Colin MacArthur, Managing partner – Consulting, Kantar Australia.
In an era of hyper-connected yet increasingly fragmented consumers, relying on a single way of understanding people is no longer enough. Brand growth depends on the bringing together of multiple lenses – behavioural, emotional, cultural and social – to uncover the golden insights that spark meaningful connection and ultimately brand growth.
The old lenses aren’t enough
Consumers today are more fluid, contradictory and complex than ever. They’re negotiating cost-of-living pressures, cultural fragmentation and the fatigue of digital overload. For marketers, that creates a simple truth: the old ways of finding insight are no longer enough.
Traditional research frameworks, focus groups, trackers, surveys and social listening remain the backbone of how we understand people. They give us the scale, structure and consistency brands need. But as the lives of consumers becomes increasingly more complex, these tools work best when complemented by approaches that go deeper uncovering not just what people say, but what they feel, mean and do. That’s where richer decoding and new growth insight begins.
Brands that grow faster and stronger are those that are both ‘meaningful’ and ‘different’, and that connect emotionally while standing apart competitively. Yet too many marketers still measure only awareness and preference, rather than probing into the emotional or cultural meaning driving those choices. Kantar BrandZ Australia’s most valuable brands for 2025 that improved both perceptions of how ‘meaningful’ and ‘different’ they are to Australians grew at up to triple the rate of brands that gained on only one, or neither, of those metrics. High performers on ‘meaningful difference’ grow in value at five times the rate of low-scoring brands.
From one-dimensional data to multi-dimensional truth
The best marketers now see consumer understanding not as a single data stream but as a prism of multiple lenses refracting one human truth. Each lens reveals something the others can’t.
When these lenses are brought together rather than treated as separate disciplines, we move beyond reporting what consumers do and begin to better understand why they do it.
The power of multiple perspectives
- When behaviour and emotion collide
In ethnographic work that we conducted with young Australians in the alcohol category revealed a striking contradiction: people claimed they drank for ‘refreshment’, yet their brand choices signalled self-expression, identity, and mood. The deeper motivator wasn’t thirst it was belonging. Behavioural observation and emotional decoding together uncovered a new growth space for brands to explore.
- When culture reframes motivation
Across Southeast Asia, a Think with Google and Kantar study found that travellers hold multiple motivations per trip relaxation, discovery, connection, indulgence often simultaneously. In other words, segmentation built solely on demographics misses the emotional complexity of real lives. Understanding that ‘multiplicity of purpose’ helps travel brands market experiences, not just destinations. - When connection becomes a growth driver
Brands with strong emotional connection enjoy twice the pricing power and four times the growth potential of their peers finds our 2024 Media Reactions in APAC In this region, where consumers are increasingly value-conscious, that connection is not a ‘soft’ metric but rather is a strategic asset.
These examples illustrate how blending different insight lenses, emotion, culture, behaviour turns data into strategy. The tension between what consumers say and what they signal is often where the richest opportunity lies.
What CMOs and marketing leaders need to change
In Australia and across APAC, the challenge isn’t lack of data, it’s lack of perspective. The most effective CMOs are those who make curiosity a leadership habit. They ask their teams and partners to look again, from new angles, and to triangulate between disciplines.
- What might we be missing by only asking people directly?
- What story is behaviour telling us that words are not?
- How is culture shaping how people interpret our brand’s meaning?
This mindset shift from research as validation to insight as discovery is where competitive advantage now lives.
Breaking through the barriers
Adopting multi-lens insight doesn’t have to mean higher cost or complexity. It’s about smarter integration. For example:
- Time pressures – use hybrid designs rapid quant validation alongside deep exploration
- Siloed teams – bring planners, creatives, analysts and researchers into the same process
- Data overload – focus on synthesis, not accumulation connect dots, don’t just collect them
- Risk aversion – pilot ‘safe fail’ experiments that demonstrate commercial impact quickly.
The best marketing organisations treat exploration as investment, not overhead. They recognise that the real risk is in not knowing enough about what truly drives people.
From insight to growth
Breakthrough brands outpacing their categories are those that see consumers in full not as targets, but as participants in meaning. They don’t chase every signal; they connect the right ones. Growth doesn’t come from extrapolating spreadsheets. It comes from empathy, curiosity, and pattern recognition from spotting the subtle cultural or emotional truth that data alone can’t show.
In a world overflowing with information, the golden nuggets of growth are still human. They just take combining a few more lenses to see clearly.