Brett Townsend, SVP of Strategy at Quester and co-author of “Insights on the Brink,” discusses today’s consumer research. He emphasizes the need to evolve beyond academic approaches, improve storytelling, and leverage emotional data. Brett advocates for better collaboration between insights professionals and agency teams, and shares strategies for capturing consumer narratives, integrating System 1 and System 2 thinking to drive more impactful insights and business decisions.

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS

Brett Townsend: We need to realize that we are in this to make companies money, period. They don’t hire us to do research. They don’t hire us to be interesting. They don’t hire us because we know methodologies. They hire us because they feel that the work we do with consumers can lead to profitability.

Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Understanding consumer behavior is more critical than ever in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. The consumer insights industry plays a pivotal role in helping brand marketers and agencies make informed decisions, develop effective strategies, and stay ahead of the competition. Our guest today believes that the consumer insights industry is at a crucial turning point. Brett Townsend is the SVP of Strategy at Quester and has had a successful career generating sizeable revenue on both the corporate and agency sides of consumer research. Brett has been responsible for domestic and global branding and innovation projects for brands including Pepsi, Doritos, Ruffles, Frigidaire and retailers such as Walmart and Lowes. Brett served on the board of directors for the Insights Association, acting as chairperson in 2022. During his time as chair, the Insights Association increased its membership by 15% and launched the IDEA Council, and IDEAtor, a program that offers diversity and inclusion initiatives in the insights industry. Brett is also the co-author of a new book, “Insights on the Brink: Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry,” which examines the current state of the consumer insights profession and offers a roadmap for its evolution. To discuss some of his book’s key ideas, I’m delighted that Brett is joining us today from North Carolina. Brett, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS! 

Brett Townsend: Thanks, Adrian. I appreciate being here.

Adrian Tennant: So Brett, what led you to consumer insights as a career?

Brett Townsend: I actually started my career in TV and radio broadcasting is what my undergrad was in. And I was doing sports broadcasting and really enjoying it, but didn’t think I wanted to do it my whole life. And so I had a marketing minor and ended up, I had a friend who I networked with, who got me in with Nielsen Media Research. And then that just kind of started my path towards really focusing on consumer insights.

Adrian Tennant: Today, you’re the SVP of Strategy at Quester. What does your role entail there?

Brett Townsend: So really, it’s a couple of things. One, it’s developing strategy within Quester to develop new solutions and new ways of thinking and new things that we can offer to our clients. But then it’s also helping our clients with strategy. So Quester is a branding and innovation strategy firm, and we really focus on consulting and using insights as a piece of the overall strategic puzzle that we’re helping our clients with. And one of the things that we see a lot with our clients is that once they have the story in hand, once they have their questions answered, once we’ve worked with them, one of the things that they then need a little bit of assistance on is, how do you seed that through the organization? How do you work cross-functionally to get people on your side? How do you layer up to the senior executives to really help them see the vision of this? And given my background, especially with my 15 years on the corporate side and having been in those meetings with CMOs and CEOs and high-level people, that is something I’m helping them with is, Okay, now that the project’s done, what do you do? How do you really activate this? How do you make this sing, so to speak, and bring it to life? And I also help with that as well.

Adrian Tennant: As I mentioned in the intro, you’re the co-author of “Insights on the Brink,” which is your first book. So Brett, what inspired you to write it, and who’s your intended audience?

Brett Townsend: So the inspiration came from actually my co-author, Tim Hoskins, who back in 2019 asked me to give a keynote address at a conference about some of the things that he and I had been talking about, because I was a client of Quester’s when I was going back to my early days at PepsiCo. And he and I have talked a lot about, over the years, the industry and some of the things that we see with it. He goes, why don’t you kind of get up and talk about some of this? Might be a little controversial, which it was. Not everybody liked what I was saying, but it was things that I felt needed to be said and then had a lot of encouragement from people to blow it out further, address more topics, and eventually turn it into a book. And then eventually got around to writing it starting last year and asked him if he would co-author it with me. It’s all based on experiences, our experiences and things that we’ve seen in the industry and things that we’ve experienced through both the corporate lens and the agency lens. And it’s really meant to start conversations within the industry, because the industry needs to evolve. And there are multiple ways that that can happen, a lot of which we address in the book. But really, we just want people to start realizing that insights are being marginalized, and departments are being cut, and budgets are being cut, and people are being laid off. And it’s a lot of times because we have not shown our value. And we have not given companies a great reason to believe that we are contributing to the bottom line. And so it’s really helping the industry evolve past the academic and clinical beginnings of our industry to more of what the business is demanding. to really make action and create great products and create solutions for consumers and to have that empathy that we need to bring. And so it’s really just kind of a rallying cry, but also a conversation point for the industry as a whole.

Adrian Tennant: Well, let’s dive into some of the topics. First of all, your book argues that the consumer insights industry is at a crossroads. So Brett, can you elaborate on why you believe it’s such a critical time for the industry?

Brett Townsend: Yeah, I kind of alluded to it – but yeah, we can talk about a little bit more where, you know, we did the title Insights on the Brink [come from] because we we feel like that the industry is either on the brink of losing its influence or reasserting its value, but it is all dependent on us. And the reason why we’re at a crossroads is that we are seeing a lot of research departments’ budgets being cut, headcounts being cut. In some instances, we’re seeing the entire consumer insights department being let go. And we’re seeing CEOs outsourcing insights to the major consulting firms because they’re more interested in outcomes than the data and information that we’re giving them. And so we’re at this point where we’re still holding on to a lot of decades old methodologies that were developed by people who are not in the business world and didn’t have the type of demands that they have now. And realizing that if we continue down the path that we’ve been on, we’re going to continue to see this marginalization. And so the crossroads comes where we have to decide. Are we happy with the way things have been going, which nobody should be, or do we want to make some change about it? And change is going to take time. It’s going to take a long time to change the mindset and to change attitudes within our own industry about how we should go about looking at our jobs and what we should be doing. But too many people I feel are talking about the future of insights with AI and everything else, but the future is going to look a lot like the present unless we change a few things.

Adrian Tennant: Well, in your book you assert that the consumer insights industry needs to break free from its academic and clinical past. Brett, how has an academic approach hindered the industry’s progress in your view?

Brett Townsend: Yeah, so I want to start by saying that this is not an indictment on academia at all. And in fact, we continue to need to be joined at the hip with them because there’s a lot that goes on there that really fuels and feeds what we do. Some great techniques and thinking comes from academia. So I want to make that clear that we’re not saying that we need to break completely free, but we are in very different situations. So we talk about going down two different paths. And so a lot of times we’re using the same methodologies that were developed by clinicians 50 years ago, 70 years ago. And they were created at the time to prove the viability of the methodologies not to provide answers for businesses to make money. And so just from the beginning, we’re starting out behind the eight ball. where we’re starting with a different approach than what really is needed. And so when I say we need to break away from that, it’s not that we need to ignore or never work together, but those in business have to understand that we are in a different environment than 70 years ago when our forefathers started this industry. There are demands that companies have and businesses have that are far different than what it was. And it really comes down to this. It comes down to we need to realize that we are in this to make companies money, period. They don’t hire us to do research. They don’t hire us to be interesting. They don’t hire us because we know methodologies. They hire us because they feel that the work we do with consumers can lead to profitability. And that’s a very different mindset than academia. And so we have to start with that understanding. And then treat this as if we are in business, not as if we are following some middle school scientific method, or we’re doing something that is so rigid in its methodology that we lose sight of what we’re trying to do in the first place.

Adrian Tennant: In the context of communicating our value, in Chapter 3 of your book, you emphasise the importance of storytelling. How can we, as insights professionals and strategists, improve our storytelling skills to make our findings more impactful?

Brett Townsend: The first way I think is we have to realize that storytelling is not through numbers, charts, graphs, and data. And so many times we feel like it’s our job to present data when it’s really not. And understanding that the human brain was not meant to be given large data sets to process them, but that we were meant to process stories. And so that’s how things get sold in. You know, when you think about your favorite ad right now, it’s one that tells a great story and hits you emotionally. And there aren’t stories and emotion and data. We have to bring that to life. So I think that’s the first thing. And then it’s understanding what makes a great story that’s being told to get things done. And so I think with any great story, we have to understand what is the consumer conflict we are trying to help them overcome. Because every great story has conflict. And how the hero or the heroine of the story overcomes that conflict is what we all want to see. And brands and products are tools of the hero or heroine to help them overcome that conflict. And if we don’t know what that consumer conflict is, if we don’t have empathy for that consumer, then we don’t even have the basis of a story. And so it’s really about not just getting up there and telling a lovely story, you know, because we may as well just be reading story time at the children’s library, if that’s what we’re doing. But it’s really it’s a story that handles that consumer conflict and then gives action at the end and says, “Here is now what we’re going to go do.” You know, Lord of the Rings, we’ve got Mordor and Sauron and we’ve got the orcs and we’ve got all that conflict. But that action is we are going to go destroy the ring. You know, and let’s all band together and go do that. And so like, what’s that rallying cry? What’s that burning platform? What’s that thing that’s going to really ignite and inspire the company to develop this new product or create this new ad and marketing campaign? What is it? And I think that’s up to us to accurately communicate that.

Adrian Tennant: So a little less of Microsoft Excel 2024 Handbook, a little bit more The Hero’s Journey?

Brett Townsend: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when I was at Frito-Lay, the CEO of Frito-Lay, Al Carey, told a few of us in Insights one time, he says, “If you can’t tell me your story in three slides, you don’t have a story.” And it wasn’t, “Let’s see how much we can jam onto three slides.” But it was, “Be succinct, be precise. When you’re talking to me as the CEO, I don’t need to know all the data. I just need you to tell me the insight and tell me what to go do about it.” And I think that’s a great lesson and just things to keep in mind as we’re telling these stories within our companies.

Adrian Tennant: Relatedly, your book explores the power of leveraging narratives. Now, we love case studies on IN CLEAR FOCUS. So, Brett, could you give us an example of how narrative-based insights led to successful marketing or product strategies?

Brett Townsend: Yeah, I think it’s important to define what a narrative is first, if you’re okay with that. So narratives are not the same as necessarily stories, but what happens is in consumer insights, we measure consumer beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors a lot. What we have historically not measured is what are the narratives in people’s minds that are driving those behaviors and attitudes and beliefs. And so it’s understanding that narratives are all around us. And even before social media, there were narratives with your family circle, your friends circle, the media, and then it’s just grown exponentially with social media, where you have narratives coming in from every single angle. telling you things to believe, and so you have that. And then you have narratives that you tell other people that then reinforce that into your brain, and then the narratives that we tell ourselves within our own heads. So when you have that three-headed monster of narratives that end up dictating so much of our belief system and our behaviors, that’s what we have to understand. And from a consumer insights context, it doesn’t matter if the narrative within a consumer’s head is right or wrong. It’s understanding what it is and being empathetic to it, not criticizing the consumer or judging them or bad-mouthing them for what they believe, because that will never get us anywhere. So where this is important is how does it drive or explain behavior? One of the case studies that we share in the book in this chapter about narratives – our head of social narratives was doing some work for a yogurt company back in the mid 2000s. And they had discovered through their social narrative work that there was this thing called Greek yogurt that people were starting to talk about. It had less sugar, had more protein, and it was giving them something more substantial that they were starting to look for and find. So, they present that to their client, and the chief executives of this particular company said, “Well, we’re not seeing that in any of our research, so we don’t think that’s valid.” And again, it’s because they were measuring the wrong things or asking the wrong questions or just not really looking for what we were looking for. So they completely dismissed it. They had the chance to be on the crest of the wave of Greek yogurt. Well, a couple of years later, a company called Chobani came around and that was all they were doing was Greek yogurt. And it lit up. I mean, it absolutely took off and became a multi billion dollar product line within the yogurt category, that client could have benefited from had they listened. And it’s one of my favorite quotes from Mark Adams, who’s a very influential voice in our industry, he says, “Just because the boardroom doesn’t know it exists doesn’t mean it’s not true.” And so it turned out to be true and, you know, a good case study in the sense that, yes, we were able to pick up on that narrative before it became a hot trend. But it’s also a warning sign of if you just rely on traditional research or traditional methods to answer all your questions, you’re going to fall short.

Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message.

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Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Brett Townsend, the SVP of Strategy at Cuesta and the co-author of “Insights on the Brink, Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry.” In the fifth chapter of “Insights on the Brink,” you discuss the role of human emotion in consumer insights. Brett, how can insights professionals better capture and utilize emotional data in our work?

Brett Townsend: First of all, it’s understanding that every decision we make as humans is emotionally driven. And we make emotional decisions that then we try to rationalize with practical means after we make them, which It explains why we make completely irrational decisions that make perfect sense to us because we’re trying to explain an emotional decision in rational terms and it doesn’t work. And so I think that it’s understanding that emotion has everything to do with decisions that we make. And then it’s really understanding the best way to do that. So then what has happened over the last 10 years is you’ve had this whole thing about System 1 and System 2 measurement where System 1 is that more instinctual animalistic type non-conscious response or subconscious response. And then System 2 is the frontal lobe that is the judgment center that can override system one. But what has happened is we’ve had two different camps and you’re either in a System 1 camp or a System 2 camp. What we’re saying in this chapter, through the help of some very brilliant neuroscientists, the brain is an integrated organ. You can’t separate System 1 from System 2 and be able to explain things. So the old way of questioning and doing market research was strictly System 2. Give surveys, ask questions, and you just have to take what people are telling you. And then you have System 1, which was able to understand some of the things that were going on in the subconscious and use that as another way to measure it, which is good. But if you swing the pendulum too far that way, then you’re missing the fact that the brain makes decisions with both parts, not just one or the other. And so there’s a number of different ways to do that. But really, what it comes down to is trying to be source-agnostic and creative. and trying to understand the best ways to see where emotion fits within your particular brand or product. So, a quick way that we did this was at Electrolux, where when we were looking at refrigerators, we were trying to show how they try to explain their rational decisions. would ask couples who were in the market for a new refrigerator to tell us how much they were going to set for their budget, and then go and look for refrigerators that fit their budget and tell us which one they would buy. We would be in a Lowes or a Home Depot doing this, and they’d come back and tell us which one they would buy. We asked them why, and they would give us very logical, rational reasons. And each time they did that, we would point out a flaw in their thinking saying, “Well, you could have gone with this one because it’s bigger or that one because it has more features,” or whatever else. And so then it finally took us a couple of layers. But then one or both of them would say, “Well, we just saw it, and we loved it,” or “We just saw it and loved the design,” or “We loved it. It was just beautiful.” I could instantly imagine it in my kitchen. And we’re like, there you go. That’s the emotion that drove their decision, but they were trying to explain it rationally. And so it’s just understanding at what level that takes place with your brand or product. And there’s a number of ways to do that, but it’s just keeping an open mind and realizing that there are ways to measure this. We need to measure this because nobody just makes logical decisions.

Adrian Tennant: So a more integrated approach, mixing methods.

Brett Townsend: Yes, absolutely. That’s a really good way of putting it. It’s like you can do System 1 measurement, but then follow it up with some System 2 questioning as well, and then blend the two together to come up with a better response.

Adrian Tennant: And a lot of these tools that used to be only available in labs have now moved online or have moved into more portable settings.

Brett Townsend: Yeah, and not only that, this is where academia comes in, is that there have been a number of academics who have been top researchers in this field, like Paul Zak or Aaron Reid, that have then come over from academia into business and have brought that academic learning with how do we accurately measure consumer emotion, and they are offering it to companies in a business setup, in a business standpoint, that helps them answer those questions. And so that’s, again, another example why keeping a close tab between business and academia is always a great idea.

Adrian Tennant: In the final chapter, you discuss improving the insights partnership within organizations. So Brett, what advice do you have for insights professionals looking to better collaborate with other departments, such as marketing and sales?

Brett Townsend: Yeah, so I think there’s … well, there’s a number of different things. I think first of all, really work on your persuasion, work on your relationship building. You know, people trust people that they are friends with or that they know or that they’ve had conversations with or things. And so it’s getting to know and really understanding the business of the other parts of your company. And so it’s learning the product development process, learning the sales process, learning about marketing, and then you can better understand how what you’re doing in consumer insights fits in with the rest of the business. And you can empathize with your co-workers and relate to them. Bring them solutions that they may not have thought about because you understand they’re part of the business and so that developing that business acumen and developing those relationships I think is the number one most important thing and Then it really is just a matter of we have to do our jobs better you know a lot of the things that we talk about in the book about evolving and being better. I think that is going to help the relationship because they’ll see that we are bringing more effective insights. We’re bringing more strategy to the table. We’re not just doing research or bringing data, but that we are really making a difference, that we have an eye towards revenue and sales and profit. And then it’s really just having the courage a lot of times to say “No.” There’s research that we should not be doing that we do because we’re trying to be nice or people pleasers, or maybe we’re afraid for our jobs because of cutbacks and things. And so we just kind of go along with what is going on, but we’re not helping anyone with that. Because it doesn’t bring, in many cases, those types of products don’t bring back anything useful. They’re not actionable. And the person whose idea it was isn’t the one who gets blamed; it’s the insights person who does! And so we just keep the circle going. And so I really think it’s having the courage to not just say “No,” but “No, but – I don’t think that’s a good approach, but here is a way that I feel like we could do it.” Or “Instead of telling me we need to do focus groups, how about you tell me what problem you’re trying to solve or what question you’re trying to answer? What does success look like at the end of this? And then we can figure out how to go about doing it.” So just really asking more questions, listening more, and the empathy that we should be showing to consumers, we also show to our co-workers.

Adrian Tennant: Yeah, it sounds like we need to maybe reconsider how we think about research briefs, for example, or the research design.

Brett Townsend: Oh yeah, because most of the ones that I would see in my agency career started with methodology: “We need to do focus groups that do bop, bop, bop,” or “We need to do one-on-one interviews in these markets,” and going, well, I don’t, you have to get all the way down to the end of the brief, or maybe it’s not even there at all about what are we actually doing? You know, what questions are we answering? What problems are we trying to solve here? And so that’s really, what it is, is just understanding that whole part of how we create a brief should start with those important things, and the path to sales, and this is what we need to figure out, and this is what success looks like, and then we go from there.

Adrian Tennant: What advice do you have for advertising agencies, account planners, and strategists who want to partner more effectively with consumer insights professionals?

Brett Townsend: Well, it’s great that they would want to partner with them, because I’ve seen it where ad agencies and other people don’t want to partner with Insights because they don’t want to be told that what they’re doing doesn’t work, or they want to have their own creative license to do whatever. It’s important for those ad agencies to look at the Insights people within their corporations as kind of not only their best friend, but they’re guiding light towards this. Because when it all comes down to it, advertising is to help sell products. And if the advertising isn’t helping the consumer understand why they need your product, then that’s where the consumer insights person can help you with that. Really answering the “Why?” Helping you understand what that consumer conflict is that you should be talking about in any story that you’re telling in an ad. Really helping you develop these characters. And so in many cases, we only have 30 seconds, but we’ve seen incredibly impactful 30-second ads that get to the point that really tug your emotion, that let you know what the conflict is, and then how they’re going to overcome it for you. And there’s a lot of room for creativity, a lot of room for things in there, but it’s using them as a resource and a kind of help and understanding that they’re on your side, rather than looking at them as, “Well, they’re just going to measure this and tell us that it’s not any good,” or “We don’t need their advice on how to do ads.” My advice is you do. You do need them and they can really help you more than you realize.

Adrian Tennant: What’s the one thing you want readers, especially brand marketers or insights buyers, to take away from your book?

Brett Townsend: I think it’s that there is – while we spend a lot of the book talking about what are the shortcomings of the insights industry and how we can improve, I think for marketers and for other people who work with insights – it’s the understanding – and as you mentioned, the very last chapter talks about this – it’s an understanding that it is a partnership. That while there are things that we need to improve upon as an industry, there are things that they need to improve on too. And they need to let us control our own budgets. They need to let us do our jobs and not have methodologies dictated to us. That we need to have a greater role in the storytelling and the story development. and to really use us as the consumer whisperer to really help tap into the empathy that a company should have for the consumer overall, which leads to really great solutions. It’s also, and I think this goes all the way up to the CEO level, is putting the responsibility of the consumer on the entire company, not just on consumer insights. And that’s something that Jeff Bezos has done very publicly where he’s talked so much about the customer obsession that Amazon has and that it’s everybody’s responsibility to take the consumer into consideration, not just marketing or not just insights. And I think a lot of people would really benefit from saying that it’s everybody’s responsibility to have that consumer empathy and then develop stories and products and things that really meet their needs.

Adrian Tennant: Well, this has been a very insightful conversation, Brett. If listeners would like to learn more about your work at Quester or your book, “Insights on the Brink,” what’s the best way to do so?

Brett Townsend: Well, you can just go to Quester.com. That’s where you can learn about our company and kind of what we do and just see how we walk the walk of the principles that we write about in the book. You can find the book on Amazon. Just type in “Insights on the Brink,” and you’ll find it there. And you can always find me on LinkedIn, whether you want to continue the conversation. You want to argue with me or have a nice little debate back and forth? I think we’re up for any type of respectful dialogue with that, because I think the first thing we acknowledge is that the things that we put in the book are not the only ways that we can go about this. And certainly people may not think we’re in the situation that we are in, but we want to have conversations. We want this to spark dialogue within the industry, and we’d love to be part of those conversations.

Adrian Tennant: Brett, thank you very much for being our guest this week on IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Brett Townsend: Thanks for having me, Adrian.

Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Brett Townsend, the co-author of “Insights on the Brink: Revitalising the Market Research and Analytics Industry.” As always, you’ll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com – just select Insights from the menu. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00: The Purpose of Consumer Insights

00:20: Introduction to IN CLEAR FOCUS

00:42: The Importance of Consumer Behavior

01:03: Meet Brett Townsend

02:29: Brett’s Journey to Consumer Insights

03:03: Role of SVP of Strategy at Quester

04:21: Inspiration Behind “Insights on the Brink“

06:30: The Consumer Insights Industry at a Crossroads

08:19: Breaking Free from Academic Constraints

10:32: The Importance of Storytelling in Insights

12:30: Crafting Impactful Narratives

14:01: Case Study: The Greek Yogurt Trend

17:17: The Role of Emotion in Consumer Insights

19:15: Capturing Emotional Data

22:37: Integrating System 1 and System 2 Approaches

23:35: Collaboration Across Departments

25:51: Building Relationships and Trust

27:26: Advice for Advertising Agencies

29:12: Key Takeaways for Brand Marketers

31:00: Where to Find More Information

31:50: Closing Remarks