On 6 October, FlexMR gathered 100 insight and marketing leaders at RSA House in London to explore how organisations can strengthen Customer Salience and embed customer-centric decision-making.
The day was packed with insightful sessions run by leading voices across the industry. To close the day, FlexMR CEO Paul Hudson left us pondering one very simple question: how can we, and our key decision-makers, be more customer?
Now that we’ve had some time to reflect, it’s time to consider some of the day’s key takeaways.
1: Facilitate customer closeness, don’t just provide it
We hear a lot about customer closeness, customer-centricity and the voice of the customer. In theory, it’s excellent. But we need to be practical with how we integrate a customer closeness practice in order to generate the biggest impact across the wider organisation.
Kathryn Eastwood joined us to detail what Sainsbury’s learned about building a program. It was established that senior leadership buy-in is important, as is embedding closeness into existing routines and experimenting with session and communication formats. So, alongside other takeaways from the day, which of Sainsbury’s learnings can we apply to our own customer closeness strategies and in our organisations?
Firstly, don’t be afraid of failure. If one method doesn’t land, keep implementing others until you find a few that resonate more with the decision-makers you’re approaching. If you’re worried about that methodology, don’t be – Sarah Jousiffe and Jeremy Woodman both shared more on what can break down and how to recover.
Second, diversify how you engage with decision-makers. Formats such as online customer sessions, short videos and live events can work for some, but not for others. Placing customers directly in front of a key decision-maker isn’t always possible, but when it is, remember that methods such as speed dating can be a game changer for maintaining organisational Customer Salience.
Third, follow the advice of Dan Siddle and hold the mirror up to stakeholders. Challenge assumptions, not just the research, so that they can experience the reality of a customer’s experience (for example, their budget or experience shopping in an unfamiliar category).
Lastly, ensure everything remains clearly actionable. Interesting is okay, but what should be done different and why is what truly matters, especially when we’re not in the room.
2: The most memorable stories are told not only by data, but by us
Memorable data is crucial to achieving Customer Salience. Once the data is with the right people, we don’t want them to just put a report to one side and forget about it once they’re finished reading. We want the contents of the report to stick. We don’t just want it to be seen; we want it to be memorable. It needs to be in the back of stakeholder minds long after they’ve finished reading, so that it can influence future decisions.
Storytelling is a key part of this. Isabelle Barker shared an excellent example of this during the Battle Panel (I won’t spoil it if you’re planning to watch it yourself, but amusingly, I do now question whether a product is “a bit downstairs loo”). Regardless, it’s a perfect example of how a customer’s story is a critical part of effectively communicating insight; it complements the data, humanises it by keeping the customer at the forefront, and it becomes a point of reference across the wider organisation.
The story felt human, which is another key takeaway from the day. It’s important to remember that human-led content remains more engaging than purely AI-generated, as evidenced by Lucy Davison. To actively sell, shape the story and communicate our value, we must consider our communications strategies and put in the work.
At the end of the day, the stories we tell will always be grounded in credible evidence, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them entertaining and, above all else, memorable.
3: Lacklustre communications can’t come to the phone right now
“We need to market our insight.”
If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably heard that before.
How we can communicate insight effectively was a key theme throughout this year’s Customer Salience Summit. More importantly, the focus was on how we can communicate it now, with strategies we can implement as early as tomorrow. Simple methods built into everyday practices are the way forward, but we should approach it with a creativity that cuts through the noise. It’s something our marketing counterparts are thinking of constantly and we should be ripping a page out of their playbook…
During the Battle Panel, Natalie Delahunty detailed the importance of branding insight projects to build stakeholder interest. The name alone should hold power; it should capture stakeholder interest and have a memorable identity that can be easily referenced in other areas of the business.
Emma Baxter added to this further, detailing what we need to do during the reporting itself in order to communicate our insight memorably and build salience through the business. Leading with insight through catchy headings and the “so what does this mean for us” is key, as we need to secure that attention from the offset to truly communicate the value and have it resonate with those who have lots of decisions to make (and little time to do so).
Once we have a name and the research has been completed, the creative communication of the project shouldn’t stop there. When we’re distributing a slide deck, we should stop for a moment and ask ourselves whether the email subject “Q4 brand perception” is really going to make people in the wider organisation want to open it…
A key takeaway from the Customer Salience Summit is that we need to hook stakeholders and key decision-makers, so perhaps we can do it through a subject line such as “Why have sales of […] increased this quarter?” or “How our customers would improve […]” instead.
In short, let’s lead with some accurate clickbait.
In Closing:
The 2026 Customer Salience Summit explored what we should be doing now to communicate insight and rewire decision-making, rather than entering a tunnel vision towards what we should be planning for in the future. We’re currently experiencing a period where narratives are evolving and insight roles are not always secure, so communicating our value (and the value of the data we provide) is feeling more important than ever before.
We must remember to ask ourselves this: how can we ensure that our key decision-makers are being more customer?
The answer isn’t simple, but here’s a starting point: don’t be afraid to try something new. Shamelessly stick post-it notes on a wall in the office, go further than a basic hook and give distribution emails the most atrociously clickbait-y title possible, and don’t be afraid to build a memorable story around our data.
But above all else, remember to be engaging by ensuring our outputs and communications still feel human.
Want to hear more? Catch up with the on-demand summit here and register for the 2027 Customer Salience Summit here to avoid missing out on next year’s event.
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