Consumer insight training

Has Elon Musk just done a Gerald Ratner? – A Billion Dollar Cock Up – You decide!

Elon Musk has just bought Twitter for $44 Billion a fact that will almost certainly not have escaped your attention.
It will also be clear that he had a severe case of buyers remorse half way through the transaction and tried to trash the financial reputation of the platform in order to back out, or at the least lower the asking price.
You’d probably try and get out of a deal that was clearly over-priced in a world where tech-stock prices were nosediving all around you. The question is, would you do that at the cost of devaluing the very asset you’d leveraged yourself to the hilt to own?
For those that don’t recall the story of Gerald Ratner, it’s a good place to start when considering the place Musk now finds himself in.

Webinar – That Aha Moment! – How to create breakthrough insights. Full recording

In the session I covered:

– What is an insight?
– The difference between insights and data
– The formula for creating perfect insights
– The traps and mistakes people make with insights
– Insights in B2B and B2C
– My favourite examples of great insights
– My favourite examples of bad insights

Lots a very clever and probing Q&As from participants

Top 5 – Insights in Advertising & Communication

insights are multi-faceted and can be used to create products or to engage and connect with consumers through communication. If we can reflect how our target is feeling and behaving in our advertising, they should see themselves and say “that company really understands me!”

I’m often asked to give great examples of insights being used effectively in advertising and communication and this is my top 5 list of favourites. These are personal preferences as I relate to the ideas and behaviours within the communication.

What is value proposition, and why does your start-up or small business need it?

Setting up and running a start-up or small business is never easy. There are lots of tricky decisions and things that you need to consider and work on to reach the success that you hope for. Whilst it may be tricky; there is some good news!

One of these top tips is value proposition; it might sound like another bit of jargon, so what is value proposition and what makes it something you want to have?

No bullet holes? What they say about Insights vs Observations

Observations are facts, data points or trends that are visible not usually just to us, but to others (including our competitors)
If asked what the biggest single mistake people make when writing Value Propositions, I’ll reply that 90% of them contain no insight at all, simply observations.
Let me tell you the story of Abraham Wald a Hungarian Jew who spent the second world war in the USA doing his part for the war effort as part of the classified SRG (Statistical Research Group)

Amazon Astro – Roaming around your home? – Good idea or not?

This week I saw the announcement from Amazon of the Astro household robot. It appears to be an Amazon Fire Tablet on a large castor that rolls in an out of your living space, recording and broadcasting video and audio. What could possibly go wrong?

Is there such a thing as a Universal Insight? – No! (Not unless you believe everyone thinks, acts and believes the exact same things) – Myth 3

I regularly engage with organisations where the #officeboor in senior management believes that they are on the lookout for universal insights. Unfortunately for that to actually happen, we’d need to imagine we operate in a soulless homogenous market place and believe that all our customers value the exact same thing, hold the same priorities and speaks exactly the same way about them. Which is a little tricky to believe.

Henry Ford said – “If I’d asked them what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse!” – Fake News – Find out why.

Henry Ford said – “If I’d asked them what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse!” – Fake News – Find out why. How to debunk the myth:
Henry Ford never said that, there is no record of that quote until 2006.
It is not the customers job to tell you ‘how to solve’ the problem but to define the problem that needs solving. Tell the office boor that if they are asking the target to specify the technology, they are doing innovation wrong!