Big Category Project? Octopus Problems?

Sometimes, in pursuit of the big category story, the data landscape can seem overwhelming and hopelessly infinite. Everything seems pertinent, every fact, figure and Kantar chart feels like necessary insight needed to drive and deliver the retailer proposition.  

Somebody wise* once told me you can’t ‘boil an ocean’. Essentially, this means accepting that when approaching a category project, it is utterly impossible to assess and place all available and evolving shopper data. When faced with a significant amount of data and insight, a good Category Manager will sort the important, interesting and irrelevant data with gusto. 

Reviewing and contextualising data to find the spark to start the fire is the reason most Category Managers do the job. In truth, retailers want dynamic, decisive and most importantly robust insight from suppliers not data overload.

As the project evolves, it can often feel like putting an octopus in a shopping bag, you think the project is heading in the right direction, deadlines are achievable, and the retailer will be delighted with the dynamic insight. And then a tentacle escapes. A new trend is emerging, the data trail is suggesting something different. Things are not going as planned. More tentacles begin to escape. 

Most great Category insight does not take a rigid linear path; how dull would that be?  Most great category insight involves an octopus’s tentacle, something unexpected that simply had to escape. It’s how you view the tentacles and curveballs that data can spew out which define your outcome. 

Here at Collective Stories, we know where to start when faced with a massive amount of data and insight, we know how to keep a project on track. We recognise every time a tentacle escapes, we identify and challenge new variables, recognising when it’s time to pivot the project. Collective Stories will help your team to conquer their octopus.**

*Somebody wise is likely to be one of my random pals but actually this quote is unclaimed, it’s been suggested (but never confirmed) that it was uttered by Lewis Carroll or Mark Twain.

** No octopuses were harmed in the making of this metaphor because it’s a metaphor.