Activation is the whole game
Insights are only enabled through activation. No matter how great or ground-breaking an insight is, it's just good to know until it's put into practice. Activation makes insights important.
But historically, insight functions have been siled, far from the action. Insight leaders advised on decision-making and execution, and Insight teams reported performance and accountability metrics. However, the Insights feature was typically a data handover that removed one or two from the way the data was leveraged in the market.
It was the advent of digital big data that brought insight capabilities into the fray. The time required for data is now real time. The range of connections has become even richer. And important data began to be collected at moments of truth rather than at moments of randomized sampling. Insights is currently in the activation phase.
However, in many companies, insights capabilities still reflect too much of the old siled approach and too little of today's interconnected reality. This is why leading companies that outperform their competitors are likely to have insight capabilities that focus on activation as a point of engagement and learning.
Insights capabilities from leading companies work where the rubber meets the road. Activation is a goal, not an intermediate step in a strategy or plan. This is one of his key takeaways from Kantar's industry-leading study of future insights, Insights 2030 (I2030). AI will build deeper insight into activations.
The I2030 House of Insights framework presented here recognizes that activation is the culmination of insight. Activation is how a fundamental understanding of empathy builds brand value through an exciting provocation process. Activation is the reward. The activation will shape the future of insights in the advent of the AI era, known as AI 2030.
Activation in action
Activation involves three important skills and processes. Strong relationships that influence partner engagement or decision-making. Driving impact or a full commitment to organizational rather than functional priorities. and real-time execution, the ability to inform and adjust with speed and agility.
Activation means building trust and emotional intelligence, as well as data skills and research IQ. Business leaders want answers even before they ask questions. Insight must become the authority you seek, no matter where or to whom you report. A focus on activation builds a sense of authority, which is essential for Insight Her leaders.
In recent years, the guiding principle for seeking insight has been to become more involved in creating strategy and advising on planning. Strategy and planning are equally important. But shifting the focus to activation requires the insights function to become more involved in implementing strategy and planning. To disseminate your insights, you need to act with courage and courage.
A business-first focus on activation means the Insights department is responsible for business standards as well as research standards. Kantar's I2030 research found that leading companies are twice as likely to adopt business-oriented KPIs to assess the performance of their insight functions compared to trailing companies. . In other words, competitive companies ensure that insight capabilities are connected to important business outcomes.
Brands need to integrate AI into the data flow that impacts activation. When AI is integrated into business operations, it provides the connective tissue of efficiency and responsiveness. To do that, you need insights that deliver ideas at the real-time tempo of AI.
Insights capabilities should be benchmarked against the ability to monitor AI in this way. This type of organizational benchmarking is what Kantar provides insights for leaders.
AI as activation
As companies implement AI into their operations, they quickly discover that AI applications work better when managed collaboratively rather than individually. Efficiency was shared. Learning has spread. Implement best practices across your organization. When this happens, insights become more tightly connected to every part of the business. The natural evolution of the AI transformation currently active across the commercial enterprise will bring insights even closer to activation.
AI provides enhancements across all aspects of activation, including partners, influence, and real-time, that enhance insight capabilities and make a big difference in activations.
Six important points to highlight:
business leadership. It was clear from Mr. Kanter's work on his I2030 that Business and Insight expects his leaders to work more like senior managers than senior researchers. They want their insights teams to be more competent not just in research, but also in non-research skills that make a difference to executives.
The traditional challenge is that insight leaders are based on research and data rather than strategy and vision. However, AI is a resource that reinforces strengths and compensates for weaknesses. Therefore, this is a tool that insightful leaders should leverage to further contribute to business leadership.
Additionally, insight leaders need to bring AI to business problems as well as research needs. AI can help businesses do what they need most: activation. Indeed, AI should provide the necessary insights in terms of efficiency and capability. But the bigger opportunity is for Insight Her leaders to step up as senior managers and enable them to leverage AI into their business.
trust. Activation is more than just implementation. It is primarily about persuasion, or getting decision makers to take action. Effective engagement with partners is based on trust that is built over time through shared experiences. It creates confidence and the willingness of business leaders to act as recommended.
With AI, insights capabilities become more knowledgeable and deliver information faster. Both the insights team and other business teams can more easily access knowledge. The display and dashboard will be fuller and more modern. Your entire insights toolbox is powered by AI tools to extract, summarize, report, and monitor faster and more comprehensively.
Ensuring better knowledge, delivered in real-time and perfectly matched to your audience, increases the ability of insights to positively impact activation. This means using AI to turn insights into actionable nuggets. It also ensures that your insights are up-to-date and complete. AI’s reach and processing power gives true insight leaders a step up.
Expertise. In this context, AI can significantly improve and impact expertise. AI provides a learning system for insight teams. Gathering important information in a condensed but easy-to-use manner makes knowledge more accessible. AI can thoroughly and accurately fill in the insight experience and training that leaders and teams lack.
This is not to overlook the challenges of generative AI hallucinations. However, this is a recognized issue, temporary and manageable in the meantime. Our ongoing work will eventually resolve these issues, which always arise with new models and analyzes of all kinds.
Even basic applications can make your insights team smarter. These include driving content, summarizing conversations, and evaluating performance.
The greatest opportunity lies in the untapped potential of a company's unique data and experience. Every company has a unique view of the market, but most of it is dormant and untapped. They are often difficult to access and, generally speaking, difficult to collaborate with. These are tasks that AI systems excel at. Internal conflicts also play a role, and tools can take precedence over people.
AI systems are available to all competitors, as are third-party databases and systems. Competitive advantage from AI comes from the ability to discover and activate the unique expertise of individual companies in the marketplace.
Continuous execution. The Insights team has traditionally operated at an incremental pace. That means completing one project and digesting it, then doing the next one and digesting it. It's one step at a time, always methodical, but often time consuming. AI operates at a different pace, facilitating real-time execution and impact.
AI facilitates continuous optimization with rapid assessments that connect the dots more thoroughly. But as I said, the hardest thing to gain insight into is accessibility. What slows down the process of enabling insights is the need to collate, extract, and assimilate information. Doing this so fast is the central genius of AI, especially generative AI, and thus the power of AI to facilitate faster activation cycles.
Norms. The impact drivers that are part of activation are not just cultural. It’s not just about loyalty to a goal or championing a vision and strategy. This also means identifying and establishing best practices and norms.
The kinds of things that are most effective and the norms that guide activation are often buried deep within a company's experience and tacit knowledge. They also include the success or failure of past campaigns and business initiatives. The collection of tracking studies, advertising tests, concept tests, user experience studies, and other research projects provides a cumulative database from which prescriptive learning can be extracted.
The value of extracting norms is that the rules of the road for high-quality marketing are identified. And they apply to all activations and can be enforced. The risk of relying on norms is that all marketing tends to look the same. Everything will become prescriptive. Of course, everything will be better, but everything will be the same.
These normative risks of homogenization will have the happy consequence of increasing the importance of finding new ways to revitalize breakout success. When everything seems standard, you have to be more creative. This is where insights can have the greatest impact.
The key takeaway from I2030, whether you quote it or not, was the “need for imagination,” the need for breakout thinking in a market characterized by rapid change, high volatility, and continuous disruption. . Prescriptive marketing alone is not enough. Now more than ever, businesses need curiosity, creativity, and imagination. Insight must govern a company’s imagination, and in the age of AI, it’s more important than ever.
Organizational preparation. Real-time capabilities are worthless if companies cannot act on real-time knowledge and opportunities. You need to optimize all touchpoints, not just the insights feature. AI will provide enforcement to businesses that might otherwise be slow to adapt.
The advent of AI increases the risk of falling behind. At the same time, AI makes it easier for companies to respond to the speed of markets characterized by faster business cycles. However, if competitors also do not move quickly, the first mover will exit sooner. AI has made it easier for businesses to become better, faster, and smarter. With the advent of AI, waiting and waiting has become riskier.
As activation stewards, the insights function must guide business leaders through the transformation that AI brings to the marketplace. The key is to make AI part of the activation. These are the processes and skills that insight teams must leverage in the age of AI.
