INSIGHT on INSIGHT: Picking a third-party agency that’s right for you
If you have decided it makes sense to utilize a third-party insight agency and not do the work in-house, you still need to pick the right agency to work with.
There are two basic types of insight agencies:
Agencies that offer insights as one of many services provided to clients: These tend to be agencies focused on advertising, marketing or social media that have incorporated an insight offering to complement their other services.
Agencies that specialize in insight: These range from large market research firms to independent consultants working out of a spare bedroom in their home.
Picking the right partner is critical to having a successful project because identical objectives or identical project design specifications can still lead to very different deliverables and different results depending on who is involved.
As you consider and evaluate partners, investigate the following areas to make sure you get the right fit, have the experience you desire and get the results you need:
The number of hand-offs: Continuity is critical to maintaining focus. The intellectual assembly line utilized by larger companies means information will change hands a number of times from the beginning to the end, potentially creating an effect like the game of telephone. Each exchange loses some perspective and introduces room for error through misinterpretation.
For example, the sales person who creates a proposal might initially receive the objectives of a project. The proposal is then sent to a project manager who engages another expert to translate the objectives into a design before it goes to another department to execute the project. From here, it might go to yet another group to process and analyze the data while even more people help create the final summary and presentation, which gets handed back to the project manager to deliver back to the client.
Larger agencies would counter this point with the fact that each component is done by individuals with specialized expertize (i.e. a designer, a programmer, a moderator, an analyst, etc.) which may or may not add enough value to outweigh the risks.
Smaller organizations have fewer exchanges, which helps maintain consistent perspective, but increases the risk of work being done by someone that is “a jack of all trades, but master of none.” In the end, some clients like to know an entire team is working on their project while others would rather know one or two people are living and breathing it day-to-day.
Depth of experience: Large organizations can have a broader talent pool to draw from which provides access to employees with decades of experience, but also an assortment of junior employees still learning the craft. Smaller organization may not have the breadth of employees, but they typically exist because someone had gained enough experience through prior jobs to want to go out and start their own agency.
Subject matter context: It is always important to work with a company that has extensive experience with the type of work being done (i.e. shopper insight, not just market research). There are also times when category-specific experience provides an existing framework to operate within. However, there can also be a lot of value from the perspective of people that have done similar types of work, but on other categories. Clients should consider the value of prior category work (i.e. prior projects on your category), prior experience with the type of work (i.e. shopper segmentation models or category assessments. etc.), and related experience (i.e. using insight to sell).
Client communication: Some companies only feel comfortable if a project has a weekly one-hour conference call to discuss status and updates. Others want to be hands-off and forget about the project until the delivery deadline approaches, knowing the agency they are working with has everything under control. In addition to the amount of communication, clients should consider if they want an agency that will challenge and refine their suggestions or simply execute what they are given. Of course, it also helps if those interactions are with people that show respect, humility and feel like an intellectual equivalent.
Creativity and curiosity: Insight is as much of an art form as it is a science. Agencies can force-fit projects to one-size-fits-all templates and standardized questions or they can consider more unique approaches that might better accomplish a project’s particular objectives. While proven approaches have value, creative ideas (from overall design to recruiting the right people to asking the right questions in the right way) are typically critical to revealing the most powerful insights. Curiosity is almost equally valuable in determining what areas to explore and how much exploration to do before being satisfied with the results.
Depth of analysis: Many agencies will only do the analysis necessary to answer the core project objectives. They know where to look in the data to get answers and do little exploration beyond that point. Other agencies have a more systematic approach to analysis, increasing the odds of uncovering unexpected insight and shining light in the ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ corners.
Relevance of analysis: It is very easy to apply technically accurate analysis to a set of data only to produce meaningless or useless results. Much of the meaningful insight can be lost if the person (or people) spending the most time in the data are not able to recognize what deserves more attention and what can be ignored.
Ability to Interpret and recommend: For many agencies, projects end with delivering a slug of data and some superficial observations. Others drill deeper into the data and offer conclusions with supporting insight and practical recommendations, application steps or summaries in presentation-ready format. Unclear expectations can easily lead to disappointment.
Cost and timing: The overhead and bureaucracy of larger agencies typically translates into higher costs and longer timelines. However, other agencies have focused on cost and speed as points of differentiation, offering cheap and fast solutions for straight-forward standardized projects. Due to lower overhead and smaller teams, some smaller agencies can (but aren’t always) less expensive and can (but aren’t always) faster depending on how they are structured.
In general, larger agencies are good at handling standardized and straight-forward projects where the client has narrow and clear objectives, design guidelines and delivery expectations. These agencies can also be better to work with when the client has a dedicated insights manager that can oversee the project and take ownership of the interpretation or translation of the results.
Smaller agencies are often a better fit when clients have limited insight experience or the objectives or design are more ambiguous, creating more demand for creativity or curiosity. Small agencies also typically have a more clearly defined niche where they can offer greater experience and expertise.