Finding Gold Dust in Your Data: How Real-Time Consumer Insight is Essential in Maximising Marketing and Brand Reach

The pace of change within marketing communications together with ever-evolving consumer behaviours put the need for real-time consumer insights at the heart of every marketing operation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current insight gaps within the wider marketing and advertising industry in order to propose an innovative and agile means to truly understand consumers’ needs, behaviours and feelings. Clients are progressively drowning in data, reinforcing the need for agencies to find fresh, relevant and creative insight amongst the
sea of available information. This paper provides fascinating findings about the key issues the industry is facing, in an environment where every idea has to be validated by robust data to prove return on investment before being granted credibility. The research reveals new opportunities for agencies to access fresh consumer insights, breaking the monopoly of global advertising networks, who currently have exclusive access to the deep pockets of data within the industry. The data collection method for this research was a mixed qualitative approach of
in-depth interviews and a practical comparability study of several insight tools on the market. Given the relevance of big data today, the research findings are of significant importance to both marketing client and agency side: emphasizing the need for new data collection methods tailored towards clients’ business needs and ultimately enabling both parties to create powerful impact with content and strategies that are based on real insights available in real time.