Why have so many smart industry leaders’ roles been made redundant this last year? Why has the narrative around ‘insights need to drive more commercial impact in organisations’ not changed in the last 10 years? FlexMR’s Third London Customer Salience summit led by Paul Hudson CEO of FlexMR suggested insight teams are failing to focus on the right data, exhibit the right behaviour, or target the right people for impact in organisations.
FlexMR hosted 100 passionate, driven and forward-thinking insight leaders in a day of review, thinking and conversation at the RSA House, London, on the 6th October. Bringing together leading voices from the insight and marketing industry to explore how organisations can strengthen Customer Salience and embed customer-centric decision-making.
The event began with a provocation from Paul Hudson that the industry is excellent at understanding customer audiences but dire at understanding and engaging with business leaders and decision makers, who desperately need a deeper, better understanding of their customers at the top of mind; to make the right choices for their business and ultimately their bottom line.
The day progressed through key topics that support delivery of customer salience, starting with customer closeness. A central part of a customer-orientated business is ensuring that decision makers stay attuned to who their customer really are. Sarah Jousiffe from Sky shared a powerful example of a customer from one of these programmes who was so memorable that teams still knew his name, 16 years later.
Then the day turned to an interactive session of sharing ideas and voting, where presenters battled to win the most votes on their initiatives for effective internal insight communications. Dan Siddle, Molson Coors won the vote by holding a mirror up to decision makers and getting them to self-reflect to see that they were not their customers.
Emma Baxter from The Coventry Building Society shared that if we want to drive customer salience we need to not only embrace change but drive it from the helm and experiment adding that ‘We need to influence people even when we’re not in the room’
A sentiment that was echoed throughout the day, with Bethan Blakely telling us to ‘just get started’ on that new initiative and see how far it gets you (the results can be really powerful - sticky notes on a wall brought the customer feedback to life in a hallway) echoing Kathryn Eastwood of Sainsbury’s earlier sentiments about experimenting with customer closeness until you find what is right for your insights engagement to become BAU across the organisation.
Then the audience’s attention was focused onto what can be done to develop a decision community; a broad group of decision makers who all recognise the value of customer insight. Natalie Moyce’s PhD update suggests very little coherent literature exists on how much customer insight is being used and applied to make the right decisions and Veena Natarajan from the HMRC shared that she also learned through experimenting with insight communications that there was actually a huge appetite from ‘apparently disengaged’ decision-makers for regular insights that enrich customer understanding.
The end of the day sessions then saw the audience hearing from Chris Harvey, Activate Research, Hannah Hartrey, Aldermore Bank and Paul Hudson, FlexMR sharing approaches to, at first taking a step back to be able to move forward and focusing on diagnosing where the organisation is at in terms of bringing customers top of mind in decision making; creating a ‘clear picture’ in order to benchmark where you are now to demonstrate the impact on delivery of customer salience in a measurable way.
The London event was the third annual Customer Salience Summit held each October in London, which is celebrated by forward thinking insight leaders as a place to collaborate with a 5 out of 5 consistent rating.
Attendance is free of charge for eligible professionals, though spaces are limited and advance registration is required. Due to the nature of the event, attendance is restricted to clientside professionals.
“Customer expectations are evolving rapidly, and insight teams must adapt to remain relevant,” said a spokesperson for FlexMR. “This event is designed to equip professionals with the tools, strategies, and inspiration needed to operationalise Customer Salience and drive meaningful change within their organisations.”
Pre-register for next year if you don’t want to miss out here.
About FlexMR
FlexMR rewires how business decisions get made. The award-winning market research and insight agency partners with ambitious brands to embed Customer Salience at the heart of organisational decision-making — ensuring customer understanding actively shapes strategy, investment and operational choices.
Blending decades of expertise with industry-leading technology, FlexMR moves organisations beyond knowledge production toward bespoke cultures of customer centricity that influence real behaviour. Through its InsightHub platform and consulting services, the firm keeps the customer present, prioritised and influential at the moments that matter most.
