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The Power of Insights to Gain a Competitive Advantage with Brett Townsend, Quester: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Sep 03, 2024

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we’re talking the power of insights to gain a competitive advantage with Brett Townsend. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: The Power of Insights to Gain a Competitive Advantage with Brett Townsend, Quester

Insights can be a huge competitive advantage for your business or brand. When you first understand how you can make the lives of your customers better, you can then sell them your products and services as ways to deliver the emotional impact. But what makes a good insight? Do focus groups still work? How has market research changed over the years? We wanted you to learn from an expert who knows the insights industry better than anyone, so we welcomed on Brett Townsend, SVP of Strategy at Quester. He’s also the Co-Author of the new book, Insights on the Brink: Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry. This episode covers everything from insights to focus groups. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Why are companies relying less on insights?
  • Is market research a commodity?
  • Are focus groups still valuable?
  • What’s the best form of market research interviews?
  • How do you find the best insights?
  • What makes a good insight?
  • How do you focus on your target customer while trying different marketing campaigns?
  • David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:00
This is Marketing Smarts, a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader, no matter your level. And each episode will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We will also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to marketing smarts. I am Anne Candido and I am April Martini, and today we’re going to talk about the power of insights, and specifically how they can be used to gain a competitive advantage. Now, many approach sales as an Inside Out exercise, it, meaning they sell based on the specific attributes of the product and services and what they do, and this usually leads into a commodity trap. Effective sales is actually an outside in exercise, meaning you first understand how you can make the lives of your consumers, customers, clients, better. This is the inside piece, and then you sell that, leveraging your products and services a way to deliver the emotional impact. So this approach differentiates you from the masses. It helps you form to relationships and allows you to command higher prices. Yes, and before we really get into things here

April Martini 1:08
Let me first define what an insight is. If you listen to our podcast or know me at all, you know this is a big point of contention for me, because people often cite observations as insights. When it comes to insights, they are a culmination of what you observe and hear. When you watch and speak to your consumer or customer or client, you’re looking for patterns, asking why, until you get to the heart of what matters to them and the emotional impact you can then have as a result of all the things that they tell you, this is when you are at a true insight, you will never, and I actually said this on a call today, you will never get an insight from your consumer customer or client that just comes out of their mouth. That is not an insight. That is what we would call an observation. When that happens, what we tell people is that is actually a missed opportunity to make an emotional connection. And one of the things we often cite, just for simplicity’s sake, is Nike sells shoes a thing, right? But what they’re really selling, what that insight is, is the belief that anyone that wears their gear can be an athlete. That is that crux of the emotional connection that came from the insight that that was where they were really connecting with their consumers. So I will shut up now, but I’ll have more to say as we go. I’m sure

Anne Candido 2:24
you will. So to help us with this topic, we have a special guest, and that is Brett Townsend of Quester strategy, and he’s also the co author of the new book Insights on the Brink: revitalizing the market research and analytics industry. So hey, Brett, nice to have you on the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Brett Townsend 2:41
Sure, it’s nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Brett Townsend, I’m really excited about the book that I co wrote with my friend Tim Hoskins, who’s the president of questor, had a over 25 year career and insights on both the agency and the corporate side. Corporately, I worked at PepsiCo Electrolux and Lowe’s home improvement, and then kind of book ended that corporate career with experience on the agency sides. Actually started my career in sports broadcasting. That’s what my undergrad was in. Oh, wow. And I’ve had a fun life of varied experiences.

Anne Candido 3:13
Nice, yeah, we share that the corporate gone agency, back to corporate, back to agency, kind of flip flopping experience. So I’m sure we’ll have a lot to speak on that front as well. So with that, let’s get into the power of insights to gain competitive advantage. And so Brett, when we talk to prep for this episode, you mentioned that many companies are shoving insights away, and I want to really just kind of understand from you, like, Why do you think that is? What are the implications you’re seeing too as a result of this,

Brett Townsend 3:43
I place the blame on the insights industry as to why companies are pushing insights away, because it’s kind of to your earlier point, April, is that we too often get caught up in talking about data or information or observations, and We don’t deliver insight all the time, and when we do, we’re more focused on methodologies or charts or graphs or things and and I think the one thing that a lot of insights people don’t realize is they are there to help their companies make money, period. And if they’re not contributing to the bottom line, if CEOs and other senior leaders can’t see how they are helping the business, then they’re just going to cut budgets, cut staff, do away with it completely, because they care about outcomes. And historically, the industry has not really focused on,

April Martini 4:34
yeah, I mean, I think it’s obviously you’re speaking my language, because I already had my rant at the beginning of the episode. But I mean, we see the same sort of thing, and I think on the other side of the insights teams not delivering, it’s the pressure of doing something right. So we wrapped up a 10 part creative series this summer, and one of the conversations, or one of the threads that seemed to happen was. Is, it’s great that we have all these tools and things at our disposal, but they can’t replace the work or the art of what we do, or the human side, or whatever you want to call it, and so you can’t just just, similarly to what I said about you can’t hope that your consumer is going to give you an insight. You can’t surpass it and say, Well, we have this digital tool or, you know, AI always comes into the conversation, or whatever, you know, we need to be there now. Our competition’s there now, wherever that is, you know. Or we need a new website. It all becomes about the things. Instead of taking the time to take a step back and say, why do we think we want these things? What’s the rationale? What’s the deeper, you know, meaning of things, all of those kinds of things, I think, get missed in this hurry to chase dollar, be faster, whatever. But none of that is really meaningful when you talk about those deeper connections. I don’t know if you have thoughts there. Brett, yeah,

Brett Townsend 5:54
well, and when you talked about commodities, you know, a little bit earlier market research is a commodity. You know, every agency, every company, can do all of the different methods and techniques. I mean, everybody does conjoin, everybody does discrete choice, Max, diff. I mean, market research is a commodity, and so it’s really but, but insights, analytics, storytelling, are not and that’s where the true insights leaders are separating themselves and being able to really deliver on those insights, the why behind everything you know. I always say that the insights professional should be like three year old kids, you know, and just like, Why? Why? Why, you know. And just always kind of getting to that and and I think we because of the kind of historical background of the industry. It came from academia and from clinicians. And so the emphasis for decades has been on the methodology. It hasn’t been on making companies money. Because, you know, the academics and the clinicians were just judged on, does the methodology work, but they were never held responsible for what the outcomes were in this day and age, like you said, we are held responsible for those outcomes, and those outcomes need to lead to great consumer solutions. They need to lead the company profitability. They need to give companies direction on how to activate marketing, messaging and advertising and new products, and so if we’re not focused on the right things, then that ends up happening.

Anne Candido 7:34
Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I obviously grew up at P&G, and if we didn’t invent consumer research, we definitely perfected it in some manner, I think, and spent a lot of time in products research, doing exactly what you’re talking about. And if I was going to really dissect what made good research and what made ineffective research, I would say it’s in the art of the listening. It’s really understanding and listening for what’s being said, but also what’s not being said, or what’s the emotion that’s being generated as a result of what’s being said. And really taking that in any kind of a 360-degree, kind of comprehensive purview, really trying to then highlight the connectivity between the things that you’re actually presenting and the things that you’re actually listening for, what tended to be on the other side of that was a bunch of confirmation bias, right where you go in wanting to hear certain things, or kind of not even sometimes intentionally, and a lot of times it’s inattention, but kind of setting up the research in order to kind of lead the Consumer to the direction that you wanted them to go to, or then interpreting the results in a certain way that kind of like you can, you can make any kind of conclusion based on the resource. I mean, my favorites when you when you take creative concepts and it’s like, strike out what you don’t like, underline what you do like, rate them one to five. And, you know, all these sorts of things. And you hope you’re going to generate some sort of insight from that. But really what you’re but really what you’re doing, to your point, is you’re going through a methodology to come out with an outcome that’s kind of confirming or not confirming, what you already thought or what you already wanted going in. So I feel like that continues to be something that is kind of stuck in the traditions of research and analytics, and, you know, when people kind of talk about the quote, unquote focus groups and all those sorts of things, so I really love to understand, for me, Brett, like, are those still the days of today, like, when we’re talking about, kind of going in and the methodologies of being able to sit in the back room and eat Eminem’s and watch people you know, Talk about your concepts, or, like, what is the new style of it now? What is, what do people and what do companies, or what do you recommend them start to gravitate towards in order to be able to come up with really good, true insights?

Brett Townsend 9:53
Unfortunately, there’s still too much of that going on. What you said, I mean, you would think that we have evolved. And I think. That’s kind of one of the themes of the book, is that we need to evolve as an industry to get beyond our where we were 50 years ago. And in many cases, we’re not. We’re using the same methodologies. We’re using those same techniques and expecting different outcomes, and it just doesn’t work and and I think part of the problem. So you said a lot in there that I was like taking some notes. I wanted to make sure I hit on a couple of things. He

April Martini 10:27
does that. Yeah, that’s great.

Brett Townsend 10:31
You know, I always say that we’re the opposite insights. People should be the opposite of lawyers. We should never ask questions we already know the answers to. You know, lawyers don’t want any surprises. We should be happy when we hear something that we don’t expect. You know, we’re not in high school where we’re following the scientific method, where you put forth your hypotheses, and then you test and you prove whether it’s right or wrong. And I think, to your point, the confirmation bias, the working the data to make it say what you want it to say, we’re only hearing what you want to hear, you know, or listening to the first focus group and what one person says, and you’re like, that’s it. We’re done, you know. And then they run off with that, you know. We should go into it extremely open minded to not, not try to prove or disprove any theory going into it, because that only lends itself to bias. At the end, we should go into it saying, I don’t what we’re going to fund, I don’t know what we’re going to learn, but we’re going to learn something. And let’s be open minded when we go in and we do that, and then that’s where you the listening comes in and those other things is like truly trying to hear what’s going on. And I think the word that wraps everything up that you said there, and at the beginning was empathy. There’s not a lot of empathy a lot of times in our in our profession, you know, there’s a lot of data, a lot of information, a lot of charts, as we’ve talked about, but there is no empathy in data. There is only empathy through listening and understanding and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your consumer, and only then can you really understand the solutions that you need to develop. You know, we think we’re trying to develop products, but really we’re trying to develop solutions that help consumers overcome a conflict that they have in their life. I mean, like one of the most deep meaning examples of this that I had in my career was when I was working at PepsiCo and I was working in the dollar channel, specifically with Dollar General and I was in homes and talked to dollar general consumers. And these are people who sometimes had to make a decision whether or not to pay the electric bill or buy food that month, or they have to park their cars halfway through the month because they can’t afford gas for the rest of the month if they’re going to feed their kids, that is real empathy. I mean, like when you can dig in because you’re not going to find that on a survey or anything else like that. You’re going to find that by listening, by continuing ask questions, by being very curious about their situation. And then you get to those situations, and then all of a sudden, the empathy takes over, and you’re like, All right, we need to develop something to help these people. That’s where the magic happens, and insights, I mean, that’s when you’re really coming up with solutions where you’re not necessarily being product centric, but you’re being consumer centric, and the empathy is what led you to that.

April Martini 13:29
I mean, I, too, have done my fair share of the in home circuit and all of those kinds of things, but I think your point is really well taken. You know, going back to asking the why, which we talk about constantly on the show and with our clients and across the board. But then the other piece about, you know, it not coming out on a survey, is you have to sort of prime those people to get them to a point when they’re willing to be that vulnerable with you, right? And so Anne, you brought up the whole like you come in with your five concepts, and you’re like, Okay, I know what I want here, and I know what I want to come out. And you know I’m going to serve it up to them, so that we can’t be wrong. But when you get to those points where you allow space, you’re actually really listening, and sometimes I think I like what you said about the empathy turns on, because those of us that have done this for a long time and believe in it and have practice at it. We also don’t always have to ask all the uncomfortable questions in those situations, right? Like we get to the point where we’re hearing the things that they are saying, we’ve gotten them to the point where they’re willing to be vulnerable, but it’s vulnerable enough that then it becomes our job to start asking the why, or the you know, how or what comes next, and doing the analysis on behalf of them to solve what is actually a critical issue for them, versus just sell more stuff, or, you know, whatever it is we’re trying to do. And I think that it’s very much of a balancing act of respecting and appreciating. Waiting Well, their time, their willingness to speak to you, all that kind of stuff, but then when we’re listening, we need to almost be solve, starting to solve at the same time, if that makes sense, and that’s what I mean too about you can’t ask the consumer to provide an insight. You also have to remember that they are people when we’re going through these exercises with them, and that the empathy needs to pay the respect to the fact that they’ve given you that level of information as someone they don’t even really know.

Brett Townsend 15:28
I feel very differently about how you go in home or how you do one on one interviews than has traditionally been the case. So the traditional way that you know I was originally trained, and how I know a lot of qualitative moderators are trained is you’re a detached third party, you stay professional, you don’t really get into things, you don’t reveal anything about yourself. You’re there to just gather information. And I don’t like that approach at all, because people aren’t going to be vulnerable, they’re not going to open up, they’re not going to give you the answers that you want, if they feel that you’re just some Hired Gun professional who’s coming in there, just taking up their time, and sure, you’re paying them 150 bucks or whatever to come over, but you’re not going to get what you need out of it. And so like, for instance, with these dollar general things that I would do, I would dress down as much as I could. I’d be wearing jeans and T shirts. I would sit in their room. We would just talk about them and their families. Before I asked any questions. I got to know them and their families. I told them about me, you know, I did. No, no, that is, well, oh, that’s what they said. But no, because, because the thing is, it’s like, you know, this is the cool thing, is that my wife is a mental wellness and mindset counselor and coach, and she gets people to open up to her and be incredibly vulnerable to her in her profession. And I have kind of taken a lot of that and moved it into when I do qualitative, because she asked questions. She’s intensely interested. She shares personal experiences with them to to empathize and to make them feel that, you know what, you’re not that unique. You’re not you know, there’s a lot of people who suffer with this. And so I took that approach when I would do qualitative interviews with people, and I would get amazing insights and feedback and conversations, and we would sometimes be there three hours just talking to people. I’ve had people say, hey, why don’t you stay for dinner? You know? Just those different kinds of things, you know. And so I think that’s one of those things where the traditional way of going about getting things is not the best way. And so I think that’s really a way that that I’ve learned to go about and do those things is just to help them feel comfortable and it’s okay to be personal and to share. And you know, it’s like any kind of friendship where you want to get something out of it, it’s like you’ve got to open up if you want them to open up. And traditionally, we’ve tried to to be as straight faced and oh yeah, don’t comment. Don’t say yes, don’t agree. Just go along with whatever they say. I’m like, No. And it kind of goes back into, what are we there for? Who are we there for? And you talk about they’re humans. We’re studying people and humans. They’re not robots. They’re not like, these, these detached, you know, people in a zoo that we’re just watching. They’re actual humans. And so I tell people, I’m like, how do you want to be a first How do you want to be taught to, you know, what shouldn’t we be talking to them the same way? And I’ve gotten into some nice, heated debates with some other people who disagree. And I’m like, Yeah, it’s fine, we can, we can agree to disagree, but that, in my experience, that has led to some incredibly rich conversations that have led to some great products, programs, marketing, messaging, because of how much I was able to understand.

Anne Candido 18:58
I love this, and I think it’s really telegraphically kind of reorienting insight mining in the world today, because a lot of stuff is so distant. I mean, focus groups are like today’s Social Media almost. It’s like that. That was the zoo, right? You were sitting even behind glass and everything. You’re watching everything kind of take form in front of you, and you’re doing your email and stuff like that. But I want to speak to something that you just said about the power of the one on one conversation. Because a lot of times people are like, well, but I need to have, like, 100 respondents. I need to, you know, go and I if I’m going to do one of them, means I’m going to be just doing this forever, and it’s going to be so expensive. And I want to bring up the power of what you just said. And this was preached at png all the time as well as like, if you recruit, well, if you find, if you’re really intentional about who you’re talking to, and you have a really good conversation with them, you only need a few of those to really start making very. Very Educated insights based on what you’re hearing, and then you can start to kind of test and learn against those, and kind of see what resonates. But so I think also like that that need to have like the statistical significance and able to write really have like the span across, because, of course, we market to everybody. So we need to talk to everybody. It’s like there’s something about being very intentional about who you’re recruiting, why you’re recruiting them, and really being able to focus in on how you’re going to deliver that to this group of people and get that right, and then you can move on to the next group of people, right? And I’m going to speak to that in a second, about why I think that’s important, and how it manifested itself on tie, what I worked at tide. But what do you have to say about format? What do you have to say about like, what I just said, I mean, is that the mentality you have, or do you have a different perspective on that? No,

Brett Townsend 20:52
I totally agree. And I think you being a P&G, me being a PepsiCo. I think both companies would argue who’s who really is the king of doing great. I

Anne Candido 21:00
think that there’s, there’s a clear one. I’m not going to like, you know,

April Martini 21:05
you’re going to go there. We only have another.

Brett Townsend 21:08
We only got so much time here to talk about that. But what I was going to say is, is that that’s where, you know, PepsiCo, what the things that we did there were very much aligned with what you did at P&G. And I think there’s a first thing is that it’s the understanding that we’re not there to talk to everyone or to sell to everyone. It’s, you know, insights has to define who is that target consumer that we’re going after. Because you can’t be all things to all people, because if you try to do that, you’re nothing to no one. You don’t stand for anything. You don’t have any purpose. So this whole thing about, Wow, we got to talk to everybody. We got to do Gen pop sampling? No, you don’t. You don’t at all. And so I think that’s the first thing to get at. And I totally agree, because some of the best work I’ve ever done in my career has been qualitative in nature. The problem is, is that, again, I’m going to go back to the industry history here, the insights industry has conditioned executives and other constituents that we have to expect big sample sizes, statistical significance, like you said, and where they don’t believe or trust qualitative data enough to action on. And that’s our fault, because, you know, for decades, we’ve been like, we’ve gotta have 1,000 sample size, we got to do all these things. It’s like, No, you don’t. You’re about getting insight. You’re not. It goes back to do we care more about the methodology or the insight? And that’s the thing. And so it took a lot of reconditioning of my peers and my bosses and senior level executives to say, this is amazing insight. Yeah, we only talk to 15 people, but we’ve got something so incredible here. We’ve got an amazing story that we can build on and action on. And the thing is, it’s going to take a lot of a lot more people in the industry standing up to these, these people who think they know enough to be dangerous about research, which a lot of senior executives will say and just say, No, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to waste time on enormously large Gen pop sampling, because that won’t tell us anything. We’ve got this amazing insight that we’ve learned, or these little things that we’ve gathered, and we can action on. We can absolutely go develop solutions based on what we’ve learned.

April Martini 23:20
Well, and I feel like the other part of that argument is that the risk is, is less today, right? And what I mean by that is, when we used to do those, we would be asking the businesses that we were working on, so I was on the agency side, right? So when I say we, we were asking you guys to take three months or whatever, right? And we’re gonna do and we actually couple. The agencies I was at would do multiple routes, right? So we would do the initial insight, qual, and then we would prove some of that out with quant, and then we would get to concepts, and then we would do qual, and then we prove it out with quant. What we find ourselves saying all the time to clients is that, because we have tools now at our disposal, so we’ve talked about how not to use those correctly, but when we actually take the time, which, as you both said, doesn’t actually have to be that intensive or that many people, you just have to do it the right way. And then you can put stuff out there and do AB testing and optimize as you go and, you know, fix the nuance and get closer and closer to the people you’re trying to target. And and I agree with what you said about, you know, you can do it one segment at a time, like we think this is the nucleus of who we’re going after, so let’s really get that right, and then we can move along. But I think the tools even are getting a bad name, and it’s why people aren’t willing to change, because they have that sort of proven process in their minds. And this feels a little more wild wild west, right when we’re trying to convince some of our clients, like you don’t need quantitative it usually comes from the perspective that you were talking about Brett, where it’s like, well, we’ve done it that way. I’m not willing to trust that this new way is going to do it. And. And it becomes bad on both sides, because the time isn’t taken to do the Insight work correctly, and then it’s put out there in a way that’s not right. And so then nothing is working. Instead of saying we’re going to do the insights right, and then we’re going to optimize as we go and put things out there and try them on, we don’t have to worry that it’s our one TV spot this year anymore, right? We can spread it out and get closer and closer and closer.

Brett Townsend 25:23
Yeah, it’s funny. I just when you were talking, I was thinking of the office, when Michael Scott said, you know, Jim can do something in an hour that it takes me all day to do, and, you know, any, any and he said that as if it was a bad thing, you know, is it’s like, is he really been working hard, you know? And so it’s that, it’s that whole working smarter, not more kind of thing. And that’s what, you know, we’ve had to tell people that too, and and you know, now that I’m back on the agency side, very fresh after 15 years on the corporate side, I’m able to really have some pretty direct and honest conversations with people on the corporate side. I’m like, Hey, do you want a methodology, or do you want an insight? You know, do you want something to action on? Or do you want to do a specific method? Because if you want to do a specific method, then you know what? Go somewhere else to do that. Because that’s not what we do. That’s what we focus on. Is giving you outcomes strategy, giving you real insight. And I think these tools that you’ve talked about, I think they were good, like they’re not inherently bad. You know, they a lot of times. They’ve helped us, they’ve helped people stretch their research budgets. They you know, people have been able to do more and gathered some needed data and gather some insights and things like that. The problem is, is that when we rely on them too much, yes, and when we make that the focus, and then again, it just becomes a commodity, and, and so, yeah, so it’s not like, as if the tools themselves are bad. It’s just, how do we use them? And it’s, you know, you can say that with anything. It’s like, there’s good and bad and in food and the Internet and alcohol, or, you know, whatever else is, there’s

April Martini 26:56
no bad. There’s no bad in alcohol.

Brett Townsend 27:00
But it’s like, if used the right way, it works well, but if, if used the wrong way, then it doesn’t. And that’s just the same way it is with tools or methods or or things like that. So it’s really just understanding what is needed. You know, it’s, it’s so funny. I would have people I mentioned this in the book about how I would have coworkers come to me and like, hey, we need to do focus groups. And I’m like, No, you don’t. We need to do an a and u I’m like, No, you don’t. And it’s just, and I think insights people have gotten to the point where, because of so many cuts, because of layoffs and budget cuts and things like that, that we’re scared, you know, we’re running a little scared for our jobs, that we’re worried about backlash, we’re worried about pushing back. We’re worried about being seen as an obstacle to things where we are not standing up to bad methodologies or suggestions from other people within the company. And so it’s we have to be able to say, you know, so when they would come in and say, Hey, we need to do focus groups, I’m like, No, you don’t. What do you need? You know, what question are you trying to answer? What problem are you trying to solve? Let’s start there, and let’s work on, what are the outcomes need to look like? What does this have to become? Methodology is the very last thing that anyone should be talking about, because if we don’t get everything else right, it doesn’t matter. We could use the greatest method known to mankind, and it would not matter. And so it’s we just have to be better and have better business diplomacy, maybe, or business acumen, to be able to understand what is needed in the moment and not be afraid to push back and not say no, but say no. But here’s a better alternative. Here’s what I think we should be doing. And then I think a lot of some of this could be solved, but it just takes a little bit, a little bit of courage from our industry to say no, we’re not going to keep doing it this way anymore, right? Because, I

Anne Candido 29:01
mean, that’s what people will pay for, to some extent, that’s what they’re used to. So you’re right. It does take a lot of courage, and I think that then needs to be also generated from the client side, or they need to be educated. And what’s going to lead to good insights? And I want to spend some time talking about what is a good insight and why it’s so powerful. The whole premise of this is that when you have some really fantastic, really powerful insights, you can gain a competitive advantage. And that’s 1,000% true. And I’ll go back to the story that I was referencing a little bit ago. And I’ve, I’ve said this a lot, because this, it references and it brings to light so many different things. But like working on on the Thai brand personal, as I did, if I went out and asked 10 people, what’s the best laundry detergent, nine out of 10 will tell you Thai, but only four will buy it. So going back to the conversation we were having before, and we were talking about your PepsiCo example, about that consumer who was like, Yeah, I know it’s the best. Doesn’t really care. I don’t really care as much. You know to it’s not the right value proposition. For me that you’re touting your quote, unquote technology, that it can remove 100 stains or whatnot, because I am trying to decide between buying tide and bread, right? So that’s a very real thing when you’re talking about premium products. It’s a very real thing when you’re talking about services that you’re trying to deliver that may not be top of mind or not being may not be like, as essential as as something that’s like super right now in the moment that is driving whatever I’m thinking about that day or doing that day. So what I say that because the objective them is like, Well, how do I get them to buy it? And that might sound unempathetic, but really, our job as marketers and branders is, how do we get more people to buy our products, and how do we do it in a way that drives value? So as we started inside mining for that, what we were able to really discover after having several really, really good conversations with people, was that the fact that tide removed, the stains also made meant that clothes lasted longer, right? So they started, they look better longer. They they stayed in better condition. They didn’t have to replace the clothes as often. And they’re like, well, now I have a value proposition that works for me, that makes sense, that I would could buy tide now because of the fact that my clothes that’ll last longer, and so I’m not investing in buying new clothes all the time that I can buy into and that and that starts driving a relationship that feels like the product is for me. And that’s how you get to that other 54% of household penetration is not by continuing to tout my product is the best, my product is the best, my service is the best, which is generally what people think. I don’t need an insight, because, hey, I’m the best. Well, the best is table stakes. Now, people expect the products to deliver at some level of calibration that they have, but beyond that, it’s like, why should I care? Why should I want you what? What makes your product or your service the right one for me? So I’d love if you could talk a little bit right about, like, the power of the insight. Like, what makes a good insight from your perspective, and how do you really, like, know that you have a good one?

Brett Townsend 32:11
I’ve got a similar story to your type one. It was when I was at Frito-Lay and there was a bit of a worry among the sales team that the value brand or private label potato chips were going to, you know, they were starting to gain share on lakes, which, of course, is is more expensive. And so we started to talk to consumers about this, and what we found is that consumers were almost reluctant to buy the private label brand, because, number one, it’s almost a bit of a letdown when they bring it home, you know, like, you bring the bag of lays home, and everybody’s like, Yay, you bring private label. Homer is like, Oh, good, yeah. And then it may not taste very good. And we had a lot of consumers, you know, give us examples about how they would they opted for the cheaper brand, and it only got half eaten. Or people that their family didn’t really like it, and so they said, I didn’t save any money. I wasted $1.50 or $2 on that bag. Or if I had bought lays for 350 or whatever, the whole thing would have been eaten, and I wouldn’t have wasted any money. And so that was kind of a way that we that we did that for for that’s a simple example of how you can have something that you think is a problem, but then when you really understand what’s going on, it’s not. And that’s kind of an insight. I’ve got a friend, Gina Fong, who teaches at Northwestern University and and she has a very simple definition of what’s an insight. She’s like, how can you tell when you delivered a good insight, she’s like, everybody in the room is nodding their heads. It’s that simple, you know. And so instead of their heads nodding back going to sleep, because you’re, you know, killing them with data, you know, it’s just like, oh, you know. And we’ve all experienced that. We’re on probably both sides, where we’ve been delivering data and it’s like, oh, or we’ve delivered something really impactful, and people are down there. It’s like, you there, it’s like, yeah, okay, I get that. And I think really, where it comes to going back to your so there you you’ve kind of hit two different subjects here about what is an insight. But then I also want to kind of talk about what you were mentioning earlier. And it’s like, the brain is a big cost benefit calculator. You know, we are always doing trade offs. And so that’s what it is. It’s like in your example, it’s, they’re trading off bread for laundry detergent, you know, they’re trading off food for electricity, you know, in the case of the dollar general consumer. And so it’s this cognitive and emotional thing that goes on in this integrated brain where we are constantly doing this cost benefit analysis. The job of brands is to communicate that what we’re doing will improve the life of the consumer. We have to know what their conflict is. We have to have empathy for them, and we have to communicate accurately to them that what we’ve developed for. You is going to improve your life, and it’s worth paying for. And then what does, what that happens is, is that it kind of establishes these metabolic pathways in the brain where it’s just, it’s just habit. You know, I bet you would talk to a lot of people with tides, similarly to we did with lays, where they don’t even have to think about grabbing the tide off the shelf. Think about buying the lays off the shelf, because that pathway has been established, and the only way that you break them out of that is a big, major disruption, like a big price increase, or, you know, you just stop doing the things, or it stops working well, or whatever else like that. But that’s the holy grail for brands, is to kind of establish those metabolic pathways and to get them going. And so now, going back to what you said earlier, you only can do that with a real insight, which is truly about do you understand the consumer conflict? Do you understand the problems they have in place, and do you understand how you can develop something that will help them? Here’s another good example too. Is that when I was at Electrolux, working on major appliances, obviously connected appliances are a big deal. And with the Frigidaire brand, which is the largest brand owned by Electrolux in the US, there was, of course, you know, what should we do about a connected appliances for Frigidaire? And at that point, we knew our consumer so well, and we knew so much about them, that we said, You know what, let’s stop talking about. How do we do connected appliances? And let’s figure out, does our consumer even need them or want them? What problems would they solve? And so we did this research where we started to understand, like every day, like when they wake up in the morning, to what they go home and at night, what is it that they’re dealing with? What are they facing? What are the time crunches? How much time do they spend in traffic, you know, how much time do they have to actually cook, you know, all these different things. And so we presented the product, the the product team with here are the issues that we feel we can solve with a connected appliance from Frigidaire. It’s not going to look like Samsung, it’s not going to look like LG, but it’s going to deliver what the Frigidaire consumer needs, and nothing else, you know, and I think that’s part of the problem, is that, you know, brands try to compete with other brands, and they’re like, Oh, they’re doing that. We got to do that too. It’s like, no, that’s not an insight. You know? It’s like, we can, we can make the same products, but we don’t sell to the same consumer. And so that was another example of how really understanding what was going on in their life from a daily basis helped us uncover the right way to do a connected appliance for our consumer, not for the entire marketplace.

April Martini 37:47
A couple of things that strike me is, number one, an insight isn’t going to matter if you aren’t intimately aware of the target that you’re targeting. Number one, because it has like you have to know them so well in order to be able to get to that point. And then number two, we talk about how it’s, you know, well, we always used to make the joke that the definition of a human is that we’re, you know, made up of contradictions, right? So, like, totally we go to the grocery store and we buy private label this, and don’t think about it, but we buy the Doritos every time, or the laser we, you know, whatever, whatever the the products are. But I think that’s compounded now, because our attention is grabbed like this all the time too. So we’re trying all the time. We’re hit with so many messages that I think a lot of times we’re in survival mode. And so I think that speaks in support of those neuro pathways, right? Like it’s almost a relief for me to go to the grocery store and just be able to go and not even pay attention and and tune it all out. But when it comes to really knowing the consumer, I think the people that get the insights right, not just once, but over and over again, it’s because they see beyond whatever the stereotype or persona that they’ve made up about the person, they actually understand them. So I remember we worked on a high end makeup brand, which, you know, in and of itself, is a ridiculously crowded category. I feel like we’ve talked CPG, but that one too is just a mess. And so you go into the store, right? And at that point in time, and it’s been several years, but the spa thing was the whole trend, right? And so the brand we were working with to the point you made, Brett was like, Well, everybody’s doing spa, so we have to do spa. We have to create a spa like experience for women. And so we got into a discussion about how the person that like takes on the makeup, and it’s like, you know, perfection, and they’re looking at their face, you know, close up in the mirror and all that like for this natural brand, I’m not real sure that that’s who we’re targeting, right? And so they went along the journey with us and took the step back to actually figure it out. But what we identified was they had the target rate. It was a person that wanted natural beauty, that wanted people to know, did not know that they were wearing makeup, right? But we kind of had to pull back away from like this is the trend in the industry. And then the insight we came to with them was. Was, it was not about a whole spa experience, because they’re very realistic. They have very precious time throughout the day. So it was, I want 10 minutes by myself. So I want it to be able to be a routine I can do in that amount of time, and I want to leave feeling good, that I look better than I do without makeup, but not meaning that I look like I’m wearing makeup. And so getting to that point, it was like we saw them where they were, and we were able to then start delivering that messaging to them. That was like, Oh, they are actually the brand for me. And they had, at that point, you know, they had the consumer identified. They were delivering the wrong way, is what I should have said. But going back then to that insight, it was like, we have to really listen. And nobody said it like that. It was like, you know, well, I only have 10 minutes. How many times did we hear that? We could have just glossed over that, right? But it was like, Well, wait, they’re saying that it’s a very finite amount of time, and they don’t have time for that regimen. So, you know, just another example,

Brett Townsend 40:52
as a girl, Dad three daughters, I totally that I have lived that through three of them, going through teenagers. You know, it reminded me, as you were talking, it reminded me of working on the Mountain Dew brand at PepsiCo. So Mountain Dew and Doritos. I don’t eat Doritos and I don’t drink Mountain Dew. But I loved working on those brands, because those two brands understood their consumer so intimately well. It was amazing how much they knew them, because they saw them as people, you know, not consumers, but they saw them as real people. And one of the things about brands, I think a lot of people get wrong, is that they want their brand to be universally appealing, and it doesn’t have to be. So one of the genius things that Mountain Dew did that got a lot of press positive ending was the Super Bowl and puppy, monkey, baby, I don’t know. So it was, you know, there, it’s kind of a funny story how it all came about, but it was in a very Mountain Dew kind of a way. And the people who were on, who were commenting online, like, WTF, what in the world, you know, those are the people that Mountain Dew does not care about. The Mountain Dew lovers were like, Oh my gosh, that was freaking awesome. You know, they had it as ring tones on their phones, and they were, you know, kind of we would see people who would make up a puppy, monkey baby doll. It was just they were eating it up, and they love it. And there were videos of people doing the dance like they were doing in the in the commercial. And so it’s like your brand only needs to resonate with that consumer, with your target, with the people you mostly care about. And it doesn’t matter what anybody else says. You know, you brought up Nike earlier, they have been the kings of saying, we don’t give a crap what everybody thinks. This is our brand. This is who we are, and we are unapologetic about it, like the Colin Kaepernick thing. You know, when they did that, it was like, Yeah, you had people on there, like, I’m never buying Nike again. And they’re throwing their Nikes away, and Nike just went, we don’t care about you. And guess what? Their sales went up after that Colin Kaepernick ad, because the people who love Nike and care about Nike and who Nike cares about, they loved it, and they don’t care about the people who said, Yep, we’re not going to buy on the flip side, we had the recent example with Bud Light, where they tried to be controversial, but they did it in such an incredibly tone deaf way, in a way that they did not understand their consumer and this has nothing to do with Dylan Mulvaney at all. It was, I mean, they could have put an opera singer on there, for all that matter, or a university professor or something, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because they they not only were tone deaf as to their consumer, they despise their consumer. They openly the executives at Bud Light who did that, they gave interviews where they were openly despising their consumer, and they didn’t like them at all. And so they tried to come in something doing, you know, being controversial and trying to shake things up, and it has absolutely killed that brand. It’s two sides of the point about it’s okay to be controversial if it’s true to who you are, if you know your consumer and you have that insight, versus trying to be controversial for controversy sake. And it absolutely blows up into your face. And now the people who do that don’t even have jobs there anymore, and that brand shares, and it’s like, well, you know, sorry, but you should have known better.

Anne Candido 44:30
I think it’s a very good point, because I think that’s where people start to get a little gun shy, when they start to learn about insight. So I think one of two things usually happens. So on the the PNG side, because basically the consumer is, for tide, for example, is 22-60 year old woman, right? Had a household or whatever. So you’re trying to get to such a big target that you are striving to be more a. Accepting to as many people as possible and not alienate a single soul, right? So to be brave and be like, Hey, this is my insight. This is what I’m going to go after. Like, I don’t care about like, if these people don’t like, it, is a really hard thing for a lot of businesses to stomach. So what would happen, and sometimes in Insight mining, is that you get these really good insights, and then they get generalized, right, in order to be able to accommodate a bigger segment of the population, or, I say, tongue and cheap, but for reals, like being able to summarize it for your executives, right? So they can’t handle, you know, very detailed oriented, how you came about to say this went like, you know, the buckets, and give me the picture, and give me the title, the whatever that segment is, and let’s go on their happy way, right? That that would either happen or on the other side of it, if you’re not generalizing it, that you get too worried that it’s too niche, right? And so you don’t want to go so niche and then have your brand be so niched down that now, like, if you try to expand, and that’s how maybe some people would see, like, what happened with Bud Light, what happens with other brands when they try to expand and now they can’t expand into another consumer segment, they’re like, Oh, well no, we can’t be too niche either. So what would you say about that dilemma? And I’m sure you have perspective from your days as well, of how do you like make that choice? How do you balance that out? Or maybe you don’t balance it

Brett Townsend 46:27
out, it all comes down to insight. Really, it’s like you have to understand. So one of my favorite quotes that I like to use is from the book zag by Marty Neumeier, where he says Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is, you know, meaning the consumer. The problem is, is that a lot of people take that word they to mean everyone. And so then you start doing this research with Gen, pop sampling. And like you said, you try to be universally appealing, and you have no identity. You know, people don’t really know what you stand for or or who you are really targeted at, and that’s where you start to really fail and where it’s really muddy in there it was. It’s one of those things that we did at Electrolux where we just said we don’t care what anyone else is doing. We’re not going to try to make frigid air appealing to everyone. We need to understand who it is that loves our brand, Frigidaire what they want from us, and how do we develop things for them? I mean, that’s what it’s all about. And every brand has brand lovers. Every brand has people who are fiercely loyal to your brand, who are evangelists for your brand. They know your faults, but they don’t care. You know, it’s very much like a, like a human relationship, you know, it’s like, it’s, you know, those of us who have partners, you know, it’s like, our partners know everything about us, good and bad, and they stay with us for whatever reason, you know. And it’s like, you know, my wife, for instance, could say, Yeah, well, you know, Brett’s not really good at working at working on cars, and he’s not really good at doing fit, you know, stuff around the house, handyman, stuff around the house. And he could, she could list all these things that that are bad about me, but she’s like, but I don’t care, because that’s not, why is she married? You know, I still don’t know why, but, you know, that’s another but I think that’s the point is that you that we need to get to that point with our brands where we know our brand lovers so well that we are doing everything we can to cater to them. So I think that’s that’s one thing. And you know, yes, it’s a niche audience, and it’s a very small audience, but the point is, is that you build your brand story through the eyes of those who love you, and then you start to tell that story to the masses through however you do it, and then people, other people, start to see you that same way. You know, it’s like you guys could ask anyone else who knows me, about me, and they could tell you a story about me, but if you really want to know about me, you would ask my wife, and she would tell you the story of me. And then you start to see me the way that she does. That’s how brands work. So you’re not just only marketing to those brand lovers, but they’re the ones that help you build your brands. And I think so many people and even that term brand lovers, gotten a bad rap, because people have used it wrong and have gone about it the wrong way. But if you do it the right way and you really develop your brand in a way that you are telling the most compelling, true, authentic story about who you are as a brand through the eyes of those who love you. That’s what’s going to resonate, because it’s real and it’s and nobody can duplicate. You know, that’s the other thing. It’s like your competitors can’t duplicate that story. Everybody has a brand story. We told it with all of the brands at PepsiCo, we told it with Frigidaire, we told it with these other with with these other brands that I’ve worked on. And even though there’s competitors all throughout the landscape, they could not tell the same story that we could tell, nor could we tell the same story that they could tell. And I think people just get lazy and they’re driven more by because, see, that doesn’t. Sound good on an earnings call. You know, when you talk about that, you know, it’s all about share and profit and things, and so, because it’s hard to put a number behind that, brands just get lazy, and they don’t want to do that, and they’re more concerned about building the business rather than building the brand. But really, the irony is, is that if you spend all your time building the business, the business is never going to grow because people buy brands, and if you invest in the brand long term, your business will grow. But it’s not because you’ve invested in, you know, ltos or price breaks or deals or different things like that. It’s because you’re telling a great, authentic brand story through the years that people are aligning with, and then your business just grows because of that.

April Martini 50:47
Yeah. I mean, we, we say all the time, back to the you know, person that loves you most, or Anne, you brought up the demographics I’m always like. So tell me about your the character of your brand, the personality of your brand, and if they start down the path of the more what I would say commodity things, right? Like you taste the best, or we’re the cheapest, or we’re the, you know, and I’m like, what time out, you wouldn’t describe your best friend. You wouldn’t say my best friend is a doctor with three kids that lives in the city. You would say my best friend is loyal or super gregarious, or always the life of the party, or, you know, that’s the way you would describe and so when we talk about the brand piece, that’s what we’re always talking about. And then the other side of that is that some of what we’ve been a lot of what we’ve been talking about here is discipline, right? And so the other piece about referencing a brand similar to how you would a person, it’s like, we don’t wake up one day and have a completely different personality as humans, right? But our personality does change, and so you have to continue to then, when you’re thinking about your brand, make sure that you’re staying on brand for yourself, and then you’re not making some of these departures that we’re talking about, because that’s the inauthenticity that people sniff out immediately, right? And so when you bring up the Bud Light example. I mean, that’s so much of what happened there, like, and yes, there’s so many raw things wrong with that situation, but at the end of the day, it was like they just threw away everything that they were. And so we’re going to try to go over here and didn’t even think about who they were as a brand or the legacy of who they had been all these years.

Brett Townsend 52:16
Yeah, I can’t really add much to that. I mean, you’re right. It’s just, it’s, just really understanding that and staying true to that, and it’s the discipline, and it’s, you know, let me use coke as an example. And I’m saying this as the next PepsiCo.

April Martini 52:29
I was just going to say, man, you know, we are going there today.

Brett Townsend 52:31
Call it telling a timeless story in a timely way, is kind of what you’re talking about. So if you go back to the 19, you know, 70s, where I want to teach the world to sing and buy the world a Coke, you know, with the hippies and everything that was kind of that first commercial that coke did. And then as you see their storytelling as it’s evolved over the years, you have the polar bears and the penguins. You have, you know, the you had the the athlete, the Mean Joe Green and the and the kid. And then now the iteration is, you know, people coming together at gatherings. The story, the timeless story that coke has always been saying is, we bring people together, but they have changed the way that they have told that story over the last 50 to 60 years to keep up with cultural trends, to factor in the way that societies change, the way that we may change as we grow older, but the story has stayed the same. And I just, I really admire them for that, because they have not varied one bit, whereas I’m sure we can all name brands that they can’t figure out who they are. And like, one day they’re telling this story, and another day they’re telling this story and this story, and it’s like, you know you’ve got to develop that timeless story, but yet keep retelling it in a timely way. And it’s because they know who they are, and they’re unapologetic about it, and they know who their consumer is, and they know what makes their consumers love them,

Anne Candido 53:56
yeah, and I think that as a really true testament to what’s the ultimate goal for brands is really, you want the people to know that you’re for them, you know, because you want to when you want to create that relationship, not just once, but ongoing and and by the way, we’ve used a lot of B to C examples, but there is the same principles that apply and B to B and service oriented businesses, and a lot of times, we don’t reflect on those businesses as brands, because we’re not selling a product necessarily. We’re selling maybe a service. But the philosophy is the same, and actually it’s even more powerful in that context, because it is the differentiating factor, a lot of times, is the brand, and that’s what drives that competitive advantage that we’re talking about. So hopefully, I probably should have mentioned that at the very beginning about how the you know, we were going to go through a lot of product oriented examples, but hopefully people could see that what we were talking about actually goes across the board, is not just an element of you’re going to go sell like a thing, thing, well,

Brett Townsend 54:59
because. Even with businesses, to your point, and I mean, businesses have a story to tell exactly, you know, B2B have brand lovers, you know, they have people who love their brands and and they have a brand story. And to your point, it’s no different. You just have to find out what your brand lovers love about you and then develop that same story and you tell it to them, whether it’s for your service. Are you selling a, b to b product or whatever else you’re right. These are universal things that were universal principles. We’re talking about whether it’s B2C or not.

Anne Candido 55:29
Yeah, 1,000% we just call them customers and clients on the other side, right? So, yeah, we just have a different name for them. But I wanted to, I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you really, really talk about the book, Brett, because this one, I mean, it sounds like it’s going to be a real expose, and kind of how marketing and analysis and agencies that really do that work should really shift their mindset. And I know we’ve kind of sprinkled in some all the way through this conversation, but give us some, you know, additional insights from this book. Like, what are you really hoping that people are going to take away from this book?

Brett Townsend 56:01
Yeah, a couple things. And the funny thing is, I’ve been sprinkling in the examples from the book without referencing it so, you know. But I think there’s two things. One, it’s we want this to start conversations. You know, we know that there’s going to be people that won’t agree with everything that we say, and that’s okay. You know, we state some pretty matter of fact things pretty bluntly, and we didn’t really pull any punches. I mean, now we’re not embarrassing anyone or anything like that, but we’re talking about the industry as a whole. And so it’s kind of hand in hand. The industry needs to evolve. We need to evolve away from our historical past, plain and simple, and we need to let go of some of the things that we’ve been carrying since the 1940s basically, and evolve to understand what are the needs of business today. You know, you mentioned earlier, just making a great product doesn’t matter anymore, because there’s a lot of great products that fail, and so it has nothing to do with the quality of products. So it’s we need to evolve. But then the best ways to evolve, that’s what we want the discussion to be. We want people to start in our industry, to start talking and start having conversations about, how do we evolve? How do we get better? And then the other real thing about this book is that when we started writing it, our goal was it, this is not a philosophical book. This is not head in the clouds, 30,000 foot view, full of philosophy that you walk away with. Okay, that was interesting, but how’s it going to help me? We wanted this to be practical, in the sense that anyone at any level could take something or multiple things from the book and suggestions that we have on how we can evolve and get better and implement them in their jobs today, and how can they start getting better today? Whether you’re an analyst or you’re a CMO or whatever it’s, how can we start to make little improvements today? Because, you know, We’re under no illusion that this is going to change overnight, because, like I said, we’re still doing things that were developed in the 1940s and we’re in 2024 so we’ve been doing the same thing for decades. And so this evolution is going to take a while, but it has to start. And there’s so many things going on, and I see webinars, and you know, Yale is doing this future of insights, and you know, all these other things, I’m like, we’re not going to have the kind of future people think if we’re still holding on to our past, if we don’t evolve, the future is going to look very much like the present, like it did 30 years ago, like it did 50 years ago, because so many people in our profession are doing the same things over and over again. And one of the I just was telling somebody yesterday, one of the I’m a big movie person, and one of the movie quotes, I wish I’d have put it in the book, and I didn’t think about it till afterwards. I’m like, it’s from Shane redemption. When red is talking to Andy’s like, he says, you know, these walls are funny. First you hate them, then you grow news to them. Then after a while, you come to depend on them. And that’s the way that methodologies have become to us, you know, it’s like, oh, these methodologies are restrictive. You got to follow these rules and stuff like, when you’re first starting out in this business, then you kind of come to accept them. And then so many people in our industry, like, like red and Shawshank says they become institutionalized. You know, it becomes more about the methodology and how you do the work, rather than why you’re doing it, and things like that. And so those are really the big takeaways that we want people to get from the book. Now obviously we have opinions on how we need to evolve and things and again, like I said, Not everybody’s going to agree with what we’re saying, but that’s really what we hope those are the main points that we want to get from the book, and it’s really kind of a labor of love, because both Tim and I have been in this business for a long time. We’ve both served on the board of the insights Association. We both worked with so many clients and so many colleagues and things that we just we really love this profession, you know, and we want it to be better. And so that’s you. Really was the driver for a lot of what’s in there.

Anne Candido 1:00:03
So we should expect a chapter on focus groups. 101, right?

Brett Townsend 1:00:09
I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m not a big fan of focus

Anne Candido 1:00:15
groups. I know it’s not about that at all. Maybe in the sequel well, because one of

Brett Townsend 1:00:20
the things that what we found is I was kind of looking at the ideas for the book, and I was looking at what are the books were out there. All of the books that cater to the market research or consumer insights industry are about methods, techniques or philosophies, you know? And there wasn’t a book that we could find that was written about the industry itself. And so that’s where we’re like, Okay, I think we may have something here that could be a value to people based on our experiences and the things that we’ve observed and the things that we’ve learned and and so I think it’s unique in that sense, that we don’t talk about methodologies in here, other than we depend way too much on them. But we don’t get into what are the right methodologies. We don’t get into that at all because that’s not what we that’s not the message of the book.

Anne Candido 1:01:04
Yeah, I love that, and I think that everybody who is just in the brand and in business should read that book just to really get a refresher on what it takes to actually one really mind for those insights and get those practical tools and actions that they need in order to really bring that into their business, integrated into their business, to really drive the success that we’ve been talking about, and to wake

April Martini 1:01:31
up as to why we got here.

Brett Townsend 1:01:32
Yes, and that’s one of the things we spend, you know, the preface in the first chapter, talking in one is, one of the chapters is how we, how we even got you know, how did we get here? And we kind of talk about that, and how did we find ourselves in the position we’re in? Because, quite frankly, insights should always be needed. You know, we should. We have no natural predators in the business world. Everybody should love us. But yet, because of the way we have conducted our business, we’ve become the greatest threat to our own existence. And so that’s kind of one of the things that we we set it up by saying, how did we get here? Well, here’s why, and it’s kind of our fault, you know, we can’t really blame other people and say, Oh, they don’t get it, or they understand us. I’m like, No, we’ve not really done a good job. And and most of the book, the first eight chapters, are all about the industry and how we can improve and evolve. The last chapter, we actually gear it towards senior executives, because we say, look, alright, we’ve spent the whole rest of this book talking about what we need to do to get better. But at the end of the day, this is still a partnership, and we still have to work together, and there are some things that senior executives need to hear about, how to what they can do on their end to have a more effective partnership with insights. And you know, insights, like I said, it’s needed at all times, because when the economy is good, then you want to develop new products and you and you’re constantly needing insight to expand your business when the economy is not good, you need great insight to figure out how you get consumers to spend what little disposable income they have on your products, but yet, the minute any kind of economic trouble hits, well, let’s cut consumer insights. Let’s cut market research. It’s like you’re absolutely chilling yourself when you do that, and part of it is again, our fault, because we haven’t shown our mouth. Yep,

Anne Candido 1:03:22
yeah. 1,000% alright. So before we let you go, we’re going to do some rapid fire questions, just so we get to know a little bit of a different, different side. Alright. Well, I’m going to start with one sense. You said you’re a big movie lover. What’s your go to movie? Which ones you’ve seen the most often?

Brett Townsend 1:03:38
I love movies and I do not have a favorite, but I’ll just say the godfather. It’s just so amazing and so deep. And you can talk for hours about that movie. Well,

Anne Candido 1:03:48
that’s one of those movies too. I think I’ve seen bits and pieces, but I’m not sure I’ve seen it all the way through. We’re

April Martini 1:03:53
not going to be friends with Brett after this without, yeah, maybe,

Brett Townsend 1:03:56
oh no, it’s fine. I get it. Different Strokes, different folks. I totally did it.

Anne Candido 1:04:03
Hope we can all quote it, I’m sure. Oh, yeah. All right. Rapid fire. Question number two, what is one skill you hope to learn by the end of the year?

Brett Townsend 1:04:11
I’d love to fix my slice on golf. I’m not a great golfer. I’ve never really taken lessons, and I have a bad slice to the right. I would love to fix that slice.

Anne Candido 1:04:20
I love that. All right, the last one here, we’ll, we’ll let you have to hook up to this one. What is, Oh yeah, okay, what is one song you would be embarrassed by if someone learned that was on your playlist? My

Brett Townsend 1:04:32
playlist is extremely eclectic. I don’t know if I would be embarrassed. Let

April Martini 1:04:38
me think not a closet. Taylor Swift. No, I’m

Brett Townsend 1:04:41
not. I don’t. I’m one of those few that’s, well, I love Eminem. People know that. Okay, I did think of one that people might think is weird. Rewrite the stars from the greatest showman. I love that song. I just it’s sweet, and I love it, and it’s on my playlist. And. Yes, I don’t care if people know that I have it or that I sing it in my car.

Anne Candido 1:05:05
I like that. Yeah, I have several of those on my soundtrack too. So yes, we’re kindred spirits in that way.

Brett Townsend 1:05:12
But yeah, you’ll find anything from 80s, 90s, early R and B to Van Halen Metallica to, you know, Moon dance, you know, Michael Buble, you’ll find, I mean, really, I cover the gamut, you know, journey and, I mean, yeah, I just, I love music, and I’ve, yeah, so it’s, but that would probably be the one. I think I’d be maybe a little embarrassed.

Anne Candido 1:05:38
Okay, so then the last one, then, since you brought it up, David Lee Roth or Hagar, no,

Brett Townsend 1:05:42
David Lee Roth, and it’s not that I knew Sammy Hagar. I mean, I thought 5150 and ou 812, were great. Those were albums, awesome, really good albums. But there was just an energy about the David Lee Roth Van Halen that I just love. So again, it has more to do with David Lee Roth and not really anything to do with my dislike as Annie Hagar. I just

Anne Candido 1:06:03
think all guys like Hopper teacher. I don’t, I don’t understand what it is with that song, but that just seems to be like, just in every every guy’s soul made husbands the exact same way we have this discussion all the time. Well, if

Brett Townsend 1:06:14
I had had a hot teacher growing up, maybe I would have thought that. But no, that’s not like. I’ve never had a crush on any of my teachers. So I guess I never that song Never really resonated with me as much when I was in high school. We need to

Anne Candido 1:06:26
have that as a rapid fire question. You have a very good crush on your teacher? So which one that could drive some listens? Brad, this is like a fantastic conversation. I mean, I think we hit on so many different aspects of this topic that I think anybody listens going to take something away that I think they’re going to find extremely to find extremely valuable. So I hope so. Before we let you go, though, please tell people where they can find you, where they can find the book. Anything else that you want to say to kind of wrap us up here,

Brett Townsend 1:06:53
yeah, just again, it’s been great, to be honest, you guys. I really have loved this conversation. It’s really fun. You can find again, the book is called insights on the brink, and you can find it on Amazon. It’s available at paperback and ebook on Kindle. You can look me up on LinkedIn. That’s really the main social that I use for business stuff. So I don’t really use Twitter X and my Instagram is my personal thing. So find me on LinkedIn. I’m on there a lot. Thanks again for having me and promoting the book. And again, we really think it’s it. We hope that it’ll be very beneficial for people.

Anne Candido 1:07:24
I appreciate that. And with all that, we’ll say, go and exercise your Marketing Smarts!

April Martini 1:07:30
Still need help in growing your Marketing Smarts? Contact us through our website: ForthRight-People.com We can help you become a savvier marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now, go show off your Marketing Smarts!