Spoiler alert! It’s people who drive success, not machines.
By Julie Rose
Don’t get us wrong, SIVO is pro-technology! We are all for technology that enables efficiency and effectiveness. Within the insights industry, online surveys, advances in virtual reality, neuroscience, and even webcams (to name a few) have changed how we collect data. Artificial intelligence applications have transformed data analytics, for example, turning massive data sets into insights frameworks, personalized performance tracking dashboards and real-time, micro-targeted digital marketing campaigns. Technology has literally changed how we connect with consumers, identify insights, view the marketplace and essentially, how we manage our business.
And yet, these technologies still require human talent—possessing the sensitivities and critical thinking of the human brain—to use these powerful, innovative tech tools to identify the insights, apply the learning back to the business, drive decision-making and ultimately, help teams achieve sustainable growth.
Let’s consider why talent eclipses tech:
Creativity: Thinking outside the box, coming up with innovative solutions, and understanding nuances give creative thinkers a competitive advantage. While technology can automate and save loads of time, it's limited by what it's been programmed to do.
Emotional Intelligence: Humans are empathetic beings and can be tuned into the emotional nuances of others, such as body language, facial expressions, and culture-specific interpersonal behaviors. While machines can be designed to recognize emotions, they can miss deeper level connections and cannot develop the same strong relationships.
Adaptability: Being flexible and adjusting quickly is necessary in today's changing business environment. Great talent learns new skills quickly, pivots when necessary and is overall more agile than AI, especially when things like emotions, unwritten rules, biases and company politics and culture are part of the equation.
Leadership: While machines provide a plethora of data and insights, it’s the true leaders who synthesize the information, across multiple sources and vantage points, to meet the needs of their organization. They inspire, motivate, and guide their team in ways that are consistent with the company culture, toward success and making the right business decisions.
It is the talent that will leverage technology to take calculated risks, explore the possibilities, identify the insights, and develop the opportunities to move your business forward that would be impossible to do with technology alone. So, start with the right talent, select the right tech tools to support them, and then build a culture of excellence that is difficult for competitors to replicate.
SIVO Fractional Research Capabilities
SIVO On Demand Talent team includes an extensive pool of Fractional Insights Professionals with years of experience and expertise across an array of industries such as CPG, healthcare, finance, technology, apparel and retail. You can rely on SIVO’s team of experts to leverage technology to collect high-quality data, provide an accurate interpretation of that data, and offer guidance on how to best utilize the insights learned. From managing a portion of a research project to full-service research design through insight application, SIVO helps clients make data-driven decisions and identify opportunities for growth.
Please email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or request a discovery call from our website at SIVOInsights.com.
As customer needs evolve and competition intensifies, traditional segmentation frameworks often fall short. Many segmentation models are based on demographics and psychographics, and often define customers based on traits such as their age, gender, attitudes and values. They tell you who your consumer is – but not why they make the choices they do.
To fuel meaningful, strategic growth, businesses need more than demographic snapshots. They need contextual insight. This is where frameworks like Demand Space thinking comes in.
Demand Space frameworks shift the focus from static consumer traits to the moments that drive decisions. Instead of defining your audience only by traits such as age, gender, or income, this approach considers:
It’s not about who your consumer is on paper – it’s about what’s happening around them, and inside them, when they make choices.
Consumers don’t always behave the same way, even when they share similar traits on paper. A single person has different needs and behaviors throughout the day, week, or year, and traditional segmentation often misses these moments that drive real-world decisions. Demand Spaces, on the other hand, are based on the moments where context, emotion, and need converge.
When implemented thoughtfully, Demand Spaces help businesses:
Demand Spaces help businesses find the moments when consumers are underserved by existing options. These blind spots often become the clearest opportunities for growth. By identifying emotional or contextual gaps in the consumer experience, teams can design solutions that respond to real pain points and not using assumptions.
They also help businesses go beyond what consumers say they want and uncover what they actually need in specific situations. This helps teams design offerings that better reflect real-world behaviors. It’s a way to spark smarter ideas, grounded in daily routines, shifting priorities, and overlooked occasions that traditional research often misses.
Demand Space tools help position brands based on context and need, not just category. This reduces overlap and creates clearer brand roles. That means brands can carve out distinct emotional territory, ensuring each one plays a defined role in the consumer’s life, not just on a shelf.
By focusing efforts on the most critical consumer moments – when the stakes, emotions, or needs are highest – teams can prioritize smarter. It enables brands to align resources with the occasions that drive the most value, loyalty, or conversion – improving both focus and ROI.
They also help in assigning each brand, product, or service distinct moments. This ensures they serve different needs or occasions rather than competing for the same ones. By separating who serves what – and when – demand spaces bring clarity to brand architecture and reduce inefficiencies across portfolios.
Demand Spaces help businesses unlock growth by bringing clarity to what consumers need, when they need it, and why. Instead of chasing broad segments or spreading resources thin, brands can focus on the moments that truly drive behavior – revealing new opportunities, reducing internal friction, and building solutions that resonate in the real world.
Let’s say your target is a 35-year-old parent who regularly shops for snacks. Depending on the situation, they might want:
Each moment carries different emotional and functional needs – and may lead them to choose entirely different brands or products. This is the nuance Demand Spaces capture.
In a challenging market, brands can’t afford to rely on guesswork. Demand Spaces provide both smarter lenses for targeting and innovation, a more human understanding of consumer behavior, and a faster path to discovering what will actually drive choice – and growth.
To identify and activate demand spaces, brands need to move beyond static surveys. Instead, they should use context-rich research tools like:
These are some of the methods that help businesses capture real consumer behavior, in real environments. At SIVO, we combine deep qualitative expertise with flexible research models to help you map the demand spaces that matter most to your business. Whether you're reassessing brand positioning, exploring whitespace for innovation, or trying to understand behavior shifts in today’s market – we help you with the right tools and insights for your business.
Want to talk about how Demand Space research can unlock strategic clarity for your team?
We’d love to help!
By Julie Rose
Whether in need of C-Suite leadership, mid-level managers or junior-level analysts, many companies are turning to fractional talent to fill temporarily open roles, expand their team bandwidth or bring new or specialized skillsets to meet business needs. SIVO, Inc. has worked with many companies to place fractional Consumer Insights Professionals (fCIPs) across all levels of the Insights function. Through this work, we have established a few guidelines for a positive outcome to make your outsourcing experiences successful.
To prepare for the fCIP to join your team and set everyone up for success, you should:
Clearly Outline Your Fractional Talent Needs
It is important to be clear on the work that requires the expertise of fractional insights professionals. We’ve helped our best clients with this critical first step and it has had a huge impact on their ability to get the help they need.
Each quarter, I outline the prioritized initiatives for my team and in that process, I identify the critical work for my SIVO On Demand Talent resource. This practice provides both clear direction for the fractional talent and it also helps me estimate the hours needed and budget appropriately. Continually getting clear on priorities has led to a successful outcome for both Perdue and SIVO.
– Tara Campbell, Sr. Director, Insights, Analytics & Sensory, Perdue Farms
For one week, you should log all the work that you wish you had someone available to delegate to. When something comes up that you think, “wow, if only I had a resource to help,” write down the task and the skills you believe are needed. At the end of the week, you are well-equipped for a scope of work plan that can be short-term, long-term, for a fill-in role or a finite project. Your log of the work that needs to get done will help you identify a fCIP with the appropriate skillset to accomplish the work effectively and efficiently.
Interview Candidates
Once you are clear on what you are looking for in terms of skills, expertise, and know-how, it is a good idea to interview 2 to 3 candidates for the temporary role. It may seem like “overkill” when the role is temporary but in the end, finding a person that fits your team will make your work-life a lot easier. This is an opportunity to evaluate organizational fit, establish rapport and set expectations. During the interview, you will ask about previous experience the candidates will bring to the role, what expectations the candidates have, and gauge how the candidates will approach your specific role.
We looked at resumes for a few candidates for the role we had on our team. On paper, all three looked equally suited to the role however after interviewing the candidates we realized the best cultural fit with our team and organization. I appreciated the opportunity SIVO provided to meet with more than one candidate for the role.
– Marnie Pfeifer, VP Customer Experience Leader
Set Up Regular Updates
Once you’ve chosen the fCIP for your role, it’s important to establish a clear work plan and a good working relationship. Through regular check-ins and updates, you will be able to align on objectives, stay informed on progress, and understand any barriers that might need to be addressed. Regular updates allow the insights professional to meet smaller deadlines throughout the project while keeping the overall timeline and success metrics front and center.
Provide Timely Feedback
The regular updates will also facilitate the ability to provide timely feedback throughout the project. It is critical to invest some of your time to monitor progress and be actively engaged in the work of your new resource. This professional comes with experience and expertise, but may need guidance to navigate the organization, such as recognizing unwritten rules or norms that are tied to the organizational culture. There might be a need to provide constructive feedback, that if given early, will set the fCIP up for success. Feedback will provide clarity and optimize the experience for both parties – you and your contract talent.
Show Appreciation
Once you’ve built a good working relationship with your fCIP, you will likely want to tap into this resource again in the future, when the need arises. Providing positive feedback and showing appreciation for the contributions this person is making to your organization will increase satisfaction in doing the current role and increase the likelihood of taking on future assignments. Appreciation can be shown with a simple thank you or by recommending this talent to others in the industry who may also need this type of resource.
Following these steps will help you find the right fCIP and make the entire process easier for you and your team.
For fractional Consumer Insights Professionals, you can lean on SIVO’s On Demand Talent team to walk you through the process and provide you with the support you need to get the right talent working on your behalf. We are passionate about matching our clients’ needs with our fCIP’s experience and skills.
Reach out today to learn more about SIVO On Demand Talent. Contact@SIVOInsights.com
Are you facing these challenges?
More workload and pipeline projects than your team can execute
Questioning how to keep saying “Yes” to internal stakeholders
Not enough time or resources to meet multiple requests for actionable insights from leadership, product development, marketing, or strategy
SIVO Insights On-Demand Talent™ is a solution for Insights talent needs for teams just like yours. We leverage our extensive pool of Insights professionals, with years of experience and expertise, to help you achieve your business objectives.
We recommend three key steps for evaluating and making the case internally for hiring contract Insights talent.
As workforce talent continues to evolve, there is no shortage of options, including interns, short or long-term contractors, contract-to-hire, or direct hire. Below, we highlight the advantages of Contract Talent vs. Full Time Hire:
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Do customers want to ‘hire’ your product?
We have started engagements in as quickly as one week. To discuss your needs and how we can match the talent with the best expertise for quick solutions in your organization, visit SIVO Insights On-Demand Talent or email Brent.Budke@SIVOInsights.com.
SIVO Insights brings together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence. Have a business challenge? Let's talk!
We bring together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence
