I was recently asked to give a view on a brand communications issue. What was my instinct?
This is a familiar dilemma for a research consultant – maybe any consultant. We want to be positive and constructive, to maintain good relations; we need to be honest and transparent. We like our opinion being valued; we need to maintain a good reputation.
Looking carefully at the comms piece in question, I felt that something was amiss. It was not right. It was hard to pinpoint the source, harder still the remedy. The usual caveats leapt to mind, I am not the target market, lack of evidence, minimal brief.
But I also thought, I am certain of this.
To convey my instinctive reaction, do I:
(a) go all in? (this is how it is)
(b) play it down? (my habitual response)
(c) cop out? (I couldn’t possibly say)
We are told that 'instinct trumps evidence'. Go with your gut feel. ‘One instinctively knows when something is not right’, to adapt the old Croft Original advert.
The trouble is, my instinct as an opinion is worth just the same as the next person’s. Opinion is not in short supply, on this brand in particular. But my instinct is conditioned by having researched this brand and many, many other brand comms issues over the years.
Then I remembered this. A good definition of instinct-plus-experience is phronesis. It is often translated as ‘practical wisdom’, ie both instinct and memory, a distilled form of evidence: practiced instinct, perhaps.
There is that Woody Allen line, ‘Is sex dirty? Only if you do it right’. I think if you 'do qualitative right', the result is ‘practical wisdom’ and this is a valuable, if hard-to-define and under-rated skill.
In these days of data domination (pure ‘evidence’), practiced instincts have even greater value, so we must protect and promote the craft values and the theoretical underpinning of the qualitative inquiry.
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