Leader Spotlight: How to tell a story using numbers, with Donna Foti

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Donna Foti is Director, Consumer Insights & Analytics at KIND Snacks, a snack food company based in New York City. She began her career as a strategic planner in advertising, and progressed to consumer insights roles at top CPG companies including Pfizer, Unilever, Pinnacle Foods, Heineken, and Diageo. Donna also started and ran her own consumer insights consulting business, with clients such as Zoetis, Citibank, and KIND Snacks, before joining KIND Snacks to head up its consumer insights department.

In our conversation, Donna talks about her best practices for communicating data, including using the “granny test” and a storytelling narrative, as well as leveraging designs and visual assets. She discusses the qualitative and quantitative methods her team finds most helpful, including ethnographic research like shop-alongs. Donna also shares how she uses marketing mix modeling to surface critical insights.

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Visualizing data using the ‘granny test’

In your role, you spend a lot of time analyzing consumer insights and presenting your findings. What do you consider to be the essential elements of a good data-driven story?

I believe that there are four elements of any good data-driven story:

1. Connecting the dots between the data — You need to identify meaningful patterns, as well as curate the data that you show to stakeholders
2. Using a storytelling narrative — This is critical to bring the data to life in a way that people can relate to and resonate with
3. Keeping it simple — I believe that the story, key implications, and result of the data should be communicated in one simple sentence that passes the granny test. In other words, if you were to explain what you learned from the data to your grandmother, she should be able to easily understand it
4. Using visuals — This is critical for bringing data to life. I’m against data dumps and fully believe the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Using visuals could be as simple as leveraging the design tool in PowerPoint or using infographics to make the data more digestible and visually appealing

Do you find you address these elements in any particular order?

Yes. It’s kind of like in the movie The Wizard of Oz where the wizard is just a person behind the curtain. Behind our version of the curtain, my team and I are analyzing extensive amounts of data — sometimes up to 50 pages — to identify the pieces relevant to the story. When I talk about that granny test, that’s the snippet that usually acts as the headlines of the charts or visuals.

Can you share an example of a time when an effective visualization changed your audience’s understanding of a project or initiative?

Yes. Sometimes, when we’ve discussed plans for innovation research, renovation research, and market research with internal teams, it’s difficult for them to grasp the plans and processes. However, when we presented them with more visuals in one-page executive summary formats, they were able to understand these points better, especially from a holistic point of view.

The average attention span today is only eight seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish. I’ve found that presenting data visually is very helpful because people absorb and process visuals much more quickly than they absorb words.

Finding your competitive advantage

During your career, you’ve worked with clients from several verticals, including Heineken and Citibank. How do you tailor your approach to consumer insights to meet the unique needs of different verticals?

A consumer is a consumer — it doesn’t matter if they’re in food, retail, banking, or some other industry. In any case, you need to understand the triggers, barriers, and unmet needs of consumers. Once you understand those, you can figure out how to target your brand or product to those consumers. The real challenge is figuring out how your brand can gain an advantage over its competitors on an emotional level, a rational level, or both.

Is it more challenging in some industries, like banking, for example, to get the data that you need because of privacy laws or regulations?

Yes. Industry regulations have an impact on the type of research that you’re allowed to do and how you’re allowed to do it, especially if the industry is something akin to banking or alcoholic beverages. But, it’s not really an issue for gaining a basic understanding of consumer needs. For example, it doesn’t impact the way that we do focus groups or quantitative research in a major way.

Leveraging qualitative and quantitative research

Are there any methodologies that you find to be particularly effective when you’re uncovering those ‘aha’ moments?

Yes. I’m a big believer in ethnographic research, whether that takes place in consumers’ homes, shopping along with them in a store, or even when they’re making a drink selection at a bar. By actually seeing how the consumer lives and shops, as well as understanding their life context beyond the brand and industry, you can get priceless insights that surveys can’t provide.

When it comes to early-stage strategy in particular, I always start with some type of qualitative research to get those deep, rich insights before moving on to more quantitative research methods, such as segmentation.

With that said, segmentation research is invaluable. It works best when it’s done from both a consumer targeting perspective and a need-states perspective. You can marry the two to find demand spaces, which are important for innovation, messaging, brand strategy, and portfolio strategy. For example, if you have two products in your portfolio with the same target audience, you can ensure that they’re not competing with each other by targeting different need states.

You’ve talked a little bit about some different ways that you collect qualitative insights. What methods do you rely on to collect quantitative data?

Depending on the objective, we will often use statistical techniques like MaxDiff or conjoint analysis to help identify patterns in the data. We’ve also had success leveraging consumer communities as an effective and efficient way to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research.

Additionally, some of our surveys are done via text message, which is much more nimble and consumer-friendly. Instead of a traditional word-heavy, five-point scale questionnaire, many of these surveys use emojis. For example, if we ask, “How do you feel about this product?” respondents can answer with a smiley face, serious face, or sad face.

People are always on their phones, so really you’re meeting them where they are. What KPIs do you tend to prioritize when you’re assessing the impact of consumer insights or brand growth?

It depends on the brand strategy and the objective of the study, but there are three KPIs overall that are really important to measure and that are highly correlated with purchase intent:

1. Relevance — We often measure this with an attribute called “is for people like me.” It’s critical for the advertising message and brand sentiment that consumers feel that the brand is for people like them, and that’s a metric we want to continue to see growing
2. Brand love (or brand affinity) — This can be measured with a statement like, “is my favorite brand,” or “is one of my favorite brands”
3. Differentiation and advantage — For this, we want to ask consumers, “Does this product offer an advantage over other products that are currently available?” This one is particularly relevant for innovative products

Using marketing mix modeling to surface insights

You’ve had significant experience leveraging consumer insights to optimize marketing mix modeling. Could you talk a bit about what that is and what you’ve gotten out of it in your roles?

Marketing mix modeling is a bit of a beast — there’s so much data that needs to be collected and so much historical data needed for the model to be accurate. It’s well worth the effort, though, and I’ve seen marketing mix modeling used in several ways.

The most obvious way that we’ve used it is to help us understand which channels are driving the most volume and which channels we’re getting the greatest return on. We use that data to prioritize or reprioritize our spending and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, whether that’s in creative optimization or media plan adjustments.

Do you have an example you can share of when you used marketing mix modeling to surface a valuable insight?

One of the more interesting and unique ways that we’ve used marketing mix modeling effectively is when I worked for a food company. We identified that a packaging change had driven a 20 percent sales decline — a problem that we solved by updating the packaging. It was actually the one variable that wasn’t captured by anything in the model, and it coincided exactly with the packaging change. This goes to show that sometimes, you identify something that you weren’t even expecting out of the modeling.

As a best practice, I always look for a strong model fit for the accuracy of the data and credibility with the team. This example in particular was a unique scenario where the one thing that didn’t fit had to be an attribute outside of the model, and it turned out it was the packaging. We know that to be true because when the packaging was addressed, the brand returned.

What’s your approach for actually translating insights into actionable strategies?

Three factors are pertinent to having good insight: consumer wants, consumer needs, and consumer beliefs. These can be translated into statements like “I want X,” “I need X,” and, “I believe X” from a consumer language point of view.

It’s also important to understand those three statements on three different levels: in life, in the category, and for the brand. Once we understand the statements on those different levels, we can translate the insights into implication-oriented strategies for the brand. From there, we can identify the jobs to be done, unmet needs, and growth opportunities, which ultimately influence the brand strategy.

When you use this model — wants, needs, beliefs; life, category, brand — are you looking at it by segment or do you tend to look at it as the consumer overall?

It depends, but it’s usually always by target. There’s a holistic view that goes into the brand planning, but then when you drill down into the specific initiatives, it comes down to whatever the target is for that particular initiative.

The future of products that promote wellness

From your perspective, what emerging consumer trends or technologies do you believe will have the most significant impact on consumer insights and brand growth in the next 5 years?

Consumers have been bombarded with events over the past several years that have impacted their mind state — even above and beyond the COVID pandemic. Depression and anxiety are at an all-time high. They’re more stressed and stretched than ever before, and are generally very worried about the economy.

As a result, their mental, physical, and financial wellness has become a top priority for them. Products that can help them to address any of those, either by making them feel more in control, more empowered, or experience more enjoyment will prosper in the long run.

From a more technological perspective, I think AI is going to have a big impact on how we do research and target consumers. It’s going to make consumer data more comprehensive and more readily available, as well as make data synthesis and output quicker and easier. Finally, it is going to enable us to create more personalized marketing to consumers.

Photo credit: Jill Lotenberg