March 15, 2021 /

Part 2: All Research is Creative

Chris Hayes EVP, Brand Strategy

Agencies and clients agree that research-driven customer insights play an important role in the development of effective marketing and creative campaigns. At the same time, I’ll bet relatively few think of research as a creative process or discipline.

The fact is, all research is (or should be) creative. The best researchers approach their work with an open and creative mindset that skillfully uncovers the information to successfully drive creative development. The constraints of time and budget—facts of life in the business world—should never be an excuse for missing out on insights that support business growth and lead to game-changing creative campaigns.

That said, the insights gained from any customer research are only as good as the questions asked and the techniques used to capture those insights. Survey 100 or 1,000 people, if you’re not asking the right questions to the right people in the right way, you’ll probably be missing valuable information.

Creative researchers must be somewhat iconoclastic in their approach to the methods and executions of their insight gathering efforts. Traditional e-surveys and focus groups can certainly generate actionable insights, but sometimes creative thinking can provide additional information.  

Here are five “creative research” ideas to consider for your next research project:

  1. Involve the creative team early on in the development of the research. They are the folks who will be challenged to understand and use the information generated in your research, so it’s important to incorporate their thoughts at the outset and make sure you get answers to their questions in your survey.
  2. Include your competitors’ customers in your survey. Too often, brands focus their research efforts exclusively on their own customers. Identifying and understanding your competition’s perceived strengths and weaknesses as well as their perception of your brand can help differentiate your brand and identify important hidden opportunities.
  3. Employ social media listening. Not to be confused with social media monitoring, social listening collects data from mentions and customer conversations on the internet and draws insights to help inform decisions. Social monitoring captures and responds to specific brand mentions on social media. In other words, monitoring tells researchers the what is being said; listening tells the why. Both are important tools, but in the hands of a skilled researcher, understanding the “why” is invaluable.
  4. Add “1-on-1” Empathy Interviews as part of your research program. Customers sometimes don’t know what they want, which can make a traditional Q&A interview unproductive. Empathy interviewing focuses on the emotional and subconscious aspect of customer’s actions by probing why customers behave a certain way. The process is conversational and encourages participants to tell stories. A skilled interviewer can draw out what the subject really thinks and feels about a topic. By identifying needs that customers may not even know existed, marketers can develop innovative solutions to meet future challenges.
  5. Observe customers in usage situations. A technique popular with many CPG companies is seeing your customers in settings that mimic “real world” situations. This methodology can reveal important information like product preference and feelings about practical issues like packaging. Data uncovered in these “natural” settings can offer insights into product usage that you may not have considered. Knowing how customers store and maintain the product can also drive product enhancement and innovation. 

Creative research doesn’t have to be expensive. In some cases, we’ve found it can cost less than more traditional methodologies. Finding new customers can cost as much as eight times more than keeping existing customers. Insights driven by creatively designed and executed research can pay for itself, many times over.

Whatever research techniques or methodologies you employ, creative research is ultimately about never being satisfied with the first or simplest answer. Always dig deeper. Keep pressing. Every new fact that you discover generates new information and that next question may be the one that uncovers the nugget that is the basis for a truly breakthrough idea.

Looking for insights that can build your business? Give us a call… J.Schmid has the experience to provide creative research that will make a difference to your bottom line.

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