IC01: Understanding People and Brands by Alice Mackenzie (Havas People)

• Agency is a great environment to start your insights career.
• It’s great to combine qual and quant, staring with qual to understand and quant to validate (but it can work both ways)
• In research, don’t focus only on your competition.
• When insights don’t show the client what they want to see, reassure them on the methodology used, and walk them through the process of obtaining the data.
• Ensure that your insights provide solutions to client problems, not only problems.
• People see the value of research, but sometimes the purpose gets lost.
• Research should be done before you build anything, not after.
• Try to expand your role from researcher to trusted advisor and consultant.
• Be simple and straightforward in your conclusions.
• Poor, vague briefs happen all the time.
• Nail your research brief and objectives for the project; everything else comes after that.
• Your outputs are only as good as your brief.
• Create a template for research briefs.
• Always think about “so what” when you see data and insights.
• If you have a one-page research summary, include three things: research objective, key findings, and next steps.
• Client satisfaction with research is mainly driven by the quality of your recommendations.
• Applicable triangle in research: good, cheap, and fast. You can only get two. 🚶🏼

Check the full recording here 👇🏻