Navigating the Performance Landscape: Insights, Causes and Solutions

The world is in a perpetual state of flux, creating a dynamic and disruptive environment for businesses worldwide. Myriad challenges confront both businesses and consumers across the globe, from the soaring cost of living, global pandemics, population expansion, dwindling resources, climate change, to evolving social attitudes and norms. The world remains in a constant whirlwind of change, and these are just the known challenges. Consider the countless unknown forces at play – the possibilities are boundless.

The profound social implications of these known and unknown challenges have made it increasingly complex for businesses to decipher the forces impacting their brand and industry. Amidst the tumultuous currents, businesses often struggle to stay ahead, meet customer expectations, and foster innovation.

Most businesses grapple with four fundamental questions:

1. What is happening in my category?

2. What do my consumers want?

4. How can I identify early signals?

3. How can I win in the future?

On the surface, addressing these questions appears to be a recipe for enduring growth. However, we've recently questioned whether this is truly sufficient for long-term success. We've often wondered why businesses seem content with the status quo, settling for the rudimentary "this is what's occurring" approach. To us, it appears to merely skim the surface. As champions of innovation and pioneers for growth, we aim to highlight some of the limitations inherent in the current performance models available in the market.

Many diagnostic tools tend to be myopic in nature. They focus solely on self-comparison with direct competitors, failing to provide a broader perspective on indirect competitors or the prevailing trends within their industry and the cultural influences that shape performance outcomes.

The evolution of how we perceive a competitor set is exemplified by Netflix, which has expanded its outlook beyond the confines of traditional streaming platforms. Rather than exclusively viewing other streaming services as competitors, Netflix now recognises that the true competition extends to encompass various leisure activities, including sleep and gaming, vying for people's precious spare time.

Distinguishing between claimed behaviour and actual behaviour is crucial in understanding human actions. Surveys and focus group polls often gather data on claimed behaviour, which may not always align with reality, whether due to intentional misrepresentation or unintentional inaccuracies. In contrast, utilising social data sets offers a more transparent and accurate view of human behaviour, as it bypasses the limitations of memory and honesty, providing a more genuine reflection of how individuals truly behave.

Many diagnostic tools fall short in comprehensively mapping the entire consumer journey, which typically encompasses awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy stages. Integrating social data sets into performance tools proves invaluable by filling this critical gap, offering insights that conventional models may lack.

The insights industry is in a race to keep pace with emerging technologies, requiring clients to broaden their knowledge and grasp of predictive models along with the associated risks and benefits of peering into the future. Our response is to construct a bridge connecting the potential of machine learning prowess with tangible actions you can implement right now.

So for agencies within this space, innovative thinking is needed to respond. At Freemavens, MSQ’s research & insights agency, we’ve developed TILT, an all-encompassing and forward-thinking performance diagnostic tool, designed to seamlessly address all these challenges.

TILT gives the flexibility to input an extensive array of relevant, exploratory, and customised signals, allowing clients to tailor their tracking precisely to their needs. It transcends conventional analysis limited to direct competitors, encompassing social data to gain a broader perspective on consumer journeys, opinions, reviews, as well as real cultural change and behaviours. It also empowers clients to set their tracking cadence within specific date ranges, providing a level of granularity that traditional survey data simply cannot replicate.

This fundamentally is about creating more harmony from the noise of the marketplace to help tune business leaders’ ears to how they should play and where they can win.

Because I believe that it’s so important to consistently push the envelope, transcend conventional boundaries and delve into uncharted territories. And I’m excited to see the developments in our competitors and this evolving landscape to ensure that the gap between predictive promise and proof is as small as possible.