The customer is at the heart of what we do as marketing, design, and branding practitioners. Without customers, businesses (our clients) will fail.
It’s one thing to know the principles of our field of work, but we also need to be able to execute on those principles. The gap between what we know and how we act on what we know is often challenging to bridge, and it plays out all too frequently in design and branding, especially in the context of consumer research.
The foundational principle of marketing we learn in business school is “The customer is king.” Businesses must prioritize customers’ needs, ensure their satisfaction, and, in turn, drive their loyalty. Brands must resonate with the audience and drive meaningful engagement to be impactful.
Good design and branding work rely on consumer insights to inform the approach. Agencies recognize the importance of these insights, but they often gather them without proper research or strategic intention. Depending on a given project’s time and allocated budget, consumer research can sometimes be conducted hastily—through a cursory internet search or quick “interviews” with colleagues instead of real consumers.
With every new agency project I worked on, I wondered if there was a more thoughtful approach to bringing in consumer voices without completely upending the process and timeline. Given that agencies help build some of the world’s leading brands, it felt important enough to get it right.
During my years in the field, honed with learnings from my current role at the consumer insights agency, The Mix, I’ve discovered a few simple things to ensure consumer voices are genuinely heard and included in your team’s decision-making process. These guidelines don’t require any special equipment or expertise, and they won’t disrupt your timeline or budget; all you need is your innate curiosity, empathy, and to think slightly outside your typical process.
Four Guidelines to Improve Your Consumer Research
Balance Your Audience Representation
A brand will resonate with its target audience only when the insights are from people who actually reflect the audience. Representation matters. When considering whose voices you invite to the table, ensure a balance of age, gender, race, and other relevant factors (proportional to the actual population of your market).
An example of this in practice is an alcohol brand with a major market in Florida. We ensured that the consumer research skewed Hispanic, because they represent nearly 28% of the state’s population.
Avoid Generational Generalizing
Many client briefs define the target audience as the most influential generation at the time. Currently, that’s Gen Z. However, a brand cannot resonate with every individual in a generation. There is no simple definition of Gen Z – people within this group have diverse characteristics, behaviors, and affinities. Your brand will resonate with some but not with others. The key is acknowledging these nuances and making an informed, strategic decision when defining your specific audience.
Dimensionalize Real People
The goal of consumer research is to understand how people behave and what their needs and desires are. Using quotes directly from people can strengthen consumer insights when presenting the strategy behind a concept. Including audio or video clips that capture people’s genuine thoughts rather than a summarized version makes a more significant impact. Additionally, photos of people from their everyday lives can bring your consumers to life.
When a large global sports brand wanted to understand the hair dynamics for Black women in sport, we asked some women to record their gym-day and wash-day routines. The compiled video captured their everyday frustrations, which was eye-opening for our client (many even shed tears!).
Go Beyond the Internet Search
If your first step is conducting desk research to understand your consumers, don’t simply fire up ChatGPT or do a generic Google search – go niche. There is no shortage of trend reports circulating on LinkedIn, as one example, especially at the start of a new year. Mine deeper insights from podcasts, Substack, and Reddit threads to uncover what truly matters to your audience.
Often, when I receive a brief about a brand struggling with a particular product’s performance, digging into subreddits gives me a quick understanding of people’s true sentiments about said product.
The challenge for creative agencies is to go beyond surface-level research and embrace a more thoughtful, intentional approach to consumer insights. Meaningful consumer insights will set your work apart in a crowded agency market.
Reema Mehta is a strategist at The Mix, where she is making insights famous while working with some of the world’s leading brands. She leverages her cross-cultural and international experience and education in research, strategy, branding, and business in decoding culture and consumer behavior and applying it to business challenges.
The header illustration was created by Rajvi Mehta, a textile designer with a decade of experience in textile design and, more recently, as a studio potter, reveling in the newfound freedom of clay.
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