Justice to the consumer story

‘No one killed Jessica’, a Hindi movie that talks about the corruption in the justice system. This and many other movies on similar topics highlight how you can choose different perspectives to tell the same story. One leading to acquittal and one to conviction.
In the Qualitative research world as well, we can take different perspectives to tell consumer stories. The perspective we choose can change the decisions clients make about ads/concepts to launch, new products to develop etc.
So how do we get the right perspective, the one that will do justice to the consumer story? At Consumer Faces we have 3 rules of analysis to ensure that we present the right case:
1. Always divergent before convergent thinking
• Divergent thinking is about creating choice and convergent thinking is about making custom. It is easy to make some custom right after groups on the story. But that would be like marrying someone without dating them first. It is only after different dimensions are uncovered that a story emerges. Building upwards from the data is what really leads to deductive analysis.
2. Being objective focussed
• We gather a lot of information during conversations/observations. Creating frameworks/classification to make sense of the data in a way that will answer client questions is what provides new objective perspective. And like a kaleidoscope that forms different patterns with every twist and turn, these frameworks shape a common filter with which to see the consumer world and add new perspectives over time.
3. Stories as currency
• It is only after consumer insights are discussed, exchanged within client organisations that they begin to have true value. Exchanges of key insights means clients begin to build on these, even personalise these. It is these consumer tales that a client takes away that inspire them long after a project is closed.