Better Market Research Insights through Human Truth

Priscilla McKinney: Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, CEO and mama bird over here. Always having my friends and great colleagues come on the show and provide us some real value. What is going on in large picture, but also some very specifics. And let me tell you, we are in a very challenging time for brands, for market research, for marketing.

More is being asked of us and often we're being given less resources. Fun, fun. I have my good friend Alex Millett here from Brand Trust and let me tell you a little bit about who they are and why I have asked him to come on today. So I've just hinted a little bit about how complex life can be right now in the business world. And these business challenges are getting harder and harder. Some of them are pretty wicked, but business challenges are human challenges.

Right? And so as a cultural anthropologist, I love this setup. We're going to have an interesting conversation because BrandTrust, if you haven't worked with them in the past, they are a research and strategy consultancy and they use very interesting methodologies that are grounded in applied social and behavioral sciences. So I talk with them as often as I possibly can. Let me assure you, I am never the smartest person in that room when I'm talking with them.

because they are asked to solve pretty complex business challenges and they really work to unlock brand value for their clients. So Alex is the CEO and he leads a team of really fantastic humans.

who he calls them also employees, but let's just leave it with humans. And they are all focused on really understanding the other humans involved and not only the clients, but also the humans that are consumers. And they're looking to better understand and serve the needs of all of those people and bring it all together into something that is more meaningful and drives much better impact. Fun fact, Alex and I,

really love to sail. So we're going to try very hard to not just talk about boats during this podcast. Welcome to the show, Alex.

Alexander Millet: Thank you Priscilla. Thanks for that wonderful introduction and thanks for having me.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, so next time on a boat. For sure. Can we do that? Like, do you have a boat? I've got to know.

Alexander Millet: I'm a partner in a sailboat and if it was two weeks from now that would be all we were talking about because we'd be in the middle of launching it or maybe we wouldn't be talking at all because I'd be out in the middle of the lakeside.

Priscilla McKinney: I love that. Once upon a time, we were partners in a boat too. So that's a really fun way to go about it and enjoy it. Now we just own ours by ourselves and that's also a very lovely feature. But you're right, in about two weeks, forget it. I'm going to be trying to...

out of here on Friday. Well, let's get right to the meat here. You and I get to have amazing conversations, conversations that make me feel very good about my degree in cultural anthropology, because I think, my gosh, I could actually track in this conversation. But BrandTrust for me for many years has always been a very aspirational brand. I've looked at it, I've admired it. Darrell Travis, who was one of the founders.

just is so impressive to me and he's built a very impressive leadership around now. And even more recently with a partnership with Proto Brand, things have gotten a little wacky and even more interesting over there. So before we start out just to set the context, can you help everybody understand what is that unique qualifier of brand trust? What makes you different? What makes you straddle between market research and marketing so interestingly?

Alexander Millet: Thanks for that question, Priscilla. I think actually my personal trajectory with BrandTrust kind of answers that well. BrandTrust was originally actually founded by Daryl Travis, who you mentioned like 25 plus years ago, as a straight up brand consultancy, brand strategy, brand design, those sorts of things we might normally associate with a pure brand consultancy. And then he started to realize what you were just talking about at the beginning, which is that...

Business challenges are really human challenges. Like if it was just like, we got to figure out this problem and put this data against it get these really smart people to solve the problem or create a brand identity or brand strategy or a commercial against it, it would work great all the time. But you'd have all these great, brilliant teams with all this money and still some of these marketing strategies, some of these marketing executions would fail spectacularly. And ultimately he determined what so many of us in the market research industry determined, which is that garbage in garbage out. You have to have

the deep insight around what's actually shaping decision making with your customers, consumers, if you're B2C. And then once you know that, once you know that deep insight, what we often refer to as human truth, I'm sure we'll get into that in just a second, then you can build a strategy on top of it. And then you can build executions on top of that that have the best chance of working. And I myself actually came from a more straight up brand consulting background, and I didn't know that much about market research. I was happy when we would get to do some focus groups or have a little like

brand equity or tracker survey or something out there. And it was only when I got involved with BrandTrust around helping to answer the question, great insights, now what? How do we translate into strategy? That I really drank the Kool-Aid and understood that insights and strategy have to be married. They have to be joined at the hip in order to create great outcomes.

Priscilla McKinney: I 100% agree. And I think this is where you and I get a lot of similar questions asked to us, right? I get asked a lot about marketing effectiveness measurement. What am I going to do? Everybody's being pressured to say, well, we put these things out. How are we going to measure them? But I want to go back earlier in the process to where I think brand trust comes in is that people at brands want to make data-driven marketing decisions. OK.

I get that. That's kind of the soup we're swimming in. That's what everybody's being asked to do. But your point was, but it's not just about understanding the data, right? That's a leap that a lot of people make and say, let's look at the data. But what you're saying and what I want to really hone in on, and you're right, I'm going to bring you back to this idea of human truth because it is a huge differentiator of how you all approach every problem in the market. And that is to say, it's not

data-driven marketing decisions. It's human understanding driven marketing decisions. Let's hear a little bit about that. What is this big thing called human truth? And why are you guys at BrandTrust banging on and on about it all the time?

Alexander Millet: Yeah, it's a great question. So another way to look at it is to think about maybe reframing or redefining data. We're not against data driven decisions. In fact, we want our clients to have the best data driven decision they can have. We just want to open the aperture on data a little bit. And maybe it could be more about the human truth, more about the deep human insight that might drive your decision making. And so when we talk about human truth, there's a very simple definition of it, which is

That really that deeper human insight that reveals the why behind the what of your customer's decision making, their choices, their actions in the market, why they might pick you over a competitor, why they might choose something higher priced for the same thing. Hopefully that's your product that's the higher price for the same thing. And so that's the simple definition. It's the why behind the what that too often data gives us some clues to that, but it can also artificially obscure the real answer.

because it's really just at that what level. There's a great example that one of my colleagues here at BrandTrust, Ashley, I've heard her use it quite a bit and I'm gonna steal it. She talks about when Netflix was back in whenever it was probably the 90s or the early 2000s, when they were trying to figure out what they could do to better serve their customers. And they put out a survey and they asked them, what's the best movie on Netflix? What's the best movie? And everyone said Schindler's List. So where does that put us? Early 2000s? I don't know.

figure that out. It was Schindler's List. But then they went and looked at the data and they found that the most watched movie right then on Netflix was Dude, Where's My Car? So you can start to see the massive divergence there. And somewhere between those two pieces of data is the human truth, which is around why do we choose movies to watch? What deeper human need are we trying to serve? And if we can reveal that for our customers, then for our clients, then we can help them create

not just marketing communications, but product innovations, experience innovations that actually better serve those Netflix customers and get them more quickly connected to the things that they really want.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh my gosh, that is the best example I've ever heard on this podcast of the difference between when you ask somebody the answer that they think you want or the thing they ought to say. Right. And that becomes data somewhere. But if you base all of your decisions based on that is not really market research insights that will drive a better brand impact. And to your point where the bigger human truth is in the discrepancy between the two things in the why it exists.

Alexander Millet: Yeah, I really I've been meaning to steal that for a while. So I'm glad I got the opportunity to do it today. But I think the other thing that's interesting that ties into some things that I've heard a lot in the market today, I'm hearing it frankly, in the market research and the brand consulting industry, and also across a lot of our clients. And what we're hearing is this idea that in the age of AI, like the answers are commodified to a certain extent, the data, the answers are very commodified.

but what's not and where we can really differentiate ourselves and build distinct business value and brand value is in understanding and asking the better question, the more beautiful question. And that's what I think that example about Netflix so just articulates or exemplifies so well because the both of those things are interesting pieces of data. One of them maybe is not true because as you point out, the survey taking mind is a real thing. But what maybe the better question would be

tell us about to the Netflix customer, tell us about a time when you were really like, you really got exactly what you wanted out of Netflix and tell us what you were watching and tell us why you were watching it and just take me through that experience a little bit. And then we could maybe unpack that story with them and actually understand the motivators behind what they were searching for from that brand and from that service provider in that moment. So I want to call out that it's not just the human truth. It's not just the data. It's not just the answers.

It's often about helping to frame just the right question.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, I love that. That kind of brings us into this kind of a really interesting pivot we need to make in this conversation. And that is that I'm with you, I'm 100% saying we've got to get deeper why, number one, we need a larger context in order to understand the deeper why to say, well, what's happening in this moment and to your point, kind of moving away.

from this self-reporting, which we think someone's watching over our shoulder. And this is kind of like why adults, we keep saying that we love the symphony and the opera, but we don't. Come on, people, we're going to the movies, we're watching, so we're streaming something from home, right? Okay, so we understand that, but where does brand trust fit into, in my opinion, kind of the bigger push of what's happening? So I have people listening to this podcast.

who are managing brands, who are creating marketing messages, who have B2B content marketing strategies, et cetera, et cetera. You mentioned some B2C concepts you have, and I'm sure that you've presented many a time marketing plan examples that are based in human truth. So help me make that pivot, that switch, that how do we tie this in and say, but why should brands care? Like how does getting, let's just say we do spend this extra money or time or whatever it is, getting to

the larger context of human truth. How would I better use that? How would that human truth drive better brand value for me?

Alexander Millet: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying about my personal journey, which was, I guess Daryl's as well, our founder and chairman, moving from a place where strategy and execution were very, very closely tied and research sort of lived in a different world where sometimes you could afford it, sometimes you couldn't, sometimes you cared about it using it, sometimes you didn't, but you were definitely gonna have the idea, the strategy and the plan.

and you are going to have the brand execution, whether it's a campaign or brand design or whatever. And our perspective and the perspective I've come around to is that what actually must critically be linked is the insight and the strategy, that foundational strategy at the core. And that's why Brand Trust does one thing a little bit differently. You'll have a lot of companies that say, we do insight strategy and design or execution. We do strategy and execution. We do everything. That's what you hear that a lot from the big agencies. We do it all.

And we very specifically don't do one thing. We don't do execution. We don't do creative design. We don't do brand campaigns. And that's because our belief is that if you do the work to get that deeper human truth and understand not just that the Netflix user really wanted, dude, where's my car, but the why behind that. And then you craft your brand strategy on top of that. And then it informs all your brand executions around how you communicate to your customers, around how you serve up experiences for them.

you're gonna have a much better chance of being successful than if you base that same strategy on the idea that what they really wanted was Schindler's List, or even worse, that you didn't ask any question whatsoever and just did it based on what a bunch of people assumed in a boardroom. And so that's really where the value comes in. The value comes in saying, hey, we as a brand have practically infinite touch points with the world, some of which we have a lot of control of, but these days, let's face it,

the vast majority of which we have very little control of. So let's make sure that the strategy that sits at the core, that sort of blueprint we're using to inform and shape as much as we can the brand experiences the outside world has with us. Let's make sure it's based on those fundamental human truths that shape what our customers want from this category, what they expect and what they can reasonably expect from our brand. That's where the real differentiator is. It's on not just getting to a good insight,

That's great. Well, I think we have the best insights, but lots of companies have good insights. It's also about connecting that insight to a strategy that sits at the center of your organization and is ready to be executed across the entirety of your brand ecosystem, whether that's a campaign, whether that's an innovation pipeline, whether that's an experience design, or what people so often forget, whether that's actually internal initiatives around brand culture to make sure that your people are ready to execute on your promise to the world.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh my gosh. This connection. It was a lot. It is a lot, but I think I could boil it down a little bit. To me, it seems like the simple view of it, it's an alignment of brand values with human truths. Yes. Right. And so what a company is looking for is where is the opportunity of the Venn diagram here? What's that connectivity point?

what the customer wants, needs, whether they can express it or not, whether they're telling you the truth or not, just more emotionally, viscerally, what does the customer want, what do they need, and where is the sweet spot where your brand loves providing that and really can deliver on this. So it seems to me like brand trust is basically trying to say, yes, there's a lot out there. The consumer is a big complex entity and your brand, of course, is a big complex entity.

But where do they connect? And where's the through line here? And what's the opportunity? So I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit with a good example of something you've really loved working on. But I am curious know, I'm sure that you can't always name a name of a company, but can you give me an example of like within a particular industry where these two things came together and it created something much more beautiful? And I use that word because I love that you said at the very beginning that you ask more beautiful questions. So.

Yeah. Give us some kind of an example of a time when you saw this come together that was really created, not just one plus one equals two, but it's that one plus one equals three approach.

Alexander Millet: Absolutely, I'd be happy to. While I'm thinking about if I have an actual brand name I can use or if I'm gonna use a generic or a blinded one, I just wanna add you nailed it exactly. That place where human truth and what's most true of the brand, what has the potential to generate brand value come together. There's one third component we often mention that is about how brands keep powering themselves up and to the right, which is of course where we all wanna go. It's not just, we talk about the three A's of brand. Is it authentic? Is it aligned?

And is it aspirational? Authentic is that being true to the brand itself. We're not working always startup. So it's often what equities did the brand actually have in the market, even in the non-conscious mind of customers. Aligned is what you just said about those customer needs. What do they want? And then aspirational is what points us all towards a preferred future. What keeps us moving forward and inspires new thinking, new ways of growth?

And so when you add that third dimension, get just, it's exactly what you said, but it adds a little bit of energy to it and momentum, which we find that can be so valuable for brands. An example of what we're talking about, there's actually one, a client we're actually just working up with now, I won't even tell you the category, but I'll just say that they have a little bit of a legacy brand. And even I think they would say in their mind, a little bit of a tired brand in the category that they are in. However, they are well, well loved.

by a large segment of consumers who really, really rely on them. They rely on this brand to play a consistent role in their life. It's in their food life. And they really rely on it to remove some complex decisions, give them some satisfaction they need in the moment, but also feel like they're making relatively good decisions. Not quinoa and dry chicken breast decisions, but pretty good decisions.

And one of the things that this client expected was, we're in the modern world. What we actually need to do is we need to create more variety. We need to create more options and more variety to modernize this brand and make it more relevant to customers. And they were getting answers from their more traditional market research saying, yes, we want more choices. We want more variety. What our deeper emotional research revealed was that in fact,

What they didn't want was more variety. What they wanted, what the consumer wanted was to not feel like they were a boring eater. They didn't wanna feel like they were a boring eater. They relied on this brand, they were happy with it. They were happy with a small number of selections, but they didn't want it to feel like it was limiting or defining them. And so when asked questions about, would you want more variety? Do you wanna try like some far-flung flavors? Well, of course I'm not boring. So they would answer yes.

But what we actually understood was that what they wanted was to be had their hand held a little bit and walked forward to maybe some new form factors, some near neighbor tweaks on a theme, but not magically, not completely reinvented. And so what we were able to share with this brand was don't change your stripes. That might seem what the answer is, but that would actually hurt your brand. What you want to do is embrace the deeper emotion. Forget about their demographics and focus instead.

on the deeper emotional drivers of this audience's choices in this category and think about how that actually connects to more indifferent and younger consumers and then evolve the brand along those lines. And I think what it's actually going to end up doing is completely, I'm not gonna say 180 degrees, but about a 90 degree pivot on where they were going to position the brand to where we're actually gonna end up.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh my gosh, okay, this is really interesting and we didn't need to know the brand. But I see this so often in many different verticals. And I'll tell you a recent conversation I had is about SaaS platforms and software is that if you ask the customer what they want, they always, well, I want this option and that option and this option. Or if you people do demos with my clients and the feedback is, well, if it did X, Y, Z, I'd buy it. But the thing is, then they don't.

the company goes off and chases this whole thing, develops XYZ, and it comes back to that client. They're like, well, if it did da-da-da, I would buy it. It's like, wait a minute. In the first conversation, you said if it did this thing, you would buy it, right? And so this kind of comes back to our original conversation is that often people are giving the answers they think you want them to give you, and also the answers that on the surface they think is true.

But it isn't actually true. They haven't been asked the right question or to your point, the beautiful question, right? And I tell people oftentimes when they come to me with an idea, they're like, well, I've asked around, it's a really good idea, I want to start this company and what do you think of it? I'm like, well, a couple of things. Number one, people rarely ask the right people. So don't ask your mom if you should start this company. Her role is to support you. And in that case with SaaS, the person who's on that demo call, their role

is to put a block or an obstacle up for sales, right? That's their role in that moment. So they are going to tell you that because they are just non-consciously in that role of sales deflection, right? So you ask the wrong person and secondly, you ask the wrong question. If you want to ask your mom, that's great, but maybe ask her, would you invest $600,000 in this tomorrow,

Yeah. Okay, now that's a different question, right? Yeah. And so I think that applies really across the board with every vertical.

Alexander Millet: It does. And you've brought us right back to that question on human truth, because I think that's maybe beyond just the why behind the what, that's maybe the best definition of human truth is that you can get something that I go casting my mind back to Stephen Colbert and many years ago when he coined that phrase truthy, you can get something that sounds truthy, you can get something that even the respondent telling you that answer is in their mind telling you the truth, but it's not the real reason. And so that's why we talk about human truth as

Once you dig deeper and understand the actual kind of non-conscious, often very emotional drivers and shapers of decision-making, then you can get to the human truth, which even if it doesn't align with a certain piece of data or a certain survey response, is far more reliable in terms of predicting future success of activations based on the insight.

Priscilla McKinney: What an amazing episode, Alex. I don't know why it took me so long to get you on this podcast, but if you are interested in learning how your brand can become a trusted and a valuable asset in people's lives that actually propels purpose and fulfillment, and then in that sweet spot also brings you business success, then I think you're kind of perfect for brand trust. So give Alex a call and let me just give it to you so you can find him on

LinkedIn. It's Alex, A-L-E-X, Millett, M-I-L-L-E-T. Look for him out on LinkedIn. And thank you so much, Alex, for joining us today. As always, it's such an interesting conversation to me about really the beautiful complex experience that it is to be human.

Alexander Millet: Priscilla, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Priscilla McKinney: From all the peeps here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.