In the past few years the insight industry has looked at debated almost every facet of what we do in order to better understand consumers and deliver insights that are actionable and engaging. We have looked at how to tell better stories, how to better visualisation the data, better use of mobile technology, why we should look beyond self-reported to embrace biometrics, almost every other part of what we do. Yet we are strangely quiet on the very branding of the report; the report title!
OK, this may not appear like the next big thing but work with me here. What if instead of giving our market research reports either a title that looked like a hangover from the cold war with names like Project X or Project Oxygen, or the ever so descriptive “Brand X New Brand Positioning Phase1 – 21062014” type, we took our cue from online tabloids with a clickbait title that made opening them irresistible.
So here goes. Below are my Top 15 Report Titles That Will Blow Your Client’s Mind and the de-branded pedestrian titles that were their inspiration.
- This Man Had The Perfect Answer To Why People Leave You (Customer Attrition Study: Qualitative Phase)
- After This Customer Saw Your Competitor’s Offer, You Won’t Believe What She Did Next? (Brand Repositioning: Discrete Choice Modelling – Grocery Channel)
- 6 Things That Will Ruin Your Day (Brand Health Tracking, Monthly Results)
- The Expert’s Guide To Launching Your Brand: 7 Rules You Must Know (Sales Channel Engagement: Stakeholder Interviews)
- Find Out What Kate Has To Say (Voice of the Customer Feedback: Quarter 1 Results)
- WATCH: People Looking Confused When Watching Your Adv! (2015 Spring Campaign: Pre-Testing with Facial Coding Results)
- The 10 Things You Need To Do Today! (Customer Satisfaction and NPS Monitor: Quarterly Review)
- We Asked 32 Random Strangers What They Thought You Were Doing Wrong (Customer Acquisition: Uptake Barriers – Qualitative Stage)
- Wow! This Women Had A Lot To Say About Your Website (Phase 1 Website Usability Testing)
- Find Out Who Said “This Is The Best Brand I’ve Ever Used And I Should Know” (Product Development: In-Home Trial)
- It’s Your First Month of Your Product Launch: Do You Have What It Takes to Be Popular? (Post-Launch Sales and Market Analysis: Autumn Retailer Category Review)
- Grocery Buyers Love It When You Do This! (ROI Analysis: Quarter 2 Price Discounting Strategy)
- These Concept Boards Are So Brilliant You Can’t Help But Launch Them! (Brand Re-Positioning: Phase 2 Concept Development)
- 10 Creepy Tactics Used By Your Competitors To Steal Your Customers (Competitor Strategy and Product Analysis: Annual Review)
- This Claim Will Make Your Customers Love You (Claims Testing: Campaign Development)
How would you make your reports clickbait worth?
On the serious side, report and document titles play an important role in insight management. Boringly self-evident but true and often overlooked. This truism is especially important when trying to make a business customer-centric and keeping insights at the heart of decision making. Having helped set-up and review insight functions for a number of companies, an often cited concern was that their existing insights are not being used and that decision-makers struggle to find the right insight when needed. When looking at how market research is managed in these business it easy to see why managers saw it as easier to send emails asking for the right report than attempt to find it themselves. Turning the insight management role into a librarian role without the glamour.
We know that creating brand names that are obscure and trivialise the value of the product within spells death for a brand, or that poor website headers undermine our search engine optimisation (SEO) the same logic applies to insight reports.
Choosing the right labelling approach greatly improves the ease of finding the right documents quickly. This is not a minor issue as even the smallest organisation produces a copious volume of emails, reports, and documents every day. If we want our business to be customer-centric then insights must be accessible to current and future decision-makers.