It's not uncommon to hear marketing likened to 'telling a brand story', and if that's true, where should that story start? I think it should start with understanding your users. I often hear marketers talk about some of the pain points in their work, such as brand positioning problems, lack of strategy, lack of inspiration for communication, etc. In fact, most of these problems are also attributed to the lack of effective user insights. So, what is user insight? How to do? How is it different from marketing research? What should we try to understand when we conduct insights? This article will discuss with you. First, the definition and mission of user insights First of all, let's take the reference to "user insights" to discuss its definition and mission with you. In discovery marketing theory, we refer to the work of understanding users in general as 'user insights', the core of which is the understanding of users' consumption habits, consumption characteristics, potential needs and lifestyles. In practice, this segment involves some classic methods, such as the most familiar questionnaires and focus group interviews, so some business books and experts will also refer to these as "marketing research". Words are powerful, and an expression always corresponds to a perception, SDi chooses to use "user insight" instead of "marketing research" mainly because: when we talk about research, we realize that there is always a subject-object relationship, such as A researches B, A researches B. However, if we want to understand the users, we can't set ourselves as an "outsider", but if we want to understand the users, we can't set ourselves as an "outsider". "Outsider". In user insight, we have to mobilize our own perception as much as possible, to achieve a deep understanding of the user's life, rather than the pursuit of a logically seamless, but can not empathize with the report to guide the work. So, based on this definition, what is the mission or task of user insights? We believe that the most important "main task" of insights is to explore and clarify the "value discovery" for the brand, and the second is to guide and optimize the brand's "value expression". Let's talk about the first task - clarifying "value discovery" for brands. Take the bakery industry, which I have been paying more attention to lately, as an example. Let's pick a brand - 85 Degrees C. 85 Degrees C is a very interesting brand, which was the first to experiment with crossover, pioneering the splicing of freshly baked breads, exquisite pastry and drinks in water bars, and its highly differentiated business strategy helped the brand take the lead for a while. I therefore define 85 Degrees C's "value discovery" as "light street supplies" - because it brings users an ideal place to "come and have a drink and a rest after a tiring day of shopping". It is an ideal place for users to "come to eat, drink and take a break when they are tired of shopping". We can also recognize that 85's main competitor is not other bakeries, but brands that offer similar "street refreshment", such as street cafes. If 85 Degrees C were to launch a user insight today, its first task would be to find out what challenges the brand's core values are facing. How can the core values be re-explored and clarified through the insight? For example, the insights officer may be concerned that with the widespread rise of e-commerce and O2O (especially food delivery services like Hungry Mansions), the timing, consumption characteristics, and cultural contexts behind shopping and its associated "light refreshment" have changed dramatically. What are the implications of these changes for consumer mindsets and brand values? For example, there has been a proliferation of other brands catering to similar needs that are also dedicated to "light refreshment on the street" (such as CoCo and Happy Lemon, which have blossomed everywhere), as well as an arms race for hot coffee in cups that has been initiated by many convenience stores (e.g., Family's Punch Coffee Coffee, with its advertising campaign of "I'm on the corner, meeting a cup of goodness", will have a strong impact on the established value of 85. Based on these changes in the market and competitive environment, what are the brand's unique values that set it apart today? Ultimately, in a well thought out insight operation (which requires the combination of market, user behavior and cognitive information, and the rational deployment of observation, survey and experimental methods), the insight person must be able to find out and point out what the core values of 85 Degrees C are today. What does the brand do for people in the new era? This is what we just said, user insights help brands to clarify the task of 'value discovery'. Regarding the second task of insights, guiding and optimizing the brand's "value expression", which may be an independent task or a deepening of the first task, in practice it can be further subdivided into "optimizing communication expression" and "optimizing product expression". For example, a past insight project by Nunwood Consulting to optimize the advertising strategy for tourism in Scotland is a typical example of 'optimizing communication expression'. In this project, Nunwood Consulting organized a series of in-depth user interviews and focus groups in six regions across three countries, asking questions along the lines of: what is the current consumer perception of Scotland? What aspects of the country are most attractive to visitors? What aspects in particular appeal to consumers in each of the target market countries? (In other words, what is ****ually appealing) The insights revealed consumer characteristics that many brands have overlooked in the past (e.g. the large number of travelers who travel "randomly" without prior planning), as well as underlying unmet consumer needs (e.g. visitors want cultural and social engagement more than sight-seeing, like interacting with local residents, making unique discoveries, being surprised, or even craving a personal cultural learning experience, etc.). These insights translated into new value propositions - for example, Scottish tourism ads used to feature a "breathtakingly beautiful" landscape with an image of a quiet, relaxed traveler. Instead, the new campaign features a series of visually expansive photographs that emphasize cultural and social inclusion with the phrase "Welcome to Scotland", and a series of subtle vignettes that highlight the human discoveries and surprises that tourists are likely to pick up on, such as: "I was talking to a lovely local 'gardener' and he was very excited to see the country and its people. I chatted with a lovely local 'gardener' who turned out to be the owner of the castle." and "Accidentally falling into a flock of sheep - slowing you down in a uniquely Scottish way." And so on about this aspect of using insights to optimize product expression, we can also see a number of representative examples. For example, Kimberly-Clark found that moms who used Curious Baby body wash had trouble holding the bottle - it took two hands to open and squeeze out (and many times they had to hold the baby at the same time), so the new product was designed as a bottle that could be held tightly with a large cap that could be easily topped off with a thumb as well. Another example is a detergent manufacturer trying to figure out why their bathroom cleaner was not selling well. Through user interviews, they quickly discovered that the dull color of the packaging gave the impression that it did not have the power to remove stains. In addition, by observing the user scenarios, the brand also found that many people have a "hobby" of cleaning bathroom tiles with an old toothbrush. Therefore, the product packaging was quickly replaced with bright colors and a brush was fixed on the top. Second, the content of user insights to understand the definition and mission of user insights, followed by insights to talk about the specific implementation of the work, starting with an understanding of the "insights in the content of the key points". User insights to ask what exactly? What do we need to know? These two seemingly basic questions are often the most confusing in practice, and the ones I've been asked the most in the past. Before answering, please review this part of the "insight task" above, in reality, we do not know what to ask, what to know, in fact, to a large extent, because of the lack of a clear goal. As I said earlier, the most important goal of insights is to help brands clarify "value discovery", which is a goal we must always keep in mind in our work. This is just like a chef must always have the final meal in mind, so that he can find all the ingredients he needs in the process. Based on the goal, the next step is to search for the "ingredients". The 4 points in the chart below are what I consider to be the most important "ingredients" in user insights, and they are critical to mission achievement. Successful user insights are usually based on the full and in-depth collection of information in these 4 areas. Let's take a look: 1, different brand awareness of different brand awareness, the complete expression should be "the user's awareness of different brands (categories)", we want to clarify the brand value, or to use fresh eyes to "find", we must first grasp the user's existing impression of their own brands, attitudes and perceptions; in addition, we also need to know the user's perception of the category in which we are located. In addition, we also need to know the impressions, attitudes and perceptions of other brands in our category, as well as those that are similar to the value we create and the needs we fulfill. For example, in the case of travel to Scotland, the first thing the insights people need to know is what kind of impressions, attitudes and information travelers are familiar with about "travel to Scotland" (cognitive situation), and how is it different from "travel to France"? How does it differ from 'traveling to France'? How does it differ from 'traveling to Europe' as a whole? Which concepts are more in line with the image that tourists have of them? What are the core factors that lead to a more positive attitude towards traveling to the target country? (e.g. "very convenient" or "great value for money", etc.). For example, in the insights project I did for the lifestyle app "Salt", the brief I received at the beginning was "How to launch an internet product that can satisfy the lifestyle & arts consumption needs of the mainstream urban population, especially the new generation of consumers? I can say that I was under a lot of pressure when I first received this question, because I had to define what such a product is? What should be done? What functions to provide? The possibilities of what value to create were so broad that the seemingly "free-for-all" freedom made it extremely difficult to gain insight into the project. I had to think hard in order to figure out "what kind of product would be more likely to meet the expectations of users of literary and lifestyle internet products? I finally decided to start from the category first, and adopt the insight idea of "from category to brand", through questionnaires, focus groups and social media content analysis, to understand users' expectations of "lifestyle new media", "literary vertical e-commerce", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products", "lifestyle products" and "lifestyle products". Through questionnaires, focus groups, and social media content analysis, we understand users' awareness of four categories, including "lifestyle new media", "arts and culture vertical e-commerce", "arts and culture and lifestyle community", and "O2O information service", covering representative brands such as Douban, A Article, and Where to go on weekends. Take the category of "Literary Vertical E-commerce" as an example, what is the overall impression, attitude and cognition of consumers towards this segment? The answer is - not very good! For example, in the focus group interviews, some people will talk about this kind of e-commerce platform product prices are inflated, but customer service and after-sales haphazard; some talked about this kind of e-commerce is often a beautiful page to build up a "flower shelf", but the products sold are actually far less than the page presentation; there is also a common problem is that users are generally worried about buying fake goods, worried about the security of funds and personal information in the transaction process. Another common problem is that users are generally worried about buying fake products and about the security of funds and personal privacy in the transaction process. The social media analysis conducted during the same period also allowed us to see some details of how users view and use these products in real life scenarios. For example, on Zhihu, in the face of the question "how to look at literature and art e-commerce", some users frankly said - "has been used as a catalog index, good things to go to Taobao to buy, basically can be cheaper! "After completing the cognitive scanning of the four categories, we finally found that only "new media" and "O2O information service" are the categories with higher value recognition and clearer value cognition, which makes it more difficult for users to recognize the value of these categories. This provides "navigation" for "Have Salt" to choose what kind of product form and what kind of value it wants to create for users. (Note: For details of this case, please refer to "How a newly created brand can make a category comeback from the user insight of Have Salt APP", which can be obtained by sending "Have Salt" to the public number "Yumi"). 2. Consumption Behavioral Characteristics Consumption behavioral characteristics are the second important aspect of the content of the insights. By focusing on consumer behavior that is related to the value created by the brand and similar to the needs it meets, insights officers can gain a better understanding of the user's lifestyle. To illustrate this point, let's take an example of a new "community bakery brand upgrade" project I took on this year. In order to figure out "what role do those community bakeries around the neighborhood play in users' lives? I conducted consumer observation in 13 typical neighborhoods (divided into high-end, ordinary and old neighborhoods) in 4 cities. During the process, I kept collecting "ingredients" and took a lot of photos reflecting the life of the neighborhoods. For example, the photo in the middle of the picture above shows an early morning in a third-tier city in the south, where we can see an "army of cyclists" emerging from a typical neighborhood environment. These "consumers" are in a hurry, and a simple, fast and hot breakfast is the most appealing to them! The bakeries with slightly more upscale décor, but with less freshly baked bread and no sensory appeal that conveys the idea of "a hot bite in the morning," are not in line with their needs. Note the auntie in the circle who left earlier than the "cycling army", carrying two bottles of cooking oil in her left hand and three others on her body! A slightly arduous return from the mini-mart, which was having a sale. On the right side of the picture above, a father is anxiously waiting for his cake order at a bakery on a Saturday afternoon. Due to the small size of the bakery, he can only leave his bags from the grocery store on the table, with a copy of the comic book "Fathers and Sons" among the clutter (most likely purchased for his child, or intended to be read together with him). This scene is a true reflection of the fact that community bakeries are a place of "incidental consumption" dominated by the satisfaction of family needs (with little active purposeful consumption). All these observations help us to think about who the consumers of community bakeries are and how they 'use' them. How do they "use" community stores? What values are they more sensitive to? And what factors are central to their brand choices (e.g., whether the store is located in the consumer's primary lifeline). -User insights in marketing practice (above) ------- ---------SDi --Explore marketing methods to innovate user value and create user awareness. This article is from Yujianyingxiao (ID: yujianyingxiao); please cite the source for media reprints. ---------- Note: The above content was written in 2017, since then the author of the user insights of the content of a number of iterations, the relevant content, please take the author's latest publication of the book "insight: let marketing from now on straight to the heart of the people" shall prevail.