Much has changed since then – research today is more than just sales figures and market research reports. It’s about listening and talking to customers, recording and analysing what they’re saying both face to face and online. Most companies haven’t the processes in place to listen to consumers this way, and the few that do often fail to ask the right questions, making effective decision making harder and the time scale to react longer.   

Rather living with information overload, it should be the role of agencies to ensure that clients are aware of the right research approaches to take. For example, they should suggest relevant techniques and guide them through the process of converting the data into actionable insight to drive swift decision making. 

This will require agencies to use the “conviction” and “balls” described by Claire Beale in her recent column. Too often agencies stick by methods they know, remaining in their comfort zones by promoting the type of research they think clients will be happier buying, rather than what best fits with the problem at hand.  

But before becoming this beacon of light, agencies themselves must put actionable insight and swift decision making at the heart of everything they do – rather than leave it to the last minute, for example, after storyboards are drawn up. It should be implemented much earlier in the process to enable it to have an actual impact on creative strategy. 

And it isn’t just about buying in the right research tools and getting specialist information professionals on-board. Agencies need to create a culture where research is a way of life: driven by a clear understanding of their client’s end-user and supported by a desire and enthusiasm for innovative thinking. 

Ad-avoidance is an established concept in our industry. This has forced the sector to up its game, so much so that the majority of advertising aimed at consumers today is of a ‘good’ quality. It is the role of research to lift advertising from ‘good’ to ‘great’ to drive greater cut through – not just benefiting sales but contributing to long term brand strength.  

Chris Lovell, Group CEO

Marketing spin or reality, time will tell but one thing is for sure, whether you are the worlds largest corporation, or a new start up, putting your customer at the heart of your business and letting them collaborate with you, your brand and the way in which you do business with them is the only successful path in the future

How agencies and consultancies react and enable this process of collaboration between Brands and consumers is still a big question, one that many agency networks have not even thought of let alone started to solve……coming out of recession it will be interesting to see which agencies revert back to the old way of working and which take the brave new path.

Chris Lovell, Group CEO