The Power of a Pivot: Recovering Stronger With Compliant, First Party Data At Scale

The past year has been a stark inflection point on how change being inevitable, but growth being optional, is more poignant than ever! So, as we focus on how to recover from the impact of COVID-19 in the strongest, healthiest state possible, it’s important to take time to reflect on the new learnings these unprecedented times and challenges have brought when it comes to understanding the behaviour shifts and new trends that will lead to positive growth in the months and years to come…

 

A mindful balance of human-sourced but tech-enabled data

Understanding the behaviours and rationale behind what people think, feel, say, and do have always been core to building stronger businesses, brands, strategies, and policies. However, with this past year turning out far different than anyone could have imagined or planned for back in January, the importance of reliable, inclusive, and compliant data has an even stronger purpose in 2020.

In today’s ‘always-on’, digitally-driven world, there’s certainly not been a lack of data available, and ‘big data’ has been a buzzword in our industry for quite some time now.  However, in these new times of rapid and inconsistent change and a global crisis, where the crumbling of third-party cookies and increased data privacy legislation also add increased pressure to compliant data collection, there’s no guarantee that ‘more’ data automatically equates to ‘better’ insights. 

Online purchase behaviour now enables us to collect an exuberant amount of “what” data from customers. But it’s understanding the ‘why’ behind these purchase decisions without disrupting the dynamic purchase experience for the customer that is key to providing a holistic understanding of peoples’ decision-making mindsets – and to take meaningful action that drives growth in unprecedented times and unpredictable circumstances.

The growing prevalence and benefits of online activities also therefore applies to consumer surveys. Digital surveys provide a fast and cost-effective way to connect with people at speed and scale to better understand peoples’ “what” and “why” sentiments, motivations, and behaviours. But ensuring that the data collected is reliable, unbiased, timely, and representative of the ever-changing, diverse world that businesses, brands, offers, and society serve also now requires a more compliant and more mindful balance of human-sourced but tech-enabled data.

We first recognised the power of this pivot in Kantar back in 2019 (i.e. pre-COVID). So, over the past 18 months, we’ve been on a rapid journey of transformation, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise to hear that the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated this transformation to ensure we remain at the forefront of delivering representative, compliant data insights at the speed of life. This has included:

• Enhancing our exclusive LifePoints Community for our proprietary double-opt-in LifePoints panelists. Peoples’ time and data have never been more precious, which means having the privilege and permission to share peoples’ time and data commands more engaging digital experiences. So, our LifePoints community focus ensures our panellists feel they are treated as the valuable members of society they represent. LifePoints provides them with a safe, diverse, inclusive community which enables their voices to be heard and gives them the opportunity to influence brands and society in ways that matter to them. This has led to LifePoints now being rated as ‘excellent’ (4.5 stars) by our panelists on Truspilot. You can hear how they feel about this themselves in this video.
• Building our Kantar Profiles Network – a unique API-driven ecosystem of 100m+ compliant panelists across 70 markets to provide our clients with a menu of options to meet their increasing demands for trusted first-party data at speed and scale in times of more scrutinised budgets.
• Re-platforming our entire business to a pioneering cloud-based ‘OnePlatform’ solution that powers access to our valuable source of panelists at unprecedented speed, scale, and security.
• Introducing programmatic ways of connecting our panelists to the right surveys faster, and the recent launch of our Accelerated Answers quick-turn survey solutions that deliver real insights from real consumers in as little as six hours by streamlining programming, data processing, and data visualisation time by up to 50% – again in appreciation of how precious our clients’ and panelists’ time and data is.
• Implementing five layers of robust but dynamic quality checks, including the use of captcha’s, identity validation, anti-bot testing, and machine learning to take a proactive, 24/7 approach to removing fraudulent panelists in an always-on world, as well as our uniquely patented statistical ‘Honesty Detector’ approach that removes people who have been previously identified as over-reporters before they enter a new survey to ensure all the data we collect is not just done so compliantly, but also reflects the real world.
• Ongoing work on a plan for implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to enable our high-performing talent to spend less time on manual tasks and invest more time focusing on creative innovation for client solutions – the most recent example being our award-winning approach to destroying the online façade of forcing panelists to fit into traditional online boxes (worst of all the ‘other’ box) and instead encouraging them to reveal their true selves by taking them on a journey of their life story in a way that helps us collect data that better reflects ‘their real why and their hidden who’

 

The Playbook

All this work has also enabled us to create a Playbook and checklist for helping our clients make more informed choices on garnering the right data to understand people and inspire growth in times of inconsistent and unprecedented change. Three key highlights from this include: 

 

First, Mitigating Data Risk Right from The Get-Go:

The quality of the data insights from the work you commission is dependent on the quality of the data that goes into the survey in the first place. So, first and foremost, ensure you are talking to respondents who have given their permission to be contacted and that the data you collect from them is done so in accordance with the different data compliance and protection regulations around the world. Data should only be collected if there is a clear purpose for its collection, and the use cases for any data that is collected must be made clear to all respondents before it is collected. Ensure this is supported with sources that actively work to predict and identify fraudulent behaviour and mitigate the damage that might cause to your final data sets.

 

Second, Optimising Business Growth with Inclusive & Diverse Data:

Reflecting the real world we serve is imperative to staying relevant in times of change and uncertainty. Taking a people-first approach is therefore key to collecting representative ‘what’ and ‘why’ data – and compliant online access panels provide a trusted way of doing this at scale. For example, Kantar’s online access panels are all ‘opt-in’ by nature. We welcome everyone who wants to join our proprietary LifePoints Panels, regardless of their origin, their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, as long as they pass both our unique and industry-leading quality checks validating that they are not ‘fraudulent’ panelists. The overall representation of the panelist sample pool available in a country is therefore driven by those who voluntarily sign up to be a member of the LifePoints panel in that country, but we then ensure the compliant representativity of the specific demographics and behaviours required for each survey. 

It’s also important to know what data you can and cannot collect as the legalities and propensity to be able to compliantly collect sensitive data such as ethnic origin differ market by market. For example:

• US: “Ethnicity” and “Race” are key variables of the population census. So, when appropriate, quotas or sample controls are added to our US work via a combination of “Ethnicity and Race” questions. As of June 2020, data analysis shows that the Kantar LifePoints panel in the US is broadly representative in terms of available respondents for selection purposes across “Race / Ethnicity”.
• EU: Collection of sensitive data is only allowed in the EU with explicit consent, and in France, it is not legal to ask or collect data on ethnicity.
• UK: Ethnic background is not a standard sample and research characteristic for consumer survey studies and therefore not generally collected or measured as standard practice. However, in June 2020, Kantar conducted a survey in the UK, which added a consent question enabling us to compliantly collect data on 18 classifications of ethnic origin. The results show that Kantar’s LifePoints panel in the UK is broadly in line with the 2011 Census data, with 1% of respondents opting out of answering this question, and <1% selecting ‘prefer not to state’.
• Other Markets: There will be local specific requirements about data collection and / or there is no specific data available. But in general, particularly sensitive data points are not collected as typically they are not part of the requirements of the research.  

 

Third, Making Data More Actionable with Honest Response Techniques:

Whilst misreporting is not necessarily conscious behaviour from panelists, there can be times when survey respondents over and under claim on certain answers. For example, Kantar has found that respondents are more likely to say they do socially desirable activities (like vote, recycle or buy organic food) and less likely to say they do socially undesirable activities (like smoking, watching reality TV or eating fast food) than they actually do in reality. So, proactively limiting dishonesty in data collection is key to ensuring true behaviour shifts are identified in times of change like COVID-19 to build recovery and growth strategies from, and you can apply simple techniques to your survey designs that address them and complement these techniques with a narrative that is created from some of the better ways to ask questions we could share with you to ensure respondents feel their time investment has been a worthwhile, engaging experience – not forgetting of course that the best gut check of all is taking the survey yourself to see how much you enjoy the experience!

 

Helping you collect honest and insightful feedback from the consumers, patients, physicians, citizens, and audiences who are important to you has always been key to our mission to understand people and inspire growth in an extraordinary world – but we are now able to go that extra mile when it comes to pivoting at speed and scale to provide you with honest, compliant, representative, first-party data – even in times of unexpected change and uncertainty. So, for more information on this, please contact us here. 

 

Photo by mauro mora on Unsplash