Meet the generation who'll become teenagers from 2023 onwards; who'll be living into the 22nd Century; and who'll be forming their identities in ways unknown to ourselves...
We’ve been exploring what the lives of so called Generation Alpha will be like of late. We can gas on about this topic for ages (and indeed we did here) but, if your time is short, here’s a nifty little video that explains plenty.
‘Bringing research to life’ - a term that’s used regularly but elaborated upon rarely. First published in AQR's In Depth magazine, Crowd DNA's Andy Crysell explores how insight can start to live and breathe within complex company structures...
Current industry debate on how to optimise the role played by insight is largely polarised between the input and output ends of the work: between how we get the data in the first place and what emerges in the end place. Tangible steps forward are being made at the input end – specifically via a raft of tech-led means to in-the-moment interactions – and the sense is that there’s plenty more to come on that front. Laurels, it’s safe to assume, are not being rested upon.
But at the output end? Here the advances are harder to define. Progress seems to have largely stalled with the vague notion of ‘bringing research to life’, a term that’s used regularly but elaborated upon rarely. What does it mean exactly? Often it is hard to tell. Perhaps it means making films to a higher standard than that which may previously have been expected of a research agency. Maybe it’s about creating more visually striking slides; the kind you might more normally expect from a creative agency.
These are good things to do, for sure, but hardly represent a great leap forward. The sentiment here is still of something to be delivered, dropped off and left with the client. Prettified but still passive in mode.
Clients across multiple categories, from businesses of all sizes, are starting to articulate a need for something more palpably living and breathing; for work that more overtly switches from the passive mode. The language most often used reflects a need to ‘democratise’ research; ‘socialise’ it; enable it to go ‘viral’.
This demands a more concerted resetting of industry norms by agencies – to a user centric approach of the kind we remain far better at recommending to our clients than implementing ourselves. But, as much as agencies love to wring their hands and bemoan their collective shortcomings, this is more particularly an issue for those who are client side to contend with. We, at agencies, can empathise with the issues, learn to understand them and point to fresh approaches – they can much more readily set bold new agendas.
In speaking to three client side senior insight people, the strongest themes and/or areas of consensus were as follows…
Sure, continue to ‘bring research to life’ but embed much more purpose in the prettifying. Genuinely editorialise the work, with a heightened comprehension of what that actually means. Begin to visualise what it looks like if insight, or the content derived from insight, starts to flow through a business – how do you get to that; what’s the practical way to achieve this? Build into the work a cultural relevance to the stakeholder audience – wrap the business relevance within that cultural relevance. Begin to picture insight as something owned by the end users, by those outside of the research department; as something that those end users are allowed – and, vitally, feel allowed – to modify further and to build upon. See insight as something that’s disseminated peer-to-peer; not from on-high. Stop hiding behind methodologies and embrace the notion that everyone within a business is, in their own way, both very insightful and very capable of gathering insights.
Martin Vovk from Sony Music, says: “Our challenge is trying to ensure that the tap’s always on – if you run a great workshop or consumer session you get this fantastic halo of engagement from everyone involved – it can sometimes even last weeks after the session. But doing that once every six months or year isn’t really enough.
“What it all comes down to is avoiding being a ‘push’ service,” he adds. “I think we’d all agree that insight works best when it’s a collaborative process that everyone’s bought into. Mandating it from the top down is valuable in some senses but can be damaging in others – our philosophy is that we want to encourage people to understand the value of insight and to start asking us for useful stuff – we don’t just want to be sitting here centrally, pushing irrelevant things at people that they aren’t interested in.”
Paul Woodhouse, director of brand research at The Walt Disney Company, builds on this theme: “For insight to become truly viral it needs advocates, and advocates are bred from active engagement, inclusion and being part of the solution. Is it practical to think of insight as being something owned by stakeholders outside of the insight department – something that’s handed over to them to shape further? It is, and I absolutely believe this should be the case.”
“Insight teams should make it a mark of success when stakeholders are able to successfully challenge them with their own information and interpretation,” believes Thomas Armstrong, director of insights and innovation at SAB Miller. For him, it’s not just a case of opening up the inner workings of research to other departments, but ensuring those in research are making more concerted efforts to understand exactly what makes other functions within the business tick as well. “It isn’t simply about getting others to understand what we do – we need to be getting our hands dirty, understanding the challenges of sales teams, operations, finance and so on.”
Martin Vovk concludes: “If non-insight folks think of us as a central department laying down instructions and ‘telling them what the consumer wants’ it’s very easy for them to become cynical and disengaged. If instead we try to position ourselves as offering interesting routes into the world of the consumer that are not closed experiences bound by facts and rules, but actually creative fuel that leads to inspiration and ideas, then I think we’re starting to get people excited. And once you get to that point, people also feel empowered – what you’re presenting isn’t a mysterious black-box approach, but something they’ve actually seen that they can do and understand themselves.”
While the opinions being offered here are of course diverse and reflect different category needs, what’s most striking and consistent is the sentiment around trying to tackle old problems in new ways. There’s less emphasis on the oft stated and longstanding challenge of how to secure insight a place at the ‘top table’ in businesses, and much more on ensuring that the advocates of insight can be found across all departments, at all levels of seniority, suitably informed and authorised to take the work in the direction that works best for them. And this, ultimately, is what we should really be getting at when we talk of bringing research to life…
Read more from the AQR’s In Depth Spring 2015 edition.
Here's a video we've made to show off some of our approaches to creating content from and, ultimately, socialising insight...
While there’s a lot of industry talk about ‘bringing insight to life’, we don’t think there’s much quality on show at present. And even when the content created from the insight does reach reasonably high standards, there’s often not so much thinking on show around quite why content has been created and if it’s really connecting with the target stakeholders in the required manner.
So for us it’s as much around understanding how businesses function, how best to socialise insight, as it is about actually creating the content. We look to explore and visualise what it will look like if insight, or the content derived from insight, starts to flow through a business; how we can wrap the business relevance within all-important cultural relevance; how insight and the recommendation derived from it can be seen as something that’s disseminated peer-to-peer; not from on-high.
We hope you like the vid, and if this is a topic you’d like to discuss further do shout
We've recently been working with Sony Music on film content designed to help their teams to connect with, relate to and work with audience insight. Here's a few nice stills from the project...
Youth culture gets played out in lots of different environments. On the streets and online, of course. But let's not forget the bedroom - a time-honoured safe space for experimentation, in which to let your identity take shape. These images are from a recent wave of our UK Tribes work for Channel 4. We can learn a lot from the codes and sentiment embedded in the images and items on display. Big thanks to all contributors...
“I love all things 1950s, be it the pin ups of the era, the culture of the time, the clothing, the make up. And Audrey Hepburn is an ever-lasting lovely.” – Meg, 18
“I love free romantic blockbuster DVDs. I collect them. My room is full of them. I don’t know – is that weird?” – Rachel, 23
“My wall is made up of my favourite people and my favourite memories. You put different things on your wall than you share on social media.” – Cait, 16
“So when I’m playing my guitar I’m looking at these posters of bands and musicians. Seeking inspiration, I guess.” – Jordan, 18
“There’s a mixture of photos, tickets and stickers behind me. All to do with bands. Each has a specific memory attached to it. The Smiths and Morrissey feature most.” – Amber, 18
“My room is a build up of life! Everything I’ve collected is on display – well, mostly loose bits of paper I’ve ripped from magazines or found at the bottom of a bag.” – Sofia, 19
“There are a few massive influences here. I adore anything Oriental, as you can see. Ballet shoes – I danced ballet and modern from age five to 15. It was a major part of my upbringing.” – Laura, 22
“I collect things: candles, make up, cameras, perfumes, rocks! And I spend a lot of time outside taking photos, so my cameras really represent me.” – Olivia, 17
“My room is a calming place. I am also tidy, very organised. Technology has to take centre stage.” – Ian, 17
“I love my skis and I also try to incorporate art into my room. I’m aiming for an eclectic mix of furniture: Ikea, antique, thrift, anything that catches my eye.” – Olivia, 17
You can read more about the Channel 4 UK Tribes project here.
Our Amsterdam-side strategic initiatives director, Lydia Jones, is a planner no more. Oh, hold on, she's more a planner now than ever. Think we'd best let her explain...
When I first uttered those fateful words, ‘when I used to be a planner’, in my second week at Crowd DNA, I had a little moment. Am I really not a planner anymore? After eight years in advertising with that job title, it felt weird to relinquish it. But with three months now at Crowd getting stuck in all over the place – from toothbrushes to cheese – I realise I’m might be more of a planner now than I was at any ad agency.
Gone are the days when agencies had in-house research departments with a team dedicated to moderating groups, setting up surveys, doing your desk research, and running TGI reports. Gone too are the days when every project had two months of planning time, where planners shut themselves away in a room and stroked their beards, noodling over the precise articulation of a proposition. These days, you’re lucky if you get two weeks. So planners now have to do their own research and mostly that means turning to their trusty friend Google. Trouble is, everyone else also has access to the same free but never-the-right-markets, never-the-right-target, or perfect-but-from-2005, reports that you do. So a planner ends up making do and extrapolating, ie, ‘making shit up’. Many planners are highly skilled at Making Shit Up. They have to be. I know I was. My strategies were a thing of beauty!
In my ad career, I’ve worked at many different agencies: direct, digital, above the line, old school, new school, old dinosaur, and shiny new start up, And apart from a handful of groups, a couple of surveys, and a few hastily put together vox pops for pitches, I never did any primary research. Never. In eight years. Most of the time, I didn’t even have access to proper secondary research (Mintel subscriptions were cut along with the free fruit). So it’s no wonder most planners nowadays are expert storytellers and deck crafters, but pretty terrible when it comes to talking to real people.
That’s partly the reason why I joined Crowd. To actually do some proper primary research, a skill I should’ve been well versed in by now. But secondly, I joined Crowd because they get those challenges faced by agencies today. They work fast, they tell stories, and they don’t make planners wade through hundreds of terribly ugly powerpoint charts. And they’re nice.
We are an agencies’ research department. We are their planners. Bonus being they don’t have to fork out for breakfast for us every day.
Here's a data oriented double act, with associate director Claire Moon on author/broadcaster Tim Harford's Google Firestarters presentation, and Eric Shapiro, our creative delivery knowledge leader, reviewing David McCandless' talk at a Guardian Live event. Let's go...
In the first of our two reports, author, broadcaster and FT columnist Tim Harford gave two TED-style talks – one titled ‘Big Mistakes With Big Data’ and the second on ‘How To Tell The Future’. Here’s four relevant insights from his presentations.
At first glance, big data promises to render traditional methods of sampling obsolete (because we now have the data for ‘n=all’), and does away with the need for theories and hypotheses because we can simply ‘listen’ to the data by running algorithms to analyse it.
However, the rise and fall of Google Flu Trends – the poster child for big data – highlights the importance of ‘old-fashioned, boring lessons around how we behave with data’ and the enduring importance of human intelligence at all stages of analysis.
Despite working well at the start, the success rate of the predictions made by Google Flu Trends began to fall spectacularly – and because Google didn’t have a theory for why it worked in the first place, it was impossible to work out why it had gone wrong.
Despite calling himself a huge fan of big data, Tim advocated human intuition over computer learning and algorithms, and explained why speaking to ‘n=all that matter’ is still a far better approach than attempting to listen to ‘n=all’.
As the volume of ‘found data’ increases, big data is becoming increasingly good at telling us what is happening and identifying correlations, but it can’t tell you why it’s happening and if a correlation actually represents causation – you still need to speak to real humans for that!
Tim’s final lesson was around prediction, and the importance of being open minded. He spoke at length about a research programme set up by psychologist Philip Tetlock that aggregated a large number (20,000) of quantifiable forecasts made by a broad variety of people. Through this experiment, Tetlock found that the success of predictions lie in correcting biases, working in teams, and in practicing ‘actively open-minded thinking’.
In short, the best way to ensure accuracy when carrying out research and looking to the future is to continually challenge what you find and be prepared to change your mind when new information arises.
During the Q&A session after Tim’s talks, he was asked about his work for the Scenario Planning division at Shell. Tim’s description of it as ‘science fiction’ got a few laughs, but his point was a serious one – research shouldn’t always be about finding answers. Instead, research should be about stimulating thinking.
(If you want a more detailed account of the event and Tim’s talks, check out Neil Perkin’s great write-up here)
In the second of our reports, we heard Mr Information Is Beautiful (more commonly known as David McCandless) discuss his new book Knowledge Is Beautiful, where he spoke not only of the art of data visualisation, but more deeply on the dividing line between ‘data’ and ‘knowledge’.
Psychology tells us seven pieces of knowledge is about the most information a person can hold, so here’s three things to remember from David’s speech to add to the four from Tim’s.
Knowledge is joined up data
Bored with drawing up immaculate and fascinating data representations, McCandless sought to understand and illustrate knowledge in his new book. He came to the realisation that single data sets only tell you so much. If you want to find something new and genuinely interesting, you need to join up different banks of data to paint a clearer representation. For example, if you want to know who’s top dog, you need to look at a huge range of factors, including vet records, dog genealogies and popularity to reach your goal. It’s the same with insights. To find something new, you need to join up different data types and studies, and view them as one.
3/4 of our brain is vision
Astonishingly, three quarters of our neurons are dedicated to the visual system. We’re incredibly sensitive to beautiful things, but we’re equally aware of ugly things. Even more fascinatingly, we have trust in the former, and are suspicious of the latter. It’s why we describe companies with older or more simple websites as ‘dodgy’, and equally why we forgive glamorous celebrities for just about anything (nice corn rows, Justin…). This means no matter how great, relevant, or life changing a piece of knowledge is, we won’t trust it unless it’s packaged in something beautiful that earns our trust. Equally, we need to be conscious of not presenting something incorrect beautifully, encouraging the wrong sort of knowledge – which means data integrity still matters.
Up wide, crash zoom, to the side
Finally, we learned how in order to extract the best information from data, you need to examine it from all angles. That means looking at the whole picture, exploring the tiny details within, and changing the angle of approach. Take the world of cash crops. From afar, wheat is the most planted, sugar cane the most fecund and most popular, and cannabis yields the highest revenue. That last one’s interesting, no? Well, if we zoom in, you can see that cannabis generates £47,660,000 per square kilometer. And if we look at it from another angle, we see in a state where cannabis is now legal, Colorado, that it reels in more tax revenue than Alcohol. The insight? Cannabis is more lucrative than you might have thought.
Rather than point you towards the illegal drug trade, we reckon this is a lesson in analysis: specifically the importance of using frameworks to view data through different lenses and extract the best and most interesting bits.
(You can see more of David’s beautiful works here, and he’d probably want this blog to link to the Amazon page for his new book – we’ll acquiesce and do this here.)
What's in the DNA of a YouTube superstar? What's the tipping point from speaking to your mum and mates to having roughly the population of Belgium following your every move? And who are the names lurking behind the cross-over likes of Zoella and PewDiePie?
We’ve been exploring all of this and more for a number of clients recently, pinpointing the developing trends driving the notion of the ‘niche superstar’. The strategic thinking of course stays under wraps, but here’s a vid that casts some clear light on this exciting, ever changing, very social world…