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Telling stories with data:discovering and communicating real insights
By Ed Stalling, Chief Storyteller, Maritz Research
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"Actionable insights" are market research’s Holy Grail, but
they don’t just happen and aren’t automatically generated.
Research is both art and science. Think back to a research
study or two that really nailed it – really delivered insight
you could act on. Now consider those that missed it by
a mile. Looking across a spectrum of studies we found
that there are four key ingredients which differentiate truly
actionable research from data dumps. Three of these
take place behind the scenes and involve researcher and
client working together in a meaningful way to lead to
new findings. The final element, the announcement of the
insights, has evolved tremendously from statistical reports
into entertaining and engaging communications which draw
upon a variety of creative devices.
The four ingredients
1. Context
Insights evolve from discovering relevant patterns or
relationships in data. Context enables researchers to
connect the dots, to tie those patterns together into a story
rather than separate bullet points. Understanding how the
research fits into a client’s sector, category and business
model has to be the foundation of any project to deliver
actionable insights.
2. Planning
The single best opportunity to ensure you get insights is in
the design phase. Most insightful research has clients who
welcomed the “real” discussions and open exchanges of
information early in the process. These are often built into
the budget and timeline as formal, early-stage
discovery sessions.
3. Discovering the story
Even with context and good design insights don’t come
easy. They have to be discovered. The discovery process
combines art and science. Many researchers are steeped
in the science component, so the "art" side doesn’t get as
much attention. This constant interplay between art and
science, between intuition and hard facts, is an ingredient
we see time and time again in those studies that endedup
being described as "insightful research". The art
component includes logical reasoning, non-linear thinking,
using data visualisation techniques to aid us in recognising
patterns, healthy doses of scepticism and curiosity, with a
pinch of optimism.
The best teams use non-linear thinking in the discovery
process, since the world is not linear and neither are the
problems we address. These teams mix things up and
look at the data from all angles. They don’t communicate
findings survey question by survey question. They bring
in information from other sources and triangulate across
studies to increase confidence in findings.
4. Communicating the story
Once the dots have been connected there should be a
story, and it needs to be told in a persuasive narrative, with
numbers as evidence rather than the main subject.
The storytelling of the findings is rarely given the attention
it deserves, but if the insights are not communicated to the
right audience in a credible and approachable way, the
research has failed.
We need to make research as engaging as possible. A
recent success story in this area is HP which recently
used creative storytelling to reposition itself and to build a
closer connection with customers. Michael Mendenhall,
senior vice-president and chief marketing officer at HP,
who joined the company from Walt Disney Parks and
Resorts, has spoken about how story telling has helped
transform the company which was traditionally strong
in the commercial market into a consumer oriented brand.
"My objective was to transform HP from being conceived
as a dull professional’s service brand into a company
that could be seen as a world-class global citizen." And,
"storytelling and the ideas of co-creation are at the core of
what we do now as a brand." (Marketing Week, August 13
2009). Researchers are now looking at how to borrow from
fields such as writing, presenting, visual arts, film, theatre,
music and information visualisation to create powerful and
impactful insights.
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