Introducing Material Spotlight: Agile Insights for an Evolving Business Landscape

By Kate Whittle, SVP Strategy + Insights at Material

Change is a defining feature of the modern, highly connected business landscape.

We can see it in evolving consumer behaviors, habits and preferences. Emerging technology continues to disrupt established ways of working, from supply chain operations to customer engagement. Competitive landscapes are increasingly dynamic, as businesses anticipate and adapt to shifts in the marketplace and new brands and products quickly emerge to fill unmet needs.

In this swirl of change, actionable consumer insights and deep human understanding have never been more critical to growth, innovation and long-term success. But as the speed of modern business continues to increase, so has the need for agile insights solutions that can match its pace.

Time to insights isn’t a new challenge, but it’s becoming more pronounced than ever before. Organizations can now collect primary insights in very short timeframes via DIY, low-touch solutions and merge them with troves of available data across omnichannel brand touchpoints. While these automated and self-service methods of gathering data offer great speed and access, they fail to provide potent and relevant insights necessary to drive informed decision-making.

The result? Teams and businesses find themselves data rich, but insights poor. And DIY can start to feel like DIAY (Do-It-All-Yourself). What many clients have told us is that when they need quick, focused insights to complement their larger-scale, ongoing research engagements, they also want a potent dose of Material’s science, storytelling and partnership.

We developed Material Spotlight to fill this gap. Combining Material’s industry-leading market research capabilities and a team of strategists with agile principles and AI, Spotlight offers an efficient, cost-effective solution for organizations seeking nimble, targeted and fast insights into specific, time-sensitive business questions – without compromising on quality. Material has decades of proven experience helping organizations tackle their largest, most complex challenges; with Spotlight, we apply the same rigor to urgent needs that are narrower in scope but no less impactful as drivers of strategy and decision making.

Human Insights Delivered with Speed

In the quest for quick insights, many organizations have begun experimenting with automated, AI-powered insights platforms. While these tools offer the advantage of speed, one response we consistently hear from insights leaders is they offer limited flexibility, quality and actionability in their outputs. This leaves organizations grappling with a difficult compromise: gain speed, but lose out on effectiveness and impact.

These limitations reinforce a core principle for Material: the human element is critical. From our customer-centric strategy consulting to our behavioral science research, our teams elevate the human in all that we do – even in these small, focused studies. With Spotlight, you get more than a DIY research platform; you get a team of human research strategists with deep industry experience and methodological expertise that act as an extension of your team.

Whereas most automated tools are highly templatized and rigid, Spotlight offers a flexible solution that is always tailored to the unique needs and goals of each engagement. To deliver potent insights with speed, we partner with teams to narrow in on one to two key business questions, then design and field surveys within a matter of days. Our story-driven reporting brings findings and recommendations to life in a digestible, actionable format built for immediate impact. With Spotlight, your quick, focused projects don’t need to be any less strategic than your large-scale research initiatives.

Unlocking Impact in Diverse Contexts

We’ve seen this agile approach unlock value for teams in a variety of different business contexts. Consider a few examples:

• Prioritizing direction and focus areas. Fast, targeted insights can help guide approach and create confidence in areas for investment or further research and exploration.

• Data-backed hypotheses. Our Spotlight team can help quickly pressure-test ideas and help teams better communicate business cases to stakeholders.

• Quickly understanding the impact of competitor launches. We help teams quickly gauge the impacts and implications of market moves and pressure test response options.

• Enhancing larger research initiatives. Spotlight engagements can be designed to tie into larger, ongoing insights work like brand health trackers. We can help teams dig deeper into unexpected findings or incorporate new research elements in response to category changes.

Agile Insights. Material Impact.

The imperative for speed in today’s business landscape doesn’t mean your team needs to compromise on quality. Material Spotlight combines modern agility with proven market research rigor to unlock rich, actionable insights in as little as one week – so your business is empowered to grow, lead and innovate with confidence.

Reach out today to learn more about our approach and explore how Spotlight can make an impact for your organization.