Insights alone don’t move the needle – stories do. When findings are woven into a compelling narrative, stakeholders can feel what consumers feel. This emotional connection turns passive listeners into active advocates. By structuring your insights as a story – with vivid examples, clear arcs, and a purposeful resolution – your work has staying power.
Over years of partnering with brands across industries and geographies, we’ve seen storytelling unlock breakthroughs in product development, marketing, and customer experience. Below are four reasons your team should lean into narrative when sharing consumer research.
1: It builds empathy.
A great deliverable(s) inspires empathy among stakeholders for the consumers being discussed. Inspiring empathy isn’t as simple as including a few quotes in your report – it’s building your report around a framework that illustrates how consumers think, including great but short quotes and video clips in the right places, thinking out of the box on deliverables (so you might create a video summary or journey map), and facilitating activation.
In-person fieldwork and a video summary are like a power couple – you can capture more subtleties and build stronger empathy.
2: It increases understanding and recall.
Structure – a problem, a tension, and a solution – and frameworks (e.g., archetypes, journey map) work together to increase understanding and recall. Some examples:
- Illustrating the tumultuousness of hypertension patients’ journeys through five-stages –Repressed, Recognizing, Retreating, Responding, and Recommending
- Matching the six types of makeup consumers with celebrities (e.g., Sophia Ritchie)
- Comparing consumers’ credit strategy to the unpredictability of pinball
- Using a jazz band to explain the principles of service – for example, like tailored premium service makes you feel special, the saxophone doesn’t come in often but dominates when it does)
3: It helps with socialization.
A good simile, analogy, metaphor, archetype, persona, illustration, mnemonic device, framework, etc. makes socialization easier and more fun. Fun especially matters – your team is more likely to share and use insights if they’re fun to talk about.
Structure also helps with socialization. Any good book has a beginning, a middle, and an end – reports, video summaries, etc. should too.
Recently, we used a garden as a framework – the key insights being fruits and vegetables, and the stakeholders the pollinators. We even decorated a space for each fruit/vegetable family in our client’s conference room, sparking additional conversations for weeks.
4: It allows you to move from what to so what to what now.
Any good story has a resolution so a report, video summary, etc. should too. A resolution will allow you to better imagine the possibilities, to decide where to go from here.
A video we recently put together highlighting hypertension patients’ arduous journeys made physicians across the organization reflect on their own interactions with patients.
Why This Matters to Brands:
Empathy-driven narratives help brands create products and experiences that truly resonate.
- Memorable frameworks accelerate decision-making and inspire alignment
- Thoughtfully socializing insights reduces resistance and builds insights champions
- Action-oriented summaries deliver measurable ROI.
About the Author:
Alix has an extensive background in original research, particularly qualitative/ethnographic research. She has helped clients in a variety of industries and geographies get to know and observe their customers, understand where their industry is headed, identify whitespace, launch products, evolve their packaging, and rebrand. All the while developing deep expertise in virtual and in-person moderation, narrative development, including for videos, and hybrid and in-person workshop facilitation.
Alix Greenman, Oct 25