This was my second year attending IIeX (Insight Innovation Exchange) and it was great to learn about so many innovative new approaches, technology, and suppliers in the market research space. Below are the top 6 themes that I took away from IIeX 2016--what's new and what's next in insights!
 
Key Insights Industry Trends:
 
1. The Commoditization of Research Execution

• Automating research execution and interpretation opens up more thinking and analysis time (e.g. Research Now standard brand trackers, AYTM analytics).
• Off-the-shelf research solutions (e.g. ZappiStore) provide a right-sized, pre-packaged research project at a great value.
• Do-it-yourself (DIY) research (e.g. AYTM, SurveyMonkey) enables client researchers and consultants to do faster, cheaper research for simple objectives.

 
Key take-away: Automating non-value added work can be faster, cheaper and more accurate. However, it can never replace an actual human for creativity, influencing and engaging, convincing and telling stories.
 
2. Bite-sized, Right Sized

• Bite-sized research means surveys that can take 5 minutes (vs. 50) or even a single question at a time (e.g. Google Consumer Surveys, gamified/app research).
• Bite-sized insights can be easily and quickly understood and are a good way to ensure learning is absorbed in an organization (vs. one massive report).

 
Key take-away: In our information-overload, time-starved world, collecting and communicating data in bite-sized amounts can increase engagement all around.
 
3. Storytelling Everywhere

• As a research tool—especially in qualitative research, but also larger scale via video in quant (e.g. Voxpopme) or online metaphor elicitation (e.g. Meta4Insight).
• As a reporting tool—think re-telling consumer stories in qual or applying a narrative approach in a quant. summary.
• As an innovation tool—use stories to bring a possible future to life (e.g. Lowe’s Innovation Lab comic books) or collaborate with sci-fi writers to create a future story (e.g. SciFutures).

 
Key take-away: Emotion is required for action, whether it’s consumer buying behavior or client/stakeholder decision making, and nothing gets to emotions better than a good story.
 
 
4. Rise of Machine Learning

• Text analytics and sentiment analysis can derive meaning from big data, social listening, and survey data (e.g. OdinText, Converseon).
• Facial coding can now be done effectively by machines and so opens up new worlds of application and scalability (e.g. Affectiva).

 
Key take-away: Advances in machine learning mean that computers can take over hours of laborious hand-coding of text and emotion—it’s not perfect yet, but it is much more scalable.
 
5. Visualization Drives Clarity

• Visual questionnaire design can capture much more accurate data where the subject could be misinterpreted or hard to understand (e.g. VitalFindings).
• Visualizing data and reporting is still a hot topic yet still a major client unmet need. Like stories, visuals make insights easier to understand and more likely to stick.
• Visuals aren’t just for data; they are also essential for bringing strategy to life—think images, video, etc. in addition to text.

 
Key take-away: Visualization in survey design can help increase accuracy (e.g. visual scales, pictures + words), while in reporting and strategy documents, it’s a way to bring the content to life.
 
6. Behavioral Research: Actions Speak Louder

• Re-targeting surveys can reach consumers based on a specific online behavior for research—ad effectiveness, site visitors, audience profiling, etc. (e.g. Survata).
• Purchase/ receipt triggered surveys can be a great way to get real time, accurate sample and data on path to purchase, shopper insights, etc. (e.g. InfoScout, Field Agent).
• Implicit research, including affective priming, gathers data indirectly so it can uncover real thoughts and feelings on a range of topics (e.g. Scientient Decision Science, Olson Zaltman).

 
Key take-away: Identify research respondents via actual behavior (vs. claimed) to increase accuracy. Also, brain science tells us that most decisions are made unconsciously, so don’t rely only on what people say, but also consider implicit and behavioral findings.

​I attended the Future of StoryTelling (FoST) event in New York City last month and experienced a cornucopia of performances, roundtables, workshops, speakers, and interactive experiences all centered around “reinventing the way stories are told”. As described on their website:
 
The Future of StoryTelling is an invitation-only, two-day gathering of technology, media, and communications visionaries from around the world. The summit is designed to put participants in direct contact with the most vital ideas, people, and technologies that are shaping the way we tell stories.
 
There were three sessions in particular that gave me great inspiration for storytelling for brands and companies and I wanted to share a few key nuggets from each here:

Dave Nadelberg, founder of Mortified, taught a “story extractor” method for turning anecdotes into stories. He recommended starting with one aspect of the event and then filling in the rest of the framework. Mortified focuses on adults telling stories from their childhood, so the framework looks like this:

• “As a kid, I wanted nothing more than…” [THE GOAL]
• “Which mattered because…” [THE MOTIVATION]
• “Unfortunately…” [THE PROBLEM]
• “So I tried to overcome that by…” [THE FIX]
• “Which lead to…” [THE OUTCOME]

 
There are a few things I love about this approach. First, you don’t have to know the entire story when you get started. When writing a brand story, maybe you only have “the goal” to start with or “the fix”, but by walking through a step-by-step framework like this, you can flesh out a holistic and multi-dimensional brand story. Also, this approach separates out “goal” and “motivation”—translated into business speak, that’s “mission statement” (goal or objective works here too) and “brand purpose”. The motivation, or purpose, is the why behind your brand story—why you do what you do as an entrepreneur or a company—and no brand story is complete without it. Lastly, this framework is equally applicable for brand or customer stories (and don’t forget, the customer is always the hero of either kind of story!).
 
____
 
Beth Comstock, Vice Chair of GE, talked about growing a corporate brand and I took away three big lessons from her roundtable discussion.

1. Every story should have multiple audiences and multiple objectives. When GE is looking for new stories to tell through media or events, they look for narratives that will appeal to more than one key stakeholder. For example, a single story might be expected to: grow the corporate brand, reach key customers, and help bring in top talent for recruiting.
2. There are three “tiers” of brand/corporate storytelling. The first is the broadest and most emotion-driven: fall in love with us. Next, “engage with us”—this is the learning more phase and involves both the heart and the head. Finally, a “direct offer” which is more functional and much more specific/product focused than the previous two tiers.
3. A holistic brand story has three critical elements: Attention, Relevance, and Call to Action. This is a classic marketing framework applied to story—it must capture the audience’s attention, it must speak to them in a relevant and meaningful way, and finally, it must drive activation (e.g. buy, sign up or apply) and provide a way to easily do so.

 
_____
 
Frank Rose and Paul Woolmington, senior fellows at Columbia University, talked about “The Story World” that the most engaging brands and media properties build around their entire proposition. This Story World offers four levels of engagement to participants/audiences/customers:

1. One-way: this is the most traditional approach for both brands and media and involves putting out a message via broadcast, print, etc. for consumption. These also reach the broadest audience.
2. Two-way/interactive: here, brands communicate with their audience and also allow for responses. A common example would be social media interactions (e.g. customer comments & sharing, direct company responses, etc.).
3. Participatory: Here, the audience is granted license to fully participate in the brand Story World in an online/virtual way and may involve things like: co-creation (e.g. “design-the-next” or “pick-the-winner” contests) or gaming.
4. Experiential: this is the most immersive level of engagement, targets the narrowest and most dedicated audience, and happens in the real/off-line world. It allows customers/fans to engage with a brand or property as though they were actually a part of the Story World. Examples include “fan experiences” or scavenger hunts/geocaching.

 
 
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into the Future of StoryTelling and just maybe, found something that inspires you too.