Most insights work is paid for by the team whose plan it is supposed to validate. Which is why most insights work validates the plan.
Three principles, learned the hard way. First: the research budget belongs to the CFO, not the CMO. The person paying for the answer should not be the person whose plan the answer affects.
Second: the contract should specify what an inconvenient finding looks like, and what happens to the launch if one shows up. If the answer to 'what if the data says no' is 'we launch anyway', do not commission the research.
Third: a category read is not a focus group. Three hundred interviews, segmented by behaviour not demographics, with a sample that includes the people who actively reject the category. The rejection cohort is where the strategy lives.
On the engagement that rewrote a launch, the inconvenient finding was that the brand's core audience already had the product. They just called it something else. The relaunch positioned against the something-else. Repeat rate, six months later, was 47%.
