• by Lisa Seward , December 2, 2008

Here's a phrase you don't often hear: "I had the best customer-service experience the other day." But I really did, and it made me think about how rarely marketing communications actually serve consumers' needs in a valuable way.

I won't walk you through my entire customer-service tale; suffice to say it involved a cell phone service rep who intervened on my behalf, pushing my handset maker to take care of some issues I was having at start-up. It would have been surprising enough had the handset people provided this level of service, but it was truly astonishing that the cell-company rep, someone with little to gain other than my goodwill, took the initiative. I emerged from the experience impressed and cemented to my brand-new cell provider in a way I rarely feel toward utilities. I even took the rare step of calling the service rep's supervisor to praise her.

Weeks later, I find myself comparing that experience to the many I have with marketers and their communications, both as a member of this industry and as a civilian. Few marketers seem to get what I need and want in the way that service rep did. But "insights" is a hot topic in advertising circles now, so why are we still seeing so many lame programs? Why the disconnect between all these good intentions and the actual flat-footed campaign executions?

I have a theory. Actually, it's a combination of three hypotheses, closely interrelated: First, while most in our business today say they seek insights, far too few know what that really means. Second, many lack the resourcefulness and facility with various methodologies to glean genuine insights. Third, even when a big "aha" is reached, even fewer know how to make it actionable in terms of communication ideas.

Let's consider that first part: What, exactly, is an insight? It's not a fact, or a data point, or even a particularly intelligent conclusion. Insight shouldn't be confused with knowledge; it is more akin to understanding and even, in the best cases, intuition. It requires a leap from the merely factual or rational - for example, what a consumer does or says - to get to a penetrating identification of the motivations behind those actions or words. In other words, the why that drives your consumer prospects. When you accept this, you can see why media people might not be the most adept at gleaning insights. It's a softer science than many of us are comfortable with, so it's tempting to stop short of the squishy stuff and tell ourselves that the smart observations we've made are insights. But today, consumers run the marketing show, so our ability to make real intuitive leaps about what they want and need is more crucial than ever.

Moving on to Hypothesis Part Two: methodology. Simply put, there's more to life than focus groups. Somewhere along the way, people in our business grabbed onto the idea that the in-person focus group is the single ticket for getting inside the heads of consumers. This is not only untrue, it's also an expensive assumption. One can glean plenty of insight without doing any proprietary research at all. (Just try scouring consumer opinion sites and blogs.) And should you decide to conduct your own research, consider tech-enabled solutions that reach wider and deeper than a handful of focus groups can (and often less expensively). The goal of this work is simply to have enough understanding to apply your own intuition in an informed way.

Any insight's value is measured by our ability to apply it to communications programs that work harder because they tap consumers' most deeply rooted needs and motivations. Today, this calls for inventing wholly original solutions rather than tinkering with old formulas. If all we're going to do with our hard-won insight is change a headline or modify a daypart mix, we might as well not even try for it in the first place.

I doubt my Verizon rep had a manual saying, "Sit on hold with the handset maker for two hours so your customer doesn't have to." But through some brilliant blend of intellect and intuition, she did it anyway. Her reward is an incredibly loyal customer who will continue to share this story. Here's hoping more advertising people and marketers begin to trust their instincts as much as she did.