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Recent research has highlighted the allure of near-misses: those times when we almost win, which are both excruciating but also intoxicating – and often lead us to try harder.
Put Your Stamp On It!
Insight functions, just like products and services, need to be visible, respected and credible. Anything you produce should be clearly branded. There are some important reasons for this:
- Users will then be aware of the source, and will know where they need to go for further information or clarification. Insight material gets used in many different places – and even at the highest levels of an organisation – so it’s good to brand the original documents.
- It builds loyalty, as it encourages people to go to the Insight function whenever customer information is needed. Many insight problems arise from people going to different sources to get what they need – wasting time and effort, and often leading to conflicting information.
- It means that your team is more likely to get the recognition they deserve for the decisions they influence.
- Your outputs may be used widely, but this doesn’t help you if people don’t know that they come from your Insight team. Our IBEX benchmarking study shows that most internal clients want their Insight teams to have more influence throughout the organisation. Branding outputs can play a key role in raising awareness of your capabilities.
Branded for life!
The key elements of branding are: naming (so that everything you produce is identified as an Insight function); a memorable logo; and a consistent style of presentation (which also helps users to equate anything you produce with something that is likely to be of value to them).
One good example of the effective use of branding comes from the Customer Research Department of a leading insurance company. The department has adopted a logo of a thumbprint that bears the words ‘customer research’. This is used on all communications produced by the department, and on its intranet site.
In some organisations, this approach may not be quite so easy, as the sources of Insight may be separate. In situations like this (where the Insight functions aren’t under the same roof – or aren’t formally co-ordinated), the branding issue must be addressed very carefully. A solution needs to be developed that will achieve the main aims of branding, but without confusing the customer.