dig essay: insights can't help you if you can't find them

by burnley vest, dig director

here in chicago, spring is in the air, and so my thoughts drift to my beloved sport of softball. why do i love softball so dearly? well, when i take my place in the outfield, stare in at the batter and pray for a fly ball to be hit my way i am completely transported, and enter a liberating zen-like state.

of course, not everyone who plays softball has the same motivation as me. to start with, most people prefer to bat, while i would be happy to play designated fielder — if such a thing existed. and i must admit that a large percentage of people who play softball are mainly out there to socialize, drink beer, be silly, find love, et cetera. but while the motivations for playing are many, there is a basic set of good practices that everyone should share. many involve communication, like yelling "i got it!" to neighboring fielders when you are certain you can catch a fly ball and want to avoid a broken collarbone. others involve moving in concert based on shared information, as when somebody calls out "lefty!" and all outfielders move to their collective left because a certain hitter bats
left-handed.

softball and business have many things in common, not the least of which are the twin needs of communication and cooperation. of course, this is not an original idea, as a quick trip to amazon.com will reveal. enter the word "team" into the search field, and you will see relatively few books on sports, but a slew of titles like the wisdom of teams with post-colon phrases like a field guide for leaders, managers and facilitators and creating the high-performance organization. all of these books will tell us that we should strive to coordinate our movements and work off the same shared information as our teammates. this simple, yet elusive goal is commonly referred to as cross-functional alignment.

in theory, consumer insights make ideal drivers of cross-functional alignment, and teams that develop initiatives around products should benefit tremendously from a shared understanding of the motivations, habits and preferences of consumers. again, in theory, everyone working at large corporations should have access to the same body of consumer knowledge, and thus be able to tap into the company's collective wisdom and take advantage of everyone else's experience. in practice, however, this goal seems
nearly impossible.

i work at a company called dig, and we conduct qualitative consumer research on behalf of large companies. at the beginning of every project, we ask for all of the company's existing research that is relevant to the consumer segment we are exploring. however, crucial pieces of information often don't reach us in time, and findings or conclusions from past studies sometimes surface halfway through our explorations that cause us to radically change our approach on the fly.

one case in particular comes to mind. we were doing a study on the shopping habits of an international consumer segment for a large packaged goods client, and were told that no relevant data existed within the company. we then went through a lengthy stage-gate process of researching the segment, and producing, shooting and editing a documentary film reflecting our findings. finally we proudly presented our results to a room full of market researchers, several of whom, strangely, we had never met before. midway through the meeting, one of these new faces began citing precise percentages that contradicted one of our conclusions. of course, if we had been able to see this fellow's statistics at the outset, it would have significantly altered the approach of our research. as it was, we had to re-edit our film to avoid a glaring conflict with a prior internal quantitative study—a study that none of our initial contacts seem to know existed.

while this kind of thing is frustrating for outside researchers, i wonder what it must be like for people within a large company, knowing that plenty of knowledgeable people within the organization harbor all kinds of helpful information about their consumers, but a relevant and helpful detail might be buried in somebody's hard drive or on page 127 of a deck.

this past weekend, i took a peek at my family's storage space in the basement of our building and let out a sigh. we are in desperate need of spring cleaning. there is a chi-chi bicycle trailer halfway inside that is redundant and needs to be sold — if we can ever clear out all the other stuff to access it. lurking somewhere deep within the space is a badminton set that my young sons would get a kick out of, but if i tried to fish it out for them, they would grow violently bored waiting.

instead of a tightly packed, claustrophobic wood and chicken wire enclosure, i wish i could wave a magic wand and create a colossal vending machine with all our bric-a-brac categorized, clearly visible and accessible by the click of a button. while this will forever remain a pipe dream when it comes to my storage space, in the world of marketing, companies like brandwizard are doing something similar. they have been creating toolkits that let vendors across the world instantly access branding elements and allow clients to ensure that visual treatments and logos precisely conform to strict
guidelines.

maybe corporations should be doing the same thing with their consumer insights and data. take procter and gamble, for example. they own over 100 brands, and have offices in over 80 countries worldwide with well over 100,000 employees. what if they had a digital home where all their most significant insights and data on all of their consumer segments lived? maybe they already do. if not, they would be an extreme example of a very common problem. in corporations the world over, from brand to brand and from office to office, valuable data on common consumer segments goes unshared. thus researchers often end up starting at square one and mining areas that have already been explored elsewhere internally. then there's the opposite problem: there is so much information (e.g. stacks of massive decks) that hunting down relevant details seems impossible, given the time constraints. since executives throughout the company are often unable to quickly access relevant and concise information about their consumers, they must often make vital decisions in a vacuum.

it's kind of like in softball when a left fielder has no idea that a batter is a power pull hitter and positions herself shallow and straight away, while the pitcher aims inside. meanwhile, the only teammate who knows about the hitter and could thus help avert the impending disaster couldn't make it to the game.

forgive me. spring is in the air.