What the data says
Editor’s note: Esther Igbinehi is director of marketing intelligence and insights at Augustine Agency with 12 years of experience driving consumer insights, innovation strategy and portfolio development for CPG brands. She holds a B.A. in English from Benson Idahosa University, Nigeria. Find Igbinehi on LinkedIn.
The CEO looked up from the deck and asked the question every insight person dreads: "Why don't these numbers match?"
We were mid-pitch for a category stretch – an innovation for our beverage and snacks portfolio, built on research showing strong brand equity and real headroom for growth. I had pulled five years of category growth trends from two of the biggest names in the business: NielsenIQ and Euromonitor. Both are considered gospel in CPG. And they told two different stories.
Euromonitor's numbers were bigger. Nielsen's were smaller. Neither was wrong.
Same category, different lens
The gap was a purpose problem, not a data quality problem. NielsenIQ and Euromonitor aren't built to answer the same question. Euromonitor is designed for market sizing and strategic intelligence; NielsenIQ is built for retail measurement. Two respected sources, two different jobs, two different answers to what looked like the same question.
For a lot of teams, this is the moment where things go sideways, where someone picks the source that supports the story they already wanted to tell, or worse, averages the two numbers together and hopes nobody asks how. Instead, I unpacked the insights using a funnel approach.
I started broad, with Euromonitor: the size of the market, the headwinds and tailwinds over the years, the forecast a few years out and the strategic case for moving. Then I narrowed with NielsenIQ, getting down to the consumer needs we would be solving for at retail, all the way to the SKU level. Finally, I added the icing on the cake, qualitative research, to understand the ideal product format, unpack motivations and pain points, sentiments and land on the right communication strategy.
The room gets quiet
When the CEO asked the question directly, I didn't pick a winner. I explained that Euromonitor and NielsenIQ exist to answer different questions, one built for market sizing and strategy, the other for retail measurement down to SKU level and made the case for why we needed both here: the strategic case for the opportunity, and the retail-level detail on where and how it would actually win. The syndicated data gave us the scale and the specifics. The qualitative work gave us the conviction that consumers would actually respond to it.
That combination, not either source alone, is what gave leadership a solid enough platform to move forward.
Moving research along
What happened next? They said yes. I partnered with research and development to shape the formulation, and from there the concept moved through prototyping, consumer testing and retesting across the innovation funnel before it launched into the market.
None of that happens if the room stalls out on which number is right. It only moves when someone is willing to hold two imperfect data sources at once and ask what each one is actually good at telling you.
Building a story
Data is important. But when you're working with multiple sources, relying on just one narrows the insight instead of sharpening it. A good consumer insights professional doesn't choose one data source over another they contextualize each one to answer the business question more robustly. This is also the art of storytelling.
That's the difference between reporting a number and doing the job. The number is easy. Giving leadership something they can actually act on is the real work.