Introduction

It was 1876 and Alexander Graham Bell was

pitching his start-up. He offered Western Union

his telephone technology for a rumored

$100,000. The company dismissed it as “an

electrical toy” (Anderson,2005).

“Technically, we do not see that this device

will be ever capable of sending recognizable

speech…

Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install

one of their “telephone devices” in every city. The

idea is idiotic…

Furthermore, why would any person want

to use this ungainly and impractical device when

he can send a messenger to the telegraph

office…”

Shifting consumer habits

The quote, although recently challenged for its

authenticity, is an accurate reflection of the factors

that drive product adoption. What is

recognizable speech if not product readiness,

telephone devices in every city, a means of

distribution and the question of why anyone would

use it - that of shifting consumer habits?

Fast forward 130 years and the questions are

the same about video communications. Video

communications are nothing new. The goal of

making it easier to see the person you’re talking to is

a consistent theme in telephony. And yet by far the

fastest growing communication method in the last 50

years has been short, asynchronous text messaging,

with WhatsApp alone generating 18.3 trillion

messages annually and an aggregated SMS volume

at 8.16 trillion (Portio Research, 2013). So why is

video communication not mainstream yet and

what can we do to accelerate its adoption?

‘My Life in Video’

The Comms Services team at Telefonica decided

to set up a study to uncover opportunities in

consumer video communication. We tackled

the challenge on video communication by setting

up a Consumer Consulting Board. A

Consumer Consulting Board is a small group of

highly-engaged consumers, connected online for a

longer period and systematically engaged to take

part in research challenges (Willems, Schillewaert

and De Ruyck, 2013). For the ‘My Life in Video’

project, we engaged 65 consumers from the UK

and Mexico, each in a Consumer Consulting Board

of their own language.

Through ethnography tasks on their communication

habits, we collected 957 contributions in two weeks’

time for the project. But disruptive innovations

are difficult to research and the challenge is

twofold.

Consumers have a hard time imagining how innovations will

influence their lives. Most likely, if we would have set up market

research in Graham Bell’s era, the results would not have

predicted the future success of the telephone. Likewise, we can

of course ask consumers to report on their video consumer

communication, but will this lead to useful angles to change

future communication patterns?

The Challenge

1.

The future will need to be created by marketers and

product managers at the client side. As it is for

consumers, for them also a crucial aspect for this long-term

change is the ability to IMAGINE an improved future state

(Carleton, Cockayne and Tahvanainen, 2013). Like an

athlete, if employees can imagine winning the race, you will

increase your chances to realize the outcome that you want.

The reality however is that we often miss this stakeholder

involvement and willingness to act upon the insights. A

recent study among 184 consumer insight managers and

researchers showed the most important criterion for impactful

research is that it should change the attitudes and decisions

of marketing executives. The same study revealed that

especially on this matter, we still have a long way to go. We

conduct great research but are often unable to ignite the

spark that engages, inspires and drives action. How can we

better activate our insights within organizations?

2.

Looking at the challenges above, it was clear that we were in

need for inspirational research and research that inspires

in an equal matter. During our journey with the ‘My Life in

Video’ project, we tried to create a recipe for research that has

that spark. We decided to put some common research beliefs

when it comes to gathering consumer insights to the test. By

investigating what we will further call in this paper ‘research

myths’, we aimed to discover best practices on how to best

generate new consumer insights that can serve a

springboard for innovation and brand activation.

Research is about

solving problems

Myth #1

@INSITES

If we would ask research practitioners to

describe the business we are in, many of them

would claim that we help marketers and

consumer insights managers to solve a

marketing challenge. During the proposal stage

and in the kick-off meeting, our client explains

their challenge as detailed as possible and in

the subsequent stages, we formulate an answer

on the stated problem based on research data.

But are we really in the business of problem

solving?

Recent thinking coming from a world that is

completely different from research but breathes

inspiration and creativity (being the world of art),

suggests that our focus on problem solving

is limiting us to create inspirational

research. In his latest book, Pink (2012)

describes the following experiment explaining

why:

Research is about solving problems

“In the 60’s, social scientists Jacob Getzels and

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recruited three dozen

fourth-year art students for an experiment. They

brought the young artists into a studio with two

large tables. The first table displayed 27 eclectic

objects that the school used in its drawing

classes. The students were instructed to select

one or more objects, then arrange a still life on

the second table and draw it.What happened

next reveals an essential pattern about how

creativity works: The young artists approached

their task in two distinct ways. Some examined

relatively few objects, outlined their idea swiftly,

and moved quickly to draw their still life. Others

took their time. They handled more objects,

turned them this way and that, rearranged them

several times, and needed much longer to

complete the drawing. As Csikszentmihalyi saw

it, the first group was trying to solve a problem:

How can I produce a good drawing? The second

was trying to find a problem: What good drawing

can I produce? As Csikszentmihalyi then

assembled a group of art experts to evaluate the

resulting works, he found that the problem-

finders’ drawings had been ranked much higher

in creativity than the problem-solvers’.

Ten years later, the researchers tracked down

these art students, who at that point were

working for a living, and found that about half

had left the art world, while the other half had

gone on to become professional artists. That

latter group was composed almost entirely of

problem-finders. Another decade later, the

researchers checked in again and discovered

that the problem-finders were “significantly

more successful — by the standards of the

artistic community — than their peers. Getzels

concluded: It is in fact the discovery and

creation of problems rather than any superior

knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship

that often sets the creative person apart from

others in his field.”

The parallel with our research world is

obvious: we are so focused on solving the

research problem that we forget about

problem creation. Often we cannot be

inspirational because we did not understand

sufficiently what would create this positive

disruption among the users of research. We

are experts in doing research with consumers,

but we forget to research our client!

So how can we engage in better problem

creation? Let me start by saying that it will not be

easy. When it comes to generating insights, most

clients would agree that they are looking into

research to detect something they did not know

before. This implies that they can tell you what they

already know, but are unable to tell you what they

don’t know. The latter is often the problem. In

addition, several internal stakeholders can be

spread across countries, making it harder to collect

all relevant information needs.

Better problem creation

If we want research to be more impactful, we should

not think in silos; we rather need to know how the

research fits within the strategic focus of the

company.In the ‘My Life in Video’ project, we

decided to engage in problem creation by engaging

Telefonica employees in a mind map exercise (Fig

1). Several people in the company got access to an

online portal where they were asked to collaborate

with their colleagues in a couple of challenges

helping us to clarify the research goals. The

challenges could generally be divided into two

buckets. The first was to capture current knowledge

of video consumer communication. Telefonica

Comms Services employees could for example add

their own predictions to the outcome of the research

or create archetypes of the current and future users

of digital and video communication. The second

challenge set was focused on how this project could

lead to action. People were asked for example to

describe how they could use this project in their daily

work or how they could engage in a collective SWOT

analysis.Fig 1. Mind-mapping tool

To start with, a total of 37 employees took part in the mind-mapping exercise,

adding 253 relevant entries to the collaboration tool. This number exceeds

normal participation in a kick-off meeting meaning that this approach lead to an

increased internal buy-in for the study even before starting.

It helped us identify common beliefs in the organization and spot polarized

opinions that would allow us to create a positive disruption with the research.

At the reporting stage, we were therefore able to contrast internal

perceptions on certain consumer topics with the findings. For example,

one of the deliverables that the research lead to was the development of

needs-based segmentation. Upfront in the mind-mapping exercise, we asked

Telefonica Comms employees to describe current and future users and non-

users of video communication. Based on the input of the mind map, we created

a first set of personas – existing only in the head of the employees prior to the

research. When our Consumer Consulting Boards were finished, we compared

them with the segments based on the research data highlighting gaps and

similarities with previous thinking.

So, did our time spent on problem creation pay off?

1.

2.

The additional research stage helped us make the research more impactful

by focusing on the right topics from the start. We decided to adapt the initial

conversation guide by adding 3 new topics and fine-tuning 7 of the existing

topics. It also helped us to narrow down our gaze during analysis focusing

on those consumer stories that were most relevant for the different internal

stakeholders. Overall, we did not just decide to answer research questions

put forward at the start of the research, but extended our scope. Upon

presentation, our study appeared to be a hit because it did NOT give

answers. It was powerful because it helped the organization to raise the

right strategic questions. An example: one of the outcomes of the

research was that in a world where consumer privacy is often neglected,

Telecom providers are perceived by consumers as taking privacy and data

security seriously. This made Telefonica Comms Services pursue this

message in marketing communications.

Overall, we can conclude that research is only partial about problem solving.

Problem creation is equally important and deserves more attention!

3.

Big data leads to

big insights

Myth #2

@INSITES

When looking at the research industry, we have

focused predominantly on collecting data. In

our struggle to engage consumers in research, we

have invested in new research techniques such as

research communities, mobile surveys and

social media data harvesting. Today, we can

even add tons of behavioral data to that package.

We talk about ‘big data’ where we try to

interconnect different sources into enormous data

ecosystems. But has our focus on more data truly

increased our chances of finding golden nuggets? In

order to investigate this research belief, it is

important to make a distinction between data

and insights. When we talk about data we refer to

factual observations that can come from many

sources. It can be a percentage found in

quantitative research, a consumer quote originating

from in-depth interviews, a picture uploaded in an

ethnography study, a type of complaint received

most frequently by the customer care center, a click-

through rate on your website, etc.

Big data lead to big insights?

What is important is that it is objective. It contains

no judgment or explanation and is free from

feeling or thoughts. Observations need an

interpretation before you can turn them into

insights (Fig 2). An insight is an

understanding of the inner nature of things,

leading to a discovery of something that is not

obvious yet but at the same time recognizable and

real, providing the basis for actionable marketing

decisions, ultimately leading to competitive

advantage (Verhaeghe et al., 2013).

Fig 2. The process of turning data into insights

The ultimate question to research this myth is the extent to which a lot of data also

lead to more meaningful observations or can only be considered as more noise. We

decided to put the data we had collected for the ‘My Life in Video’ project to the

test by analyzing to what extent each of the 957 posts truly contributed to

finding new insights by giving them a rating from 1 to 5. We came to the following

conclusions:

Big = Meaningful + Noise

55% of our data could be considered as noise (obtaining a 1 or 2 out of 5 score).

They consisted of three types of contributions: a minority were posts that were off-topic.

Next, we had a set of conversations that needed to ensure the smooth functioning of the

Consumer Consulting Board but did not immediately contribute to any results. This could

be a conversation in the social lounge or questions from participants on how to handle a

certain task. A substantial part of the posts however did not add anything interesting to

use for further ‘insighting’. They were typically posts that were a description of

communication that did not reveal any clues on the ‘why’ behind the behavior (e.g. ‘My

last video communication was with my mother on Sunday using FaceTime’) or posts that

described well-known communication facts (‘I feel laptop is better than mobile as part of

video communication because the laptop screen is big and much clearer than mobile’).

They were also dominantly neutral in sentiment. It was not that the participants

necessarily did a bad job in participating, but the input they provided did not immediately

help us with our research challenge. As results only 45% of the contributions

helped in shaping the final insights we found on the adoption of video

communication and hence could be considered as meaningful. It meant that at

least one insight that made it to the final report was based on this observation.

1.

2. With only 28% of all posts made in the ‘My Life in Video’ project, we would

have obtained exactly the same results. The difference between a rating 3, 4 or 5

was based on the uniqueness of the contributions taking similar criteria into account that

were put forward by Weger and Canary (2010). The 5-star rating was most valuable

since it meant that this post lead to the discovery of an insight that we did not encounter

before in the community. Only 13% of the posts met this ‘freshness’ criterion. A post

obtained a 4 out of 5 if it helped further refining an insight that we already built based on

previous posts. 15% of the posts belonged to that bucket. The 3 out of 5 ratings were

posts that were a pure repetition of what had been set before. It did add to building the

final insights, but since many people in the community already reported this before, our

final report would not have been different if this contribution was not there. They

encompassed 17% of the posts.

Our results show that even in a set of data which cannot even be considered as big (‘only’

957 posts), we already have a lot of ‘waste’. This illustrates the power of even one single

observation to come to a powerful insight (Willems, Schillewaert and De Ruyck, 2013).

Although future benchmarking with other studies is needed, we do not believe that the

results in the ‘My Life in Video’ project are exceptional in any kind. Moreover, we

realize that this analysis is not a proof that recent big data approaches cannot lead to big

insights. We would however like to make a case for small data with less noise or duplicates.

Having a lot of data is neither the Holy Grail for insight detection nor a guarantee for

impactful research. Our focus should be on getting more meaningful data that helps

us to really make a change.

Only expert users

can help us

detect insights

Myth #3

@INSITES

It is a common belief that advanced users of

a product can help us detect more

unusual use cases (Von Hippel, 1986 and

2005). Since they have a more in-depth

experience with the topic and often are early

adopters, they can teach us a lot about which

needs new innovations fulfil. Alternatively, one

could argue that it does not matter whether a

person is an ‘expert user’ or not, as long as he

or she is engaged in the project. In this case,

this would mean that getting more

meaningful data is a matter of getting

people to post more often on different

topics and put more effort into longer

posts.

Expert users vs. engaged participants

Although all participants in the community

had an affinity with the topic (Willems,

Schillewaert and De Ruyck, 2013), there

was considerable variation in the extent to

which they already used digital and video

communication. Therefore we decided to

check if more relevant posts came

from more advanced users of digital

and video communication or if

participant engagement factors like

average post length or total number of

contributions were more determining.

The general linear model we created based

on the data (Fig 3) appeared to be significant,

with a predictive power of 76%. Only two of

our determinants were significant: the

average post length and the total number of

contributions to the project. Those were the

two key parameters describing participant

engagement in the project. This means that

participants who are more engaged in the

project, also posted information that leads to

insights more often. We did not find any

significant effect of expertise with digital

or video communication. Our results

suggest that a good insight can come from

anybody as long as you get them

engaged. We need to create the right

conditions to get people involved because our

analysis shows that engaged people will

make more relevant contributions!

Fig 3: General linear model explaining which factor in a Consumer Consulting Board

contributes to insight detection

Post relevance = percentage of posts from one participant that have a 4- or 5-star rating

Average length = average character length of posts from one participant

Number of topics = number of topics or research challenges a participant took part in

Usage of digital communication = degree to which a participant is a light or advanced digital

communication user

Usage of video communication = degree to which a participant is a light or advanced video

communication user

This conclusion was also

confirmed by looking at

the relevance of posts

over the lifetime of the

community, we could

observe a pattern of

peaks of ‘relevant posts’

over time in both

communities (see Fig 4

for an example in

Mexico). Analysis of the

peaks revealed that they

typically appeared oneFig 4: Relevance (percentage 4- and 5-star ratings) over time in the Mexican ‘My Life in Video’ community

day after giving new research challenges to participants meaning that burst of ‘meaningfulness’ can

be obtained by stimulating our participants to think harder and better. Overall, our results

show that any consumers can contribute as long as they are triggered in the right way. Again,

we do not claim that using extreme users in research does not have any value. It is just not a necessary

condition to find powerful insights!

The best way to find

insights is by probing

current behavior

Myth #4

@INSITES

Bringing our participants outside their

comfort zone

A standard approach to find insights is to

invite the participant ‘on the Freudian

couch’ and stimulate them to reflect on

their latent needs and desires. In the ‘My

Life in Video’ project, this meant that we

would ask people to report and reflect on

their daily communication means. One can

wonder if studying only current consumer

behavior will not only lead to discovering

what is already known. An additional pitfall

of this approach is that you do not learn

much about how to break away from habits.

Moreover, in typical ethnographic or in-

depth interview settings, we can only

collect information on communication

habits that people remember at the

moment of the research, so gathered in

a specific context and mood.

We belief that one way to get more diverse

data is by NOT investigating current

consumer behavior, but by bringing

our participants outside their comfort

zone. This could be done by engaging them

in activities they are not used to and by

allowing them to take part in research in

different contexts. We tested the potential of

this approach within the ‘My Life in

Video’ project by introducing mobile only

‘do it now’ tasks. At certain moments

during the fieldwork, consumers got a

challenge they had to complete within a

limited time frame. By putting them under

time pressure and enabling the challenge

with mobile, they were stimulated to report

about their communication habits in a

different context than they would

usually do. Next to asking them to report

on their daily communication habits in the

heat of the moment, Fig 5: Example ‘do it now’ task

we also applied activation tasks where consumers

were, for example, asked to place video calls as

replacement of other ways of digital

communication than they were used to. This way

we hoped to learn more on speeding up the

adoption of video communications.

The ‘do it now’ tasks proved to be very

successful in obtaining more diversified

data. When comparing the number of tags to a

certain post, the ‘do it now’ tasks obtained 36%

new tags that did not pop up in the other

research challenges. People reported using

more communication devices and alternative

goals for the communication that were not

mentioned before. Qualitative analysis clearly

indicated that the heat of the moment consumer

feedback often lead to a less staged

representation of consumer behavior.

Example: in one of the tasks consumers were

asked to describe a typical day in their life. As

shown in Fig 6, they typically reported

aspects they did not think of before such as

playing with the cat or oversleeping. Being

in the right context stimulated participants to

report different things than they would otherwise

do.

Fig 6: Example ‘day in my life’ task obtained through ‘do it now’ tasks

We found that the activation tasks that

challenged consumers to do something

outside of their comfort zone lead to

meaningful contributions that were not

discovered before. They basically triggered

participants to imagine a potential future with

video communication by experiencing it first

hand, which helped them realize which

barriers or triggers would help them adopt this

technology more rapidly. Example: one of the

British participants reported on having video-

called with his friend during an actual Chelsea

football game to experience the game

together, yet still apart. During the experience

only did he realize that one barrier for this

specific usage of video communication

for him was the level of concentration: he had

a hard time focusing on the game and having

visual input from his friend.

Our findings suggest that insight generation is best

done by exploring different consumer contexts

preferable also outside normal consumer

behavior. We do not claim that we should abandon

classic approaches towards ethnography but we

should at least strive for more diversity on what we do

with our participants.

Only researchers

can turn

data into insights

Myth #5

@INSITES

Participant as co-researcher?

Despite more empowered methodologies of

doing research, getting insights out of the

data is still an exclusive job for the

researcher. Our participants provide us with

data and it is up to the researcher to decide

which data are meaningful and to turn them into

insights. But what if we would allow

participants to help us out with this

process? If we would explain upfront to

participants as co-researcher what we are

looking for, we could maybe get a reduced

amount of noise and more meaningful data.

Moreover, if we would ask consumers not only to

report on their own behavior, but also on what

they observe among others, we include not only

communication habits from people who are

willing to take part in research, but also

observations from people who are less easy to

recruit for online ethnography (such as the

elderly or people who are more reluctant towards

using digital communication in general).

Moreover, maybe they would come up with

different interpretations and insights by

looking at the same reality with their own

individual perspective. We decided to set

up a separate condition where

participants could do the observation

in groups. They got similar challenges as

other participants in the research, but were

asked to build further on each other’s

observations. They were stimulated to add

conclusions based on what they observed in

their environment and not just to give

feedback on their own habits. In addition, we

provided them with a framework to

both report meaningful observations

and make interpretations.

The networked communication lead to almost

half of the amount of data in comparison with

the individual sessions. What is important

however is that we obtained the same

richness: by using the power of the crowd

to observe their environment, we

discovered exactly the same amount of

relevant data as in the individual

condition, but with a lot less effort. For

the moderator, it was easier to moderate the

group observation than to dig into all the

individual blogs. Moreover, we had to digest

far less data during analysis. Hence, by

involving consumers as co-researchers, we

could reduce the noise versus signal data ratio

significantly.

What’s the result?

It is important nonetheless to mention that

success depended largely on the country. In

Mexico the networked observation worked

significantly better than in the UK. Participants

were really building on each other’s conclusions,

whereas in the UK community people often kept

on adding similar observations. Although

further research is required to clarify the

parameters to make group observation a

success, we have two theories:

Firstly, when looking for example at Hofstede (Hofstede,

n.d.) dimensions describing cultural differences in values,

we learn that the Mexican culture is far more oriented

towards collectivism than the British culture - which is

more individualistic. This orientation could entail that

the social condition of group observation suits

Mexican participants better than the individual

reporting mode. A second explanation can be found

in the group dynamics. The British group was

characterized by fewer interactions between community

members.

They mainly interacted with the moderator but

the social glue was difficult to increase. The

Mexican community by contrast showed much

more collaboration between members. One

explanation for the different dynamics

might be the different motivation of

participants in the target countries to

take part in the consumer consulting

board (Deci and Ryan, 1985). We noticed

from the start that the Mexican group was

dominated by participants who like to socialize

or find it important to show their topic

expertise to the others, whereas the UK group

consisted of participants interested in new

communication technologies. The more outer-

directed participants (socially or reputation

motivated) in Mexico made efforts to really

collaborate with each other, especially at the

beginning of the community. They used the

knowledge of the more topic-directed

community members to increase the

strength of the group instead of their

individual postings (see Fig 7).

Fig 7: Evolving group dynamics in the Mexican group

Our results suggest that having outer-oriented

participants is an important condition to get

group observations started. They form the

necessary social glue between participants. Our

results show that a more in-depth collaboration with

consumers where we make them an ‘insider’ in

turning data into insights is definitely beneficial. We

must admit however that this myth is not completely

busted. Although we found a more efficient way of

finding meaningful data, our approach did not lead

to new insights in comparison with the

benchmark. Moreover, actually turning the data into

insights could not be taken over by consumers. They

were powerful companions in pointing out

where to put our attention and helped out to

give potential interpretations but did not deliver

us insights ready for our report.

Our work is done

when we present

the results

Myth #6

@INSITES

Inside-out vs outside-in

Market researchers often see their role within an

organization merely as a facilitator between the

business and the external agency. They facilitate

the selection of a vendor, manage the project and

deliver the report at the end of the research. In

contrast to this vision, we would like to claim that

the research only really starts once the

results have been presented. As mentioned

before, even when we involve stakeholders in

problem creation or use approaches to get more

meaningful data, there is still a huge challenge

to create an impact from that research. It is

therefore crucial to have an internal

champion on the client side that helps to

change the culture of an organization from

one that thinks inside-out to one that has an

outside-in vision.

Within the ‘My Life in Video’ project we were lucky to have this kind of ‘chief consumer

officer’ (De Ruyck, 2014) whose role is to activate peer employees to take relevant action.

How was this achieved? To begin with, as in contemporary marketing, careful content planning

that takes the needs of different departments into consideration was mandatory. Therefore the

initial research report was ‘translated’ in four different ways:

A report containing all details on the research was passed on to researchers in the company.

Those people also got the chance to access the research community and see some of the

participant contributions first hand.

The product owners within the Telefonica group got a distilled version where the implication of

the research for their specific technology or product was highlighted.

Condensed reporting was foreseen for management highlighting strategic challenges that

were put forward based on the research.

General interest for the research was evoked by creating some more digestible

information that was made available for the entire organization. For example, an infographic

was created to visualize key results and generate additional interest for the research on a

larger scale.

Rich

Analyzed

Condensed

Popularized

Next we tried to bring the consumer into the hearts of employees by organizing an event where

consumers and employees of Telefonica Digital could meet in real life. As a marketer or product

manager, it is easy to lose track of consumer reality. Despite research results, we often make decisions

based on ourselves as consumers or on people around us. Organizing a physical meet up with the

research participants might help to get people out of that ivory tower. Through several sessions,

product managers had the chance to share with the participants the innovations they had been

working on and also to get some firsthand feedback. Afterwards a speed-dating session was organized

between consumers and product owners to elaborate on the research and product info sessions. This

speed dating allowed for more informal contact between the employees and the consumers.

The different formats of presenting the research made it

possible for the outcome of the research to find its way to a

larger number of internal teams than usual. The constant

work of our internal ambassador also meant that months after the

research had been conducted, the news on ‘have you heard about

the consumer video research’ was still spreading and inbound

requests from other parts of the organization found its way to the

insight department as a result. On top of the mileage Telefonica

Comms Services got out of the research, some ‘power slides’

from the final report started circulating in product

presentations. We learned that slides that went viral often

contained insights that helped make existing presentations more

credible. The voice of the consumer was therefore used to support

and leverage internal ideas.

As mentioned before, evangelizing the research

results is a continuous process. At this very moment,

when writing this paper, the following impact of the work

of our consumer chief officer could be observed:

1.

We were not only able to change the minds but also the hearts of the

Telefonica Comms Services team. Especially the offline consumer event

created a positive disruption with key stakeholders. Telefonica Comms Services

employees work in a cocoon of technological inspiration. They get confronted

on a daily base with the newest and most thought provoking

innovations. For them, attending the consumer event was a reality check: they

were confronted with the fact that the technical understanding of consumers on

how communication works was far more limited than they anticipated. Despite

the research report that supported these findings, hearing a consumer

paraphrasing certain key conclusions in his or her own words appeared to be so

much more powerful to evoke that mental shift.

Our research did not really impact how the technological side of the video

communication products Telefonica Comms Services will evolve. This is where

the role of the expert at Telefonica Digital lays. The research had a direct

impact on fine-tuning future video communication offerings. Our work piece

is being used to help better position the different video

communication products to consumers. As such, it had not only changed

the hearts and minds of employees but it also triggered action.

2.

3.

Creating research that sparks

Despite the fact that as an industry we are experts in

finding new consumer insights, we often still fail in

creating an impact. We do not always succeed in

delivering something new and refreshing and fail to

inspire internal stakeholders to act upon the research.

Our experiments in the ‘My Life in Video’

project illustrate that we will not be able to be

more inspirational by conducting our research

over and over again in the same way. In our

journey towards more inspirational research, we will

need to spend more time in researching our

clients before we dig into solving the research

problem. Although methodologies to research

consumers are well developed, we still have a lot to

learn when it comes to our client research toolbox. It

will be about researching new techniques that

trigger consumers to contribute with data that are

meaningful and lead to something refreshing and

inspiring. Our findings suggest that the solution

should not only be found in bigger volumes of

data but can lay in getting more meaning out of

small data by smart probing of consumers or

even involving our consumers as co-

researchers.

And last but not least, it is about the realization that

only half of the work is done upon the

presentation of the results. We are in need of

consumer chief officers who apply content marketing

on research data and constantly look for ways in

which they can bring the voice of consumers alive

within organizations. Will we succeed? It is clear that

on our road to research that sparks, we will

need to develop new skills that go far beyond an

in-depth knowledge of methods, tools and

analysis techniques. It will also imply courage to

leave the beaten tracks. It is time for a generation of

brave researchers on both client and agency sides to

venture onto new research tracks. As with many things

in life, the magic starts outside our comfort zone.

References

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Willems, A., Schillewaert, S. and De Rucyk (2013). Always-on research. online]. Available:

http://www.insites-consulting.com/presentation/always-on-research/

Thijs Van de Broek

Research Consultant

InSites Consulting

Natalie Malevsky

Product Strategy

Telefonica Digital

Annelies Verhaeghe

Head of Research Innovation

and Managing partner

InSites Consulting

www.insites-consulting.com

Thank you!

@InSites

marketing@insites-consulting.com

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