Collecting Brand Insights from Portugal

“Democrats and Republicans are all the same.”

Our friend Francisco (not his real name) shared that perspective as my wife and I dined with him and his partner at a beachside restaurant near Lisbon last week. 

It was jarring to hear that opinion since the differences between the two parties seem very stark amid our current political campaign. But Francisco had a nuanced argument about U.S. foreign policy and how, from his view, it did not seem to matter who was leading those policies. 

Francisco shared another interesting perspective: “My good friend is American, and he’s always saying that America is the best. I say, ‘At what? You guys don’t even have health care!’” (Fair enough.)

Francisco’s points reminded me of a dynamic I’ve often seen in organizational life—that the view from the outside looks totally different than the view from the inside. 

Moreover, the internal stories are often self-serving! Almost every nonprofit or company I’ve seen believes its work is improving the world, and there’s regular messaging to employees about this fact. When a customer shares a story of positive impact, it gets shared around. But when a customer says, “You all are full of it” or “The other guys are way better,”  those perspectives are often conveniently left out of the customer insights team’s weekly roundup. 

While this dynamic may have the positive intention of building employee morale, it can skew people’s understanding of reality. Francisco also mentioned that he knows Portuguese people who were taught the self-serving story that Portugal was a better, “more inclusive” colonizer. As someone who grew up in one of Portugal’s African colonies, he definitely had a different sense of the history!

Last week, I also read a book on brand management, which made me imagine what Francisco’s points would look like in a report on external stakeholders’ perspectives of the U.S. brand. If the report only included the words he spoke, it would be lacking. 

You wouldn’t know whether the point about the U.S. self-belief was the first thing that came up or only shared after the second course and a glass of wine. Was it an angry lecture or part of friendly banter with new friends?

Almost every report you could read at headquarters faces this problem. They can never show the nuances of context, tone, and emotions that you could observe when hearing their feedback directly. 

That is why strategic leaders go and see firsthand. They talk to customers and employees directly. They visit the factory floor. They use their organization’s product or service personally—and competitors’ products, too. The data they get from these activities is anecdotal, but that data is critical to understanding the synthesized and averaged reports they review in the normal course of business. 

The sales report will tell you that sales of product SKU 123 have declined 25%. But you’d get a different sense from visiting a store and seeing that all the kids at the mall are starting to wear loose-fitting jeans or hearing from a sales associate that customers are requesting styles that the company doesn’t yet offer. 

It’s one thing to read that productivity in the Omaha branch is up 13%. It’s another to see, smell, and taste the impact of the branch manager who loves to bake and uses it to show care for and generate connection with the staff. 

The presentation at headquarters explains how the product should work. Using the product yourself reveals how it does work, why  Step 5A in the assembly instructions isn’t as clear as it needs to be, and whether the customer service line is helpful. 

Collecting this more robust data enables far more effective decision-making. 

Leadership Wisdom 

John Johnson, the founder of the company that launched Ebony and Jet magazines, wrote in his memoir Succeeding Against the Odds:

“It’s not enough to sit in a big office and read reports and study bar graphs. You’ve got to get out of your office and walk the streets with customers and sell products with your salesmen. Somebody said once that ‘in order to get lion’s cubs, you have to go into the lion’s lair.’ I’m no expert on lions, but I know people, and I tell you there’s no other way to keep up with their changing needs.”