why traditional market research comes up short | the recap
published 4.26.24
This month, we kicked off our first Stakeholder Engagement That Doesn’t Suck virtual fireside, “Why Traditional Market Research Comes Up Short,” with Melissa Hanson, the Executive Director of Marketing at Nautilus Solar Energy® and Dylan Siegler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability at GreenBiz.
Stakeholder Engagement That Doesn’t Suck is a guide for ethical and inclusive engagement. Noemí and I wrote this paper because we believe it’s time to break the mold of traditional corporate-community engagement and take an approach grounded in trust, accessibility, transparency, flexibility and fairness.
We hope that by elevating the standards for what community engagement should be, organizations of all sizes can design more inclusive and ethical experiences. The goal: yield more solutions that center people and communities.
Our conversation on April 11th was not recorded to encourage candor, but here are the takeaways from two women who knew traditional market research wasn’t going to cut it.
Traditional market research tactics do not meet people where they are and often leave out the individuals most susceptible to climate change impacts.
Traditional market research is extractive and doesn’t prioritize inclusivity and accessibility.
Climate solutions shouldn’t be made in a corporate silo. Don’t project, listen.
If you don’t have a mechanism to ask the right questions—create one! Siegler and Hanson acknowledged they needed a way to ask communities—what they need (that’s where qb. came in 🐝👋).
Designing climate equity solutions takes deep, hyperlocal insights, trust in the community and flexibility.
Patience can be counterintuitive to corporate-think, and gathering this data may take longer. Prepare your leaders and team to be nimble and accommodating.
Get rid of jargon, do not use acronyms and do not assume people know what climate change is! Sometimes, we are too close to the work and fail to see how language resonates. This is especially true for “just transition” efforts.
Fair compensation is a must. And compensation was not the sole reason people participated in multiple engagement sessions. Taking an ethical, inclusive approach to community engagement means recruiting people who are ready to engage.
Virtual engagements were cost-effective and inclusive. Conducting engagements over Zoom helped us meet people where they were—in the car before commuting home, on a moving bus, or in the kitchen with two grandkids in tow.
Ethical and inclusive doesn’t have to mean more expensive. Hanson and Siegler both confirmed qb. can build an engagement based on goals and budgets.
Corporations are good at creating value for themselves. Putting the community at the center of an engagement will be a behavior and mindset change, but it is a change that must happen!
It is difficult to oppose the standardization of common corporate practices. Introducing an approach to gather deep, hyperlocal insights may require circumventing typical processes and scraping away at corporate calcification.
And remember, it's okay to “fail”! Being committed to doing something more inclusive, and ethical first is always the better approach.
To learn more about corporate-community engagement, check out our white paper.
by Sam Hartsock
Cofounder + Partner
