Insights2020 is described as a global initiative focused on uncovering the drivers of customer-centric growth, aiming to align strategy, structure, capability and the role of insights and analytics to drive business growth. It builds on Marketing2020, which was the cover story of Harvard Business Review in July and August 2014.
The scope is 337 vision interviews with business, marketing and insights leaders, plus a quantitative survey with more than 10,000 respondents across 60 countries, supported by LinkedIn behavioral analysis, Wharton crowd sourcing, and eight global research teams.
Key findings
- The single largest gap is on leadership priority. Customer centricity is a top priority for leaders at 91 percent of overperformers against 48 percent of underperformers.
- Purpose comes next. Linking everything to a clear brand purpose shows 80 percent against 32 percent.
- Customer centricity being fully embraced by all functions shows 79 percent against 13 percent, the widest proportional gap in the set.
- Insights and analytics leading the business shows 51 percent against 18 percent, and linking data sources to distil insights shows 67 percent against 34 percent.
- Incentives based on customer related KPIs remain uncommon in both groups, at 45 percent against 24 percent.
What the study inherited from Marketing2020
Marketing2020 drew on more than 250 CMO and peer interviews to answer how to focus and organize marketing. It identified three characteristics of winning future brands: relevant big insights, a clear and engaging purposeful positioning, and brand value created through a personalized, consistent and engaging total experience.
It also named five effectiveness drivers for a future-proof marketing organization: connecting with other functions, inspiring all employees with the brand purpose, focusing efforts on key strategies and KPIs, organizing efficient processes, and building marketing excellence.
Keith Weed of Unilever frames the change in data. As a brand manager he dealt with third-party retailer data that was twelve weeks old. With mobile, first party data arrives from consumers in real time, and he argues that must change how insights are thought about.
Who answered, and how growth was measured
The survey base was 10,495 respondents across 60 markets. By region, 40 percent came from Europe, 35 percent from the Americas, 22 percent from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Pacific, and 3 percent from elsewhere. By level, 22 percent were C-suite or board, 45 percent vice president or director, 25 percent executive or senior vice president, and 8 percent manager.
The methodology checked self-reported growth against actual growth, and partnered with the Wharton School and its Future of Advertising Program for crowd sourcing on customer centricity.
The context the study sets is device growth: 7 billion connected devices in 2008, 25 billion in 2015, and 50 billion projected by 2020, which the study argues gives companies the ability to understand customers better and become much more customer centric.
The three dimensions, and what is offered on top
The ten drivers sit inside three dimensions: total experience, customer obsession, and the insights engine. Under total experience, data-driven customization shows 73 percent against 31 percent, and using insights and analytics to drive consistency across all touch points shows 64 percent against 29 percent.
Under the insights engine, the critical capabilities are measured separately: business sense at 75 against 50 percent, wholebrain thinking at 71 against 42 percent, and storytelling at 61 against 37 percent. Experimentation is the lowest scoring driver in both groups, at 40 against 13 percent.
The study is packaged for use as well as reading. A scorecard uses the respondent base to model business growth scenarios from a company’s current scores, and the offers range from a keynote to a self-assessment workshop to a full in-company quantitative pulse check with vision interviews, a tailored data cut, and three growth ambition scenarios.
Scope and limitations
The figures throughout are reported as a contrast between overperformers and underperformers rather than as a single population estimate, and the summary gives the sample composition by region and job level without margins of error.
Source
This page summarises Insights2020: Global Results Summary, by MillwardBrown Vermeer, 2015.