Over the past few weeks, YouTube has been overflowing with spin-offs of the viral video, Stuff* Girls Say. The original, based on the eponymous Twitter feed, inspired dozens of other satires, from Stuff People in DC Say (“Right, but where are you from originally?”), to Stuff* College Freshmen Say (“I’m either going to major in political science, psychology, business, or maybe pre-med.”), to my personal favorite, Stuff* Nobody Says (“Does anyone know how I can make Papyrus my default font?”). I’m still waiting for “Stuff Market Researchers Say”– we’ll leave the comments section open for your suggestions.

These videos are only intended to be humorous – stereotypes and sweeping generalizations are embraced and political correctness and cultural sensitivities are deliberately thrown aside. But in addition to provoking a knowing laugh (or righteous indignation), these videos also made me think about creative ways to collect, manage, and present knowledge about customers.

For Research to have the greatest impact on customer-related decisions, teams need to use effective communication strategies to engage their business partners. If your research team were to make a video titled “Stuff Our Customers Say,” what would it sound like? Would you need to adjust the way you think about segmentation? Not many of these Research videos would ever achieve YouTube fame, but our most progressive members are thinking differently about how to make existing information accessible to researchers and palatable to business partners.

Here’s an example of how Deloitte used video to highlight the many voices of its consumers. (Golf? Golf!)

MREB Members, read about how Heinz uses video to create an appetite for customer learning.

*This is a family friendly blog — the actual video titles all replace the word “stuff” with a more colorful 4 letter word beginning with S.

Snow removal is not Washington D.C.’s strong suit.  On Monday, all federal agencies enjoyed a two hour delayed opening because of a whopping 0.7 inches (1.8 cm) of snow that fell here over the weekend. Perhaps the city should forgo the plows and heavy machinery in favor of some of the tools featured in this article, which promise to make snow removal easier and safer.

With the importance of good tools (and the importance of good insight) in mind, the Market Research Executive Board has compiled some of our best insight generation exercises, worksheets, and practice guides into one easy-to-use toolkit. (The best part? Our tools carry little to no risk of back injury!)

Insight generation is one of the most important and most difficult tasks of any market research function.  MREB research has shown that a shift to make quality insight generation a priority is associated with a 70% increase in business impact. These 15 hands-on tools are designed to support you and your team in scoping and focusing your efforts, thinking creatively, and framing your insights in an actionable and impactful way. MREB members, access the toolkit here.

We all know the importance of asking the right questions. (Sir Francis Bacon’s assessment that “a prudent question is one half of wisdom” was surely an underestimate.) So, how do you train your line partners to ask the types of great questions that lead to great research insights?

You need to teach them to imagine knowledge that doesn’t yet exist and to focus on these unknowns in the research-scoping process. In other words, encourage your business partners to start thinking about IWIKs. What is an IWIK? No, it’s not a misspelling of one of George Lucas’ furry creations. It stands for “I Wish I Knew,” and it’s a great way of making sure you’re asking the right research questions.  

Because better data and better synthesis are often inadequate for producing differentiated insights, line partners must focus their questions on key drivers of consumer behavior so that we as researchers can collect the right information capable of propelling significant business impact.

MREB Members, read about how Eli Lilly successfully used the IWIK process to educate their line and ensure that key unknowns were translated into questions with high potential for differentiation.