Transforming Insight Podcast

Episode 79: Bigger than biscuits

Episode Summary

This season we’ve been continuing our focus on the 9Ps of the Insight Leader’s Playbook, and in the last episode, we explored P for Performance. James asked ‘has your Insight team had a good year?’ and ‘how did you approach your assessment?’ The most progressive Insight teams focus on identifying value opportunities for their organisations, and know they have to quantify that value if they’re to prioritise the right projects, contextualise their findings, and sell their recommendations to senior decision-makers.

Episode Notes

Some of the IMA’s most successful Insight leaders have gone one step further, and estimated the value that the Insight team itself has added each year, ultimately expressing this as a return on Insight investment.

In today’s episode, James talks to two senior UK Insight leaders, Danny Russell (ex Sky and O2) and Suzanne Lugthart (formerly with ebay, ITV and Rightmove). They have just launched a new initiative called Bigger Than Biscuits that aims to catalogue some great examples of how Insight, research and analysis have added value to business decisions.

Has your research led to a successful advertising campaign?
Has your analysis led to cost savings or increased revenue by relocating stores or the way products are displayed in them?
Has your joined-up insight helped reshape company strategy and unlocked hidden growth opportunities?

If it has, your work could be an invaluable addition to this initiative and help other Insight professionals make the case for greater investment in Insight.

Please listen to find out more!

Topics Discussed

Introducing Bigger Than Biscuits (2.56)
Are CMOs spending less on market research? (6.59)
Insight as a cost or investment? (10.20)
Think commercially and keep a value log (14.02)
It’s all about estimation (17.42)
The ECB’s Hundred £1bn valuation (22.33)
It starts with prioritisation (25.43)
How to get involved (27.21)
A challenge for all listeners (30.30)

Highlights

“It's the stuff that feeds the innovation pipeline. It's the stuff that feeds the creative platform development. It's all the work we do. I mean it's even stuff like customer experience research. It's anything that can help us diagnose a problem in a business so they can go and do something that will put it all right.” (04:46)
“So those stories are there, but people just need the courage to let us work with them to get them out there. The point is that we have to assume that these very important stakeholders around the business let's call it nicely don't really understand and let's be realistic and say they don't really care about the incredible work that we're doing or the stresses that we're under, or the budgetary constraints, etc.” (17.19)
“We'd go along and say, okay, you want our time and our budget, so tell me about this thing you're working on, how much money is it going to make and how much are we going to make a difference? And some of them hadn't really thought through and it was good for them to go back, and then they felt they were in this competition for our time and attention and suddenly you feel really quite elevated.” (24.46)
“It's about being loud and proud, and if people are still too nervous about that, then just get onto LinkedIn and give us a follow on Bigger Than Biscuits, because that will at least mean they start to see the sort of work that we're doing. .” (29.41)

This is episode 79 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 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams and their leaders, as outlined in James Wycherley’s books, Transforming Insight and The Insight Leader’s Playbook, 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 Bank from 2005 to 2015 when he became Chief Executive of the Insight Management Academy (IMA).

He published his first book, Transforming Insight, in 2020, and his second, The Insight Leader’s Playbook, in 2025, and he hosts the Insight forums and the Transforming Insight podcast.

An entertaining keynote speaker, he has presented over 50 times at Quirk’s events, a global record, and has provided thought leadership in the UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, India and the Middle East.

The Insight Management Academy is the world’s leading authority on transforming corporate Insight teams, and its vision is to inspire and support every Insight leader to transform the impact of Insight in their organisation.

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

Disclaimer

The Transforming Insight podcast is published by the Insight Management Academy and produced by Zorbiant.