Hello again. Welcome to our session on consumers. In order to fully appreciate this session, you need to be aware of all the important lessons from the first module on segmentation and motivation. So, you either take time to go back and refresh your memory or bring out any notes you made on segmentation. This is because, at its very basic, a consumer insight refers to the fundamental motivation the category and the brand are tapping into. Consumer insights are points of deep emotional leverage that brands can connect to in order to drive action. A Purchase Act for example. This is important when talking about branding, and insight is the one single aspect which we use to gain competitive advantage. It is not a nice to know. Often, in the process of discovering and insight, you can end up with several valid insights. A brand will always, always, always use the one that will be the source of competitive advantage. It is typical we're working with consumer insights that you will mention either your category or your brand. This is not only not needed but it actually hurts the true meaning of consumer insights, which are much deeper and which belong to the person. All of us are people. If someone were to describe us, they wouldn't describe us as they buy deodorant, would they? They would talk about what we care about, what we give importance to, what makes us tick, what we hate. The secret to good consumer insight is getting to that level of depth about a consumer, so we may connect with them. In our quest for a good consumer insight, we typically encounter five barriers. We tend to target so broadly it ends up being completely meaningless. We also tend to leap into insight from a purely demographic or behavioral target description. We saw how wrong this was when we worked on segmentation. Remember, businesses make money when people do things not when they are things. If we are able to explain why they do things in the first place, what motivates them, then we're truly getting to core insight. We also tend to be superficial, not observing broadly enough. People use umbrellas in the rain. This is the obvious part. But why are they using umbrellas? Because they don't want to get wet. Okay. Why don't they want to get wet? Because they are afraid of falling ill. Why are they afraid of falling ill? And so on and so forth. We avoid also questioning deep enough, stopping short in our relentless why. When looking for insights you have to be like a two-year-old, ask why until there are no more layers left for you to understand. Also, we get ourselves with our values and our prejudices in the way, we judge before we understand. So, how do I know if I'm on the right track to a true consumer insight? Well, you have to ask yourself, if I knew only one saying this one thing about my consumer, could I offer the most delightful complement or the most painful insult? As such, insights will tend to be psychological, empathetic, and explanatory. They will never be behavioral or judgmental or descriptive. It is worth remembering that consumer insights are not ownable, exclusive, or temporary. They do not belong to the brand. They belong to the person, that some brands will inevitably make a better use of them. They are also the foundation for action but not action in themselves and they are never the strategy. But a good strategy, branding or marketing, needs to be clear about the consumer insight in order to drive action. One final thing, insights are always framed in consumer language. Be ready to open and close quotes and write the inside as it were a verbatim and directly spoken by your consumer. Unnerving and writing a consumer insight is a difficult task and it requires practice. Only practice makes perfect. So, start practicing as we speak. Get hold of some print advert, some TV adverts, even a pack, and start thinking who is behind this initiative and what is their core insight, the one thing that defines them all.
