As many of us are neck-deep in planning and strategy for 2026, LGCC founder Tim Healey on recent learnings from his top-tier marketer interviews – when should we not trust customer research?
When should you listen to your audience and when should you not?
It’s a question that has come up repeatedly in the interview series that I run with senior-level marketers for The Drum – so much so, here are 3 key take-outs.
Really Talking to your customers:
It’s clear that powerful and informative insight comes from talking to your customers, as advocated by all the great marketing programmes and miniMBA Professor Mark Ritson.
Quantitative research will help to back up or disprove a theory – but qualitative, ethnographic, real-time conversations with actual people – customers – or audience samples – should be an absolute non-negotiable when undertaking research and strategic marketing planning for a business. Ignore at your peril. Too often marketing -leaders become removed from informative conversations like this. Great marketing demands regularly one-to-one check ins with customers.
When working on the British Gas Nest thermostat product, Octopus’ Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Rebecca Dibb-Simkin remembers a wise colleague who would often pop outside from the office and on to the street. She would ask passers-by questions about their marketing. This yielded an immediate response which the team could work with – a super cost-effective and immediate way of testing messaging or a new product.
But should what your customers tell you always provide the bedrock for your marketing?
Asking the right questions:
Speaking one-to-one – or in focus groups – with your customers is a powerful pillar of research – but beware of some answers. Marg Jobling, CMO, Natwest shared an anecdote: how people reported their dental hygiene discipline, when questioned, deviated from how they actually behaved.
Equipping a toothbrush with a sensor that recorded activity showed that people claimed to brush their teeth more frequently than their brushes were actually being used. Be aware that what people say is not always what they do.
Don’t be restricted by customer paradigms:
Another tale from the Octopus school of marketing excellence: After joining Octopus, Marketing Director Charlotte Snelgrove was keen to ask customers what they wanted but instead was given sage advice by Octopus co-founder Pete Miller.
Pete advised that customers ‘don’t necessarily know what they want. What they want might not exist yet.’ Instead he urged Charlotte to find out what Octopus could offer that would make their lives better.
This view is also backed up by Campari’s Managing Director of the House of Aperitivos, Andrea Neri, who when launching Aperol in the UK received countless pieces of negative feedback about Aperol. Campari was told time and time again that ‘Aperol would never be popular in the UK’ and that men would ‘never be seen outside a pub holding a stemmed ‘prosecco style’ glass.
Andrea remains grateful that they did not pivot to reflect this research, and instead doubled-down on their strategy – and proved the research wrong – now the sight of men holding such glasses is common place in the UK and Aperol’s his-and-rise continues across the globe, unfettered by the initial research results.
Proceed with caution:
In summary: smart marketers should definitely talk to real people when planning and refining our marketing strategy. But sense-check – and in some cases – challenge the findings – maybe your audience is not being honest, maybe you are not asking the right question or perhaps they are only thinking within their own paradigm.
Tim Healey’s weekly interviews with CMOs and Marketing Directors are published weekly on Tuesdays in The Drum, and published in the LGCC Synapse Newsletter each Friday.
