself will remain engaged and focused so that it impactfully communicates insights and those insights stick.

the paper report can act like a good moderator’s report, underscoring the insights in the film and providing in-depth methodology and background that answers questions that will inevitably arise (i.e. are these people truly part of our
target group...)

now, after reading this you might be thinking, “this is all well and good, the technical jibber-jabber was a little boring, but when would be an appropriate time to commission a documentary film that brings to life consumer insights?”

as you can probably sense, the cost of a consumer insight film makes it most appropriate for larger and more strategic initiatives. for instance, to bring to life a segmentation study, an attitude and usage study, or to present broad, strategic insights into a consumer target group.

one of the great benefits of a film beyond its superior ability to communicate insights is the added value. a well-crafted film can be used for a myriad of initiatives beyond the main objective of the project. for instance:

• as a multi-dimensional tool for product, communications, marketing and internet development or planning

• to influence key internal decision makers

• to dimensionalize a priority consumer target for corporate conventions

• as a visual creative brief for vendors such as ad agencies, product design firms, distributors, etc.,

• for consumer immersion workshops

• as a sales film

• for employee training

one of my company’s most recent case studies should give you a good idea of the power of a film and the added value
that resulted.

a large international food company was having trouble enabling insights about their most important consumer segments to stick - especially among top-level executives. so they hired dig as a part of a consumer immersion workshop for 250 of their top executives. for the workshop, dig created four documentary films, one about each target, that communicated the insights from the company's quantitative studies about these four consumer segments.

in fact, the program was so successful that not only did it result in additional workshops around the u.s., but the films were used to spread the insights way beyond the initial project objective. the company developed what they called a “meeting in a box.” the “meeting in a box” was a kit that included dig’s consumer insight films and simple instructions for putting together a meeting to screen the films for a group and discuss the insights from the films. over 250 were sent out and it wound up being an efficient and cost-effective way to inspire a very large group beyond the initial target. the films were used to educate mid and lower level employees across all departments as well as company vendors including ad agencies, media agencies and distributors.

our client has told us that even almost a year after the project was completed her co-workers continue to ask for copies of the films.

as we all know, many executives have recognized the need to take insights from traditional research methods and pair them with other methods in order to make them more effective. in fact, jean-marie dru wrote in beyond disruption: changing the rules in the marketplace:

“many traditional research methods — focus groups, attitude and usage studies, attribute research, segmentation — can be made to be more disruptive simply by using them in systematic combinations. for instance, segmentation combined with ethnographic research into prototypical representatives of the segments can help you make the leap from what is on paper to what is going on in the real world.

examining links and paradoxes among different methods, you can make leaps into consumer behavior and attitudes that isolated methodologies may not uncover (2).”

instead of simply putting together a traditional ethnographic research video, by creating a film, companies can ensure that the millions of dollars they invest in uncovering insights will actually be well-spent. their insights will not only stick in the minds of executives, but also spread across all areas of the organization and be used in ways previously unimagined.

bibliography

1. bai, matt. “‘king of the hill’ democrats?” new york times magazine 26 june 2005: 15 – 17.

2. dru, jean-marie. beyond disruption: changing the rules in the marketplace. new york: john wiley & sons, inc. 1996