Innovation to maximize the value of research
The Problem
The Consumer Insight team at Unilever is responsible for generating and commissioning all research within Australia – an annual investment of millions of dollars.
- Most of the formal delivery of research is shared through one off PowerPoint presentations with the occasional workshop thrown in
- As a result the feeling was "we don’t get as much out of our research as we could"
- The team wanted to make sure that they optimized the value of their work, and educated internal clients (marketers) and other business partners to think and do things differently
- Our goal was to teach our marketers about consumers in an exciting, relevant and motivating way
The Process
The aim was to develop a practical toolkit of new ways to distill, communicate and imbed Consumer Insight learnings. This new thinking was going to be applied to the launch of a major U&A study, so that the experience would be tangibly different, powerful and effective. A cross-functional team was formed with Consumer Insight, ?What If! and the research agency commissioned to deliver the U&A study.
As a team we agreed that our output would be a living book of ideas and principles for bringing research to life that we would write together. Everyone in the team was allocated a research role based on one of four groups of influencers who could help us understand how to make research stick:
- teachers
- storytellers
- revolutionaries
- celebrities
We downloaded our learnings as principles and first burst ideas and planned an inspiration day around them, drawing on the expertise of first class communicators, motivators, educators and storytellers.
Initial ideas were generated against eight emerging chapter headings, and then turned into more developed concepts for the team to use. We then applied some thinking to how to make these new best practices stick.
The Solution
We generated over 100 new ideas, under eight core principles (chapter headings) that ranged from the seduction (drawing people in), to the ride of your life (creating an experience) to staying alive (keeping the learning front of mind).
Our output was pasted into a beautiful leather bound book, with space to add new ideas, comments & feedback.
The Results
The book was put to immediate use to generate new ideas for research presentations that week. The toolkit has been used to add freshness and energy to research presentations since the project. New ideas have been added, and some of the existing ideas have been evolved and refined after initial trial.
"The project was heaps of fun and we left it with loads of great stuff to work with, output we could continue to build on going forward and feeling incredibly inspired to go out and make the stuff happen in the business. What's great is that we are using it and still inspired by it!
The ?What If! guys work with you and that collaborative feel is terrific - they make sure you never lose sight of the end goal and the need for the stuff you produce to be usable in your business."
Tiina Raikko, Consumer Insight Director, Unilever Australia
"This challenge was a little different to normal, and we needed to keep the plan flexible to work around the emerging principles, ideas and energy from the team. But the core principles were still the same: seeking fresh inspiration for ideas in new and exciting places and bringing them to life at pace. It’s always inspiring to work with people who embrace change and challenge, and were so excited about the output."
Matt Whale, ?What If!
