Episode 43: Developing the Insight team brand
There is no point in producing any research or analysis unless it drives change.
So, forward-looking Insight teams think carefully about how they are going to disseminate their insights and ideas. As we’ve heard in earlier seasons of our podcast, the IMA’s most effective corporate members have developed:
• Influencing skills and plans to help them to persuade specific decision-makers to follow their recommendations, and
• Communication skills and plans to enable them to share customer and market knowledge throughout the organisation
To borrow a marketing analogy, this is rather like a company focusing on selling to key clients, and also developing advertising to communicate the benefits of its products across a broad market. Both are established tactics, but they are both much easier if the company has first developed a well-respected brand.
According to the entrepreneur.com website:
‘Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.’
In our world of corporate Insight, we might rephrase that paragraph as:
‘Simply put, our Insight brand is our promise to other departments. It tells them what they can expect from our products and services, and it differentiates our offering from that of other functions. Our brand is derived from who we are, who we want to be and who senior people in other departments perceive us to be.’
All Insight teams already have a ‘brand’ of some sort whether we realise it or not. But do other departments’ views of our team align with our views of Insight? And do they help us to optimise our team’s position in the hearts, minds and decision-making processes of our organisation?
Please listen to find out more!
Topics Discussed
- What does brand mean for an Insight team? (1.58)
- Leveraging our knowledge of brand development (4.42)
- The role of personal brand (7.03)
- How do we become good influencers (8.57)
- AI and its impact on the Insight brand (13.00)
This is episode 43 of the Transforming Insight podcast.
If you have the ambition to transform your Insight team and the role it plays in your organisation, please tune in to future episodes. Not only will we explore the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams as outlined in the Transforming Insight book, we will also talk to senior corporate Insight leaders, delve into books that have inspired us, and discuss new best practice research carried out with the IMA’s corporate members.
You won’t want to miss this! So please subscribe - and thank you for listening.
About James Wycherley, the author of Transforming Insight
James Wycherley was Director of Customer Insight and Analytics at Barclays from 2005 to 2015 when he became Chief Executive of the Insight Management Academy (IMA). A popular keynote speaker and acknowledged expert on Insight leadership, strategy, and communication, he is the author of the book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams, and over 35 IMA publications. He has provided thought leadership in the UK, Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, India, and the Middle East, and regularly hosts the IMA’s Insight forums - London, Manchester, UK Online and US Online.
The Insight Management Academy is the world’s leading authority on transforming Insight teams.
Resources:
If you would like more information on any of the ideas discussed in this episode of the Transforming Insight podcast, please visit www.insight-management.org
Copies of James Wycherley’s book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams can be purchased directly from www.transforming-insight.com
Disclaimer
The Transforming Insight podcast is published by the Insight Management Academy and produced by Zorbiant.
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