We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

Benjamin Lickfett – Global Head of Digital Innovation at Diageo – shares insights on the way that AI and other emerging technologies are enabling more relevant and impactful consumer experiences for iconic brands like Guinness, Johnie Walker and Baileys.

The post Making it personal – using tech to build connections with consumers | Diageo appeared first on Attest.

We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

Here a stellar panel industry-leading Research and Insights experts from across the consumer spectrum discuss the challenges facing customers and brands, and the tactics they’re taking to maintain and grow market share.

Attest’s VP of Customer Success Sam Killip moderates this panel discussion, and we hear amazing insight from:

• Matthew Bloxham, Head of TMT Research – EMEA at Bloomberg
• Selene Riontino, Insights Lead at Butternut Box
• Emma Pinto, Senior Shopper Marketing Manager at The Clorox Company – Europe

Q&A responses

Here are the panel’s responses to the awesome questions from the audience.

@Emma – how do you use consumer insights to drive the NPD pipeline for Burt’s Bees? Particularly in this competitive landscape where more brands have Lip NPD

We triangulate our available data sources and focus on identifying that “Consumer Tension”.

@Emma – What do you learn from lips that applies to cat litter, and vice-versa?

There isn’t a huge amount of cross-over, which makes the job even more interesting. Where we do see similarities is within the choices shoppers are making in relation to sustainability, responsible sourcing etc.

@Matthew – how do you differentiate between a fad social vs a long term trend using consumer data?

It’s not easy. We tend to mix a few techniques: trend data over time from the consumer survey data, cross-referenced against more qualitative insights: similarities/differences with other fads; needs-analysis – is this product replacing an existing category? If it’s a new category what need is it meeting that hasn’t previously been addressed? How does the product match our broader understand of trends in consumer preference?

@Matthew – what’s the balance you take between innovating the product based on what the customer wants vs based on what they can’t yet articulate they need?

I’m not directly involved in product development, from my experience of this as an industry observer I think it just depends on how safe the organisation is culturally, I guess the iPad is a good example of a product that nobody thought they needed, my hunch is that while it met a need that consumers couldn’t articulate yet, the signs were there in the research Apple was doing and they were smart enough (and brave enough) to put it all together to create a new category.

@Matthew – when using multiple data sources, when do you find it most effective to run primary research (via Attest) & what sources does it work best alongside?

Often we use Attest to fill a gap that isn’t met by existing data sources, or gives us a time advantage. Often we’ll compare our primary research results with the data from third party sources to confirm a trend, or call out a contrarian view. To have confidence to do that we need to be comparing data sources (inc Attest) with each other over time. Often the data we compare our attest results to is actual data reported by companies or industry bodies (e.g. smartphone sales, autos sales).

@Matthew: can you give a concrete example of how you used attest to impact your decision making in your role?

We used attest data to help us develop a high conviction view that EV demand was going to fall short of expectations and the market would shift more to hybrids. This got us a lot of traction with investors and auto-manufacturer management teams.

Do you have any tips for consumer research on a budget?

[Matthew] Think really hard about the questions/data that is most important to you. The rest is just filler. Work backwards from the presentation/report you plan to create. What’s the story, what data do you need to support that story? Become a master of the attest platform, understand how you can use question types to get more bang for your buck.

[Emma] Be really clear about the question (s) you are trying to answer. Definitely utilise Attest and their amazing team. If you are working with other external agencies, ensure they are very clear what the outcome and end recommendations are going to look like, will that answer your question?

How are you all thinking about or already using AI in your consumer research?

[Matthew] Not so much yet. We’ll probably use it first to help us analyse the results and combine it with other data and contextual information.

[Emma] We are trailing a number of tools across the business, nothing specific in consumer research as yet.

How do you avoid ‘leading’ the customer/consumer in your research? How do you avoid an echo chamber effect?

[Matthew] We leverage the experience of the Attest team to help us avoid the pitfalls. We also try to test our surveys on an internal audience first.

[Emma] As Matt says, the Attest team are the real experts here, they will help us craft the surveys so that we avoid this from happening.

How do you divide your budget between consumer (market) research and customer research?

[Matthew] Volume wise we’re heavily skewed to consumer, value-wise its less skewed (because customer research is more expensive) but still skewed to consumer (probably 65:35).

[Emma] We pride ourselves on being consumer obsessed, so this is where the majority of our budget will sit.

How do you ensure consumer insights are valid and not a result of the ‘unnatural’ environment in which the research is conducted?

[Matthew] We tend to track trends/patterns that are eventually verifiable vs actual/reported data, so we check the results that way.

[Emma] Where possible we will use a combination of both Qual and Quant research.

How do you get other teams within your business to be engaged with the insights you provide?

[Matthew] We don’t find it difficult. Insights from primary research are highly valued across our research teams and also the news organisation – it’s not an opinion, its real world data, so it comes with gravitas.

[Emma] We are fortunate that our business understands the importance of data and insights; again as we are consumer obsessed all teams need to ensure the consumer is at the heart of everything they do.

How do you get your CEO to care about consumer insights? I’d love to hear more about storytelling techniques.

[Matthew] We point to the business outcomes – which in our case is readership and user engagement.

[Emma] Once the consumer tension has been identified we show the growth opportunity for our brands.

How do you make sure that insights you collect and report are actually acted on by others in the business?

[Matthew] We provide headline results under embargo to our news organisation and third-party media.

[Emma] When presenting any insights we need to focus on the “So What” as well as the “And What”…what are we going to do next?

How do you present/ deliver your research findings and insights to other teams within the business? And what way do you find to be most effective?

[Matthew] We provide headline results under embargo to our news organisation and third-party media.

[Emma] We have various touchpoints throughout our monthly cadence of meetings. Again as our team is small, we can ensure data and insights are embedded in all of our decision making.

How do you see AI altering the future of your jobs and teams? What could it look like in 5 years time?

[Matthew] We’re working on various co-pilots to automate and enhance parts of our work-flow, freeing time to focus on higher value/more creative aspects of the job.

[Emma] I definitely see it taking on a lot of the manual data analysis, meaning that we can focus on the “so & and whats” and the strategic thinking.

How do you share the insights with (different parts of) the business? Any successes you can share?

[Matthew] We provide headline results under embargo to our news organisation and third-party media.

If you could insert one idea into the minds of consumers, what would it be?

Be more thoughtful/considerate about what you buy and the impact it has.

What is consumer research blind to, and is there anything that it tends to miss?

It’s blind to the questions you don’t ask – try not to bring (sub)conscious bias to your surveys…

What is the most surprising insight you have gained on your market through the Attest product?

The slowing demand for Evs (so far).

What’s are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing self-serve insight tools across your businesses?

[Matthew] End to end control of the process and speed to market are big pros; on the flip side, some people are much better at crafting good survey questions than others (as well as testing before launch, setting audience parameters).

[Emma] The speed at which you can have the survey’s fielded and the results in are a gamechanger. But you also need to be able to invest the time at the beginning to build the right questionnaire, and at the end in interpreting the data.

What challenges do you find in sharing insights across your businesses?

[Matthew] Sharing enough but not giving everything away.

[Emma] Ensuring the “So what” and “And What” are clear for everyone, no matter which function you are in.

What’s your biggest learning across your years gathering consumer insight?

[Matthew] The questions you ask, and how you ask them is crucial, assuming you “know” the answer to a question before you ask it is a real danger.

[Emma] Leave your biases at the door.

With endless data results offering different insights, what learning would offer a brand the most insight on their customers needs/wants?

[Matthew] Combining different approaches, triangulating them, understanding/challenging reinforcing data (from multiple sources) and questioning contrary signals.

[Emma] Echoing Matt’s point, definitely combining different data sources and approaches.

The post Panel discussion – Future-proofing your brand with consumer insights appeared first on Attest.

2024’s Brand Growth Summit was a huge success!

We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

Running multi-market research in Attest has never been easier!

Director of Product Alyssa discusses Attest’s new workflows for large scale multi market research, helping you supercharge any global use case, from brand tracking to category expansion.

Alyssa also takes us through how Attest has developed simple and intuitive tools for navigating and distilling large data sets, including advanced cross-market comparison and why Attest’s audience solutions offer you the most robust and reliable sample across the globe.

Q&A responses

Here are the responses from Alyssa and the Product and Customer Research teams here at Attest to the awesome questions we couldn’t cover in the presentation.

How important is to really localise creative messages to each markets?

It really will depend on the campaign & the message. The honest answer is that we don’t know and that is why it is important to test to see if a creative needs localising or not. We do know there are lots of cultural differences around the world and different language comprehension, that could call into question if you should go all in one language or localise just that element for example. If we think of the ad that Natalie shared from Spain, while that sentiment might work in multiple markets, the specific traditions around Christmas would be different and so it would likely be more impactful tugging on those heart strings seeing your own traditions.

What’s the biggest mistake or trap people run into, when running multi-market research?

The biggest trap really is assuming that one market works as a proxy for many, so it is not doing multi-market research when that is needed. The best biggest is following on from that, assuming that UK & US is the world or that you can understand all of Europe from UK, France & Germany for example. There obviously are totally legitimate reasons to just do those market combinations by the way, but just think about that audience you are wanting to understand. Which markets is the creative running in and are they represented? Where are you trying to really grow the brand? As with any piece of research, you want the most relevant audience that represents who you are trying to grow with.

Do you ever compliment your quant data with cultural or qualitative research to help provide context and further depth to numerical findings across markets?

When our clients are exploring topics it’s always important to consider the output needed through the research and any other secondary data that can provide additional context. Combining a Quantitative and Qualitative approach can be very useful in specific circumstances as it allows to explore and evaluate topics before quantifying them to ensure a full view of the research. Attest has recently launched a Video Response offering to do exactly this, with the ability to ask up to 4 video response questions.

Is there any plans to improve unaided awareness questions in brand tracking that will automatically tabulate open text answers?

Enhancing the ability to easily analyze results over time for recurring research, such as brand trackers, is a key focus area for us. While there are currently no concrete plans for open text questions, we are actively exploring options over the next 6-12 months. These options aim to enable you to track the frequency of specific keywords and observe any changes over time.

Are you already or planning on using AI for translations?

We don’t currently integrate AI into our solutions for translating survey question content. Instead we choose to partner with leading translations and localisations providers in the research industry, to ensure high quality and guaranteed accuracy. The quality of AI generated translations are improving but we believe these still require human review to ensure sentiment is fully captured. We actively review tooling on the market to support our translation flows and it’s likely we would integrate AI later.

Not releated to multi-market, but I’m interested in whether you have plans to use AI to generate insights from qual transcripts?

We are actively exploring opportunities to integrate AI to support the analysis of video responses (Qual). We see huge potential in helping you distill insights quickly from both video content and the transcripts. If you have any ideas for what you’d like to see, please let us know!

Can we merge existing brand tracking surveys to multi-market surveys?

We don’t currently have a supported solution in the platform itself to merge surveys, but we will be supporting all customers to make a suitable shift over to the multi market workflow. If you’re keen to explore the best options for your existing research, please get in touch with your Customer Success or Research Manager.

Will this feature be available also to merge surveys run in different regions (speaking different languages) of a country e.g. Wallonia and Flanders (Belgium)?

Yes, region by region comparison (in different languages) will be supported. This will be available later in the year.

How do you do your Attest product research to identify platform improvements? Would love to take part in a survey 😉 (non Attest – PII!) or focus group.

We actively collect feedback from our users and are interested to hear any challenges or ideas you have! Please share any feedback directly with your Customer Success or Research Manager and they will take appropriate steps to pass this on to our Product teams, or put you in touch with the relevant product team specifically. We frequently send Attest surveys to gather feedback so please do partake in those! We also love chatting with our users and spend time conducting our own user research across various initiatives. We’ll often send out emails inviting you to take part in any user research activies, so please also look out for invites, or share with your CSM if there are any particular product areas or topics you’re especially keen to contribute to.

Are you building an ability to merge old surveys to this new format?

We don’t currently have a supported solution in the platform itself to merge surveys, but we will be supporting all customers to make a suitable shift over to the multi market workflow. If you’re keen to explore the best options for your existing research, please get in touch with your Customer Success or Research Manager.

Will you be doing any discounts or offers for multi-market surveys? As we would send to more markets if it didn’t cost so many credits.

We won’t be offering specific credit discounts for multi market research, but it’s worth sharing your ideas and concerns on credit usage with your CSM and the customer research team, so we can help make research both affordable and valuable to you.

How many countries is this feature currently available in?

Attest supports research in 59 countries. Any of these 59 countries can be included in your multi market research, and there is no cap on how many countries can be combined for comparison.

In the future do you plan to have a built in translation feature for open text question responses?

Translating open text responses to a native (or draft) language is a feature we aim to explore. We’re expecting the need for this to increase as we see more research conducted on Attest across multiple markets and languages. We currently offer the ability to work with our translation partners to access quality translations for your open text responses, but we believe more automated translation solutions may be suitable here.

In the future do you think it’ll be possible to do text analysis on multiple languages at once to look for a common theme?

Analyzing data across markets is crucial for us in our strive to make multi-market research easier. We recognize that open text analysis presents challenges, especially in multiple languages. While we don’t have concrete plans at this moment, we are actively exploring solutions to help you analyze multi-language text responses. It’s important to note that since our model is custom-developed for the English language, there are some challenges regarding the level of automation we can provide for other languages.

The post Attest Product Release: Multi-market | Attest’s Alyssa Stringer appeared first on Attest.

2024’s Brand Growth Summit was a huge success!

We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

Jim Dorès – International Marketing Manager at JCDecaux – explains how they have used Attest to gather consumer sentiments on OOH advertising in the post-cookie world to drive a thought leadership piece for brands on how best to harness this channel. He examines the strategy, implementation and results of the project.

The post OOH advertising in the post-cookie world | JCDecaux appeared first on Attest.

We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

Jamie Oliver has a long history of successful campaigning and social purpose initiatives.

As his company prepared to relaunch Ministry of Food at home and abroad they needed an up-to-date view of the landscape and consumer need.

Rosalind Godber – Head of Marketing at The Jamie Oliver Group – explains how they used consumer research to better understand how Jamie could engage audiences relevantly and credibly in this space – while at the same time building out a compelling case for potential partners to get involved.

The post Harnessing data for social purpose | The Jamie Oliver Group appeared first on Attest.

We welcomed Marketing, Brand and Insights leaders from some of the world’s top consumer brands to London’s Ham Yard Hotel. We heard from top speakers and panels about how they’re using consumer insights and AI to better understand their target customers.

With data from eight major markets, this global report explores consumer attitudes to AI technologies.

Jeremy King – Attest’s Founder and CEO – dissects the areas where shoppers are embracing AI, and how brands can take advantage of their changing behaviour.

He also addresses the issue of consumer trust – from concern over companies’ handling of data collected via AI, through to the difficulty consumers face identifying AI-generated imagery.

Q&A responses

Here are Jeremy’s responses to the awesome questions we couldn’t cover in the presentation.

Can we use or should we use AI to build artificial or synthetic panels?

In my personal view, artificial or synthetic panels can be useful for a few things. Things that don’t suit real audiences (e.g., highly repetitive surveys, where human fatigue becomes a factor). Things are require high volume and would otherwise be too expensive (e.g., testing a very large volume of things, all at small scale). However, synthetic audiences should be treated with caution. Re-using and/or amplifying pre-existing data is always dangerous… more so when it’s presented as ‘live’ or ‘real’ (it is neither). So synthetic data has reasons to exist, but remind me… why don’t we use synthetic radar data for air traffic control?

What’s the risk that AI hype won’t last? What does it mean for our short term and long term marketing plans?

Hype should only last where the subject delivers results. A lot of uses of AI will turn out to be great; delivering previously impossible things. A lot of AI will turn out to be just hype, not delivering on promises made. So, the hype won’t last… because the hype will turn into reality, or will turn out to be just hype alone. The answer is to look for AI products that actually work now, and improve over time (and avoid those that make future promises, but don’t actually work or have a clear path to deliver you value). Be smart, and see what hype is real, and what hype is just hypothetical.

The post AI in the shopping experience: what consumers want appeared first on Attest.