Be consumer first. Don’t be consumer only. Powerful words by leading Insights executive, Khary Campbell, VP of Consumer Research & Insights at Comcast.
https://youtu.be/xJSQO7VSw5Q
During a recent SIVO Insights Forum, Khary shared the importance of considering the implications of all functions. After all, every function is working in orchestra of the business.
Click here for a lively on-demand conversation “Bridging The Gap: Translating Insights Into Meaningful Business Results" to hear from Khary and other Insights experts including Eliana Whanon (General Mills, VP of Consumer & Market Insights) and Elizabeth Oates (Book Author, and former Ulta Beauty VP of Consumer Insights.)
Learn from Insights leaders as they discuss:
Thank you to Natasha Weith, VP of Research at SIVO Inc. for hosting The SIVO Insights Forum!
By Natasha Weith
"The great end of knowledge is not knowledge, but action."
- Thomas Henry Huxley
This sentiment resonates deeply in the market research world, where the true value of consumer insights is not in their discovery but in putting them into practice. In fact, one of the defining characteristics of a consumer insight is that it “can be applied to the business in a way that drives growth.”
Too often, valuable market research findings remain confined to lengthy, boring research reports that end up sitting in a file cabinet, collecting dust, and failing to inspire meaningful business actions. At SIVO, we have been thinking a lot about how we and our client teams can make insights land in organizations, inspiring stakeholders to engage in our market research findings and seize the opportunities that we have uncovered. We came up with five strategies to do this.
Here’s how to get insights to land in your organization:
Involving key stakeholders throughout the research journey fosters a sense of ownership and ensures that the insights resonate with colleagues who will act on the insights. Conducting insights activation workshops allows teams to interactively explore findings, brainstorm applications and prioritize the action steps. We also believe “persona immersion sessions” help clients experience the perspectives of their consumers, building empathy and deepening their understanding and commitment to business actions that will serve their consumers.
In addition to engaging the team, securing support from leadership and identifying internal advocates is a great way to influence business outcomes with insights. Sometimes teams employ the “meeting before the meeting” with key leaders to create space for them to think through the implications and ensure linkage between the research findings and organizational priorities. With leadership already on board, the cross-functional teams can feel empowered to act on the findings.
Of course, transforming data into compelling narratives makes insights more relatable and memorable. Employing storytelling frameworks, such as the hero’s journey, can illustrate the consumer's struggle, highlight opportunities, and propose solutions. Utilizing metaphors, analogies, or visual aids like infographics, consumer video reels and photos, further enhances the stickiness of the research findings, ensuring they resonate with audiences. Modifying the report for different audiences can also help, for example, R&D may want a “data-heavy” version while the leadership team will likely want a 3 to 5 slide summary.
To constantly remind teams that their primary role is to serve the consumer and make informed decisions on their behalf, CI teams can proactively “surround” teams with insights. For instance, you can develop and distribute "insight of the week" micro-learning moments through platforms like Slack or MS Teams, to keep teams regularly informed. Additionally, developing consumer reality-check posters for both physical and virtual office spaces can serve as constant visual reminders of the consumer's perspective. Incorporating gamification elements, such as quizzes and contests into standing meetings can further reinforce learning by engaging teams in a dynamic and interactive manner.
These days, CI teams can leverage AI to help with stakeholder engagement in research data and findings. For example, AI-powered dashboards are increasingly available for real-time tracking and scenario planning. Additionally, giving stakeholders access to AI chat tools that query both proprietary research data and public data sources help deliver answers to in-the-moment consumer questions and can increase engagement.
By implementing these five strategies, Insights professionals can bridge the gap between just delivering data and driving organizational change, ensuring that the insights we identify serve as a catalyst for informed decision-making and business growth.
Let’s keep pushing to effectively impact your business together!
SIVO, Inc. is a market research and strategy firm specializing in helping businesses understand people. We partner with world-class brands to answer key questions and identify opportunities that unlock business growth. Our team of insights market research professionals are masters at designing custom research plans, executing with excellence, identifying strategic insights and then helping client teams translate those insights into action. Our On Demand Talent solution places fractional insights experts into client companies to temporarily fill open roles, complete projects or expand team capabilities.
Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or visit SIVOInsights.com to schedule a Research or On Demand Talent discovery call so we can help you make an impact!
By Julie Rose
Now more than ever, it’s crucial to balance future readiness with the demands of today.
The future isn’t distant. It’s already here and unfolding in ways most can’t imagine. If you look closely, the signs of what's to come are everywhere. Technology, consumer preferences, and industry landscapes are evolving at an unprecedented pace.
Yet, many still expect gradual change, a slow evolution of today’s norms. The reality is different. The future is coming faster and with more disruption than we’ve ever experienced before. To remain competitive, companies must adopt a future readiness mindset.
More Different Than Ever Before
In the next 20 years, society will change more than it has in the past 300 years. We live in the Technology Era, where things evolve exponentially. This is hard to grasp because we’re wired to think in linear steps, not exponential leaps.
For example, the stepwise expansion of grocery store refrigerated sections to include fresh snacks and functional beverages and grab & go meals was a slow, predictable evolution. But the rise of Instacart, which recognized paradigm shifts in eCommerce, the gig economy, and rideshare platforms was a significant leap that changed grocery shopping substantially. Today, 25% of groceries are bought through delivery services like Instacart.
While we easily project near-term change, we vastly underestimate long-term transformations.
Take TikTok, Zoom, Peloton, Alexa, Airbnb, and Tesla—none existed 5 to 10 years ago, yet they are now embedded in our daily lives, and disrupted industries almost overnight.
How will your industry, competitors, and consumers transform in the next decade?
The Power of Exponential Change
Exponential technological growth, driven by Moore’s Law, is driven by the power and capabilities of technology doubling every two years, if not faster. This exponential curve is almost impossible for our linear human brains to understand. Let’s demonstrate:
Imagine folding a giant piece of notebook paper in half. Now fold it again and again until you’ve folded it 42 times. How tall would that folded tower of paper be? Four inches? Four feet? Four yards?
Wrong. It would stretch all the way to the moon (0.004 inches x 242 ≈ 240,000 miles)!
This is the power of exponential growth—small changes compound quickly, creating massive impacts. Companies and individuals who can think exponentially, recognizing and preparing for the transformational changes on the horizon, will thrive in a future that looks radically different from today.
How to Prepare for Tomorrow, Today
Here are four critical steps to get your organization ready for the era of exponential change:
1. Narrow Your Lens
With endless opportunities (and challenges) on the horizon, it’s easy to lose focus. Which do you want to solve? Where do you want to start? Narrow your focus to areas where you can make the biggest impact. Rather than trying to chase every opportunity, focus on solving the problems that align with your strengths and strategic goals. Successful companies of the future will be those that zero in on the right opportunities, rather than trying to cover too much ground (or worse, choosing to stand still).
You don’t have to be Amazon, Tesla or Google X—but you better not be Blockbuster.
2. Notice & Anticipate
The future doesn’t usually arrive in the form of today’s familiar faces. Instead, it comes from the edges. Netflix didn’t resemble its current form in its early years, nor did Facebook. To see the signals of change, look beyond your immediate competition or traditional industry players. Explore the fringes of culture, markets, and technology. The future often looks weird before it goes mainstream—initially awkward, niche, and impractical—until it’s not.
What are you doing to discover tomorrow’s signals today?
3. Seek a Catalyst
Driving disruptive change is tough, especially for established organizations. That’s why you need innovation catalysts—people who have the rare ability to get things moving and drive change. These are the people who can activate ideas by building trust, challenging assumptions, and breaking through organizational inertia. If you have them on your team, nurture and empower them. If not, hire them. Additionally, reevaluate your network. Seek and develop deep partnerships that offer 1+1=3 potential.
Do you have a catalyst on your roster? Are your partners driving exponential potential?
4. Practice
Focus, anticipation, and catalysts alone won’t ensure success. You must also create the time and space to “rehearse the future”. Build experimentation into daily routines and make future discussions a core part of company culture. You still need to run day-to-day operations, but by weaving future preparation into daily practice, you’ll be better prepared when disruption hits. World class innovation companies like 3M, NASA and Nike create space, ring-fence funds and reward risk-taking and experimentation.
What systems and norms do you have in place to enable learning about your potential futures?
SIVO is Your Future Readiness Co-Pilot
While tomorrow’s marketplace will look very different from today’s, understanding human needs, beliefs, and behaviors will remain critical. At SIVO, our Custom Research and Growth Framework solutions will highlight tomorrow’s opportunities, and our On Demand Talent network offers “future-ready” experts ready to provide fractional support tailored to your needs. Additionally, we are “rehearsing the future” by actively using and experimenting with AI tools that support our researchers in uncovering insights and optimizing efficiency.
Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or visit SIVO's Website to hear more about our investigation or to schedule a discovery call. Let’s embrace the future together!
If you're part of a consumer insights team, you already know what this time of year looks like. The upcoming start of annual planning season brings high expectations, overlapping requests, and limited capacity. You’re pulling together top trends, completing industry reviews, immersing stakeholders, and expected to deliver fast, sharp guidance that informs decisions across the business. There’s no shortage of urgency. But there is often a shortage of time, hands, and headspace.
In this post, we’ll focus on how teams like yours are preparing for the planning season pressure with smart, flexible insights support. From tips for handling the volume to examples of how fractional talent can plug in fast, this is a practical guide to getting through planning season without compromising on quality.
Planning season can be a moment of high visibility for insights teams. It’s when your work directly shapes decisions on budgets, brand priorities, innovation pipelines, and go-to-market plans. Expectations are high, and so is the payoff if done well.
This is also when the work becomes less linear, as you’re often not managing one big project, but you’re responding to competing needs from multiple teams, often simultaneously. You’re asked to shift from high-level trends to granular customer behavior, to turn data into strategy, and to do it all faster than ever. Internally, you may be running up against resource constraints, limited capacity for synthesis, or pressure to answer questions that haven’t been fully scoped. Stakeholders want insights, leaders want speed, and everyone wants you to predict the future so they can plan better for it.
This is the reality many insights leaders are preparing to navigate right now: how to maintain rigor under pressure, how to prioritize when everything is urgent, and how to protect the quality of insight that drives real decisions.
With overlapping asks and limited time, prioritization becomes a strategic skill. It’s not just about getting things done, but making sure the most valuable work gets done well. Below are a few practical ways we’ve seen insight teams stay focused and deliver effectively under pressure.
Start with internal alignment
Before saying yes to every request, align with key stakeholders on what’s truly critical to planning outcomes. What decisions need to be made in the next few weeks? What’s nice to have versus required? This helps filter the noise and focus resources where they matter most. If you’re a seasoned insights pro, this step probably comes naturally to you.
Map deliverables to decisions
For every request, clarify what decision it’s intended to inform. This helps the team determine how deep to go, what methods are appropriate, and whether existing insights already cover it.
Synthesize what’s already known
Planning often sparks redundant questions. A quick synthesis of past work, organized by theme, audience, or priority, can help prevent unnecessary rework and provide fast traction. Even a short “What We Know” session can help reset expectations and surface gaps more clearly.
Be transparent about trade-offs
Not everything can be done at the same depth, and it’s best to communicate that clearly. Stakeholders usually respond well when you explain what’s possible, what’s at risk, and where additional support would make a difference. This creates space for smarter resourcing decisions, and helps prevent extra stress and burnout among your team.
Build in a checkpoint before things scale
Use a mid-cycle checkpoint to review whether what’s being delivered is actually moving planning forward. If not, it’s better to adjust early than stretch your team to deliver work that won’t be used.
When insight teams hit capacity during planning season, the instinct is often to either say no, or simply push through. But overloading the team rarely leads to strategic work. It leads to shortcuts, slower turnarounds, and deliverables that lack the synthesis stakeholders expect – putting the strategic plans at risks.
Many teams are addressing this challenge by bringing in short-term support. But success depends on who you bring in and how they work. Traditional freelancers or overflow support often require onboarding, guidance, or extra training time. That adds to your workload instead of reducing it, and that’s not what you need when you’re already stretched thin.
What works better is adding insight professionals who understand planning cycles, know how to manage complexity, and can operate as part of your internal team. When done right, this model gives teams the room to focus on what matters most. It protects insight quality while meeting the volume and speed planning requires, and it also reduces pressure on the team, making it possible to stay sharp across multiple workstreams.
At SIVO, we work with companies across industries to extend insights teams during planning season. Our On Demand Talent includes seasoned researchers, strategic thinkers, moderators, planners, and communicators who can step into the specific functions you need. Whether that’s help managing an overflow of qual studies, needing someone to run stakeholder synthesis, or build strategic narratives that tie research to business planning – fractional insight experts are here to help.
You don’t need to compromise quality to meet a deadline, and you don’t need to burn out your team to deliver on planning season demands. Whether you need a sharp moderator for next week’s workstream, a strategic partner to help frame consumer implications, or someone to translate findings into clear planning outputs, we can match the right talent to your exact need.
Need Extra Capacity on Your Insights Team for Planning Season, Fast?
Let’s find your perfect match!
By Natasha Weith
As someone who’s passionate about the power of insights to drive business growth, I was thrilled to host our recent SIVO Insights Forum, “Bridging the Gap: Translating Insights Into Meaningful Business Results.” It was an inspiring conversation with some of the best minds in the insights industry, and I’m excited to share the experience with you.
At SIVO, we believe consumer and marketplace insights are the foundation for business growth. But let’s be honest, while all insights professionals understand this, turning those insights into actionable business strategies can be a real challenge. That’s exactly why we brought together this incredible panel of leaders to share their expertise and experiences.
I had the honor of facilitating this discussion with:
• Eliana Wahnon (VP of Consumer & Market Insights, General Mills)
• Khary Campbell (VP of Consumer Research & Insights, Comcast)
• Elizabeth Oates (Book Author, Former VP of Consumer Insights, Ulta Beauty)
Together, we explored how to bridge the gap between data and meaningful outcomes. Whether you watch the session on-demand (linked here) or continue reading for some highlights, I think you’ll find this forum both interesting and actionable.
Aligning Market Research with Business Priorities
In a world filled with data, the ability to convert that data into actionable insights sets successful businesses apart from the rest. Insights professionals must not only translate data into insights, but also deliver those insights in a way that inspires ideas and guides business strategies.
Insights teams need to be strategic about where they focus their time and resources. More specifically, it is vital to align research projects with business priorities. Elizabeth Oates posed these questions to consider during The SIVO Insights Forum:
Navigating through the business questions and issues that arise and honing in on those with the highest business priority offers the greatest chance of making a meaningful impact with your research findings.
Navigating Leadership Reluctance
One common challenge that Insights teams face is leadership reluctance to act on the research findings. This hesitation may stem from personal biases or not understanding the potential benefits. Forming alliances with key stakeholders and truly understanding the business from their perspectives will help insights teams address real business needs and inspire colleagues to act. This can take the form of getting early buy-in on research objectives and designs or previewing the findings and recommendations with colleagues to ensure alignment with broader organizational goals.
To this point, Khary Campbell advised insights teams to “be consumer first, but not consumer only,” during our panel discussion. “Consider the research implications to all the functions. After all, every function is working in an orchestra to drive business growth.”
Making a Bigger Impact
Insights teams can expand their influence by highlighting the strategic value of their work. Sharing success stories, aligning insights with organizational goals, and fostering a culture of consumer-driven decision making are crucial steps toward amplifying the impact of insights.
Great storytelling with a clear narrative, executive summary, intuitive visual aids and consumer quotes can simplify complex data and enhance understanding. These tactics ensure that research results will grab attention, persuade, and motivate key stakeholders and drive action.
Eliana Wahnon shared a 3C’s framework for driving impact when reporting research results:
The Evolving Role of Insights
The SIVO Insights Forum also gathered perspectives on the rapidly evolving role of insights professionals, inspired by the advancements in AI and the increasing complexity of consumer behavior. Despite suggestions that automation may replace traditional roles, the leaders in the panel believe insights professionals will remain indispensable for managing AI, distinguishing truth, and uncovering the “why” behind consumer actions. As Eliana Wahnon emphasized, “While AI offers tools to streamline tasks like drafting questionnaires and analyzing unstructured data, it cannot replicate the nuanced understanding of human behavior, or the creative spark needed to inspire ideas.”
Elizabeth Oates underscored the importance of balancing historical insights (the rearview mirror) with a forward-looking perspective (the windshield) to navigate future challenges. The discussion highlighted “scenario thinking” as a vital skill for anticipating multiple possibilities in an uncertain world.
Ultimately, AI is a tool to enhance efficiency and free up time for strategic thinking, but the human role in connecting dots, navigating contradictions, and driving innovation remains irreplaceable. As Khary Campbell noted, “Insights professionals must stay curious and adaptable, leveraging technology while preserving the core skills that drive business impact.”
This balance ensures the field of insights not only survives but thrives, enabling businesses to navigate an ever-changing future with clarity and purpose.
Conclusion & The SIVO Insights Forum
As I reflect on the conversations we had during the SIVO Insights Forum, one thing is clear: insights professionals play such a critical role in shaping decisions that drive growth, via consumer insights, but our real challenge lies in ensuring those insights are acted upon.
The panelists shared so many practical strategies and thought-provoking ideas that I believe can truly help us build trust, credibility, and impact within our organizations. From navigating leadership reluctance to making a bigger organizational impact, these insights resonated with me—and I hope they will with you too.
If you want to dive deeper into these topics, I highly recommend watching The SIVO Insights Forum “Bridging The Gap: Translating Insights Into Meaningful Business Results”. You’ll hear directly from our incredible panelists about:
Let’s keep pushing forward, bridging the gap, and making an even bigger impact together.
About SIVO Insights
SIVO, Inc. is a market research and strategy firm specializing in helping businesses understand people. We partner with world-class brands to answer key questions and identify opportunities that unlock business growth. Our team of insights market research professionals are masters at designing custom research plans, executing with excellence, identifying strategic insights and then helping client teams translate those insights into action. Our On Demand Talent solution places fractional insights experts into client companies to temporarily fill open roles, complete projects or expand team capabilities.
Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or visit SIVOInsights.com to schedule a Research or On Demand Talent discovery call so we can help you make an impact!
SIVO Insights brings together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence. Have a business challenge? Let's talk!
We bring together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence
