Leading organizations must modernize their insights and market research functions today because the landscape of customer expectations, technology, and competition has fundamentally shifted. There are many reasons why including: data abundance which requires smarter synthesis and actionable human insight, the need for uncovering the why behind the what in the new emotion economy—which traditional data sets often don’t do. Finally and most importantly, because brand differentiation, which is a critical business imperative in today’s landscape, will only come via deeper customer understanding.
Nick Graham On Transforming Market Research + Insights Functionality To Attain Competitive Advantage
Billee Howard
The bottom line: modernizing insights is no longer about better market research—it’s about building a living system of intelligence that fuses data, emotion, and foresight to guide every strategic decision. The organizations that fail to adapt will be left with blind spots that will likely lead to lagging business performance.
For all these reasons, I wanted to speak to an industry thought leader who has his pulse on exactly how leading organizations must be thinking about insights modernization. Critical to success will be finding ways to effectively move away from a sea of endless dashboards to real-time intelligence engines that drive better business decision-making at the highest levels of an organization. Nick Graham is among the leading consumer insights professionals in the world. He is an industry veteran who has led the function at leading companies such as PepsiCo and Mondelēz International. Following is a recap of our conversation:
Billee Howard: Why has consumer centricity never been more important and how does this tie to a need to modernize market research and insights?
Nick Graham: Consumer centricity has never been more critical. In a world that is volatile, fragmented, and fiercely competitive, the companies that win will be those that understand their consumers better – and act on that understanding faster than the competition. Yet while billions have been poured into digital and business transformation, far less investment has gone into upgrading how companies generate insight. The result is a widening gap between the demands of the market and the level of consumer-centric decision-making. Closing that gap won’t come from tinkering at the edges. It demands a fundamental rebuild – not just a basic retooling – of how we do market research and analytics. And the clock is ticking.
Howard: Insights teams and market research functions don’t seem to have kept up with the pace of transformation, let alone environmental change. What are your thoughts on how and what they should do to get up to speed?
Graham: The reality is that most insights teams aren’t designed for today’s demands. Business leaders need foresight, not hindsight. They need to anticipate what’s coming next, not just replay what happened last quarter. Yet too many teams remain siloed and fragmented, drowning in proliferating data lakes and reliant on lagging indicators and legacy methods. In a world where speed, agility and data integration will decide who wins, this model is no longer fit for purpose.
What’s needed are agile, always-on systems that listen, learn and adapt in real time. Systems that bring together every source of data – qual and quant, structured and unstructured, syndicated and custom, functional and emotional – and turn them into usable intelligence. AI can undoubtedly help here, scanning, synthesizing and simulating at scale. But it cannot replace human judgment. Machines can tell you what’s happening; people must still decide why it matters. And it is human empathy – our ability to understand fundamental human motivators like hope, fear, love, joy, excitement, and belonging – that will truly unlock the drivers of behavior change.
Howard: What are the key things CMOs must think about when retooling their insights functions in the year ahead and beyond?
Graham: Tools and systems are only part of the solution. Insights must also redefine its role. For too long, the function has been treated as an order taker, or a support act for marketing. That has to change. Insights professionals must step up as strategic co-pilots: framing the growth agenda; guiding the business on where to play and how to win; and wiring consumer centricity into every decision, from advertising and innovation to commerce and culture.
Reinvention is no longer optional. To stay competitive, companies must transform insights from reactive interpreters of the present into proactive, forward-looking decision engines. Ones that combine the speed of AI with the precision of analytics and the empathy of human understanding. But this won’t happen without serious investment – in systems, in skills, and in talent. The truth is simple: you cannot win tomorrow’s growth battles with yesterday’s research machine.
Howard: As insights continue to go through a massive recalibration to sharpen consumer understanding, why will it be more important than ever for insights leaders to have a seat at the C-suite decision-making table and how can organizations ensure that this happens?
Graham: Every company claims to be consumer-centric – but few truly live and breathe it in the way they make decisions. That’s why insights must have a permanent seat at the decision-making table, with real influence, veto rights and accountability for how consumer understanding shapes strategy. True consumer centricity isn’t a slogan – it’s a system. And only when every decision starts and ends with their consumer can businesses achieve sustained growth.
