Consumer insights are over-rated: Adam Ferrier on the risks of listening to consumers too much
Thinkerbell co-founder Adam Ferrier has said that if consumer insights were used during the creation of Vegemite, the spread wouldn’t even exist, which is why sometimes putting the consumer at the heart of the business isn’t the right choice.
“What you want to put at the heart, at the very core of your business, is your brand and building a brand that consumers then want, understanding what your brand stands for and putting that before anything else,” Ferrier said.
“If we did consumer insights today with Vegemite and did some focus groups and some sensory testing, [I] guarantee you, Vegemite wouldn’t exist. I don’t think Vegemite would pass sensory testing and focus groups today. “
Always seems like a strange debate to me. If a brand is a person’s idea of a product or service, a distinctive bundle of associations in the mind that influence behaviour, then how can brand-builders not be concerned with being insightful about consumers’ minds? Isn’t it just about avoiding being crap. Avoiding thinking the job is as easy as digesting what most consumers say and regurgitating it.
No offence to Ferrier and the often great work he has done – but I can see this point by looking at his catalogue of work, which often has a focus on brand and attention over insightful strategy. (Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse – just a more media approach than adland approach)
Though of course the irony here is that the understanding of cultural and societal impact on taste IS essentially insight. Just not packaged in the usual adland way.
I think Adam Ferrier has been lazy on this one. He could have been much more convincing if he truly believes that consumer insights are unnecessary. Vegemite is a 90 year old Australian brand. There are probably several 90 year old brands that if researched today wouldn’t ‘test’ well, but those types of brands aren’t selling taste or other functional attributes – they are selling nostalgia and emotional connection. Flawed argument Adam.
Ferrier is [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
I agree with this article wholeheartedly. However, I think the headline might not be not 100% accurate. I think there is a difference between good consumer insight, and doing what customers tell you to do. Good insight starts at a place of knowing that, as Mr Ogilvy said, “Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.” However, this doesn’t mean that watching them is useless. Once we understand that consumers have flawed insight into their own behaviour, research should be designed which aims to understand these irrationalities and flaws.
In this way – the risk isn’t listening to them too much, it’s not thinking about what they say enough.
Spot on
I totally agree. Great example of Mr Ogilvy’s quote is what happened with Marks & Spencer in 2000.
They were facing a slump in sales, so threw a focus group together to see what women wanted in their ads. They wanted to see women in the ads who were like themselves; not stick thin models.
A new ad came out. It had 68% recall soon after it aired, but sales in M&S women’s fashion absolutely tanked. The next year, models were back in their ads.
This case study can be found in Binet & Carters book How Not to Plan.
I forgot the main kicker. So the real consumer insight in this case study was that women actually wanted to see people they aspired to be – their ‘idealised self’ – in ads. So just to reiterate your point Alex F, its valuable listening to people but I guess we have to think harder about what they really mean/want.
This is the problem in marketing to older people #boomers.
They complain about not seeing themselves in ads, but if you actually show them real reflections of who they are – they don’t relate.
Same thing for weight/health – someone who is too big is ‘not me’, someone who is quite big ‘is just normal’, someone who is slightly big is ‘healthy’. There’s no point at which people identify when they don’t want to – hence why the UK using clay figures was so successful in health marketing!
You’ve just figured that out?
It’s been like that since year zero.
And it just doesn’t happen with baby boomers.
It happens with every demographic.
Young models wear clothes targeted at older woman because that’s ‘the dream’ the older woman want to buy.
As Helena Rubenstein used to say:
‘I don’t sell cosmetics, I sell hope’.
Its the same reason Wheels magazine and Top Gear etc show Ferraris, Lambos and Astons. We mightn’t have one, butr we want one… or at worst, aspire to it.
This.
What Alex F said.
Spot on
Great brands have rarely listened to their customers, because customers rarely know what it is they want until it’s presented to them.
Sony didn’t invent the Walkman because customers asked for it.
They invented it because they thought it was a good idea.
Great brands generally are lead by people who have an intuitive understanding of what they think is great for their brand knowing their customers will most likely to follow them.
This is what leadership is all about.
Great brands – leading brands – don’t put their customers at the centre of their business, they put themselves at the centre.
Testing an ad, pack or idea isn’t ‘consumer insight’…insight is delivering a clear understanding of a consumer, problem or tension that organisations can solve for. Brand, products, ads are the levers to unlock the opportunity. As an insight professional we don’t ask consumers to create ads or products … we ask them to help us understand if it delivers to a need….in the vegemite example the need is a non-sweet spread I can use on toast in the morning. That insight was used to create vegemite.
Ferrier’s headline courting statements are over-rated: McGinn on the risks of listening to what Adam says on stage too much
wikipedia states that, Vegemite was created in 1922, when an Australian food manufacturer asked a chemist to create a product similar to British Marmite. (Is that an insight?)
Adam is a raconteur and performer.. and he knows HIS brand. And it’s often at the expense of commonsense. He just wants to get a rise out of you. He takes an opposing view just to get a reaction..I worked with him at Naked. He often cares a lot less about his colleagues views and clients’ brands than he does for his own opinion. That’s ok? Right?
Calm down everyone! We’ve another headlong dash into a (false) binary world view here in the comments. Ferrier is simply saying ‘too much’, not ‘not at all’.
A too-much example: “Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!'” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” – Steve Jobs
A just-right example: P&G Swiffer http://www.continuuminnovation.....s/swiffer/
Both are valid.
There is a difference between a quote from a CEO that sounds insightful and reality. Apple run plenty of consumer research and have for a long long time.
Research can ever be an aid to judgement. The enemy of good strategy, and good advertising, is not research it is people who use it as a substitute for judgement .
The comments here reveal one of the biggest problems in marketing: imprecise terminology.
The word “insight” clearly means different things to different people, and different things to people in research firms vs ad agencies vs clients, etc.
We’re about the only group of professionals that tolerates (and even encourages) a lack of precision and shared understanding across terms. Surgeons couldn’t. Nor lawyers or accountants.
Does my head in.
So if Vegemite tastes like Australia, and I think Vegemite tastes like shit, does that mean Ferrier is saying Australia is shit?
Whose side are YOU on Ferrier?
The lack of distinction between product and brand here is truly concerning, both in the article and comments. A product is real, a brand is not. They require completely different development processes.
Also, let’s stop speaking in absolutes. Some methods work in some contexts, and others do in others. It’s up to the planners to decide what is going to work best, not work to templated thinking.
Knowledge is overrated, and experience too. And thinking, yeah, total waste of time.