This Thursday some of the North’s best and greatest minds met at the Northern Monk Refectory for a very special Aura event hosted by Mustard. The topic? Activation. Rich Lomax summarises the headlines.
For those of you unfamiliar with Aura, it’s the largest community of client side researchers in the UK.
It was a great evening, where everyone had chance to discuss their thoughts on what activation means to them and their organisation across agency and client side researchers. Below, I’ll share my thoughts on what we learned from each other…
Activation: the word we all use, but rarely means the same thing
It just isn’t one thing, it can be a mindset, a process and an outcome. Ultimately though it’s about driving action and ensuring insight is driving decision-making whether that is for tactical pieces of research or long-term strategic pieces.
Insight isn’t activated until something changes
But! One thing we all agreed on is activation is about behaviour change. It’s not about a great debrief or a beautiful video, it’s about changing minds and shaping decisions. If it doesn’t move something in the real world, it isn’t activation. It’s just content.
Agency brains vs. client realities
Whilst there was a lot of similarities between us, there was contrast too. For us agency folk it’s about the research journey and creating moments that land for our clients. Whereas for client researchers, who live in the machinery of the business where stuff gets done, their priority is making insight last beyond the debrief.
We have the same mission – get insight used, but with different pressures entirely.
Start at the end, not the beginning
One of the simplest, clearest messages: know the purpose from the start. If you can’t articulate what the research must change, influence or unlock, then you’re building a castle on sand. A lot of “nice-to-do” research falls down here. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t know what it wants to achieve. And if you don’t know that, the business certainly won’t.
Get the right people involved early
One of the biggest themes of the evening was around needing to get the right people in the room from the start and to take them on the journey as you build your story. Bring in the people who will influence, champion or ultimately deliver the change if you want to ensure your insight lives within the business.
And the reasons activation fails? Classic, predictable, avoidable
Vague briefs. The wrong stakeholders. Senior people too busy to act or implementers left out entirely. Projects that land with a bang but fade the moment the decks are saved to the shared drive. Teams who weren’t involved suddenly expected to deliver. Everyone in the room recognised these patterns. They’re not mysteries. They’re repeat offenders.
Progress over perfection
This was really interesting to hear as someone who has spent their career only on the agency side! Instead of waiting for the perfect internal playbook, the perfect toolkit, the perfect training session… just start. Build small, repeatable ways of keeping insight alive. Light-touch training modules. Cascades. Checklists. Quick wins that help teams use the findings without thinking too hard.
The heart of it?
Activation isn’t a step at the end. It’s the mindset you build from the beginning.