AT&T and SKIM on insight acceleration at TMRE 2016

Along with AT&T, we presented at TMRE – The Market Research Event – in Florida, October 17-20, 2016. Emily Toomey and Mike Mabey shared our 3 year-long journey to insight acceleration; cutting the delivery from 6 weeks down to 22 hours.

AT&T’s insight acceleration: from 6 weeks to 22 hour research

Presented by:
Emily Toomey, ‎Lead Manager, Social Media & Digital Advertising Insights at AT&T
Mike Mabey, VP Client Solutions Americas at SKIM

http://www.slideshare.net/SKIMgroup/atts-insight-acceleration-from-6-weeks-to-22-hour-research

If you are unable to view the slides on this page, click here to view our slides on SlideShare. Or, click here to download as a PDF.

Three years ago, AT&T and SKIM began a partnership and journey towards shorter timelines for research. At that time, it was typically taking 6 weeks to conduct message tests, concept tests and print ad tests.

It started with a simple urgent request: AT&T needs to test new messages, and needs recommendations for message to use in 3 weeks in order to give the creative team enough time to create the ads. Could we do it?

At that time, every project was ad hoc custom work. So this seemingly simple but challenging request from AT&T started SKIM and AT&T on a 3-year and continuing journey to streamlining research and insights processes. And today, we have cut the 3-week timeline even more drastically and can deliver message test insights within 24 hours.

We discussed the steps, challenges, processes and changes clients should consider in order to deliver insights faster. We also showed the templates and processes we are using to achieve fast turnaround.

3 main lessons we can learn from this journey

1. This kind of speed is only feasible with a solid partnership between client and agency.

Streamlining requires cutting out some steps in the typical process. Mutual trust is required in order to be successful at quickly scoping and launching research without sacrificing quality.

2. Breaking up key business questions into researchable sections allows you to pick and choose templated, pre-standardized modules for each rush study.

This way you can focus on what you need to know and, perhaps more important, trim out what you do not need.

3. Work with the client to define what deliverables and insights are going to be USED.

There’s no time for 20 slides – determine which 4 they are going to share with internal clients. To maintain acceleration, these have to be delivered in the client’s template, with the client’s language, and packed full of insights (not data!) so that the client can immediately share with internal clients.

For more information about TMRE, visit the event website.