I was hit by a sad truth last night as, of all things, I looked for a Netflix movie. Content, no matter how good, does not sell itself!

It happened like this. Netflix suggested Rob Reiner’s Flipped to me. Did you see it last year? Neither did I (or apparently anybody else)—it’s one of the ten best movies that nobody watched in 2010.

Sadly important insights can get lost like Reiner’s movie if we fail to put together a good marketing and communications plan.

Any good marketing plan starts with a great product. So start with a compelling topic and a  readable narrative. After that – as the big guys in Hollywood would say – the show really begins.

1. Identify key business partners:

• Synthesis products are different from traditional research findings in that they are designed to target a broad business audience. The synthesis team should start by thinking broadly – identifying all business functions that make customer facing decisions and deciding if and how they would benefit from information.
• Tools like Nokia’s Informal Stakeholder Power map can be used to develop an understanding of business partner’s informal relationship power structures and determine key partners to engage.

2. Tailor the message: 

• General Motors creates a list of stakeholders who will receive information rather than spamming all employees on a general listserv, and then generates specifically tailored emails based on the stakeholder’s relationship with the information. 

3. Be brief:

• Most synthesis is written in long word documents. Although these contain a lot of important information, they are probably best included as companion pieces to shorter, catchier communications vehicles.
• Researchers should create short, tailored summaries of the synthesis piece to communicate to a broad audience.  For example, Kappa Food retailer created Quick Five-Minute Reels—companion decks that took business partners through the main points of the synthesis findings. This solution managed to appeal to audio-visual learners while keeping the reality of business partner time constraints in mind.

4. Think outside the traditional communications toolbox:

• Business partners learn and engage in different ways, and good communications efforts understand and harnesses this by communicating through traditional written reports, presentations, and other
• Kappa Food Retailer realized the difficulty of conveying emotion via a deck alone and sought to match data with emotions via video interviews. Videos would typically be taken of a consumer in their own home or in store to personalize the material.