Turn Data into Decisions through this Simple Decision Making Grid

Who wants to drive corporate decision making through his data? I do. I want to drive organizations decisions in the light of insights.

In my career I have seen ‘numbers’ predicting future like Mad. And I have seen brand managers ignoring numbers like Maaaaaaaad too 🙂

So now that I am a client myself and have dealt with a lot of agencies, here is a simple Grid that I follow to drive key decisions internally. 

4 Tips to take your Marketing to Muslim to the next level

Ramadan is coming, you must be working on your Ramadan Campaign. Here are some tips for those marketers who plan to differentiate while trying to reach to Muslim market.

What is worth mentioning here is that Brand Communication has learnt to ride on the waves of uneasy insights and relate to the consumer. But somehow, all of those learning fail to affect the way we produce Ramadan Campaigns.

This presentation brings out Insights into the Muslim World that waiting to be tapped. Please don’t waste your time reading it any further if you don’t plan to differentiate.

Good Researcher, Bad Researcher

For almost a decade now, I have been part of Marketing research fraternity I have seen good presentations to surprisingly bad presentations. I have met truly inspiring researchers and researchers’ who have no clue about almost everything.

Here are my two cents of what I found common amongst good researchers and bad researchers across multiple cultures and countries.

	Good Researcher	Bad Researcher
Presentation	A good researcher presents a story. A story with twists and turns, actions & corrections and jaw dropping functional pointers. While he is talking you feel like your imagination is ignited and you land up on ideas which can be a landmark achievement for your CVHis Motto: Inspire	A Bad researcher presents numbers, percentages, ratios, values, and much more. While he is talking you feel like you are back in your statistics class. You loose the context and start to look for cappuccino His Motto: Convince the client or confuse him
Insights	he will bring forward insights not only from data but from the environment around him / her. He will connects the dots for you. From Brands, to media to culture. He presents one customer and his many shadesHis Motto: Discover	He will present you data in isolation. One focused angle of your Customer.His Motto: Cover the brief (only)
Business	He understands business are dictated by internal plans and external competition. He tries to address both of them in liaison with you through the information he hasHis Motto: Functional	He believes he should focus only on the datasets at hand and later on the client should be the one who connects the dotsHis Motto: Data is the king
Brainstorming Sessions	He will sit with client teams and understand their needs, their key questions, their key barriers etc. He will brain storm about his own presentation, data sets and findings. He will try and push himself and he will also push the clients with the aim to think hard and come up with tighter, more defined action oriented insightsHis Motto: Research is a paper without action	His Question: brainstorming with clients, why?
Heated Argument	He doesn’t sell and/or buy bull sh***. He will take a stance where he should and similarly will listen when he should. He is not there to sell or defend his data, he is there to help client understand the potential weaknesses & threats for clients’ brand His Motto: May Logic Prevail	He defends the data, the perspective shifts towards the data methodology instead of insight implications

I am an insight-a-holic. And like all others marketing researchers I suffer from occasional heartbreaks when no one else can see what I can so I continuously work on improving my presentation skills, decision buy-in processes, and I try to keep on writing about insights that are or that will be driving our business strategy. Why dont you help me out, let me know about your ideas here, at twitter or at linkedin. 

 

10 Game-changing rules to rule Dubai Brand World

The world is full of global brands. Which were never designed to be global brands? How to dominate the world is about how to beat them.

This presentation adds insights from United Arab Emirates to the points raised by Simon Silvester

Consumer Insight: UAE dictionary of change

Change has always been the only constant, especially in the United Arab Emirates. A country which is only 39 years old but has attracted global attention in terms of growth rates, construction marvels and is leading the region on many fronts.  

Following are a couple of thoughts on activities/projects which will probably bring some major changes in the media consumption and marketing front of UAE.

The three big changes that I have identified are

• Content creation
• Abu-Dhabi getting traction
• Increased connectivity

I have uploaded my views on slide-share FYR. Hope you find them useful 

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Marketing Research sector: Tips for marketing research presentation

In all the years I spent in marketing research both as a client and as a research executive I have learned that presenting research is more of an art and is more complicated than it seems.

I have been in sessions, where client completely negates the data. And on the other hand some clients have been eager to know recommendations. In either case, the client has to be entertained in a certain way. I am suggesting a matrix in the light of my experience; hope it adds value to your daily jobs. I suggest that one should try to read the client before presenting the data, try to predict his reaction and than draft the presentation.

Marketing research – how to present marketing research

View more presentations from Ayesha Saeed.

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