The Other Eff Word: Reclaiming Research from the Cult of Efficiency
By Joana Diogo
- article
- Insight Transformation
- Research Management
- Insight Activation
Summarise with AI
This article is based on my experience attending the 2026 Corporate Research & Insights Summit – you can access the video replays and download the shared content here.
Suzanne Lugthart and Danny Russell of Bigger Than Biscuits made the case that insight teams have been swept up in chasing faster and cheaper, and need to talk about effectiveness instead: what research delivers to the bottom line. Their unpaid initiative takes its name from an MRS valuation that framed the sector as bigger than the biscuit market, a comparison they feel misses the value research creates (and also, who knows, by heart, how big the biscuit market is!).
Suzanne showed how they turn award-winning work into simple research stories that. For example, McDonald’s Raise Your Arches campaign grew from an ethnographic observation about workplace eyebrow raises and generated £45 million of incremental UK revenue in one quarter. With research credited for 20% of that and a £50,000 budget, the return on research investment is 180. That single number made the case for research value so clearly – a slide stakeholders needed to see. Yet a survey of 1,000 client-side researchers favoured usability testing, web analytics and NPS while voting to bin ethnography and conjoint, and the IPA Bellwether shows more CMOs cutting research spend than raising it in 10 of the last 13 quarters. Suzanne described AI as part of the ecosystem, and said the gap is partly the industry’s own failure to shout about its value.
Danny argued the sector needs a story in the first place, with image, definition and naming problems to solve. He questioned an MRS figure that roughly doubled the market’s value while talented people lose their jobs, and asked where the sector’s Thinkbox or Mark Ritson is. Drawing on Nick Rich’s interviews with 18 displaced insight leaders, he urged commercial language, money over percentages, and proactive PR, since consultants often repackage insight teams’ own data for boards.
The pair closed by asking attendees to share their commercial impact stories. In Q&A, they discussed whether market research needs rebranding, noting how rarely the term appears in anyone’s job title. Danny’s story of a room of 100 people with a single “market research” job title between them says so much about how we describe ourselves.
What Stood Out for Me
Effectiveness matters far more than efficiency.
Efficiency describes how research gets done, while effectiveness proves its impact. The two are easily confused, and boards care about the second.
Return on research investment is simple to calculate.
Multiply incremental revenue by research influence and divide by the research budget. The goal is simply a number above one.
Small research budgets can deliver large returns.
Their evidence base includes Primark generating a million pounds of profit from under £10,000 of research.
Every new technology has sparked the same panic.
Danny remembered the same fears when research moved from face-to-face to telephone, and again when it moved online. Stakeholders welcomed each shift as cheaper and quicker, and he sees AI as the next chapter in that story.
Implications for Insights Leaders
Research with a money figure attached gets judged on its value.
Suzanne and Danny argue finance directors respond to how much research makes for the business. A simple return calculation gives us that story in a few lines.
An easy way to start:
- Pick one past project with a known commercial outcome and agree on research influence with its business owner.
- Calculate its return on research investment using incremental revenue, influence and budget.
- Share the result with your finance partner in money terms, leaving percentages aside.
The line that stayed with me:
“Now, that’s the kind of story that a finance director would really like. Not how much you spent on it, but how much money you’re making for the business.”
–Suzanne Lugthart
