The company’s first-ever global Consumer Insight Awards was designed to recognise projects driven by consumer insight and their business impact – and inspire all employees to apply insights in their work.
Our goal: simple, useful and inspirational insight stories
We needed to translate raw submissions into compelling Insight Stories – ready for driving engagement, employee voting, and stage presentations at the ceremony.
Great stories would make the event meaningful rather than transactional, transforming consumer-centric efforts into recognised achievements to inspire future behaviours.
Defining Consumer Insight
Before shaping each story, we aligned on what constitutes a consumer insight. Great insights:
- Offer new understanding – challenging assumptions and revealing deeper reasons behind consumer behaviour
- Reveal clear business opportunities for growth and competitive advantage
- Are relevant to corporate strategy and business objectives
- Are actionable – stakeholders can translate them into decisions and project activities
It’s the ‘Aha!’ moment that creates action.
N.O.R.A. (New. Opportunity. Relevant. Actionable): this became our framework for simplifying submissions, structuring stories, and judging entries.
Crafting an Insight Story
We received 84 unique business cases, but unearthing the real consumer insight from the raw entry – what shaped the business decisions and impact – required deeper excavation.
We started with a prototype entry to test our narrative structure, articulation, and tone.
Then we explored different consumer insight angles for each entry: What did they discover about their consumers? What new understanding did it unlock?
We articulated multiple angles – each with a headline (hook), description (line), and business opportunity (sinker) – then presented them to the project owners to refine direction and fill knowledge gaps.
For the 12 finalists, we crafted complete stories: what the insight revealed, the opportunity it offered, key actions taken, and impact on both business and consumer experience.
Telling the stories
Each team needed peer votes, so we adapted stories into:
- Film scripts for 1-minute videos to generate interest and efficient voting
- Synopses for the dedicated awards page to make entries accessible and digestible
- A Pitch format for stage presentations at the ceremony
The impact
Turning insight-driven projects into compelling stories made the awards engaging before, during, and after the event. More importantly, it reframed how critical consumer insights are for positively impacting consumer experience and driving commercial success – inspiring markets and functions across the organisation to seek and generate consumer insights to shape their future projects.
Written by Chris Allan
