Representation ≠ Relevance

Photo by Julio Gutierrez on Unsplash

The job of research isn't to reflect the world. It's to understand how to move it.

Earlier this month we put out a short POV about how most research is filled with respondents who are too emotionally distant to deliver the kind of insight brands need to act with confidence. Especially if they're aiming for cultural relevance.

The story is all too familiar: Everything looks good from screener to recruit, but...

As you near the moment of truth, confidence starts to fray.

Is this just a research effect?

Let's not forget about the say do gap.

I'm worried we aren't learning anything new here.

That's when the spin and second-guessing begins.

Here's the hard truth: The more emotionally distant someone is from what you're researching, the more likely they are to give you surface-level answers.

So when you design research around "average consumers," you get shallow insight. And the output - your brand, messaging or product? It ends up just as average.

It's one of many reasons incumbent brands can steadily lose share. They're too busy trying to be everything to everyone.

For any brand, average is a death sentence.

• Dull creative drives 50% less brand attention and 66% lower short-term sales impact.

• 72% of successful product innovations fail standard tests like BASES or Zappi.

• Watching a cow chew grass outperforms 50% of the ads in System1's database.

All too often, research delivers lunchbox letdown instead of breakthrough, because the market research industrial complex is optimized for average. It's built for generalizability, not the sharpness that leads to creative or products that stop you in your tracks.

Brands are already drowning in data about the average. They don't need more of that. What they need are new edges. New inputs that expose hidden tension, unmet desires, and emerging threats.

What teams actually need are new lenses. Ways of seeing what's been hiding in their blind spots. That comes from engaging with people who live differently, think intensely, and feel things the average consumer doesn't even yet realize they feel.

The insights that will help you out-think, out-maneuver, and out-grow are hiding in the hearts and minds of passionate outsiders that traditional research casts aside.

People, like Steve, Joyce, or Gavin.

All of whom we've met in projects over the last few months.

All of whom shifted how we and clients see spaces we've been exploring together.