Why half the journeys we create simply ain’t the truth

I was once a member of a band at school, which has one (now) world famous former member — but before we get side tracked, that’s just me explaining the title of this article, as I regularly found myself penning imaginary song titles and then half writing the actual tune itself. Especially having spent a few months indoors like everyone else recently.

With businesses now looking to accelerate their efforts as the world attempts to move forward, we are being asked to do work that involves re-looking at journeys.

And what we are finding is that the journeys being developed both client side and agency side are often not fully baked.

Why? Well, often it’s cobbling together a variety of research, that’s been commissioned by different business verticals, so that a journey can pop into existence. Or it’s simply a one-dimensional view.

This happens because silos are a business reality and having cross-functional groups reviewing the various findings, then stitching together a coherent interpretation and common agreement on the implications for the business is, frankly, all too hard.

So we work with clients to build a common framework for understanding ‘the journey’, that cuts across organisational divisions.

That is an entire post in and of itself, but to build a more robust journey, let’s look at the common types of data, sources of insights and intelligence at our disposal which are the building blocks of any journey work…

Research methodologies and ways to apply them when it comes to understanding the journey

One of the challenges is that there are lots of different tools, techniques and methodologies available. Adding to that there are also different points of view on what a journey itself looks like, depending on its application. For example, in media, you’re probably most interested in where you should distribute your content or messaging to encounter your desired customer.

In my experience, interviews and panel-based research are often the main tools being used to construct journeys. But this doesn’t build an accurate picture of consumer engagement as it’s reliant on customers telling you the truth, or at least what they may well think they did. So a ‘true journey’ needs to include steps people actually take, where they might encounter a brand / product / service / organization in their day-to-day life (before they even know of you), motivations for looking for a product / service etc. as well as the places they then go for information, to buy / donate etc. If you build this more robust ‘world view’ then you can apply this in a variety of contexts.

This means thinking about:

Exploratory research for insights and building out areas to further dive into

Typically interviews or focus groups

The purpose here is to generate some insights that provide a start point — what types of activities are people undertaking, where are they undertaking them? Discussion-based research allows you to at least get a sense of what people are doing as they purchase / donate and some understanding can be gleaned as to why etc. It can give you the basis for a survey, to see if some of the takeaways apply more broadly, or simply to move you away from basing everything on your own assumptions (‘Well I would never do that’ — maybe, but perhaps lots of other folks just would).

Understanding the ‘world’ that the person you’re looking to engage / influence / attract is inhabiting and what’s driving them / going on in their lives

Usually ethnography methods, including customer diaries

Observing and interacting inside someone’s own environment is not new but can be effective when it comes to getting to the crux of what might be driving or motivating them and helps get a better sense of their day-to-day encounters.

Touchpoint mapping to get into media consumption habits and platform usage to be able to interact with them

Typical platforms tend to be owned media touchpoint data and surveys

Platform based data (e.g. Facebook, WeChat etc.). This can be challenging to get, so survey-based data can be used to at least get a sense of it — think Global Web Index or similar. Yes, it’s claimed vs. actual behaviour, but these providers are, in some cases, collecting some live data from their panelists too, so it gives you something to work from.

Behavioral data for the true picture (aka validating your hypothesized journey)

Typically data from tagging and tracking

Humans are unreliable narrators, which limits the effectiveness of polling (and why complex models need to be built to account for folks saying one thing and doing another). So making sure you’re tagging and tracking what people are actually doing becomes important to validate the journey and get the true picture of how people are engaging with you over time.

This is easier to do online than off, but with the re-emergence of QR codes, location tracking etc. is becoming more feasible and scalable.

A word on social listening….

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned social listening so far. So much social media discussion is now ‘dark’, with estimates as high as 80% or more in a region like Asia happening within closed networks, so it’s important to think about the right use cases.

Social listening can be useful as a supplementary source of exploratory research (you might find a discussion that proves enlightening or insightful); it can be useful in trends mapping too, when applied to a group of KOLs, by way of example or crisis monitoring.

In the end, you need to think about how much time and effort you want to invest, but there’s plenty of room for a variety of research types and methodologies to be applied.

And stay tuned for more on our journey thinking.

Jonny Stark, Head of Business Consulting & Innovation, MullenLowe APAC