Perspective check.

Story.

I learned this at InSites Consulting, as Meet the Joneses. Marketeers wrote down what they believed their customers did, thought and said, and then compared it with what the customers themselves said. InSites also ran it as an open test: in 2010, more than a thousand marketers in Belgium and the Netherlands answered questions about consumers’ daily lives the way they thought consumers would. No one passed.

What stayed with me was reading the research for one client and hearing how often the picture in the marketing team differed from what consumers actually said. That shocked me. It matched a picture I already had in the back of my head of how things went, and I have only seen it more often since. The exercise gets people out of the ivory tower and in front of the people they make decisions for.

I now use it more broadly than customers. Any group whose view matters can sit on the other side of the map: players, fans, members, colleagues. The question stays the same: what do we think, and what do they actually say and do?

The map.

Make one copy per stakeholder group or topic. Keep the prompts simple and adapt them to the question.

Fill in “what we assume” before collecting input. Only put something in “what they say” or “what we observe” when you have a source for it. If you are interpreting or using a proxy, label it as such. A difference is a signal to look closer, not proof that one side is right.

When to use it.

Before committing to a plan built on beliefs about customers, players, fans, members, colleagues or partners. Use it whenever someone says “they want”, “they think” or “they need” and you have not checked recently. It is also useful when two groups describe the same situation in very different ways.

My own practice, from Meet the Joneses at InSites Consulting.