"Understanding attitudes, preferences, behaviours, and working with a market research agency, we can tailor that message and those visuals to resonate with potential employees or showcase company culture in the way that these audiences value."

- Larry Anderson, CRO | Chess Club Agency

"Showing how we can stay curious together, how we can value each other's expertise - we can bring a holistic approach to our client's problems."

- Shonna Caldwell, CRO | Insightrix Research

More from the episode:
Learn more about Larry Anderson and Chess Club Agency: https://chessclub.co/   

Want to check out Larry and Shonna’s awesome employer branding presentation? Check it out here! https://wesk.ca/resources/employer-branding/

Want to be on our podcast?
We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

"It's impossible to understand the consequences of a potential decision that a stakeholder might be making if there's no contextual understanding. The data tells you what, but the qualitative tells you why."

- Nikki Lavoie, EVP, Strategy & Innovation, Savanta

Nikki and Sharday discuss the importance of community and resources for those interested in getting started in UX research. Nikki shares valuable advice on seeking out online resources related to UX, which provide insights and career advice. In addition, they highlight the supportive and approachable nature of the UX community, where high tides raise all ships, and stress the availability of help and resources for those starting in the field. Don't miss this engaging conversation on the evolving landscape of market research and the importance of empathy and human connection in qualitative research and user experience.

More from the episode:

Learn more about Nikki Lavoie and the incredible work she does with Savanta!
https://savanta.com/

Read more on the industry insights around UX Nikki has authored for Greenbook:
https://www.greenbook.org/mr/author/nlavoie/

Want to be on our podcast?

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related.

The full transcript is available on page two.

"As things went back to more and more face-to-face research, we really see how important that human factor is... getting people together to talk is a really powerful thing. Sharing those human experiences together - it's such a huge part of what we do in market research."

- Natalie Renna, President, Fieldwork Minneapolis

More from the episode:

Fieldwork website:
https://www.fieldwork.com/

Get to know Natalie!
https://www.fieldwork.com/about/team/natalie-renna/

Natalie Renna’s Introduction Screener (So much fun!!):
https://www.fieldwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/NatalieRenna-screener.jpg
 
Need a qualitative facility?
https://www.fieldwork.com/market-research-services/research-venues/

Want to be on our podcast?

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related.

The full transcript is available on page two.

Welcome back to the Stories of Market Research: the Insightrix Podcast. We are excited for another new season of SoMR - with amazing guests and topics focused on the world of market research.

In our first episode of Season 4, Sharday connects with Leib Litman (Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer) and Cheskie Rosenzweig (Senior Researcher and Product Scientist) of CloudResearch to chat about the state of data quality in market research.

In this episode, Leib Litman, who recently led an expert panel on sample quality at ESOMAR 2022, debates the evolving techniques of survey fraudsters, the importance of sample (and panel) providers taking responsibility for data quality, and how organizations like CloudResearch is actively setting the standard for handling online sample, no matter how it's collected.

Then, Leib and Cheskie explore the industry-wide challenges and ways to address systemic fraud when managing market research, specifically online samples. Cheskie shares how CloudResearch has developed rigorous data quality solutions that combine unique behavioural and technological vetting - known as Sentry - and how this powerful tool can help businesses worldwide eliminate the many threats to data quality and the validity of online research.

Check out CloudResearch:
https://www.cloudresearch.com/
https://twitter.com/CloudResearch
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudresearch/

Check out Sentry:
https://www.cloudresearch.com/products/sentry-data-quality-validation-online/

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. The full transcript is available on page two.

Full AI transcript available on page 2.

The same can be said for our next guest! Dr. Jill Kushner Bishop is the Founder & CEO of Multilingual Connections, a Chicago-based company that provides translation, transcription, transcreation, multimedia localization and research services in over 75 languages.

Dr. Jill Bishop's journey didn't quite start in market research. In fact, her early fascination with language and culture led her to pursue a BA in the Teaching of Spanish and an MA/Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology.

An unexpected opportunity brought Jill to the corporate world, where she worked as a user experience researcher for a business and technology consulting firm.

She later leveraged her skills and background—plus her love of burritos—when she was hired to oversee language, culture, and diversity programs for Chipotle Mexican Grill. Then, in 2005, Jill took the next step in her career by launching Multilingual Connections.

"It's one thing to reach out when you want to connect with a multilingual audience, but if you don't care enough - meaning investing the financial resources and time resources to do human or quality translation - it tells them that you want their business, but you really don't care enough to earn their business or create that connection."

- Dr. Jill Bishop, Founder & CEO of Multilingual Connections

In episode 33, Sharday and Jill discuss her unique journey into market research – from a student at UCLA to landing a "perfect position" that ultimately led to starting a business, supporting professionals worldwide to connect with their audiences authentically.

As a language and culture expert, Jill speaks about Multilingual Connections' ability to provide culturally relevant and linguistically accurate language solutions to help resonate with your hyper-local audience.

Later in the episode, Sharday and Jill dive into the art and science of transcription, when human or quality transcription is important, and why language services are critical in supporting businesses interested in expanding into global markets.

Do you want to expand your products and services internationally? Conduct a community survey? Collect neighbourhood data? Jill shares why transcription, multimedia localization and transcreation can help your next project be representative of your audience's worldview in a meaningful and genuine way.

More on today's episode:

Learn more about the guest on today's episode: https://multilingualconnections.com/

Special thanks to Dr. Jill Bishop (Guest), Sharday Torgerson (Host/Producer), and Jason Hattie (Editor/Producer).

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

The full AI transcript is available on page two.

"Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not by the powers they are graced with."

As they say, not all heroes wear capes! However, many possess the ability to make things happen by helping and supporting others by acting as a catalyst for change.

In Episode 32, Sharday connects with Kevin Hayes and Scott Wells - two co-leads at the Regina Chapter for Data For Good. Data For Good is a collective of do-gooders who want to use their powers for Good and not Evil (think the Avengers) to help improve their communities through data (…think of Professor Hulk!?).

Like the Lasso of Truth (yes, we went there), the volunteers at Data For Good possess a power unlike others – the ability to use their talents and help NGOs explain 'the why' behind their data.

Using Powers For Good

In the episode, we learn from Kevin and Scott about the incredible work the Regina Chapter is doing to support local organizations by helping uncover the story within their internal data assets. Then, we dive into a sample of some organizations they've helped, including the Regina Food Bank.

Later in the episode, Kevin and Scott give their thoughts on the movement of volunteering data science for good and how others can get involved, no matter their experience level. It is a great episode about why the research community is such a collaborative group of people who truly want to make the world a better place!

If you enjoyed this content, check out more great interviews from leaders within the research industry on our website. Be sure to like, share and subscribe to your favourite podcast player and subscribe so you do not miss an episode!

"How do we set up an organization to actually make good use of their data with the resources that they have? And then what are some potential resources in the future that they could look at adapting that would be reasonable and relevant to the organization?"

-Kevin Hayes, Regina chapter co-lead, Data For Good

"Having the ability to automate [data] is really where the power comes in. What I hear from a lot of organizations is 80% of their time is spent on gathering data, cleaning it, and not even using it."

-Scott Wells, Regina chapter co-lead, Data For Good

Check out Data For Good!

For more information on Data For Good and its entire roster from coast-to-coast, visit: https://dataforgood.ca/

To learn more about the Regina Chapter of Data For Good, visit:
https://regina.dataforgood.ca/
https://twitter.com/dataforgoodyqr

Connect with Data For Good on social:
https://ca.linkedin.com/company/data-for-good

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. The full transcript is available on page two.

In Episode 31 of the Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, Sharday meets with Leigh Caldwell – a mathematician and economist and the Co-Founder and Partner at the Irrational Agency, a group of narrative discovery experts committed to exploring consumer world views and perspectives.

In this episode, Sharday and Leigh dive into the nuance of storytelling in market research and how insights professionals apply behavioural science techniques to bring their client's narratives to life.

"You have the mathematical/quantitative skill, you have the creative storytelling skill, but you need both as a quant researcher. It is such a great and unusual combination of skills. And it is brilliant when somebody can bring those two together."

Leigh Caldwell – Co-founder and Partner at The Irrational Agency

Later in the episode, Leigh discusses his recent innovative work and the psychology behind this research to help us understand this unique set of narrative research tools to capture these stories.  

For more information on today's episode, visit:

• Check out the Hidden Stories of Sustainability Guide: https://www.irrationalagency.com/  
• Leigh and some of his team's publications: https://www.irrationalagency.com/publications
• The Irrational Agency https://www.irrationalagency.com/
• Insightrix Research website https://insightrix.com

Check out the episode with Ellen Eastwood Sharday mentions.

Together, Anne and Sharday break down current issues impacting the research community and the shift in consumer behaviour through a research lens.

From climate change to the pandemic, from inflation to civil unrest and global conflict – Anne helps us explore the role of international research at such a unique point in our history. Later in the episode, they discuss how insights agencies recruit hard-to-reach populations and ways to eliminate confirmation bias when working with different people of interest.

Finally, Anne helps us understand why diversity within their organization is essential to expand your research capabilities internationally - all this, and more, on the Stories of Market Research: the Insightrix Podcast!

"I know what a great privilege it is to work in this industry of ours. I've been doing this for a long time; I've been through a lot of changes in the industry, a lot of pivots, and I still love what I do."

Anne Brown, CEO and Founder of gazelle Global Research Services

For more information on today’s episode, visit:

Special thanks to:

• Anne Brown, Gazelle Global Research Services
• Sharday Torgerson (podcast host, digital and creative strategist)
• Jason at Golden Media (editor, producer)

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

More information on today’s episode:

Check out the DOWE framework model provided by Karen Jaw-Madson, author of Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @ Work:

• Culture Your Culture Innovating Experiences @ Work
• Mobile Medicine: Overcoming Culture, People, and Governance (Karen wrote the chapter on “Innovation” – check it out!)
• Punk XL (XL stands for Experience Leadership and Karen participated in a couple of tracks!)
• The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change (forthcoming June 2022! Karen contributed an essay, “Sustainable DEI: Changing cultural patterns at the individual, team, and organizational levels”) 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

"I encourage all of you to take a step back and start putting on those traveler's eyes, as they say in design thinking and start asking some questions. Because, you never know what you're going to discover."

- Karen Jaw-Madson, Principal of Co.-Design of Work Experience

"...this is not going to be a simple bounded solution and initiative that just gets done and then everybody runs off into the golden future where we all have wonderful workplace experiences."

Evan Hanover - Director, Conifer Research

More information on today's episode:

Check out the DOWE framework model provided by Karen Jaw-Madson, author of Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @ Work:

• Culture Your Culture Innovating Experiences @ Work
• Mobile Medicine: Overcoming Culture, People, and Governance (Karen wrote the chapter on "Innovation" - check it out!)
• Punk XL (XL stands for Experience Leadership and Karen participated in a couple of tracks!)
• The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change (forthcoming June 2022! Karen contributed an essay, "Sustainable DEI: Changing cultural patterns at the individual, team, and organizational levels") 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

"[Culture] is a balance. And that's why co-creation is so important. What you're doing is bringing the organization closer together so that you can weave the future together."

- Karen Jaw-Madson

"Empathy is much like culture; a practice."

- Evan Hanover

More information on today's episode:

Check out the DOWE framework model provided by Karen Jaw-Madson, author of Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @ Work:

• Culture Your Culture Innovating Experiences @ Work
• Mobile Medicine: Overcoming Culture, People, and Governance (Karen wrote the chapter on "Innovation" - check it out!)
• Punk XL (XL stands for Experience Leadership and Karen participated in a couple of tracks!)
• The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change (forthcoming June 2022! Karen contributed an essay, "Sustainable DEI: Changing cultural patterns at the individual, team, and organizational levels") 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

Three Episodes Series:

Join us on the FIRST of THREE episodes where Sharday, Karen and Evan help businesses understand leading-edge approaches when it comes to building employee engagement, staying relevant with staff, ensuring co-creative solutions are available while impacting the organizations for which they are intended.

This episode is unlike any we've done before. Check back each week for the next episode. Part two drops on April 5, 2022!

Workplace culture is REAL. So, what are you doing about it?

More information on today's episode:

Check out the DOWE framework model provided by Karen Jaw-Madson, author of Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @ Work:

• Culture Your Culture Innovating Experiences @ Work
• Mobile Medicine: Overcoming Culture, People, and Governance (Karen wrote the chapter on "Innovation" - check it out!)
• Punk XL (XL stands for Experience Leadership and Karen participated in a couple of tracks!)
• The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change (forthcoming June 2022! Karen contributed an essay, "Sustainable DEI: Changing cultural patterns at the individual, team, and organizational levels") 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

Full transcript on page 2

Shopper Insights

In Episode 28 of SoMR, we talk shopper research with Mike Moussallem, Partner at Explorer Research. Mike, a shopper insights expert, helps us understand what businesses are doing right now to support their customer shopping decisions. Together, Sharday and Mike look at how shopper insights can help understand current behaviours and how brands are responding. They explore the outcomes businesses may see from various shopper research methods.

Mike and Sharday touch on agribusiness as an example industry that uses shopper insights methods to support product and packaging decisions.

“The purest form of shopper insights could be absolutely free, just standing in the actual environment, observing people as they actually complete their shopping experience… Even if the budgets aren’t there, you can still get meaningful insights.”

- Mike Moussallem, Shopper Insights Expert

More information on today's episode:

Check out the amazing work Mike and his team are doing! https://explorerresearch.com/

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

For more information on today's episode visit:

The Annual Market Research Podcast Award
Cast your vote for Stories of Market Research!
https://info.littlebirdmarketing.com/mr-podcast-award

Voting is open until January 31, 2022, and winners will be announced in partnership with Greenbook. 

IIEX North America is in Austin, Texas, this year! 
Welcome to the future of insights! More than 1,200+ attendees attend each year, and Insightrix has been fortunate to participate in both in-person and virtually. We look forward to seeing all the unique insights from the most anticipated insights event in the world. 

For more information on GreenBook’s flagship event, IIEX North America, visit https://events.greenbook.org/iiex-north-america. 

Insights Association Canadian Chapter 
https://www.insightsassociation.org/mrac/canadian-chapter 

--- Special thanks to 
Podcast Host, Season 3 and Editor/Producer: Sharday Torgerson
Insightrix Chief Revenue Officer: Shonna Caldwell

Recorded at the Monarch Building in Saskatoon, 536 2nd Ave N, Saskatoon Saskatchewan on December 16, 2021. 

There is a significant amount of buzz around the idea of providing your customer with a great experience – one that is better than your competitors.
You’ll be met with recommendations on how to delight customers, no matter the cost. But customers today have a much higher expectation than customers from yesterday, which leaves brands needing to stand out against their competitors. So how do businesses create WOW moments? How do organizations with multi-channel touchpoints ensure consistency with their CX programs?

In Episode 26 of SoMR, we talk with Ken Peterson, CX President of QuestionPro and leader in customer experience. Ken has worked more than two decades in marketing research, retail, technology, hospitality to expand customer experience for businesses across the world including integrated CX solutions for brands like Thales, BMW, MCCA and the American Cancer Society.

In this episode, Ken and Sharday discuss how brands can optimize their CX program by centralizing their insights for more practical uses and consistent CX scores. Sharday and Ken then touch on the change in customer touchpoints and how service-based organizations like government bodies can deliver on a powerful CX journey.

Later in the episode, they discuss how insights professionals are using market research technology to enhance humanization behind CX reporting and why the ‘human element’ continues to play an important role both on the client and the agency side of CX research.

"When it comes to customer experience - there has to be a human element to it."

Ken Peterson, President of CX at QuestionPro

If you would like more information on Question Pro CX software, visit: https://www.questionpro.com/cx/

To check out Ken Peterson's CX articles, visit: https://www.questionpro.com/blog/customer-experience/

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

Consumer behaviour during the pandemic has shifted - yes - but other factors often go into purchase decisions, whether the pandemic played a hand in their need or not.

In Episode 25 of SoMR, we are talking about consumer research through a pandemic lens.

We talk with Jeremy King, CEO at Attest. Jeremy gives us a look into the world of consumer research through his experience as CEO of a consumer research survey platform. Jeremy gives us an in-depth look at how businesses are using consumer research during the pandemic, what types of businesses have successfully used consumer research to adapt their service offering. Jeremy and Sharday discuss consumer profiling, creative testing, and how SAAS technology is leading the pandemic digital transformation.

"I think we've seen a number of clients being bolder and looking for bolder moves." - Jeremy King, CEO @ Attest 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

You will find the transcription to the podcast episode on page 2.

It’s pretty simple, really – but the complexity and the richness of the data result in anything but. 

In Episode 24 of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, we are talking about passive metering – what it is, how it is used, the privacy and ethics concerns and how to recruit for this type of research.

To start, we talk with Billy Grant, Head of Product at RealityMine. Billy gives us a look into the world of passive metering through the lens of RealityMine – a state-of-the-art software buzzing in the market research industry. Billy gives us an in-depth look at how passive metering works, what types of businesses have successfully employed passive metering – he also touches on the software’s security while sharing what exciting new initiatives they have into 2021.

Later in the episode, we are joined by our Data Scientist, Ifeoma Adaji and Research Associate Julie Ellis, to understand how Insightrix uses passive metering. They discuss some recent Insightrix projects utilizing this method, and we manage both client and participant expectations while using passive metering. 

If you would like to learn more about RealityMine, visit their website https://www.realitymine.com/. 

If you would like to learn more about passive data collection or the previous research Insightrix has done in this area, read our whitepaper on passive metering technology. 

Want to be on our podcast? 

We are always looking for new guests to appear on our podcast! If you think that is you, please email podcast@insightrix.com. For more exciting content, check out our market research blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related. 

You can also access SoMR on your favourite podcast player app like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified every time a new episode is published. 

In Episode 23 of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, we’re talking about what those benefits are, how market research for advocacy organizations can differ from research with for-profit enterprises (and how it is similar), what it’s like being involved in a research project with a non-profit from both the client and researcher side and much, much more.

First off, Duncan speaks with Julie Ellis, Insightrix Research Associate, about some recent projects she has worked on with advocacy organizations, considerations to take into account when working with such organizations, thoughts and experiences about doing research for non-profits and more.

Then, later in the episode, we’re joined for an in-depth chat with Bill Thorn, the Director of Marketing and Public Relations at the Regina Humane Society, a local non-profit organization in Saskatchewan.

In their discussion, Bill and Duncan talk about Bill’s experiences working for the Regina Humane Society and the awesome work their organization does in the Regina community, Bill’s thoughts about what it’s like to work in marketing and PR for a non-profit like the RHS and how market research has helped his organization. They also discuss a recent project Insightrix helped the RHS with and how the insights they received from that research have helped them serve their community better.

If you would like to learn more about the Regina Humane Society, head over to their website. There, you can learn more about their programs and their important work in the Regina community, and you can access the educational resources they offer there to learn how you can take even better care of the animals in your life. You can also follow the Regina Humane Society on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If you would like to know more about the research Insightrix has done in the past with non-profit organizations, check out this case study.

You can also read about the many other ways non-profits can benefit from market research in our article, Market Research for Advocacy.

One of the ways organizations have chosen to tackle this reality is through online voting. Online votes, elections, plebiscites, referendums and the like can help cut through many of the challenges associated with in-person voting, as it allows voters to participate remotely and, in many cases, conveniently.

In Episode 22 of Stories of Market Research, we are talking about just that – online voting and what it’s all about.

To kick off the episode, we speak with John Tzupa of the Saskatchewan NDP to hear about an online vote their party recently worked with Insightrix to accomplish.

John speaks about why the SASKNDP chose to employ an online voting methodology and some of the benefits and challenges they found in the process, and he shares some tips for other organizations who may be looking into the online voting process themselves.

Then, later in the episode, we speak with Insightrix Research Director, Lang McGilp, and Insightrix Project Manager, Stacy Bernales, to discuss how online voting projects are done, concerns some may have with the methodology like security and accuracy and what it’s like to work on online voting projects from both a research perspective and a project management perspective.

If you would like to know more about Insightrix Online Voting or about the online voting project Insightrix worked on with the Saskatchewan NDP specifically, please read this case study to learn more.

Episode Transcript on second page.

IIEX (Insight Innovation Exchange) North America 2020, is an annual international market research conference organized by GreenBook. Every year, members of the insights community, business and start-ups and professionals in industries that intersect with the market research industry meet to exchange ideas, network and learn about new and emerging trends in market research.

This year, though postponed as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, IIEX NA 2020 was organized to be digitally available, with all of its sessions and roundtables being streamed online to conference attendees.

With the assistance of a little technology, conference attendees were also able to enjoy the full IIEX experience, complete with the usual break-out sessions, networking opportunities and more.

With so much interesting stuff going on and with so many innovations and new ideas being discussed, it is no surprise that Insightrix was in attendance.

In Episode 21 of SoMR, we’re offering a recap of the IIEX NA 2020 conference, with interviews with some of the members of the Insightrix team who were in attendance – Insightrix Data Scientist, Ifeoma Adaji, and Insightrix Research Associate, Brandon Bellows.

We also touch base with Priscilla McKinney, the Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing out of Joplin, MO, who was not just at the event, but who also helped organize the Women in Research (WIRe) Happy Hour, and created the Annual Market Research Podcast Award in partnership with Greenbook – for which SoMR was nominated.

If you would like to know more about Little Bird Marketing or about their outstanding marketing podcast, Ponderings from the Perch, head over to their website for more information.

Insightrix Releases New Content Regularly

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcast and YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

In Episode 20 of Stories of Market Research, we’re examining some of the research Insightrix has been working on around COVID-19, and we describe the process and planning that went into it. 

First, we speak with Research Director, Lang McGilp, to discuss the large research project we have been working on since late March – our COVID Barometer. This ongoing research project has been looking into the impressions and opinions of the residents of Saskatchewan residents as they pertain to COVID-19. We report the findings of this study every second week to our clients.

Later in the episode, our CRO, Shonna Caldwell, rejoins the podcast to discuss an exciting COVID-19-related digital ethnography study Insightrix has just recently wrapped up. 

Sometimes referred to as UX testing, usability testing is an essential part of the digital development process. By testing websites or apps, organizations can be assured their product will behave as it was intended with its target user group, but further than that, it assures that the product will meet the user experience needs of that group. UX testing can produce insights that can guarantee better end usability and a better experience for end-users.

For this episode, we’re joined by Petrina Holoszyc, the Director, Research Partner at Validately.

Validately is a platform many researchers will already be well aware of for its use in UX research and usability testing. In our conversation, Petrina tells us all about how the Validately platform produces insights for clients and how researchers use it to capture the essence of a user’s UX journey. Then, later on, Petrina offers some tips and tricks for folks who may be new to the Validately platform. 

People want to be able to get what they want pretty easily, and making sure they’re able to do that is what we’re here to help with.”

– Petrina Holoszyc

Later in the episode, our CRO, Shonna Caldwell, joins the podcast to fill us in on how UX research is done at Insightrix and to talk about the benefits Insightrix clients see from engaging in this type of testing. Then, Shonna shares some information about an exciting recent UX project in which we performed usability testing for a client in the process of developing a crop science website (read the case study). We also discuss some of the challenges researchers can encounter when doing UX research, as well as some of the ways these challenges can be overcome.

If you’re interested in learning more about Insightrix UX Testing, check out this case study where we describe how we helped a Canadian provincial government agency develop a professional services website to serve the labour market needs of a regional municipality that met the usability needs of its target user groups.

Want to hear more?

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcast and YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

So, for this episode, we’re diving into the topic of employee engagement!

We’re joined by Grant Douziech, Partner and Senior Consultant with Apex Performance Consultants and expert in cultivating and maintaining employee engagement.

In our conversation, Grant shares why employee engagement is so crucial for businesses of all sizes offer some tips and best practices for managing remote teams provides some thoughts on steps businesses should take as they look to reopen their doors to their staff and a whole lot more.

Grant recently authored an article in The Business Advisor magazine, titled Working From Home: Is It Here to Stay? Check it out – it’s a great read.

Later in the episode, we speak with Insightrix Chief Revenue Officer, Shonna Caldwell, to get some thoughts about employee engagement research itself – what methodologies work best, how often the research should be done, what should be covered (and what shouldn’t be discussed) and who should be included.

“Engagement surveys have their value in measuring the outcome of whether you’ve been keeping employees connected to the company, and we would recommend doing them. They have a lot of value.”

- Grant Douziech, Apex performance Consultants

Insightrix releases new content regularly!

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcast and YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

Made up of individuals who participate in research projects via the internet, the research functions for these online panels can be as diverse as the individuals who make up their membership.

Niche panels are more specific than general market research panels. Sometimes, brands require information stemming from specific populations – like an age range, occupation or lifestyle – to ensure they get information from only that population segment with the unique knowledge base they are looking to tap into.

By gathering this targeted group of individuals into a niche panel, brands gain a dependable and relevant group they can access almost any time to gather the information that’s more actionable and germane to their research problem.

In Episode 17 of our podcast series, we’re joined by Insightrix Creative Lead and Digital Strategist, Sharday Torgerson, and Research Associate, Julie Ellis, to explore how these niche panels are developed, how researchers recruit for them and how they are employed in market research.

For the discussion, we use a recently built panel (our young adult panel) as a model of how a niche panel is developed. We chat about how this niche young adult panel was envisioned, recruited for and talk about some of the research they’ve already participated in – and some in which they may be engaged in the future.

If you would like to know more about niche panels, or our young adult panel specifically, contact us. We’d love to explore how employing an online community may benefit your next research project.

Insightrix Research releases new content regularly!

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related – including this blog about doing surveys with niche panels!

You can also access Stories of Market Research on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcast and YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

Episode 16 – Market Research & COVID-19 focuses more on our company, Insightrix Research, to tell our own story of how we’re adapting our business and our operations to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In the episode, we speak with Insightrix Chief Revenue Officer, Shonna Caldwell, to get news on how other organizations in the insights space are adjusting to the circumstances, how Insightrix is adapting and adopting technologies in our research and our operations as well as how participants are responding in terms of engagement and response rates.

Later, we speak with Lang McGilp, Insightrix Research Director, to look into how Insightrix is adapting its research methodologies and technologies to researching the pandemic, get some rules of thumb to follow when designing surveys in times such as these and learn how to do some forms of B2B research may be highly beneficial to organizations looking to determine how to respond both during the crisis, and after it.

And both Lang and Shonna share how they’ve been getting along working from home and adjusting their work habits to isolation, and how this may impact work routines moving forward for themselves, as well as the teams they manage.

Finally, we check in with Chris Twa, our IT Support and Systems Admin, to hear about how Insightrix mobilized its professional staff and entire call centre operations to a remote working arrangement.

If you have ideas for topics that you would like to see discussed on Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, or think you know the perfect guest for a future episode, send us an email (podcast@insightrix.com). We’d love to hear from you.

Insightrix releases new content regularly!

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

In Episode 15 of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, we’re looking at that role with episode guest, Joaquim Bretcha, International Director at Netquest and President of ESOMAR.

In the episode, Joaquim and Duncan discuss some ESOMAR history and how Joaquim became involved with the association, and look into the ways market research associations, and ESOMAR in particular, help both market researchers themselves and the industry as a whole.

They dive into the ways associations advocate for market research and provide guidelines in what is ultimately a self-regulating industry, and get into the ways researchers from all industries (not just market research) can receive guidance and support at any level of their career from market research organizations.

The problem is that people tend to think it’s easy to collect data, and then merge and match data to achieve this understanding, and it’s not. It’s not. It seems easy, but it’s not so easy.

But it’s through that technology – technologically, today, we can have an extreme wealth of data.

- Joaquim Bretcha, International Director at Netquest, President of ESOMAR

Market research associations play an important role in the insights and research industry.

One of the ways market research associations like ESOMAR support market research is through events and conferences in which research professionals can meet, exchange ideas and learn from one another about new techniques or processes in the field.

ESOMAR will be holding its annual congress event this year in September in Toronto, Ontario. Head over to their website to learn more about it.

We are honoured!

Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast needs your help! We’ve been nominated for what is a pretty prestigious award – the very first-ever Annual Market Research Podcast Award from Little Bird Marketing in partnership with GreenBook. We’re up against some stiff competition, so we could use your vote.

Voting for us doesn’t just mean you have our everlasting gratitude, it also means that we’ll be able to get the podcast in front of more people like you – awesome folks with an interest in research. Learn more and to cast your vote for Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast by heading over to the Little Bird Marketing website or by clicking this link.

If you have ideas for topics that you would like to see discussed on Stories of Market Research, or think you know a perfect guest for the podcast, drop us a line at podcast@insightrix.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Insightrix releases new content regularly

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

In Episode 14 of the Insightrix Podcast series, we’re talking about market research and data visualization.

Data visualization and data representation are an important part of market research reporting because they make data sets that might be difficult to grasp at first glance more understandable and relatable. They merge aesthetics with hard data to communicate research stories in ways that words just can’t match.

"What makes a really good infographic is going back to the data and finding ways that really find multiple levels in the story. I think if you’re ever looking to try to tell a better story in your reporting and really want to drill down to some of those deeper answers, showing it visually is often a great way to do that."

- Sharday Torgerson, Creative and Digital Strategist at Insightrix Research Inc.

For the episode, we’re joined by Insightrix Creative Lead, Sharday Torgerson. The mastermind behind many of our data representations, Sharday shares her experience in what data visualizations and data representations are and how they differ, how both are used, best practices on their design, the tools she uses and even some ideas about how one can advocate for more graphic-based design in your own organization.

If you would like to see a great example of some of the innovative work Insightrix has done to create graphical reporting that can both communicate data effectively AND engage broad audiences with appealing design, check out Insightrix Holiday Spending 2019. Insightrix Holiday Spending 2019 is a web report we prepared to highlight the Christmas retail shopping experience in Saskatchewan that you can download and share.

You can also access many Insightrix data visualizations and representations based on our own public work on social media.

Want to hear more?

Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

This episode is all about market research and marketing in China and features episode guest Andrew Kuiler, who joins the conversation by telephone from Shanghai.

Andrew Kuiler is the CEO and founder of The Silk Initiative (TSI), a brand consultancy located in Shanghai, China. Doing a bulk of its business working with brands in the food and beverage space, Andrew and his company works with companies from all over the world to break into the Chinese market and succeed there.

TSI works across many areas of the marketing process to design brand identities, innovate products and create visual assets for brands in China, Asia and elsewhere.

In their conversation, Andrew and Duncan discuss the differences in doing market research and marketing in China and some of the emerging trends one can see in that market. Andrew shares some of the experiences he’s had helping brands move into the Chinese market.

Later in the episode, we’re joined by Insightrix Communities Client Success Manager Evan Goodfellow. Evan heads up the Insightrix Communities offices in Bangkok, Thailand, and does a great deal of work in the Asia-Pacific market.

Since Evan also has experience working in China and similar markets, and since he coordinates his time between Bangkok and Saskatoon, Canada, we thought it would be great to have him on to discuss his experiences.

If you’d like to know more about the Silk Initiative and their work, or if you would like to know more about TSI Navigator, check out their website at www.thesilkinitiative.com.

You can also learn more about Insightrix Communities market research online community software at www.communities.insightrix.com.

Insightrix Research releases new content regularly!

Check out the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related.

You can follow Insightrix on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to make sure you never miss a video.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

Episode Transcript

[EPISODE INTRODUCTION]

[DUNCAN] We all know that to do business, you need to make informed decisions.

As insights professionals, we know that those decisions need to be informed by experience and market knowledge, backed up by solid research and analysis.

But what about when a brand wants to expand to markets it knows little to nothing about – whose culture, language and maybe even ways of doing business are different to what it may be used to back at home?

Hello, my name is Duncan McGregor, the marketing and communications coordinator at Insightrix Research in Saskatoon, Canada, and your podcast host.

In this episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, we’re talking about doing market research in China with episode guest, Andrew Kuiler. Andrew is the CEO and founder of the Silk Initiative – brand consultancy that operates in Shanghai, China.

The Silk Initiative works with food and beverage brands from all over the world to help them develop their brand and marketing strategies and to provide them the deep insight they need to move into the Chinese market and succeed there.

In the episode, Andrew shares some of his experiences working with brands in the Chinese food and beverage space, how marketing and market research differ in China, his thoughts about trends to watch for in that market and much, much more.

We also speak with Insightrix Communities’ own Evan Goodfellow. Evan is a customer satisfaction manager in Insightrix Communities’ Bangkok offices in Thailand, and he often has to coordinate with our home offices in Saskatoon, Canada.

Since we were speaking with Andrew about what research and marketing are like in China, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to sit down with Evan while he was in Canada to speak with him about what it’s like to coordinate offices for halfway around the world, how selling and marketing differ in the Asia-Pacific market and to get an update on news from our Communities software division.

Managing time zones, working through regulation and looking at trends in the Chinese market –  all that and more on this episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

[THEME MUSIC]

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 1]

DUNCAN: I’ve got Andrew Kuiler on the line. How’s it going today Andrew?

ANDREW: It’s going very, very well. Thank you very much Duncan for having me.

DUNCAN: Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us from all the way out in Shanghai. You were just telling us you’ve got some typhoons on the way.

ANDREW: We do, yes. So, we’ve been pretty lucky this year to escape them. We’re in the light zone here, but I think, with global warming, I think we’ve done a bit of a flip on the typhoon season. So, yeah, batten down the hatches today, I think. It’s a strong wind coming in and quite a bit of rain.

DUNCAN: Well, right on. I really appreciate you braving the weather to come on the podcast. Could you tell us a little bit about your company, The Silk Initiative, and explain how you help your clients?

ANDREW: Absolutely, yeah. So, we’re a Shanghai-born brand consultancy and we operate – and we started operating in the food and beverage space particularly, but we’ve branched out into some other particular categories. Essentially, all that work is insight driven. So, we’re a team of about 10 people right now and we work with global brands to help them on their China strategies and where they need rich insights to drive new brand development programs, product innovation, pipeline types of work, pack design and all sorts of other bits and boxes that sit sort of in the marketing services space. We sit at the nice intersection between insight brand strategy, product innovation and design. So, a bit of a unique shop in that regard.

DUNCAN: Yeah, really.

ANDREW: We have a lot of fun doing it.

DUNCAN: That sounds like really super interesting work. How did you get into that line of work? You must have some connection to China to begin with, correct?

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean that I’d say I was a little bit of a late bloomer in starting my own company. I’ve worked for several of the big agencies for many years myself – so, the likes of AC Nielsen, GSK, Ipsos – the big insights agencies. And I decided, about almost five years ago, to set The Silk Initiative up on pretty much the back end of the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement. And I just saw a huge opportunity there coming my way. I’m Australian; I had already been in China for a good part of 10 years. I was out here in the early 2000s – it’s actually where I started my insights career, coming out of marketing for a short period of time and had gone on to work in New York for several years. And then, come back to China, and I was like, I think I want to do something in this space. I think I want to start with food and beverage. I love that space. There was a bit of a food crisis happening in China at the time, as well – like, a lot of issues around product safety. Those are still there, as well. And with this free trade agreement, I saw this big opportunity of cleaner, better-for-you foods that are so popular with the Chinese people – food from the Australian space. And not many services companies up here that had, I would say, the kind of insight background and the ability to create brands and products for companies sitting overseas, and that’s really how we got started. So, it was very organic and we got a small project and brought in an intern, and got another project and brought in a project manager and it literally just grew organically. And now we work with brands from all around the world from the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Continental Europe, Australia – so, yeah.

DUNCAN: So, working in China in the Chinese market and helping all of these companies from all over the world, specifically North American companies, what are the main differences you see in marketing and doing market research in that market versus the North American market, or even the Australian market?

ANDREW: Well, it’s funny you should mention that. I was on a call a few nights ago with an SVP in Chicago of a big North American CPG brand and I got off the phone and I was like, that was such a refreshing call. It was a grown-up, adult conversation about methodology and what should work and what should go where and when, and what they need to get out and, sort of, full transparency on what they’re trying to achieve – it was nice, you know? Now, I think when you’re dealing particularly with brands in China, things move so fast here. And we’re started moving – we started working with some of the CPG headquarters here. The operating styles are so different, you know? There isn’t this huge heritage in things like data market research. I think a lot of things are being – the fundamentals are being skipped over over the years purely for need of agility and speed. The market was just surging with such huge growth for many, many years and some of those sort of fundamentals aren’t there, but they do pretty amazing work. But of course, China’s so big – we’re talking 1.3-1.5-billion people…

DUNCAN: That’s huge.

ANDREW: …trying to sort of decipher what is a suitable overarching consumer insight for a brand here, it can be difficult. It can be really different by cohorts, by regions – and as I said, the operational challenges and the infrastructure challenges that China presents, it makes the whole process really, really interesting. It’s not a consistent market, like say the States would be, or Australia or the UK, where you can expect a certain level of consumer behaviour or retail behaviour in one part of the coast or a city inland. The dynamics present so many challenges, and that’s the result, I think, that’s where we’ve been quite lucky is that I’ve always been quite methodology agnostic. I’m a classically trained market researcher across multiple methodologies. That’s come in really handy – that I’m sort of not wedded to any one particular way of doing things, and I’ve been able to make those sort of traditional practices, qual/quant, it bit more adaptive to today’s China.

DUNCAN: Can I ask how – without giving away too much of the secret sauce?

ANDREW: Absolutely. Yeah, I think things like digital. You know, having apps for the Chinese consumer. I mean, there’s not many consumers these days who want to be sitting behind a computer or a laptop, filling in 20-30-40-minute questionnaires. We might break the research up into different stages – stakeholder interviews, we might do quite a bit of in-store work. We might do digitally enabled surveys through WeChat at multiple phases. WeChat is a program like – it’s kind of like an integrated WhatsApp, Facebook app where you can get folks to complete surveys and also take photos and do videos. So, you can do sort of more integrated work like diaries and video logs and things like that at the same time. So, it makes things a bit more engaging for the consumer. And obviously, there’s a ton of big data in China, as well, that clients sit on. So, I think there’s some really interesting pieces you can bolt together to try and triangulate the story a bit more. Yeah, and so we get our hands dirty with all of that, but the real power comes from interplay when your in a workshop with a client and you’re actually working through ideas and try moves and arrive at some really brilliant places.

DUNCAN: That’s really cool. You mentioned earlier that there’s a lot of differences between the regions in China. I can only imagine; it’s a massive country with a lot of people in it. And I know there’s probably a lot of difference between marketing in rural and urban centres, or even mainland versus central China. What would you say were the differences in, say, marketing a product in Guangzhou versus a town in Inner Mongolia? I imagine it’s quite a different strategy, right?

ANDREW: Yeah, well, things like purchase drivers will be complete different for the same category.

DUNCAN: Yeah?

ANDREW: We were having this conversation actually, yesterday with a client in Australia. We’ve got a really interesting engagement for pet care for an organic pet food. And we’ve got to make a city selection – like, which cities to select. Dog and cat ownership, for example, have been increasing, but I guess the role of the pet can be completely different in somewhere like Mongolia versus southern China.

DUNCAN: OK.

ANDREW: You know, living in Shanghai, for example, like, there’s just been an explosion of all sorts of dog breeds in Shanghai in recent years. And it could be 100 degrees, and you’ll be on the street and you’ll see these quite, sort of elaborate Alaskan malamutes and all sorts of shaved dogs walking down the streets. And they’re being pampered and they, you know, consumers have probably spent a ton of money on them. Perhaps, that same behaviour in a second- or a third-tier city – completely different. You know? Very early days of what would be a – what I would say would be acceptable way to treat a pet. Perhaps they aren’t looked after as well. So, there’s still some emergent categories like that. That’s a classic one…

DUNCAN: OK.

ANDREW: …where the behavioural differences are so huge. Now pretty much all our cities are concerned about food safety, supply chain issues, you know, Toll chains, for example, are not as well developed in those places. So, when you go to buy, if you do have access to a pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, is it all frosted over, and has the product separated because it’s been in and out of different chillers and the delivery trucks not as consistent with temperature? Taking it from, you know, warehouses where they’ve been stored. So, you know, I think the – what’s on consumers’ mind is just so different – just more practical and probably more functional. A city like Guangzhou, I mean, we’ve done quite a lot of work down there – mothers and kids. Did a lot of work on the Goldfish brand for Campbell’s soup, yeah, and just looking at the role of the mom and the kid. And we kind of estimated that we think the mother in Guangzhou is probably five to seven years behind where the mum is in Shanghai. You know, the mum in Shanghai is looking for their child to – you know, it’s all about cognitive development. They’re looking for how to keep ahead of the Jones’s with their kids’ educational development, more interesting immersive experiences during their free time, how to really develop the kids’ social skills. Whereas, perhaps in Guangzhou or even lower-tiered cities, it’s more, just like, getting really good grades at school – so, less developed, less sort of evolved in terms of expectations of the kid. So, I think, differences. And then you bring into things like cuisine. There’s eight big cuisines in China. So, in the States, you might expect chicken and broccoli dishes, you know, when you go to a Chinese restaurant, but the cuisines are totally different in different regions of China. If you’re working in the food and beverage industry, that has massive implications on product development when you’re working with R&D teams. So yeah, it all keeps us on our toes and quite busy.

DUNCAN: You know, and you were just talking about the Haagen-Dazs situation. As somebody who works with a brand, I find that a little terrifying. How do brands deal with that?

ANDREW: Yeah, well they do their best.

DUNCAN: Yeah, right?

ANDREW: Working on, yeah, infrastructure stuff, right? So, it’s the other things. It’s like, your, the amount – and I don’t know if that’s a Silk Initiative thing whether that’s sort of every other agency out there – but I just feel that the practical elements to our consulting are so, sort of, front and centre, with things you have think about every day for a client. It’s not just a kicking a tire. It’s not just a brand strategy. It’s what can they get away with from a regulatory point of view, like towards government policy is always changing certain elements. Obviously, now you’ve got the trade war happening with the US, so consumers can turn on a dime on a topic. So, there’s just a lot of kind of noise in the background that we have to wade through when you’re doing this kind of work in China because, as I said, while some, you know, are still in the development stage in China. So, I think they’re just – they’re busy. Marketing teams here are busy. They’re constantly in meetings with different retailers. They’re constantly in meetings with agents who are trying to design the digital ads that – which seem to trend daily here. So yeah, that’s probably how I would see it can be quite different.

DUNCAN: I can imagine, yeah. And honestly, with a market that large, a little bit of infrastructure problems are definitely outweighed, right?

ANDREW: Absolutely.

DUNCAN: So, there’s – yeah. No. There’s a lot of – how would you say it? Maybe some cultural negotiation that goes on, or even legislative negotiation, as well, I imagine. Has there ever been a time where a brand, which will remain unnamed – is there ever a time when they needed your help understanding these differences or that you had a hard time getting this through?

ANDREW: I would say where that kind of occurs in the boardroom. So, in the last year or so, I have found myself being requested to come to perhaps senior management meetings to give my expert’s advice, I guess, on whether China is the right market for them. How many eggs do they want in the China basket? Do they want to kind of diversify their strategies to other parts of Asia? What would be the risks associated with that? So, all these sort of risk mitigation types of discussions, that is happening more and more, particularly because of the socio-political kind of (inaudible) and things that are coming up with China with different regions that would (inaudible) and their role in the new world. So, that’s probably where it’s happening a little bit more, I’d say – at the boardroom table.

DUNCAN: I really wanted to ask you about doing – get back to doing research in China. Now, you were talking about infrastructure issues and that kind of thing, but do you ever run into any real difficulties setting anything up? Or, do you find that that’s actually something that maybe not an issue at all?

ANDREW: Yeah, like – coming back to like, could be the way the regulatory can shut things down. There are some really cool product categories that exist overseas. We did some NPD work recently with a client and they have access. They’re interested in things like alternate land use – a sort of huge, agricultural conglomerate. And they have access to different types of animal meat and also milk – so, sheep milk, deer milk, goat’s milk. Things like hemp – you know? Alternative dairy?

DUNCAN: OK.

ANDREW: And some of those items, they don’t even have a classification for them for importation. So, the regulatory classification, the GBH code, I believe it’s called, doesn’t exist. So, you know, sometimes it’s like the old let’s just shut that project down. We’re not going to bother about it. Or, can we find an interesting way to perhaps merge that ingredient with something else that’s more dominant so we can get the product in? So, the reformatting of products is often a big discussion for us as a major work-around. It can be a liquid milk solution in one market, but here it might have to be dried and put into a protein bar. Right?

DUNCAN: OK.

ANDREW: Or, some of our binding agents for use in food service. So, it could – well, the category just kind of, and the product completely modified to be able to get it into China, to be able to play here.

DUNCAN: Geez, that’s fascinating. Do you ever help any Chinese companies go the other way? Try to break into say European or Western, say North American, market?

ANDREW: You know, we haven’t so far, but that’s going to be a big thing I think out there. Chinese investment is a big deal now, particularly Chinese investment in places like North America, Australia, New Zealand, UK. There are a few big Chinese brands here that have spoken to us. We haven’t engaged them – or haven’t engaged us, sorry. Looking at like southeast Asian markets or South America, Middle East – we’re so, I guess, we’re so busy focusing on trying to improve the food and beverage landscape through better brand and product offering into the market, and that’s the, you know, that’s kind of inherent in our name. The Silk Initiative is about clients who want to do more transformative work, like the silk moth, to produce better products of just a higher grade for the Chinese consumer. So, that’s our big focus right now. I think, for Chinese brands, particularly in the food and beverage space, right now there’s no extremely OK or high-grade offerings that we would be particularly enamoured with to want to help with a strategy for outbound work – just to be quite, quite brutally honest about that.

DUNCAN: No, no that’s cool. That’s awesome.

ANDREW: Yeah, it’s sort of, in some way, I would say goes with the team across the Silk Initiative. And I would just say, we’re so busy just coming across these fantastic offerings out there that that keeps us plenty busy.

DUNCAN: Yeah, I imagine so. I’m going to ask you to throw your fortune telling hat on for a second. Do you see anything on the horizon when it comes to marketing or doing market research in China?

ANDREW: Well, I think a big shift – I was in a conference in London, a beverage innovation conference, a few months ago and someone was presenting big trends in the US market – like 10 of them. And I said there were like five that are apparent today. Don’t ask me to repeat them all right now. But, you know the big ones, I think, are going to be alternative meats – so, plant-based protein sources. There’s a bit of a protein crisis here to be honest. That and all sorts of contamination issues with poultry, with beef, with pork, seafood – that is something that I think is of major concern to the Chinese government. Obviously, people need protein to work, grow and develop, so better sources of that. We are seeing some of that, even in the you know, say, in the dairy alternative space. Companies like Oatly, so oat-based milk doing very well here – almond milk, rice milk, etc. So, that’s taking off, particularly with the millennials – seeing it a lot of it on the café scene. So, started to make its way into food service in a big way. I’d say even things like performance products and beverages – so, the types of things that you would see on more sophisticated shelves in sports stores or your Whole Foods in the US. A lot of that stuff is turning up here. The gym scene has exploded. There is some really quite sophisticated spa-type night gyms here. People are working out like mad but I’m like, I’m really curious. Like, where do they get their good nutrition? The maca powder is a nice protein powder and the bars and lots of that stuff, so a lot of that is sourced online. Or people are just bringing it in, you know, from their travels from overseas. So, I think that’s going to be a particular big offering. Things like hyper-personalization – we’re seeing that from brand share already where we’re seeing the big, local brands getting consumers to co-create solutions that they want. More individualized products – I’ll give you the classic example. There’s a café chain in China where, when they give you a latte, you can have your photo. You scan a QR code, have a photo from the photo album in your phone digitally impressioned onto the top of the foam on the latte – like a photo of you and your friends or something. So, that’s something that’s happening quite a bit. Like cutey-quirky, more individualized – yeah, and I think, in general, things around global flavours. People here are travelling. Year on year, huge numbers of Chinese are going overseas. They’re looking for new experiences. There’s also been a big upsurge in sort of traditional values, I would say. You know, celebrating Chinese heritage, poetry, literature, that sort of stuff. Some of that is making its way into brand campaigns. Nike has done that quite well this year, using some like ancient Chinese proverbs in some of their marketing campaigns, billboards, TV series – stuff like that. So, and that’s some of the experiences. I could speak on that all day.

DUNCAN: Yeah, that’s really, really fascinating actually, to me. I used to live in Vancouver and came out to the prairies and I noticed that Chinese folks travel a lot, and they must bring back a bit of a hunger for brands that they find elsewhere. Not finding those brands could be an issue, and from what you said, a lot of the – a lot of them are turning to online shopping. Is that correct?

ANDREW: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s the best place. If you’re going to any retailer here, it’s either crazy expensive or you just don’t get the range, you know. So, to do a shop up like you do in the States or back in Australia, to actually get the same assortment of products, it’s a pain here. You know? You’ve got to go from shop to shop, bit of it sort of offline, some of it online. Stuff online, some of it has become pretty sophisticated. They’ve come up with all sorts of special stores with different products. Some of the E-commerce sites are even doing product reviews themselves. So, that sort of start – there’s a little bit of like auditing-type store. And now, they’re going like social E-commerce, so online shopping really is a big deal. And often, that can be the gateway to China for a lot of our clients. Things like cross-border traffic, where consumers who can buy something online and then have it shipped to them and have the product arrive at their house pretty quickly and it’s coming from, like, a bonded warehouse. So, those – the Chinese government has made certain regions of China with bonded warehouses, where US brands or Canadian brands, for example, can ship directly without having to do a series of paperwork or special applications or certain codes where one has to put stickers or labels or things like that. So, that’s become a big thing, as well, a lot of cross-border shopping. So, it’s really complicated to be honest with you, all that stuff in China.

DUNCAN: I can just imagine. I can just imagine. Do you see any trends about more Chinese brands moving into North America? I know I asked earlier about your work with them, but, like – I do see a lot more food brands coming out of China even here in Canada, and I’m wondering if you see that increasing here in the future?

ANDREW: Probably not.

DUNCAN: Oh.

ANDREW: I think, if I’m to be honest, I mean, if we just look at what’s happened recently, with the trade wars and some of the issues between the Canadians and the Chinese right now that are ongoing, there have been backlashes. I mean, one of the big backlashes in the last couple of days that I don’t think many people saw coming, you know, was the deregulation of the renminbi, you know, from 6.85 to 7.54 or something like that. It’s quite a big jump, you know, and I think that’s just an early indication on one of many strategies for China to claw back, you know, their own terms…

DUNCAN: I got you.

ANDREW: …between their different trade routes. There was a huge event last year – CIIC – in China, which is a big, global imports fair event and have brands, countries from all around the world being represented and sorts of brands encouraged to come to the China market and do trading. So, I think it’s China’s time to sort of, you know, spread itself more across different regions and its export interests, as well.

DUNCAN: That’s really cool. I want to ask you really quickly, I know you guys are developing a new client access portal, TSI Navigator. I wonder if you could talk to me about that?

ANDREW: Yeah, thanks for asking.

DUNCAN: Oh no, no problem.

ANDREW: So, we saw a need about a year ago from our clients. As I mentioned earlier in the call, agility and speed in China is so critical. You know, being faster to market, trying to reach distribution points before someone else – that first-move advantage. Whilst we are a project-based consultancy – so clients to us with a brief for some certain kind of work that needs to be done – we need to sort of break that cycle a bit and have something that is a little bit more real-time based, particularly for the innovation space. Clients are telling us, “I just can’t keep on top of the where the ice cream consumer’s going. I just, I don’t know why these local beer brands are killing our business, you know, in north China. Do you have something that could help me stay abreast of the changes more frequently in the market?” So, I sort of started with a view of OK, could we just track purchase behaviours, trending purchase behaviours, by categories – food and beverage by region, so that’s interesting. But our survey, we run a monthly survey, has now evolved into looking across 10 food and beverage categories, eight regions in China, and we’re measuring about 12-1,500 people per month. And we’re asking all sorts of foresight questions – so, what flavours would they want in the category? How would they feel about these projects that are being launched? So, we are developing a benchmarking database for clients.

DUNCAN: Oh, cool.

ANDREW: Rating those on assumption attributes, emotional attributes – basically, trying to understand where the mindset and the psyche of the Chinese consumer are moving. How do they – how are they changing their purchase decisions? What do they want from brands? How are they feeling about these new product launches into the market? And we’re still in beta testing. We’re about five or six months in, but it’s coming together. We’ve been able to produce really stunning, dynamic graphs and charts in an access portal that our clients can have access to, and that’s been really valuable. We’ve been doing some awesome work for some big CPG beverage producers here – some innovation work. So, being able to tap into that real-time data and triangulate that with client data, or there might be an actual engagement that we’re doing decent research on to bolt that together to inform the innovation process has been really, really helpful. So yeah, it’s called TSI Navigator. We’re beta testing it with a couple of clients now to sort of iron out some of the kinks, and we’ll be looking to go live with it in the next couple of months.

DUNCAN: That sounds like a treasure trove. It really does; it sounds awesome. For any brand who’s looking to get into the Chinese market, that sounds amazing. And they’ll be able to get that at the Silk Initiative website – thesilkinitiative.com?

ANDREW: Yeah, you’ll start to see articles about that and case studies, so that website is www.thesilkinitiative.com – and I would say to start following me on LinkedIn. That’s a great source for different memes and articles that we’ll be talking about for that. And, also, try and find some different speaking events around the world. We really think that might be viable alternative to help you understand what we’re all about.

DUNCAN: Well, that’s awesome. I’ll make sure we get a link up to your company’s website on our website, so anybody looking for it can find it on our webpage.

ANDREW: Thank you.

DUNCAN: Well, this has been really fascinating, Andrew. This last half an hour has just flown right by. I don’t want to take any more of your time, there; it being bright and early in the morning with typhoons coming in. So, thanks so much for appearing on our show.

ANDREW: No worries, thank you very much. It has been a pleasure. It has flown past – I’m looking out the window now and thinking how do I make my schedule work. The clouds are coming over – typhoon’s on it’s way and I’ve got a day of work ahead of me, so I’ve got to, somehow, fit that in. Thanks again, Duncan.

DUNCAN: Hey, any time. Any time.

[INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

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[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 2]

DUNCAN: And I’m here with Evan Goodfellow, Customer Satisfaction Manager, with our Communities division. How’s it going today Evan?

EVAN: It’s going really good.

DUNCAN: Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast – really appreciate it.

EVAN: Thank you for having me.

DUNCAN: Excellent. So, you manage our Communities division in Bangkok. Can you tell us really quickly – just give us a quick primer on our Communities division and the product?

EVAN: Yup. So, I handle the sales and marketing for the Communities in Southeast Asia. So, basically, our Communities software, it began focusing on panel management. So, panels, in my opinion, are anything over 5,000.

DUNCAN: 5,000?

EVAN: Respondents.

DUNCAN: OK.

EVAN: So, we started with managing our own panel. We built a panel here in Canada. We started roughly four years ago and now we’re up to about 18,000 members. So, when we first started the software, we were basically catering towards how we can make our own panel management easier, and since then, we’ve kind of perfected that and we started looking at the needs of our other clients who wanted a community but maybe not a panel size. So, around anywhere from like 500 and up, I would say, most of our internal clients, that’s what they use. And we also started seeing the need for short-term communities, so…

DUNCAN: Oh, right on.

EVAN: We’ve kind of… We have the panel management system, but we’re also using it for short-term communities. So, companies who want to use, who want to do qualitative studies – two-to-five-day studies – they’ll rent our software for a week. So, that’s kind of where it’s moving. So, I think we cover a lot of, a lot of different branches.

DUNCAN: Oh, that’s really cool. You manage our Bangkok offices.

EVAN: Yes.

DUNCAN: How do you find coordinating between Bangkok and Saskatoon? They’re not exactly close together.

EVAN: I don’t find it that difficult. I have kind of got it built into my schedule. So, Mondays and Wednesdays, I usually stay up to about midnight.

DUNCAN: OK.

EVAN: And I guess my body’s just used to it. So, yeah, Mondays and Wednesdays I stay up and then do calls and meetings back here. But, yeah, I don’t find it too bad.

DUNCAN: Yeah? It must be kind of nice in that you’re not doing as many meetings, too, right? You know, you get a lot more done?

EVAN: Yeah, we were talking about that. It’s kind of one of the differences. When I do come back to Canada, it is – yeah, the amount of meetings and the work that centres around those meetings. So, I think each meeting creates extra work that you have to do based on that meeting. So, I think, being more select on the meetings that you have. So, if you are only having one or two meetings per week, you’re kind of more focused when you go into those meetings, and you kind of have to plan out better everything that you’re going to need to get in terms of information to carry you through to the next meeting next week.

DUNCAN: And you’re always connected too, right? You know, that’s kind of the bonus of living in 2019 as opposed to 1989. Any time you need to get a hold of somebody, you can pretty much do it. The problem is, you still have the problem with time zones.

EVAN: Yeah. Yeah.

DUNCAN: Once we get rid of that, I think we’re going to be in great shape. Do you find that there’s any benefit, other than meeting times?

EVAN: I think, living in Bangkok, and before – I used to live in Korea – living in big, metropolitan cities, you have a lot – you have exposure to a lot of different ideas and a lot of different trends. So, I think the new ideas are sucked up faster rather than living in like, living in a smaller city, it takes longer for those ideas to filter through. And even though they do filter through through the internet, I think that the context of those ideas aren’t always absorbed in the same way as if they’re seeing somebody who’s doing that idea. They can talk to them; ask them questions. Whereas, if you’re just getting purely from the internet, I think it’s a little bit different.

DUNCAN: And being exposed to folks literally on the other side of the planet, that has to help a lot when it comes to insights – when it comes to marketing and selling a product. Actually, it gets directly to the question I wanted to ask you most is, do you see any differences in marketing and selling the Communities software in the Asia/Pacific market, as opposed to ours in North America?

EVAN: I do. I think that most of our inquiries and interest come from Asia.

DUNCAN: Yeah?

EVAN: Like, I would say at least double.

DUNCAN: OK.

EVAN: So, I think there’s a few factors that cause that. So, say like a large company sets up their headquarters in Asia/Pacific, or Southeast Asia, they’re going into a new market. So, they’re going to have to do more research. They make less assumptions, so they’re always having to do more research to get a foothold in that market.

DUNCAN: Why do you think that is? Is it just a bigger market, so they’ve got more people, so you got…

EVAN: Well, I think, like, say Company X from America is expanding into Asia/Pacific. They know how to sell their product in America.

DUNCAN: Yeah.

EVAN: They know what their customers want. They have brothers, sisters, cousins who may use that product, or may not use that product. But then, they move to Thailand and they want to sell that product. The market’s totally different. They don’t know the ins and outs of what Thai customers want, so I think there’s a lot more research that needs to be done.

DUNCAN: Yeah, you can end up, I imagine, putting your foot in it pretty bad working on assumption when you’ve got a bunch of different like language differences and cultural differences – that kind of thing.

EVAN: Yeah. Yeah.

DUNCAN: And, frankly, just a different expectation of how you sell. So, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. So, what’s new for the Communities division? What’s going on with your guy’s side of the shop?

EVAN: Well, I think the most recent one was the online discussions and updating in real time.

DUNCAN: Oh yeah.

EVAN: And that was based on a need here in Canada where our Research Services side would go out, drive two hours to do focus groups, and especially in the winter, it just – it gets dangerous driving on the highways during certain times of the year. So, they wanted to use the software to cover that aspect. So, now, all of our online discussions, you can invite people in at a specific time, ask them the questions – as they respond, it updates in real time. So, it kind of works like a chatroom.

DUNCAN: Yeah, it takes you back to like old-school observational research. You’re not just waiting on somebody to get back to you. You’re actually talking to them in real time. That’s actually a big deal. That’s a big deal.

EVAN: Yeah, because I think a lot of times, people use it for the three-day discussions where it’s – OK, respond whenever you have free time, but I think there’s also an aspect of inviting people in at a specific time and seeing the participation within the group – it kind of encourages participants to share more and so, yeah, that’s one of the new things we’ve been working on. Also, we’ve overhauled our survey editor, and also the user landing page is much more visually appealing. I think, the way I think about it is Facebook is a community, and people are used to using communities like Facebook. And so, I think that, in the past, people used ideas like, “Well, it’s a research community. We’re doing research, so we don’t have to make it that visually appealing.”

DUCAN: You have to make it sterile. Yeah.

EVAN: Yeah. And so, a lot of times, like, I would see other communities and I’d think, wow, that’s – the user experience is really low on that. So, I think people are used to using Facebook and different platforms that are visually appealing so why not make our research communities the same, the same style as that.

DUNCAN: Well, if you’re dealing with anyone under the age of 25, they’ve grown up with pretty sophisticated UX. You know? The user experience has to be really well defined and if, to my own opinion, it leads to the impression of legitimacy of the product.

EVAN: Yeah.

DUNCAN: You know what I mean? So, if you’ve got a user design or user interface that looks like something that was bodged together on HTML back in ’98, it’s just not going to work for anybody. People are going to get on there and go, “I’m don’t really know what we’re doing here.” Right? So, yeah, I really, I think that’s really cool.

EVAN: To add to that point, like, I joined – when I first started working here, I joined some other communities of kind of our competitors to see what the experience was like for them. And a lot of the times, I would land on a page – I would register, and then I would land on the page and I wouldn’t know what to do. Like, it would be – it was so unclear and there were so many, kind of, presumptions made that, “Oh, the users would land on this page after they register and they will know what to do.” But a lot of times, they don’t. So, I think we’re really trying to make it more engaging and, yeah, more user friendly.

DUNCAN: Well, that’s really awesome. I really want to thank you for coming on and talking for a little bit about your experiences out in Bangkok and what it’s like having to come between Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Bangkok, Thailand. You couldn’t get further away, but it’s nice to know we’ve got people out in that end of the world.

EVAN: Yeah, thank you for having me.

DUNCAN: Awesome. Thanks a lot man.

[EPISODE CONCLUSION]

[DUNCAN] And there you have it.

I’d like to thank our guest for this episode, Andrew Kuiler. Speaking with him about his work in the Chinese market was fascinating and more than a little informative. I ended up listening to the episode a few times after getting it edited and each time, I feel like I learned a little more.

If you’d like to learn more about Andrew’s company and the work they do, you can find their website at www.thesilkinitiative.com – there is a link on the podcast episode webpage too, in case you missed it.

I’d also like to thank Evan Goodfellow for stopping in to chat before jumping back on a plane to Bangkok. I really enjoyed learning about how it is coordinating between two continents and getting an update from the Communities side of the shop.

If you’d like to learn more about Insightrix Communities online market research software, check out the website at www.communities.insightrix.com.

And, of course, as usual I’d like to thank our awesome and loyal fanbase. Without you, none of this would be possible. If you’d like to help more folks like you who have interest in market research find the podcast, why not give us a review and a like wherever you usually get your podcast fix?

Thanks again for listening to this episode of our podcast. We’ll be back in another few weeks with the next episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

***

Ben is a partner at Conifer Research, a design research consultancy in Chicago that has worked in prototype testing with brands that include Samsung, Pepsi, Nestle Purina and BP.

In the episode, Duncan, Ben and Lang look into just what the practice to prototype testing is all about, Ben tells some stories and relates some of his experiences when it comes to the do’s and don’ts of prototype testing and looks forward to giving his ideas of where the practice of prototype testing, and market research in general, is going in the future.

If you’d like to learn more about Conifer Research and the work they do, check out their website. There, you’ll find a link to the Research RX tool that was described in the episode.

Insightrix Research releases new content regularly!

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Episode Transcript

[EPISODE INTRODUCTION]

[DUNCAN] Prototype testing is a valuable step in the product or service development process.

Whether it’s through co-ideation in development, or to align a product or service with the needs of their users, or to discover and define business opportunities for existing services or products, prototype testing can help companies learn a lot about how real users interact with products and services in real-world situations.

Hello, my name is Duncan McGregor, Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Insightrix Research in Saskatoon, Canada, and your podcast host.

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Ben Jacobson, partner at Conifer Research – a design research consultancy in Chicago, USA.

Conifer Research is a company that works heavily in prototype testing – having worked across a wide swath of industries with the design and innovation teams from companies like BP, McDonald’s, Nestle Purina, Pepsi and Samsung.

In the episode, Ben shares some of his experiences in prototype testing, how it has benefitted Conifer Research’s clients and the ways it has helped them – and – Ben relates some of the techniques his company has employed in the past to get their clients the insight they need.

Ben also talks about where he thinks the field of prototype testing, and market research in general, is heading and offers some suggestions for anyone looking to dive into the field.

And for this episode of the podcast, Insightrix own Research Director, Lang McGilp, sits in as co-host, lending his experience and research acumen to the discussion.

Do’s and don’ts of prototype research, observational research vs. big data and humanizing top box scores – all that and more, in this episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

[THEME MUSIC]

[INTERVIEW PT.1 BEGINNING]

[DUNCAN] Hello. We’ve got Ben Jacobson, from Conifer Research from out of Chicago on the phone. How’s it going Ben?

[BEN] I’m doing great, thanks. How are you?

[DUNCAN] I’m doing great. Thanks for coming on. I’ve also got our own…

[BEN] Thanks for having me.

[DUNCAN] Oh no, it’s a pleasure. I’ve also got our own Research Director here at Insightrix, Lang McGilp, on the phone to co-host. So, thanks for going us.

So, Ben is a partner at Conifer Research, a research agency that does a lot of work in prototype testing. This isn’t something we usually do a lot of here at Insightrix, so we wanted to have him on to talk about his company and the work you guys do. Is there anything you could tell us about Conifer Research and the types of prototype testing you do?

[BEN] Sure. My first question would be why don’t you do prototype testing up there? But besides that, my little company got started in 2001, and we really got started in all of this – I’m just going to give a shout out to one of our first patron clients, who back in the day was Steelcase Incorporated, run by a visionary CEO whose name is Jim Hackett. And Jim Hackett, of course, is now the CEO of Ford. And they have long sponsored observational research and ethnographic research both for new concept development but also testing all the iterations of the designs that they do. And so, we specialize in observational research, in-context interviewing, those sorts of things, which has a wide variety of uses. One of which is, certainly, prototype testing. And that’s really the first way that we got into it.

[DUNCAN] Right on. How do you find that prototype testing benefits your clients? I know it’s a pretty broad question, but what are the most common or key areas that you help your clients with?

[BEN] The first thing to kind of wrap our brains around as we talk about this is that testing, the word prototype can mean almost anything, right?

[DUNCAN] Yeah.

[BEN] It can literally mean some rubber bands and paper clips and pipe-cleaners and things that you’ve made in an ideation session. It can mean sketches and concepts. It could be a fully engineered and absolutely functioning piece of machinery, right? So, the range of what falls into that is quite large – and we love to get involved in all of those aspects of it. We don’t just specialize in one teeny, tiny bit.

And, I guess the key thing to think about is it’s just dramatically cheaper, more interesting and insightful to identify the joys and pains that you’re about to set loose in the world at a small scale rather than at market scale after launch. So, that is probably the number one thing that people out there who are thinking about this should keep in mind, is that this is, sort of, something that you absolutely should be doing.

And I guess you said, the other one was – how does it help my clients? Well, so, I mentioned, we save them valuable time and money by getting things as close to right as possible before they sink a lot of money into engineering and development. And I can tell you some stories about that later. But, sometimes, it even becomes obvious that an idea should be radically transformed, repositioned or even killed outright based on what you can learn in a prototype test. And if you talk to people in business, this is probably the thing that doesn’t get accounted for very often but should be. Which is, how many times did you save yourself from embarrassment in the market? Or building something at scale and launching it, and then having to write it all off two quarters later? Things like that – and when you think about those epic fails, usually at the bottom of that is some kind of vacuum when it really came to understanding how this was going to function in the real world. And I guess the third thing that I would add in that sort of basket of topics is it’s really important to have a different set of eyes on the design and development as you move things from concepts into offerings out there in the world. If you let an internal design team or an external design firm who created the concept do the testing, it often, I think, introduces a whole lot more bias into the process than I personally think is healthy.

[LANG] Yeah, we do quite a bit of advertising/concept kind of testing, and I find a similar approach, where sometimes just being that extra party at the table, that’s not involved in creating or taking an idea and putting it into something for consumers to absorb, gives you that chance to be a little more objective and that kind of thing and ensure that what you’re showing people aligns with the intended outcome.

[BEN] Oh yeah, Lang – I mean, that gets multiplied, right? I mean, the multiplier effects on this kind of this are so interesting, right? So, it’s at the table with your client and their stakeholders, etc., but even in the conduct of the research. If you’re, in any way shape or form, the people that are engaged in a test or a concept test, something like that, you’ll have an idea about who this is for, and those people are sitting in the room, you immediately introduce this whole sense of how you please the people who are paying you and feeding you M&Ms, right? And it’s really difficult to get out of that unless it’s really clear that you’re an unbiased third party.

[LANG] Interesting. Do you, and I wonder if the barriers might be the same with some of the work that we do, but what are some of the challenges that you find with clients who maybe want to just take the phrase “down and dirty” – just something simple. Give me the basic. Or, maybe I’m struggling to convince people to even bother with this and just move things down – move the chains down the field a little bit more on our own. What are some of those barriers that you find that you need to convince your client or they need to convince their internal client this is worth taking the time and a little bit of money to invest and figure things out?

[BEN] Well, when you have the formula for that, will you let me know? Because I think that would unlock a lot, right? So, I guess that there’s a couple of things. One is I like to think about it as really honest conversation with people. And it’s hard to do when you don’t even know them, right? When people send you an RFP through the email and they’re asking for something, and you don’t know them. And it’s hard, as well, when you know someone and you have multi-year relationships with people and they’ll say we want to do X, Y and Z, and we’ll say that seems like a good idea or a bad idea. But it’s hard to speak truth to the people who would write you a cheque. And I think we all have to keep that in mind and try to check our egos at the door and be as faithful as we can to what’s the good, right and true thing that should be happening. I like to remind people or even just ask them in the form of questions, how much money are you are you spending to take this from me, let’s say they use a staged gate or some crazy scrum model or whatever, right? Now how much money are you spending to go to move the chains down the field? And how many times have you already done that without checking your assumptions or without exposing this to the people who are going to use it? Because the further you go, the more expensive that really is. And there’s a ton of cost involved in that that people think isn’t real. And people will tell me all the time. They are like, Oh well, this is an innovation project and it has to come up with a new idea, a concept, a service, whatever – that has at least 100 million dollars a year in incremental income to the firm. And then I’m thinking, OK, 100 million dollars is your goalpost and you don’t want to spend $100,000 to figure out whether or not your moving in the right direction. And I think that they have their math. They went to business school, I didn’t. But in my mind, there’s definitely times and places along the way when you need to check things out and make sure that you’re not making some goofy, horrible mistake. And the other part of it is not just the mistakes, but the opportunity to make it better. I mean, not just not bad, right? You can learn things along the way by iterative processes that really amp up the quality and the experience of the final offering at the end. And if you think that you’ve got it all right, from the Post-It note you stuck on the conference room wall all the way through to launching something into the world, that’s arrogance. And that kind of arrogance usually ends badly.

[DUNCAN] So, could you give us an example or two of how you’ve used your methodologies to assist your clients?

[BEN] Oh God, yeah. We could talk all day about that.

[DUNCAN] Awesome!

[BEN] I know you don’t have that much time, but we’ll talk about a few things – and shut me up if I’m not making sense or if I’m causing you pain…

[DUNCAN] Okee-dokie.

[LANG] Oh no, we’re in. This is very interesting.

[BEN] …or anything like that. So, here’s a fun one and it’s an oldie but a goodie. Right? So those are kind of fun. So, we helped a large, not-to-be-named department store brand do a test of some price-check machines. You guys know what I’m talking about?

[DUNCAN] Yup, you bet.

[LANG] Yeah.

[BEN] Yeah, those little scanners. They’re all through the store and you know, you slide the barcode under there and this costs X, Y, Z, right? So, first you have to realize that price-check machines were not even close to a new thing in the world when we were doing this. All their competitors had them. And so, it was an internal, emotional problem they were having with making the decision to roll these out to all of their stores. And so, on the good side, it was really easy for them to put their hands on some functional prototypes and put them in a store, which they chose to do literally in a small town in Oklahoma so nobody would find out. And so we put these into five different formats of their stores, which at the time was like overkill, right? Why do you need to go to that length? But they were insistent that they had to do this. And they were worried that the machines would disrupt their shoppers and change their usual purchase behaviour or even cause confusion. So, we set up the machines in real store environments, using fixed video cameras to record behaviour and interaction with the machines. We hung around in the various departments. After people used the machines, we would approach them and interview them about the experience of using the machine, etc., etc. So, that was fairly straightforward, but it got really, really interesting when things started going down the road. So, the thing is, on these machines, they had, of course, a little, small screen that would display the price and some information. They had the scanner with the funky, little laser. And, oddly enough, they had a series of simple, little black buttons on the front – and the buttons had no function, but if you pushed them, they went beep.

[LANG] No way.

[DUNCAN] So classic.

[BEN] I wish I could get the right beep, right? But it was a charming little beep and etc. So, but nothing would happen, right? It just went beep. So, when you present people with a button, many, many of them will push it.

[LANG] My kids do that to me all the time.

[BEN] Of course, right? That’s how they learn the power button on every device in your home before they’re one year old. They’re going to push the button. They’ve seen you push buttons; they want to push the buttons. You can imagine what the kids in the store – they were going crazy with the buttons. But, either way, when someone pushes a button, they have ideas in their head. They have expectations and assumptions that are connected to some interesting mental model about how they think things work – and even what they think might be possible. And if it beeps, then those expectations are heightened because they already got some kind of response. And so, you know, what we started to discover was that as we were watching the video, we’d see people push the buttons. We’d see them hear the beep. They would look at the screen kind of funny – you’d see little changes in their body language, etc. And then, they would walk off. Then we would interview them. And so, one of the things that we discovered was that what they asked us for, what our clients asked us for, which was people like price-check scanners, especially in stores where there’s always this rolling markdown of prices and that’s part of the brand of the store – so, it’s an unmitigated positive. That was the easy answer. But the really interesting part of this came with the ideas that people talked about when we started to dig around a bit in what they thought might happen when they pushed those buttons. And we wound up with a very forward-looking set of ideas that came out of this work. Literally, just what shoppers thought might be possible through this digital interaction that they were having in the middle of a retail environment. And so, that’s a bit of a goldmine – an unanticipated goldmine. And that’s why I like the story because it really shows you can get a variety of very tactical answers to questions you might have about a prototype, but also introducing something like a button that goes beep or does nothing or what have you, is an interesting way to tap into these future-oriented insights about what your customers are ready for, and maybe already expecting from your brand.

[LANG] Interesting. I’ve got a quick question for you here. So, knowing that you’re primarily focused on this prototype testing, have you – like, what are some of the benefits that you often explain to your potential clients? Is this is the benefit of having something physical, hold in the hand or in the store or in the whatever kind of real environment as opposed to perhaps something more conceptual, maybe written on paper, maybe part of a survey. So, people aren’t really – it’s not confronted and it’s not really right in front of them and it’s… What kind of the thing that you often mention to tell people that this is an added value?

[BEN] Well, I’ve two things. I think that anything that goes beyond a word or a set of words is incrementally better, and so, I would never pooh-pooh fun sketches on a napkin. Or even non-designer-type sketches that end users or consumers would do in a co-creation or an ideation session. There can be great things to learn from that, but you wouldn’t want to necessarily think about the big processes – thumbs up/thumbs down, right? This is not, “Do we go forward or not?” It’s, “What did we learn from this and how would we incorporate this into the next iteration?” So, that’s my caveat to what my answer is. On the other hand, leaving things only in words is a failure mode. And I do this with my clients all the time. I’ll say, “Everybody take out a Post-It note and write this word down on it.” And it’ll be a word like – here’s my favourite one is collaboration. OK, so, we put the word “collaboration” up on a whiteboard because that’s where all good ideas land – on a whiteboard with a Post-It note that says “collaboration”. And then, what’s fascinating is, what does that mean, right? And very often, people will go around and they distill and they distill and they come down with this vision of a thing and it’s going to be a collaboration zone or a collaboration technology, or whatever it is. It’s the new standard bearer for what your new innovation project is going to be all about, but everybody has a completely different idea of what that means. And they could all be right, but if it was your job to build that thing, you would be way off – probably most of the time. And when you ask people to write down what it means, for some people, it means, well, we shared writing a document. We passed that document back and forth through email until it was finished and then we collaborated and that was the result of our collaboration. For other people, it’s literally we need a bunch of Toobers and Zots and fun playthings on a table and lots of whiteboard space, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and have some fun music playing in the background – that’s collaboration. For other people, it’s a conference call. So, what are you making? And if you leave it in the word, they’re just certain words and people love those words because they’re kind of sexy and fun and interesting, but they hide more than they reveal. And so, the minute you go from a word that’s kind of fuzzy and fun to talk about to something tangible, people go, “Oh, that’s not what I thought you meant.” And it’s horrifying – I’ve seen teams walk out of a meeting and come back a month later and they’ve all been working on different things because they had one word in their head and they were taking it in different directions. So, visualization is key to success, and the more tangible something gets as you take it from a Post-It note to a napkin sketch to a concept story or a storyboard, all the way through to something that humans are going to interact with in some capacity, there are multiple opportunities – and they don’t have to all be big and expensive. You can do things that are quick and not dirty, as long as your expectations are equally adjusted to what you need to get out of it and what you might get out of it if you’re lucky. Anyway, probably a long answer to your very good, short question.

[LANG] No, it’s really interesting.

[DUNCAN] It’s a great answer.

[LANG] You’d mentioned co-creation there a little bit and that’s something that, I think, there’s been some speaking of as well in our industry.

[BEN] Yes.

[LANG] Can you fill us in on co-creation. Like, how you actually harness people and get them engaged on something which may not necessarily be sexy or an interesting topic to the consumer, but it’s really obviously very important to your client, so that you actually – I guess my ultimate question is through co-creation, can you unlock the door to greater brilliance than more of a traditional approach?

[BEN] I would say the answer is probably yes. And I think that what falls under the bucket of co-creation is also large. So, what I’ve found to be pretty successful in this regard is to get people together in a setting that is, if not real, then is at least making a solid, playful effort at creating something of an immersion for them to get them into the right cognitive and emotional state. And so, we often do co-creation activities with people towards the end of projects where we may have done a bunch of initial fairly open-ended research, we’ve come up with some general opportunity spaces for people, for our clients to innovate in. And then we might bring end users or consumers in, and what we’re probably going to do is – here, I’ll give you an example. We did one on cooking and mixing and measuring and like really basic stuff. Like, when you think about cooking and baking, mixing and measuring has not been innovated in – in what 75 years?

[DUNCAN] If that…

[BEN] Whatever – it’s been a long time, right? It’s been a very basic kind of a thing. And so, getting people to engage with that is an interesting challenge. But we have tremendous visual information because we were in people’s homes and we watched them cook. And so, we created a fairly life-size kitchen environment to bring people into, and we had video stories of people just like them who were talking about how they cooked. And being able to use those research materials as a way to get a new batch of participants into the topic and having some connection to the challenges or that being able to and then share their own stories and, therefore, be in a projective state of mind can be really very effective. I think that the hang-up that a lot of clients have is that they think that that’s going to produce the idea – the one idea. Or that there will be some sort of consensus at the end of these things that yields the brilliance, and I think that’s a mistaken expectation. We often follow co-creation events with co-design events. So, what you learn in co-creation is often how far your users or consumers are already able to imagine and push beyond. You can learn sometimes what they feel like are barriers in the sense of, “Oh my God, I would never want to go there,” kind of a thing. You can learn a lot in the way that they attempt to solve problems and tell stories and imagine things working and not working in their own kitchens or wherever that is. So, the ideas that they come up with are actually a set of interesting things that you should tear apart. Like, “Oh, so this is really telling us the story about we have permission to live on the countertop, but we don’t have permission to be plugged in. We have permission…”. So, you’re pulling out of a session like that what I would often call consumer or user criteria for something like success. And also, like drop-dead, bozo no-noes for failure. And so, what that does is that sets up a professional ideation session where you have designers, engineers, market strategy people, etc. who roll up their sleeves and say, “OK, we learned this from the primary research. We learned this from co-creation. No what can we do with that?” Because that is a tremendous place to start from, as opposed to starting from the Post-It note on the wall.

[LANG] So, when you do those co-design sessions, is that also with the consumer or with the target audience, or is it that like what you said – with the engineers and the other folks…

[BEN] It’s more internal, yeah exactly. And because you’re really working on more fine tuning of ideas. You’re mixing and matching ideas. You’re trying to hybridize things and take them in different directions without… You don’t want, in that scenario, a person who’s judging the outcome, right? At that point, you’re really in a moment of trying to push the boundaries in different directions. And then, that’s often best handled by people who are really comfortable with doing that and with the ambiguity involved and looking to drive that. And that can often unfold over weeks. You do one session, pull things together, crystalize them, come back again after you’ve let your brain marinate for a week and you do it again and you often you wind up with some much more refined concepts that have all different kinds of nuance baked into them because you gave it time. You took some time in the field to really learn primary things from end users and consumers. You took time with consumers to hear how they would project their own solutions into it, and then you’re combining that with, of course, with some of the company’s own criteria involved. It needs to make the magical hundred-million. It needs to keep a certain factory functioning. It needs buy supplies from wherever, right? So, there are all sorts of interesting business criteria – you don’t want to spray those all over your consumers and users, but there is an important moment for them to play that roll.

[LANG] This might be slightly off topic, but I can sort of almost see the world of cars, with infotainment systems as a really fast-emerging that’s happened over the last 10 years or whatever.

[BEN] Yeah.

[LANG] Where even with like with where people put their smartphone when they’re driving – you can see the redesign of the consoles and dashboards. And the other interesting thing I find is it’s very fractured right now. Each company’s approach to the infotainment system and functionality and touch screen or a knob in the centre of the console – they’re quite different from each other so that we haven’t really got a standardized kind of thing. And I wonder if some of the techniques you talked about would have helped auto manufacturers to go along to where they’re at now.

[BEN] I can only imagine that it has. There’s – I haven’t done any work for big car companies. Happy to do that if they ever want to reach out. But I do think that you’re spot on with that. People are innovating in different directions. I think that there’s an underlying notion in that industry that drivers are going away. And so, there’s this – so much of this technology is moving so quickly that the sensibility for making really big investments is probably small.

[LANG] Yeah.

[BEN] So, here’s a funny example of that.

[DUNCAN] Awesome.

[BEN] Right. We did a project with a fast food company. This is years ago. You remember when key fobs were all the rage? Where you would put your loyalty card from the supermarket that goes on your keychain – it’s got a barcode or what have you on it, right? So anyway, this fast food company, they do tons of drive-through business, etc., etc., and they wanted people to scan their loyalty card at the drive-through because that way they get their discount, they get their favourite meals already pre-loaded in there, etc., etc. – speed everything up, right? So, we do a lot of work with this company over the years and there was this brilliant moment where we’ve got the key fob. We’re giving it to people. We’re taking it through the drive-through. And it becomes obvious what a classic epic fail this would be because where is the key fob?

[DUNCAN] On your keys.

[BEN] Where are you keys?

[DUNCAN] In your ignition.

[BEN] Yeah, right? So, a massive investment in key fobs and all that kind of stuff would’ve been a horrible idea. And they were able to find that out pretty quickly. But you can push a good idea really, really far in your head without sometimes hitting that reality moment, right? Where you’re like, “God, that doesn’t make any sense.” And sometimes it can go much further than you think. It’s hard to invest in technology that changes that quickly because that went to RFID, RFID goes to smartphones. So, how much are you going to invest in the console of a car and an entire infotainment system if in five years, half the cars are going to be driverless.

[LANG] Yeah.

[INTERVIEW PT.1 END]

[INTERSTIAL MUSIC]

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[INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

[INTERVIEW PT.2 BEGINNING]

[LANG] So, that actually maybe hits our next question here. I’m just curious about pitfalls you’ve observed when clients are looking to do the kind of research that you do. What are some things to watch for? Obviously, you mentioned very fast-evolving technology can run you out of relevance. Any other key things that you’ve observed over the years?

[BEN] Yeah, a few. I have two that are – sort of – seem contradictory but – well, they might be, but they’re still important. So, the first one is really not being focused enough on the criteria for success. And I talked about that a little bit. And I mean that is consumer criteria or user criteria for success. Often, companies are very focused on their own criteria for success, as they have to be because they’re businesses, right? But they’re often glossing over the user side of that. And so, having a very conscious way of articulating those at the end of research, I think, is really important. The second one is being overly focused on current functionality. And so, that’s the story that we talked about with the price-check machines. They were obsessed with the price-check machines and how they were going to impact today’s customers. Fast-forward 10 years, all of that is irrelevant. But, what they could have learned from that was what their customers – actual customers who are in their actual stores. So, not hypothetical customers, recruited in a survey or focus groups, but real humans in their stores – what did they, in Oklahoma! OK? So, this wasn’t in San Francisco Bay, OK? This is in Oklahoma in a small town, right? They had amazing ideas for what technology could help them to do in an in-store experience, and I’ll tell you right now, that company didn’t want to hear it. They just wanted the answer to the very limited question of, “Should we put these price-check machines in there or not?” So, being overly focused on that is bad. Assuming your customers or end users or stupid is another really bad one because they’re usually much more forward thinking, more curious than most of the folks out there that I work with give them credit for. And the last one is a lack of patience. You brought up quick and dirty. My usual answer to well we just want to do it quick and dirty is when a client says that or a potential client is that you’ve come to the wrong firm. Because we really don’t do quick and dirty. We can do quick things – relatively quick, but we don’t like the concept of quick and dirty. We like quick is good as long as you know how to train it and focus what you are trying to get out of it.

[LANG] Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. Where do you see the future? I mean maybe it’s a two-part question, but have you seen a great deal of evolution since you started in this path in 2001? Perhaps new technology advancements, changing consumer communication patterns, social media, whatever it’s been over the last almost 20 years and what’s it look like going forward, I guess, for your business?

[BEN] Yeah, well, dramatic change. I mean, it couldn’t be any more dramatic. When I first started doing this work, pretty much, people didn’t know what the heck you were talking about if you said ethnographic research or design research. Those were – they didn’t make any sense in a business context. What you refer to as traditional research was all the rage and got all the money and there were only a few companies and schools out there that were engaged in this notion of blending strategy, design and social science research from an observational standpoint or a cultural standpoint in that way. That was a very new thing back in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Nowadays, I get RFPs from people I’ve never met that say they want to do an ethnography. They want half a dozen unmet needs, and crisp insight statements, and etc., etc. And obviously it’s a bit shocking to see that, right? Because most of them don’t have the experience or else they would know you can’t guarantee finding a half-a-dozen unmet needs out there in the world. That seems pretty crazy, but that’s what I mean. It’s gone from something that nobody knew much of anything about – and I would have to do really a lot of explaining just to get in the door to now people asking for things by name and having a very particular set of expectations around them. So, that’s been huge. The other part of your question, the technology shift has also been dramatic, and does make other things possible, but my big fear is that it’s gone in a direction that is probably not healthy in the long run. And my sensibility is that this is a pendulum swing, but hopefully I’ll be around to see it swing back the other way. So, back in the old days, before there was all this technology, if we wanted to engage with people in what we call a self-documentary technique or approach, we would take disposable, actual cameras and create a little journal and put it in a Fed-Ex envelope with a return Few-Ex envelope and send it out to research participants and ask them to document something in their life. And then, they would send it back. And we might go out and visit them a week later and they knew a little bit more about us, and we knew a little bit about them, and it was a great way to get things started. And nowadays, of course, nobody does that. There’s all sorts of interesting research platforms where people can log on. They can take pictures and video and self-document almost much any aspect of their lives that they can, and I think that’s become something of a substitute for people. And that’s where, I think, there is a big mistake. It’s certainly faster, better and easier than sending out disposable cameras and sending them back and forth. Not doubt about it, but it doesn’t fulfil the really critical part of this work, which is about being present and having an experience alongside your end users or customers and having all that extra information you get from being in context. And, right now, I feel that people are just blowing that part of it off completely. They think, “Oh well, I can get 50 people on this research platform and they can tell me everything I need to know about this prototype or this set of sketches that I sent to them or what it was like last time they went to the doctor, or riding the bus – it doesn’t matter what it is. And they feel like that’s it. They’ve got everything they need to know. But they’ve only got like maybe half the story, and they don’t have any of the direct experience – meaning the clients don’t or the design team doesn’t or what have you. They don’t have that direct interaction so that they understand things at a more fundamental level, and I think that’s a mistake, but things are going that way. And the other really, I think, tragic thing that’s happening in our world is just this unrealistic notion that big data solves all, and that there’s some inherent truth in amassing all this information that seems to be swirling out there.

[LANG] Do you find that talk of big data is being viewed as a potential substitute or threat to observational research?

[BEN] Well, there’s a finite amount of money right now that people are willing to throw at anything, and big data’s the rage. There’s just wholesale budgets being shifted inside companies from one place to another. In the short term, this is certainly palpable. In the long term, I think it’s not going to be that different from some other experiences I’ve had with clients. Sometimes, I sit down with somebody and they’ll push literally a foot-and-a-half stack of documents across the desk to me and say, “We have all this quantitative data. We know all these things about these people in these segments or what have you. But we can’t do anything with it. We can’t see them as people anymore. We can’t talk to them. We can’t build something for them. We just know all this stuff about them and it’s decontextualized from anything real.” And then, you’re back out there in the world, trying to humanize an endless series of top box scores. And that’s – that’s our mission, right. I mean, that’s my mission in life: keep the human beings a part of all of this because otherwise, things just go off and I don’t know what they become but it’s certainly not pretty.

[LANG] Yeah, for sure. And obviously we’re in a smaller market here in Canada but over the years, I’ve noticed a surge in sort of qualitative research and then periods where it cools off and that kind of thing. I’ve sort of noticed, as of late, there’s less, I think, appetite for even your basic focus group or something like that or even interviews with people. It’s more, I think I’m not sure if it’s just the investment of time or what it is, but it’s interesting to see who things kind of ebb and flow.

[BEN] Yeah, it is, and I don’t know if there’s an exact, easy place to assign causality or anything to all of this. But like I said, what I think is that ultimately these are pendulum swings and there’s a point when people have different needs, and my anticipation is that some of that will come back when people realize that big data doesn’t solve all, or that maybe big data causes big problems. There’s a great book called – what is it – something of mass destruction? Weapons of Mass Destruction – great book, actually, which details a series of fairly horrifying stories about giant policy decisions that were made based on big data analytics. That can be an issue.

[LANG] So, I mean, we talked a little bit about what are some of the trends and the pendulums and things like that. What do you sort of see as the future? You mentioned that you’d like to see perhaps some of this might sort of swing back, but are there any other alterations on the horizon that could make prototype testing a little – adapt a little bit different, or that kind of thing?

[BEN] I would love to see some. And I think one of the big opportunities in the world that has not been fully realized is there is a notion, years ago when the dot com boom got started that’s probably discredited with its bust, but it was this idea of collaborating to compete, and I think that there are tremendous opportunities for big organizations that work together and interact with one another in very interesting ways to conduct research in a joint fashion so that you’re a) you’re not wasting money and time and b) you start to acknowledge that there are huge systemic interactions among and between the parts and pieces of our economy and of our behaviour and of our daily lives, and starting to knit those things together from a research standpoint would actually, I think, promote just a lot more well-being and creating more joy in the world and trimming probably atrocious amounts of waste. But people are pretty loath to do that. There’s a very few examples of it. We had a one really great example where we were lucky. They were, both companies were our clients and so – and they were each others’ partners. So, it worked out really, really well. One of them is a paper products company and the other’s a hospitality company. And so, the paper products company had cool new stuff they wanted to test and the hospitality company wanted to find out whether or not that was going to improve guest experiences. You know, you can’t really do testing of new paper products without a real-world hospitality situation to do that in. In the old days, that was – people would have to run two separate projects and try to sell each other on whether or not they were done right. But they end up talking together, creating a great research project where they share the insights that came out of it. What a concept, right? Sharing? It’s just insane, right? To share what they learned both about guest and experiences – about products and the prototypes and things like that. And then they had high confidence in the work because they were a part of conceptualizing it. And that’s just two companies, right? You think about how many different ways in which our institutions are interconnected, and yet we don’t take the time to think about, “How could we do something together and arrive at a better place?” Rather than everybody off and doing their own thing and trying to smash it together and hope it works.

[DUNCAN] Wow. Well, we’ve kept you for a while here, so I want to just ask one more question though. If someone wanted to learn more about prototype testing and the techniques that you use to do it, what would be a good place to get started with that?

[BEN] Yeah, you know there’s a couple of things that popped into my head. So, there are really a decent number of deign schools these days, such as – like here in Chicago it’s the Institute of Design in Chicago but there are others around the country and around the world, and many of them offer executive trainings and workshops in ways to get involved in these sorts of projects. And it’s really an inexpensive way for professionals to amp up their understanding and their knowledge about what’s possible. And, building on that, if that was exciting and they found it valuable, then you can hire interns and graduates from those programs who have skills in behavioural prototyping and understanding both the research and the design aspects of it, and so forth. So, I think that’s a great way. It’s low cost. It allows, I think, for an exposure to what’s new and what’s emerging from a technology standpoint, as well as from research and a real understanding of new product development and new service development, etc. And often, what I’ve found is that a number of my clients who’ve done these sorts of things, they wind up becoming more deeply engaged with that community because it is really a community of people who are interesting in innovation and design research and things like that. So, I think that’s probably the best way. Obviously, there’s books and things like but, as you can tell, I’m a bit of a freak for getting involved. And so, I think that, ultimately, if you really want to get something into your organization, you’re going to have to go there and try it out. Obviously, people could hire us, but I think that wasn’t your question.

[DUNCAN] Yeah. Well, speaking of trying things out, I was actually on your website just recently and I saw that you’ve got an new thing called – well, it’s a bit of a quiz. I’m wondering if you could tell me about that really quick.

[BEN] Oh yeah. Well, thanks for that.

[DUNCAN] No, it’s great. It’s a great resource.

[BEN] We have a little tab on our website – coniferresearch.com – called Research RX. And really, it’s a short, semi-fun quiz that helps organizations, companies, what have you figure out what’s the kind of right type of project to support what they’re trying to get done. The way we’ve been looking at it over the years, we really see that there’s basically three different kinds of projects. There’s ones that are sort of a big, fuzzy exploration. Another is more about kind of growing what you’ve got, and the third is really about refinement of concepts or prototypes or things like that. And there’s more to it than that. I don’t want to bore people to death with it, but the basic idea is that once you have a way to have a conversation between your agency of choice your company, your organization, a lot of times there’s just so much that is hidden in terms of what’s needed, how broadly does that need to be shared – there’s just all of these different kinds of fascinating questions, that rarely get packed into an RFP. And a lot of times, by the time an RFP is selected, a person is selected to do the work, it’s – you’re already a week late and running down the road. And so, this is an interesting way to begin the dialogue by trying to learn a little bit more about each other and how to think about the goals of a project and how that might flow through into the exact methodology that you would choose and what you should expect to come out of the results.

[DUNCAN] Well, that’s a really, really handy resource and I’ll make sure that we’ve got some information and a link to it so people can check it out on the podcast website.

[BEN] Super.

[DUNCAN] Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you coming on our little podcast. We really had a good time.

[BEN] Yeah, I did too. I think your efforts and, certainly, what we try to do in the world is to be as focused as we can on bringing more joy into the world and encouraging our clients to do the same thing. And, I guess it’s one of my favourite sayings is more joy, less BS. And it plays out and it’s so puritan in its approach. There’s an obsession – I’m sure you guys have run into it, right? You go do research and all your clients want to know where the pain points are and it literally is masochistic. It’s like, “Tell me all the ways in which we’re hurting people.” And I can’t help think that, well, don’t you want to know when they smile? Or laugh? Or say that was good? Because, really, that’s the good stuff, right? And I can’t tell you – yes, I can. I can tell you I have never, ever, ever – in 20+ years of doing this kind of work – had anyone tell me, “I just want to buy the thing that sucks less. Of all the things on the shelf or in the display, which one sucks the least because that’s the one I want.” No. You want to make people happy. So, if you only think of those pain points, you’re never going to get to the joy. So, I try to tell people, start with the joy. What makes people happy? Focus on that like a laser and do your best to deliver on that because that, I think, is the path to success.

[DUNCAN] Well, right on. We really appreciate you coming on and really look forward to talking again in the future.

[BEN] Yeah, thanks gentlemen.

[DUNCAN] Any time.

[BEN] Talk to you guys soon, Duncan and Lang.

[END INTERVIEW SEGMENT 2]

[INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

[DUNCAN] And there you have it. I’d like to thank our research director, Lang McGilp, for taking the time out of a busy schedule to lend his expertise to the conversation. And I’d really like to thank Ben Jacobson for coming on the podcast and sharing his thoughts, ideas and experience to the episode. While the episode interview was one of the longest we’ve done yet, I think we could have easily gone another hour it was so interesting. If you’d like to learn more about Conifer Research and the prototype testing they do, you can find them at www.coniferresearch.com. On their website, you can also check out the Research RX tool that we spoke about in this episode. If you didn’t get the URL, we’ve posted the information on our website at insightrix.com/podcast. And of course, we’d like to thank you – our awesome and loyal listeners. Without you, none of this would be possible. If you enjoy Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast, why not take a minute to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or anywhere else you access your podcasts. It would mean a lot to us, and it helps get the show in front of more people like you – folks with an interest in research. And if you’d like to know more about Insightrix Research, you can check out our website at Insightrix dot com, or follow us on social media on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. We’ll be back in another few weeks with another episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

The 2019 Insights Innovation Exchange North America (IIeX NA) conference was in Austin, Texas in April and members of the Insightrix Communities team were in attendance – and we get to hear all about it!

To kick off the episode, we speak with a client success manager with our Insightrix Communities division, to get the scoop on all the goings-on at the conference, what the Insightrix Communities team got up to while they were there and more.

"The more you can tell a better story, the more you can tell a visual story. You know your clients love it."

- Priscilla McKinney, Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Mama Bird at Little Bird Marketing

Priscilla was also in attendance at IIeX NA 2019 this year doing a master class presentation, and we were lucky to get her on the podcast to talk all about it and get a recap, as well as to pick her brain on all kinds of stuff related to marketing businesses in challenging industries – like market research.

For this episode, we were joined again by Sharday Torgerson, our marketing guru here at Insightrix, as episode co-host who lent her experience and expertise to the conversation.

In our action-packed chat with Priscilla, we left nothing on the cutting room floor. Priscilla, Duncan and Sharday discuss persona building and strategies, long-winded buyers’ journeys, how businesses marketing in challenging industries can break through the noise and get noticed, new innovations in marketing and market research (and established ones that still seem pretty innovative) and much, much more.

You can learn more about Little Bird Marketing on their website: www.littlebirdmarketing.com/

There, you can find all kinds of resources, including information on building client personas, social media engagement, email campaign tips and much more: www.littlebirdmarketing.com/resources/

Little Bird Marketing has partnered with Greenbook to host the North America Insights Marketing Day event in Denver in October. You can check out the event website for details: www.insights-marketing.org

If you’d like to learn more about the Insights Innovation Exchange conference, check out their website: iiex-na.insightinnovation.org/

Get more content from Insightrix Research

Insightrix Research releases new content regularly! Check out the Insightrix blog roll for informative articles about everything and anything market research-related.

You can follow Insightrix on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to make sure you never miss a video.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published!

Episode Transcript

[00:01] Duncan: Hello and welcome to episode 11 Stories of Market Research, the Insightrix podcast. My name is Duncan McGregor, the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Insightrix Research, and your podcast host. In this episode I’m joined again by my co-host for the episode, our marketing Guru here at Insightrix, Sharday Torgerson. How’s it going Sharday? Thanks for co-hosting the episode with me.

[00:19] Sharday: Yeah. Not too bad. Any time I can chat about marketing, I’m usually the first in line to do so. But that’s a typical millennial behaviour.

[00:27] Duncan: Yeah, no, I totally get it though. It’s a ton of fun. So in this episode, we’re talking to Jaclyn Whitley, the Client Success Manager with our Insightrix community software division who, along with some other members in Insightrix team, was lucky to attend the Insights Innovation Exchange North America conference – say that five times fast.

It was in Austin last April. She had a chance to attend some of the awesome workshops and master classes, as well as to network and meet some other folks who are in our business. While she was there, she and the Insightrix Communities team had a chance to meet with the team from Little Bird Marketing from out of Joplin, Missouri down in the United States.

Their CEO and Mama Bird, Priscilla McKinney, was doing a master class at the conference too, and as luck would have it, we got a chance to get on the phone and chat with her, as well. Priscilla McKinney is the CEO of Little Bird Marketing, and was an awesome person to chat with about market research and marketing.

Her marketing company’s got a lot of experience doing marketing for businesses and industries that a lot of people may consider challenging to market – like market research. Since this is a topic that’s close to both of our hearts, Sharday and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick her brain about some of the challenges she sees in marketing businesses that may pose bigger challenges.

[01:35] Sharday: Yeah, it was, honestly, it was really great to discuss marketing for our own company, but really to get a lot of validation out of our current efforts with Priscilla. We had a lot of good back and forths and a lot of “aha” moments I think that we tend to all share as marketers. But it was really nice and it was great to get obviously insight from someone who clearly has her name within this industry.

[02:00] Duncan: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.I really got a lot out of talking with her on the podcast and I’m sure our listeners will too. So without further ado, here’s Episode 11 of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

[Intro music]

[02:35] Duncan: I’m here Jaclyn Whitley, our Client Success Manager for the Insightrix Communities division here at Insightrix Research. How’s it going today?

[02:41] Jaclyn: Good. Thank you. 

[02:42] Duncan: Yeah, well right on. You were just recently down in Austin, Texas for a little while. How was it

[02:46] Jaclyn: Yes, it was really good. It was nice and warm. It was very nice.

[02:50] Duncan: Have you ever been to Texas before?

[02:51] Jaclyn: No, never. First time in Texas. 

[02:53] Duncan: Right on. Got to eat a lot of barbecue, I imagine, and get some sun?

[02:56] Jaclyn: Yeah… Shrimp boil?

[02:57] Duncan: Oh, right on!

[02:58] Jaclyn: Yeah. No – crawfish! Where they dump all the crawfish on the table. What is that called?

[03:03] Duncan: I think a crawfish boil.

[03:04] Jaclyn: Crawfish boil, yeah. 

[03:05] Duncan: That sounds like a lot of fun.

[03:06] Jaclyn: I tried a crawfish – not for me…

[03:08] Duncan: No? Not for you?

[03:08] Jaclyn: No, but I tried it. 

[03:10] Duncan: We won’t tell anyone. So, the reason you were down there is you were at the 2019 Insights Innovation Exchange North America conference. It was in Austin this year. Can you tell us about that conference? What’s it all about?

[03:23] Jaclyn: Yeah, it was a really great conference, a big conference. It’s a place where a market researchers, agency folks and marketing people, and then also some software companies… they all get together and they share learnings and insights and exchange ideas.

[03:40] Duncan: That sounds like a lot of fun. What’d you guys get up to while you were down there with the Communities division?

[03:45] Jaclyn: We attended a bunch of workshops and networking events and just meeting a lot of really good people in the market research industry. It was nice to hear some of the challenges that other folks are having is the similar challenges that we have. So we’re not alone. So…

[04:03] Duncan: Cool. So, I imagine you got to meet a lot of people and shake a lot of hands while you were there.

[04:08] Jaclyn: Yes. Yeah. Lots of people. Yes. A lot of people.

[04:10] Duncan: So well actually, the reason we were talking about this right now is that later in the episode we’re going to have a chance to talk to Priscilla McKinney. She’s the… what she calls the Mama Bird over at Little Bird Marketing. They’re a marketing agency down in, Joplin, Missouri. And she was there at the Insight Innovation Exchange this year. Did you get a chance to meet her? I heard you guys met her team.

[04:31] Jaclyn: Yeah, no, I didn’t get to meet her personally. I know she was out an about. She had a speaking engagement, but I did meet her team and they were very busy at the conference. So, it was actually… ran into them a few times, not just once, but a few times over the course of the three days. So, it was good.

[04:48] Duncan: Excellent. Excellent. Hey, just off the top of my head – anybody else from the Communities division make it down there with you?

[04:53] Jaclyn: Yes. My colleague Evan Goodfellow – he also made the trek over to Austin, so he was down there, as well.

[04:58] Duncan: Oh, he’s actually met Priscilla before, hasn’t he?

[05:00] Jaclyn: Yes. Yeah, I believe he met her in – in Bangkok at the IIeX Conference last fall in 2018.

[05:05] Duncan: Excellent. They do those things all over the world, hey?

[05:08] Jaclyn: Yeah, they do. 

[05:09] Duncan: I was just checking and they’ve got the next one in Latin America. It’s actually the IIeX Latin America. They’re doing it in Medellín, Columbia this year in June 12 and 13, and then they’re doing another one next year in Amsterdam. So this thing goes all over the world. So, pretty lucky you got a chance to check it out, right?

[05:27] Jaclyn: Yeah, yeah, it was pretty neat. There was actually… I ran to a few people that have been to not just the North American conference but a few other IIeX conferences on other continents. So it was kind of neat.

[05:39] Duncan: That’s awesome. Well, anything new and exciting coming up from the Communities division lately.

[05:44] Jaclyn: So, we are working on enhancing our qualitative features. So your discussions, right? So, we’re working on enhancing our image uploads, video uploads – working on nested comments and just making sure the user experience is what it should be.

[06:01] Duncan: That sounds really cool. That’s awesome. And that we’ll be rolling out in the next update?

[06:05] Jaclyn: Yeah, there are some features coming, rolling out in 3.1. and then other features we’ll be rolling out in few 3.2, so…

[06:11] Duncan: Oh, that sounds awesome. I’m super jealous. You got to get a chance to run down to Austin. It’s one of my favourite places. So…

[06:18] Jaclyn: Yeah, I didn’t exactly run down. It was a long day. There were three flights I had to take, but I made it there.

[06:24] Duncan: That sounds awesome, actually. Although I’m not a big fan of airports, but well maybe next time you head down there, you’ll drag me there with you.

[06:32] Jaclyn: Yes. 

[06:33] Duncan: Right on. Well, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate you joining us Jaclyn.

[07:14] Jaclyn: Thanks for having me!

[Music/Commercial]

[07:27] Duncan: The Insightrix Communities platform is your market research online panel solution. This all encompassing platform includes both qualitative and quantitative capabilities and updates in real time for quick results.

Whether you’re engaging with stakeholders on an ongoing basis or whether you have quick ad hoc projects to implement, the Insightrix Communities online market research platform includes options and features to meet your unique research needs.

Insightrix Communities works continuously to develop and enhance robust features to meet market research demands. For more information about the Insightrix Communities online market research panel software, check out the website at www.insightrixcommunities.com. 

[Music]

[08:21] Duncan: All right, we’ve got Priscilla McKinney from Little Bird Marketing down from Joplin, Missouri on the phone. How’s it going today, Priscilla? Thanks for joining us.

[08:27] Priscilla: It’s awesome. I’m so excited to be on your show.

[08:30] Duncan: Yeah, really glad to have you. The reason we got you on today is that recently some members of our staff from our Communities software division was down at the IIeX North America Summit down in Austin. They said they had an amazing time and said that they ran into some of your staff down there. And I was like, well, that’d be a great opportunity to have a chat about your presentation down there.

[8:51] Priscilla: Well, I won’t tell you all the things we did down there. We’ll just talk about the business stuff.

[08:56] Duncan: That sounds awesome. Honestly, how was it down in Austin this time of year? It’s gotta be nice.

[09:03] Priscilla: Oh my gosh, it was so great. And I mean, the food in Austin, it’s ridiculous. The music was amazing and you would think, oh, we were at a market research conference – we didn’t get to see music. No, we did. And there was a live Karaoke night one night. It was just super great. So, we got the music. We got the food. We got really the whole scene. It was really great venue.

[09:22] Duncan: I’m pretty jealous. I know the barbecue scene down there is pretty awesome. Pretty jealous! So, the masterclass you did at Austin called Effective Content Strategies for Being Heard Above the Noise – that was it, right?

[09:34] Priscilla: Yeah.

[09:35] Duncan: Now, you do a lot of work from market research companies – something a little close to my heart – and if I’m wondering if I could pick your brain about the masterclass. Could I get you to tell us a little bit about it?

[09:43] Priscilla: Sure, I’d love to. It’s really the platform from which I speak, which is, personas. If you don’t know who your audience is, if you haven’t crafted a very well-thought-through persona, then you’re just writing. And if you’re writing to just anybody, then my personal opinion is you’re writing to nobody.

And so, a lot of people get very frustrated… they’re writing. They’re doing all these blogs. They’re doing social posts. They feel like they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing and nothing’s working. And I come at that and try and help the market research firms and obviously other industries.

But to say, you know why you’re not being heard above the noise is because you’re not any different. And they like to think that they’re different and they like to talk about how different they are. And I talk about this in a very funny way in my presentation about how everybody, everybody who comes to me is convinced that they’re the special little snowflake. This is the way we do ethnographic research, and this is how we pull sample in, and this is how we do shop-alongs.

And they’ll go on about, well, we’re qualitative and we’re quantitative – and I don’t care what they’re putting in. They think that they – just talking and talking and talking about themselves. And my point to them is that, you know what? People don’t care if it’s not relevant to them. And so, while they may be a very special, little intricate snowflake, if you really can understand the buyer’s perspective, they open the door and they look out and it’s a blizzard.

[11:09] Sharday: To that point Priscilla, I think being able to segment a lot
of these audiences, as well, is beneficial to market research or
marketing market research because even in my experience, and to your point, it’s a lot of people will come to you with the research problem. But at the end of the day, I think everyone has a business problem that research can solve. So, a lot of the times it’s being able to really dive down into their segment through personification to really be able to assist and assess their needs. So…

[11:40] Priscilla: You’re so right. And just for example, let’s just take one example of that. So if someone says, well, market research and then we’re the best at really intense ethnography. Okay, well, so who cares? What the client is thinking is, I don’t understand how clients and consumers are using my product in the real world. If you can solve that and tell me that, and along the way, what you do to solve that is do an ethnography – great. I really don’t even freaking care.

But then we write all of our content about ethnography is or whatever, and obviously I’m beating a dead horse with this example, but they need to really think about it from the client’s perspective. What are the emerging and what are the persistent problems that your most ideal client has – and write content around that.

[12:30] Sharday: Yeah, I think there’s a really interesting nugget of information in there. Even working with clients that are willing to be maybe a little bit more innovative in some of the projects that they’re doing. So, a lot of the times, we will work with clients even to help them create personifications, obviously through the use of market research. But we are noticing more and more, even on the sales side of market research, that personification has started and segmentation is starting to slowly become even a part of our sales opportunities.

For example, even a couple of days ago, me and my team had helped with a proposal for a large pharmaceutical organization, and a big concern of theirs was really being able to try to nail down some of these personas that they themselves can be creating content strategies. And when you’re working in an environment around fundraising, I think that there’s an opportunity there to even sell them on how market research can position this opportunity with them through personification.

So, we’re already seeing this again as both a tactic for market research to market ourselves, but we’re also seeing our clients, need this as well in their research.

[13:46] Priscilla: Right. You know what? I mean you hit the nail on the head. It doesn’t matter if it’s fundraising or if it’s a consumer goods – people either give for their own reasons or they buy for their own reasons. That really doesn’t matter. So, talking directly to that end user in a way that makes sense to them and engages them, that’s really the only thing we have going for us.

[14:11] Sharday: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think we can both agree that buyer journeys itself – they can be pretty long-winded in B2B, especially things like market research, and it can be quite challenging to market. So, I think a question for you Priscilla, is that what are some kind of methods you and Little Bird Marketing use to maybe get around this?

[14:33] Priscilla: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, we’ve really honed our skills on personas and I have to say it’s probably our sharpest tool in the box. But I have a couple of questions that I like to ask, you know, when we’re creating buyer personas. And I’ve got to say, I am so in my element when I’m in the client’s boardroom and we’ve got the stakeholders around and we’re talking, and it just the conversations get so juicy it’s just awesome, you know? And I just love it. And I don’t take any… I mean, either there has to be a recorder going or someone else needs to be taking notes because I’m, like, in it. So, I think there’s some secret sauce that happens there, but I’ll share a couple of questions.

One set of a twin of questions that I’d like to ask is what keeps your most ideal client up on a Sunday night? And conversely, what gets them going on a Monday morning? Because those are very deep motivators. And so, we moved beyond what’s their age, what’s their gender, what is their role at work. Yeah, it is important to understand what level of seniority do they have. But like, for example, we can dig in a little bit deeper and I’m going to go a little listicle on this, but I think this will really resonate.

A lot of people say, oh, what’s the ideal role? So, let’s say I need an insights brand manager to buy from me. But there’s a new phenomenon in certain work cultures, and sometimes even more in deeply siloed environments, where the person who makes the decision may not be the ideal client persona for you to create. And here’s why, I’m sitting here as a CEO at a desk and then let’s just say, for example, I want to find someone who can help us, talk with clients in a geofencing target on text messages, right?

So, let me assure you that I don’t go to Google and I don’t go home and I don’t go calling a bunch of people. I say to somebody on my team, I go to my executive director and I say, “Hey, you know what I need, I need blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Lets give me three options. And so this person in my company is what I would refer to and what one of my good friends, Tim Hughes, who wrote a fantastic book about social selling. He refers to a change makers.

And I really believe that sometimes in buyer personas we get really fixated on who is the person who’s making that end decision, but it’s not always that person that we need to get fixated on. Sometimes, it’s the person who is gathering the information. We need to make them an evangelist for our company. We need to make them a mouthpiece. We need to load their lips with, understanding like, really getting excited about how our product or service is going to relieve these problems and make them look good in front of this box they’re going to go present it to.

So, it’s the very, very deep and so it’s not just on the surface like, well who are the personas and let’s ask the questions. It’s really understanding the construct and the soup that we’re swimming in when we’re making buying decisions in business.

[17:39] Sharday: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s a matter of breaking through the noise and allowing your brand to get noticed even within the context of selling a product. Now, you have an opportunity to empower your client and that decision maker, or not even a decision make, the one who is taking this to the decision maker. To your point, is going to be empowered to sell your products. So not only are you creating an advocate at the end of the day, but you’re also allowing them to be able to feel confident that your research is going to help them get further.

[18:11] Duncan: Sort of marketing people who are buy-in getters rather than decision makers, right?

[18:16] Priscilla: Exactly. I mean, have you guys found this? What have you found in talking with people about persona work?

[18:21] Sharday: Oh, goodness. Again, we are noticing that this is becoming a more common, I would hate to say buzzword, but personification is sort of a bit of a buzz topic these days. And it’s great for us because we really are both being on the market research, or rather than the market research industry, but also being marketers, we see the benefits full circle. And when we get access to statistical information, that also helps us kind of be able to understand who these segments are – or having some insight as to what these industries are like or how we can fit better in the geographic locations, I feel is quite invaluable. So to that point, we’re seeing the need.

In fact right, now Duncan and I are actually working on a couple of audience analysis pieces so that we can be positioning some of our products a little bit better. While we were noticing that this is something that we need to do every year, we’re starting to actually recognize that this is becoming a bi-annual and sometimes even a quarterly requirement, so that we are keeping on the demands of our personas.

[19:31] Priscilla: That’s so true. Yeah. What did you find when you came… were there were like red flags that came up? What made you think, “Oh my gosh, do we need to go back and change our persona or re-understand who our actual buyer is?” We hit that and we realized that we were missing one in our own company. And we’re like, oh my gosh, it’s not ideal. It would, talking with the CEO for us might be a good conversation starter, but we have identified that is the owner, we do not want them. We do not want them making the decision. We don’t want them in that room.

They actually cause a lot of problems for us. Obviously not who they are. But, you know, the way they go about making decisions… we need what we’ve identified, one of our personas is this girl called C-Suite Stacy.

Yeah, she’s at the C-suite. She got a table, you know seat at the table. But she’s heavily invested, but she does not own the company. It gives through that little bit of freedom of… like it’s not her baby. I feel like with the CEOs, sometimes I’m ripping the baby out of their arms and they’re just like, “No”. And they’re not… I wouldn’t say free with their money.

Certainly, it’s their money, but you know what I mean. They can’t sometimes be objective enough with the marketing spend to let us do the real work. And so identified that there was someone else. So did you guys find that? Was there a red flag that needs you realize?

[20:52] Sharday: Yeah, I think what makes us not to be the unique snowflakes here, but actually I think sometimes what makes us unique, in Saskatchewan specifically, and maybe even Canada, is we tend to ride a line as a market research firm between both research and software. So, we have a full research and development team at Insightrix that actually developed proprietary software that actually assists with our needs. So, things like SMS surveys, SMS alerts, online voting… But to your point, one of them is actually our online communities, which is the reason why you met a couple of folks at the conference because they were there sharing their – one of our new tools.

But what we ended up finding out when we were, created pre-implementation plans for online communities is that we were building a product for people that we assumed were making the decisions. And when we actually pulled back the curtain, started to really look at who was actually downloading the eBooks, who is actually contacting us to ask for pricing, who is actually doing the demos…

Once we really started to actually position and target – not necessarily the folks that are doing it, but understanding their needs in that regard – we actually started to recognize that a majority purchaser for online communities were actually other market researchers.

[22:15] Priscilla: Oh my God. It’s so beautiful. That’s such an amazing gut-check.

[22:20] Sharday: It was light bulb that just hit us and it was quite a special moment because it allowed us to completely re-position our messaging to essentially say, you know what, we the market researchers are helping you build something for you, the market researchers. And I think it was a really great opportunity for us to say, hey listen, we need to be able to put this product in front of the people who are actually coming to us and asking for it.

[22:46] Priscilla: Oh my God. Okay. So let me add a little bit of fuel to that fire.

[22:49] Duncan: Please do.

[22:51] Priscilla: So I love these. I’ve got a couple of numbers to throw at you, but when you talk about, it was different people coming to you. Well of course, with as soon as we talk about how do people find people or how… of course everybody is just looking down. We’re on a podcast, so it’s hard for me to gesture exactly. But you know what I’m doing. I’m kind of looking down at my phone and I’m twiddling my thumbs and then I’m texting somewhere, right? I’m Googling something because the moment I need something…

At this point 86% of buyers now conduct non-branded search queries for what they need. Non-branded. So they’re not looking for Insightrix. They’re just looking like I need blah blah blah. You know, and whether it’s an orange spatula or it’s a market research software platform, this is what we as humans are doing right now.

But this is what is really telltale to me. That’s 86%. But 95% of buyers today consider content as trustworthy when they are evaluating a company. Obviously, there’s some platforms that are more or less trustworthy. But, here’s my last piece I’d say to that, is that now the average buyer consumes almost 12 pieces of content before they make a purchase decision. So, when you talk about, you realize it was a different buyer in like, well first of all, you know they are going online. So, even if you were broadcasting a message, they’re conducting their search elsewhere. But then if you are one of the pieces of content they come into contact with, 95% of them are going to believe you, whatever it is you to say.

And if 95% of them believe you and they continue to keep reading – out of the 12 that it takes them to make a decision – the question is how many of those pieces are yours? How many pieces of those pieces of content that they read were relevant to who they are? And that is so key about then you shifting gears, and realigning your marketing and your marketing message around, and for the benefit of, that newly identified ideal client buyer. Because if they find it relevant, they will keep reading yours. And I would like for all 12 of the pieces of content people read about marketing to be mine and then there is no contest.

[25:03] Duncan: You become the brand. You’re now Kleenex, right?

[25:04] Sharday: And I think to add to that, Priscilla because I totally agree. And I think, one of the situations we often find ourselves in, being both from Canada and then perhaps a from a smaller urban area within the nation, that a lot of the times we tend to assume that our geographic location may help or hinder. But I think what we’re recognizing, and through the work of buyer journeys in the works through personification, is that we can think a lot bigger and we can use these types of tools and these methodologies to bring us out of Saskatchewan and show the breadth of the research that we do.

Because we do work across the world and we have many clients from as far as Singapore to Australia. And we tend to sometimes put ourselves in a little bit of the assumption that we are just from Saskatchewan. But I think through the power of personifying some of our buyer journeys, we’ve recognized that.

And again, to your point, as long as we’re getting the right information in front of the right people, they tend to really consider you a credible brand. At the end of the day – and a lot of the times, they’ll end up contacting you as a result.

[26:16] Priscilla: Yeah. Oh my gosh, it’s very, very powerful.

[26:18] Sharday: It is powerful.

[26:20] Priscilla: So when you were at IIeX in Austin this year, because obviously it’s all about innovation, did you feel like people were getting that message, the conversations you were having?

[26:30] Duncan: You know, I talked to Jacqueline Whitely; she was actually our rep who was down there – she was there with Evan Goodfellow, who’s also another person from our Communities division. While they were down there, they said they were getting a lot of that actually.

[26:44] Sharday: Yeah, I think on the flip side, though, we also recognize that a lot of the things we were doing and have been doing for say eight years like online surveys, we found out it’s still very quite innovative in that part of the country. And it’s not to say that people aren’t doing online surveys, but we have built a culture around our brand that online surveys are a big component of our research. And we’ve been doing it for many years, so we almost don’t even consider it an innovative technology or a methodology anymore. But what’s really neat is where we had the opportunity to share some of our experiences with online communities and online surveys and notice that folks thought we were quite innovative as a response to that.

So, a lot of the times we’re assuming, okay, we’re kind of in the middle of Canada and it’s hard to reach out. But what we’re seeing when we are reaching out, how innovative we can be. But when you actually go to these types of conferences, the amount of ideas you can get from others and the collective information you can take away from that – I mean, we were so fired up when Jacqueline got home and got to share all of these takeaways from such an amazing conference.

[27:58] Priscilla: Well, I truly believe that this is not the era of the inventor. But this is the era of the innovator. And so while you’re saying, an online survey, okay, you didn’t invent it – but are you using it in a way that is meaningful to the modern consumer? And from that, are we writing these questions and are we able to really have solid methodology and are we able to pull these amazing insights from it. And, are we able to really present back to the stakeholders some kind of a learning journey. What did they learn from paying for this survey?

[28:44] Sharday: Absolutely. 

[28:45] Priscilla: Yeah, were there great insights? Sure. Can we make the visual? Sure. Going on and on. And obviously I’m a marketer, but I speak to everybody in MR, so I know what they’re getting after. But at the end of the day, the client that you’re talking about, like you want to talk to somebody who would be buying your software, your platform, they don’t really care to know what you’re saying… That it’s a survey and this is what we’re doing. What they want to know is, am I going to learn something through this process about my buyer? Is this going to help my ideation flow? Is this going to help our R&D department? Is this going to help us change or fine tune our marketing message? Is this in the end… Is this going to increase sales? That’s what they care about.

[29:31] Sharday: Yeah. There still already concerned about the outcome of the project and that’s an obvious with market research. Because we’re so used to being a part, especially marketing market research, I’m so used to being a part of the concept portion of working on these projects. But we often, because of that, we sometimes forget that a lot of these folks are really just coming to us because we help them make better decisions at the end of the day. The information we give them is only just to make better business decisions and that’s what they’re after.

So, I think on top of that, Priscilla, one thing that we recognize, it’s a big change in the game if you will, is syndication. So, working on syndicated research where you know we can run independent studies on topics that matter to people. For instance, a social media usage in a part a of Canada that might not necessarily get a lot of coverage, is an opportunity for our business to kind of position us as thought leaders. And as the folks that you go to for this information. And we’ve noticed that syndicated research is an opportunity for people to purchase market research without having to jump through the loops of custom.

So, they can just jump on our website and we know that they need this answer, they recognize that this is the information that they can purchase, they throw in their credit card and they have a report at the end of it. Not only on our side of things that did we not necessarily have to assist them in any way so that… and we are always there to assist. But if people just need to go out there and really get that answer, that is what they’re going to do. And that’s how a lot of folks and buyers and consumers, that’s how they’re empowered today.

[31:12] Priscilla: Right. Yeah. Very empowered. And they’re also empowered to turn you off.

[31:18] Sharday: Absolutely. 

[31:18] Duncan: One hundred percent.

[31:18] Priscilla: The can follow you on a channel and they can unfollow you.

[31:25] Duncan: That’s something definitely worth managing too, for sure. Now, since we’ve got you on the phone, I’m not going to waste this opportunity. I want to get your take, personally as somebody who markets market research firms a lot, as well as other challenging industries. What’s your take on breaking through other than personification, that you can actually use market research in your own marketing?

[31:45] Priscilla: Oh yeah, that really great. Well, here’s one quick way that anybody can use market research and fund it is as we all know, spend a little money doing a Facebook ad. Spend a little money doing a Google ad. And when I mean little, I mean little like 50 bucks. Then a $100.You can find out what people are interested – go on Linkedin. If you’re a B2B, go on Linkedin. So, I think what you were asking me is like, what are some tips, inside market research specifically? But I will say this as my overall observation, I find it incredibly ironic and a little bit sad that market research companies don’t do market research for themselves, and don’t typically validate their own marketing messages through market research.

[32:36] Duncan: It’s weird, right?

[32:38] Sharday: It’s such a meta concept. It’s not to say we experience it, but I’d be hard pressed to say that that’s not something we’ve talked about in the recent past.

[32:50] Duncan: Yeah. Well, there’s always needed to know more about how your marketing is doing, how your initiatives are going.

[32:54] Sharday: And I’m sure we all do a customer satisfaction, Duncan, right? Like we’re all aware of the little market research, right?

[33:00] Duncan: I was just about to say that.

[33:02] Sharday: Right? But yeah, you’re right Priscilla. I think there’s something to, recognizing that we have a lot of these tools, as well, and how we use them is only going to empower our marketing even further.

[33:13] Priscilla: Right, and some of the things, I think, that market researchers leave behind is it with what they have not been very astute about is, first of all, podcasts, audio. And here you were on… And we use this tool. We leverage it to get right intimate – right into people’s ear buds. That’s very close at hand. They know our voices. They’re willing to hear us out. It’s like I didn’t have to fly to a hotel room in a conference somewhere, and get to speak to 100 people. It’s like, we’ll have 2000 people, tune into our podcast. And that’s just a quick way to get at… so people don’t appreciate what it takes to bring your content above the noise.

Well, they completely forget about audio. I think they also forget about video, and video – it’s insane. It’s insane how easy it is. And we’ve got these $1,000 phones we walk around with, and then everybody just kind of doesn’t want to get in front of it. And it doesn’t… people aren’t like demanding like Scorsese quality video when it comes to understanding something like surveys, or like a platform or what’s the right mix. You know, I’ve worked with a client out of Burbank, Think Now, and they do, they specialize in sample for Hispanic and African American and Asian American audiences. This is talking really specifically about the changing face of the American consumer and understanding your sample. That’s a very amazing, amazing conversation that you can have.

But there’s no reason why we can’t have that so quickly on video.

[34:46] Duncan: Webinars, that kind of thing, too…

[34:48] Priscilla: Audio… oh my gosh. It’s just crazy. This idea that content needs to be in video, it also just needs to be visual. You have know this from presenting your findings, the more you can tell a better story, the more you can tell a visual story. You know your clients love it. And so, all these amplification tools that are out there from, podcasts to writing your content around a particular topic you want to own – there’s just a lot of little tips and tricks there that I think a lot of them, MR firms, they just walk away from.

[35:19] Duncan: What’s neat about those amplification tools is that they’ve all got their own little back ends to that you can break into, start digging around, find out who’s downloading your material, find out who’s looking at your content, who’s engaging with it, and start using that to inform your own buyer journey.

[35:33] Priscilla: Right. Oh my gosh, that’s a really, really great point. Because again, we talking about like when are the red flags? What are the signs that maybe you’re out of touch with your ideal clients. If you took a guess about who’s downloading your things that your guides off, your landing page, and you go look and you look at those emails and they’re not even remotely the kinds of companies do the kinds of positions or titles that you thought, you wrote them for, then you probably have a persona problem. 

[36:06] Duncan: One of the great thing about getting across all those different amplification tools like Facebook, YouTube, whatnot – is that certain people who might engage with your landing pages might not be engaging with your podcast. So, it helps you identify who’s using what, who’s looking at what and where maybe that content should be pointed.

[36:20] Priscilla: Right. And when you’re – I’ll add something to that. I haven’t asked this question, but let me just add, another thing I see that just really drives me crazy is that people come at the marketing and also with, oh I have my favorite spots. Oh, I love Linkedin, or, oh, I love Twitter, I don’t care, Insta whatever. And then so then they think that’s where everything should be. Oh, that’s where it’s all happening. I get that you love Insta – but it’s not going to work for with your product, you know? And so sometimes we get these little pet channels that we like. And I like to, open up sometimes as conversation when I’m speaking and just add, do a quick poll. I’m like you guys are all market researchers. He like surveys. Let’s do one, let’s get the numbers.

And I’m like, how many of you guys are died-in-the-wool Uber fans? Raise of hands. How many of you are Lyft fans? And when I was in London, I even was like, hey, how many people Black Cab all the way? And people have their preferred vehicles. 

And I’m like, okay, great. That those are the numbers. Now raise your hand if the last time you got in one of those vehicles, you told the driver, take me anywhere you want to go. Crickets, right? Because that’s just crazy. But what happens is that people go, “Oh YouTube is the place.” YouTube loves YouTube. YouTube wants you to do certain things and it’s going to push you to do certain things. If that’s not in alignment with your strategy and not important to your personas, waste of time. I mean, I can just go down the list and that is just true.

So, we’ve got to be careful about these little pet loves we have for different channels and make sure that we’re really seeing things from the perspective of our ideal client buyer.

[37:55] Sharday: So, I think something that hit me that Duncan had said, is within market research or marketing market research, we recognize that validating or an informing those initiatives are quite important. And that’s why doing market research for market research will help deliver on that. Because something that I even experience as a marketer for this business is, again, we do find that we end up working on some assumptions. And how do we kind of break through that barrier? Priscilla, in your experience, do you have any suggestions to our audience if they were to ever come across some of that?

[39:16] Priscilla: Yeah, the assumption thing is interesting, but I do find a couple of quick tips. I’ve mentioned, please don’t let the CEO make these decisions. I kind of mean that a little bit more jokingly, like in terms of a founder because it’s hard. And so I think it’s about assembling stakeholders. I kind of talked about it like people say getting your ducks in a row. Well, let’s align the ducks. Who was supposed to be in this room? And let’s make sure that we’re all allies. Let’s make sure that we understand what we’re coming into this meeting for. And let’s be able to challenge each other. Because as soon as we start saying, “Okay, hey, what is this your ideal buyer?” If I have the right stakeholders in the room, they’ll start challenging each other and my work gets really easy.

And I’ll just say things like, “Well how so?” Or, “say more”, or “when does that not the case?” Or why have that, and you know… Of course, I don’t know the answer, but I am very good at effective strategy questions. Let me get to the answer. They really are in their brain. But getting the right people in the room to discuss these things is really key. And I know that probably sounds super dumb, but you would be surprised how many people have started into some kind of a strategic journey, and they did not get the right people in the room to begin with.

[40:41] Sharday: Yeah. If you think you’ve been back 10 years ago, marketing wasn’t in the board room, and today if marketing isn’t at the table with you helping make these decisions or at least giving their insights or their expertise as a business, especially for a market research firm, you might be missing out on some really big insights because again, sometimes we’re that little key to unlock the Pandora’s box to maybe answering a larger question at hand. So, having marketing at the table, I think more so than ever, is quite crucial to assist with making those decisions.

[41:17] Priscilla: Yeah. And I think let’s just add on top of that a quick thing – also make sure that somebody who is responsible for sales is in that meeting too.

[42:13] Duncan: Sure, because its really sometimes…

[41:25] Priscilla: Because that cuts the bullshit like nothing else.

[41:28] Sharday: Oh preach. Yeah, absolutely.

[41:29] Duncan: Sometimes you get to the point where you can’t see the forest for the trees. Having the somebody where the rubber meets the road kind of deal kind of helps.

[41:37] Priscilla: Yeah, for sure they’re like…

[41:39] Sharday: Yeah, we recognize that in our own business Duncan. Recently even, how revenue operations as a position is quite crucial. And we actually hired someone within the business. She moved into a Chief Revenue Officer role, and she now has a permanent spot at the C-suite table for that reason. We definitely recognize again where the rubber meets the road and what we need to contribute to that. And sales is now sitting in front and centre right along with this.

[42:09] Priscilla: Let me give you a real-world example of that. I was sitting and talking with all the marketing people and with the people, you know, who are the market researchers – in the field workers – and we’re all talking about, yeah, this is the person who buys from us, this the person. And then sales people end up saying, yeah, you know why – I know these people. They want the product, I get it. And you wrote all the content to make them want it. Sadly the procurement officer won’t do it.

And so at what point do we need to be writing to… At what point does the procurement officer become one of our personas. And we know how to incorporate them into the content that we’re writing for them to see what the wind for them is. How can we…?

[42:52] Sharday: It’s actually one of our personas.

[42:56] Priscilla: It funny but people forget about them all the time. And we want to work with Kellogg’s? Guess what? You’ve got to get on their procurement list.

[43:04] Sharday: Absolutely. 

[43:07] Duncan: So you’re saying, don’t sell to the person who you want to, sell to the person who will buy your product if that makes sense. It might not be the person who needs it or, but you need to talk to the person who has a need to buy it – if that makes sense.

[43:19] Sharday: That’s why proposals are a number one sales package for us actually. And procurement writing is right up there with us. So, the CRO takes a strong initiative in this writing and we have a full staff proposal writer as well for these initiatives. But we really do recognize that, to your point, often these are the folks that we tend to, maybe forget about, when we’re actually thinking about marketing market research. But arguably they’re are number one sales opportunity for market research.

[43:54] Duncan: Totally.

[43:55] Priscilla: Yeah. I guess my last thing I’d say about that is that, you guys have talked about it, you saw red flags that you needed to change, re-craft your personas. I’ve seen those red flags. So, I think we could say what you’ve crafted personas in the past, where you aren’t sure even where to start – you need to have a clear idea about who you’re trying to reach. And I think we can all agree to that those need to be front and centre. They need to be common knowledge. That needs to be common vernacular. Meaning, if you’ve crafted personas, we know we print them up and beautiful sheets and put them out on presentations, but like I don’t even sit down and write a blog without pulling that persona out and being like now so what was I doing with this again? Who was I writing to? The question is not just have you crafted them or have you updated them – it’s are you using them.

[44:39] Duncan: Yeah. They can’t really… you can say they inform your process, but if they stay in her desk drawer they’re not really doing much, right? So, if you’re not using them as a way to actually target your communications, messages, what have you – they’re pretty much useless.

[44:52] Sharday: Yeah. Our framework is everything to us as a department. And if I can add to that, we’ve noticed that it’s even more important to be addressing this on the daily as if it’s a working document that we live and die by. But at the same time we also notice how beneficial it is to be checking in every, month or quarter on this framework so that we are constantly addressing the needs of these personas, or making sure they’re correct as we go.

Because we both know that in marketing if things stand still, they’re just standing still. So you always got to progress and you always got to move forward. So a framework is a definite need.

[45:33] Duncan: Yeah, well you know what? We’ve taken a lot of your time Priscilla. I really want to thank you for coming on!

[45:39] Sharday: I think we can talk for hours about marketing.

[45:41] Duncan: I’ll just sit here and mine your mind for a little bit, right? This is great!

[45:45] Priscilla: You want to hang out tomorrow? That sounds great.

[45:47] Duncan: That sounds awesome. We’ll make it a lunchtime thing and we just call in! I wanted to let everybody know you’ve got an Insights Marketing Day in Denver coming up in October. Could you tell everybody about that?

[45:58] Priscilla: Oh, this is so exciting! We partnered with Greenbook and we’re putting on Insights Marketing Day. I’ve spoken at them many times, but we’ve also partnered with Keen as Mustard across the pond. They’re a great counterpart, another colleague of mine, and I always keep all of us who do work together – it’s the more the merrier. And there’s things that we all specialize in. I love being able to know my colleagues and people who are doing excellent work in marketing and be able to refer to them and find the right partner.

But they’re wonderful. And we’re going to be hosting all of the US-based Insights Marketing Day and we’re always going to be hosting them in October, and then they’re going to be hosting them in Europe, in March. And so this year it’s going to be Denver in October. And so it’s October tenth. It’s coming. You can check it all out at insights-marketing.org. It is going to be power packed. We’re waiting on one last speaker here, but it’s either gonna be eight or nine speakers. Just a really… we’ve asked them to give some of the best advice they have about marketing within the MR World. We have people like Kristin Luck, the founder of WIRe. I’m sure a lot of people know her in this area.

Jamin Brazil is going to be talking on podcasting. We’ve got Tim Hughes coming from the UK speaking on a social selling to what we talked about, like with some change makers. And obviously going to be talking about personas. I’ve got somebody coming from 3M who’s going to be talking about trade shows, really doing trade shows right. It’s just going to be a power packed, full day in Denver. Great swag bag, great cocktails, great lunch, great breakfast.

[47:26] Sharday: The whole meal deal, hey?

[47:30] Priscilla: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just powerful. I mean, you got to set your phone down and be totally present.

[47:34] Sharday: Yeah. Wow. Really exciting.

[47:35] Duncan: Want to maybe take a trip down to Denver in October.

[47:38] Sharday: Yeah, I think we might just have to squeeze that in.

[47:39] Duncan: And I know – you’re right – the website – Little Bird Marketing – you guys offer a lot of resources that are available for download, as well.

[47:46] Priscilla: Yeah, you know it’s really funny. We’ve spent a lot of time crafting really great guides, ultimate checklists kind of like, hey here’s 5 tips for this, that and the other – and you don’t have a lot of people who come to us about marketing and effort they’re a little trepidatious. Like, well we don’t want to be salesy. And my answer to them is always, well don’t be salesy then. If you really are trying to help people, then just help people. And just to that point, people are used to, there’s a little bit of like landing page fatigue – download fatigue. Like, give me your email address and we’ll sign you up for our stuff and then you can download this freebie or whatever.

But honestly, people can… yeah, we do ask for your email address. It’s there. And we spent a lot of time working on the guide, but you can like download two guides, three guides, four guides, seven guides – and nobody’s bothering you. Because you can just go about doing what you’re doing. We really feel strongly that if we keep giving valuable information out of the people who are right for us, it’ll work in that pretty aggressive funnel and that people will self-identify and be like, oh my gosh, I can’t take it anymore. These guys are so perfect for me and they’ll call us.

[48:45] Duncan: That’s awesome. 

[48:46] Sharday: That’s a great approach.

[48:48] Duncan: Well, cool.

[48:49] Priscilla: So there are a lot of great resources there. It’s a littlebirdmarketing.com/resources, but take away.

[48:54] Duncan: It’ll be on our website for sure. So check out insightrix.com when you’re done listening to this. And once again, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.

[49:02] Sharday: This was awesome. 

[49:02] Duncan: We’ve gotten a lot out of this. This was great.

[49:05] Priscilla: Sharday and Duncan, it just absolutely been my pleasure.

[49:08] Duncan: It’s been a hoot. It’s been a hoot. 

[49:09] Sharday: Absolutely. Thanks again and hopefully we can do this in the future and have another conversation. There’s nothing better than being able to chit chat about marketing market research and – especially with someone who has such a breadth of a background and as innovative as you are. We are so grateful to have you on today.

[49:25] Priscilla: My pleasure. 

[Music]

[49:30] Duncan: And there you have it. I’d like to thank Priscilla McKinney for coming on the podcast. Her take on marketing in challenging industries was super interesting and informative and I know both Sharday and I got a lot out of it. If you’d like to know more about Little Bird Marketing and the work they do, you can check out their website at littlebirdmarketing.com. That company is awesome. They don’t just do great marketing. They also bred all kinds of resources businesses can use to augment and inform their own marketing programs and initiatives. You can find all kinds of great resources like information on building client personas, social media engagement tips and more on the Little Bird website at
www.littlebirdmarketing.com/resources.

Little Bird Marketing will also be hosting an Insights Marketing Day event along with Greenbook in Denver, Colorado. In October 10th there’ll be into multiple international speakers giving multiple talks.

It’s definitely something you’re going to want to check out. You can find all the information about that event at insights-marketing.org. If you didn’t catch that, don’t worry. We’ll make sure a link to both the Little Bird Marketing website and a link to the resources page, as well as the link to the Insights Marketing Day event will be included on our web page for this episode.

I’d also like to thank Jaclyn Whitley for coming on the podcast and giving us a rundown on her trip to the IIEx North America conference in Austin, Texas in April. I really enjoyed having a chat with her and finding out about the event and her team’s time at it and because talking to her I’ll be aiming to catch the next one and their North America events.

If you’d like to learn more about the Insightrix Communities online panel software, check out the website @ www.insightrixcommunities.com.

And I’d like to thank Sharday for coming on again to co-host another episode. Having her aboard for the episode made a fun change of pace.

And last but surely not least, of course, I’d like to thank you – our awesome and super loyal fan base. Without you, none of this would be possible. If you’d like to help the show get found by more folks like you who have an interest in research, please take a moment to rate and review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, YouTube or anywhere else you get your podcast fix. We’ll be back in another couple of weeks with another episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast.

[Outro music]

Since cannabis legalization in Canada, we’ve seen a multi-billion-dollar economy spring up virtually overnight around cannabis – something that doesn’t happen all too often. Actually, you could say it’s a once in a lifetime occurrence.

For this episode, we’re looking into the retail cannabis industry with part-owner of Saskatoon’s newest licensed cannabis store, Cannabis YXE, and managing partner at Derek Murray Consulting and Associates, Aaron Murray.

Aaron shares some of his experiences of starting a new retail business in this new industry and discusses his plans for marketing and branding. He also offers some of his thoughts about what the future holds for the sector and explains some of the research he did before and after opening his retail cannabis business.

“In terms of the upside, it’s just fascinating to be part of an industry that materialized – a multi-billion-dollar industry that materialized overnight on October 17.”

- Aaron Murray, Derek Murray Consulting and Associates

More from Insightrix Research

You can follow Insightrix Research on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to never miss a new video on YouTube.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcasting app, like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play Music. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe to get every new episode.

Season 2 opens with Episode 9: Market Research, Digital Marketing & Small Business, in which we are joined by social impact entrepreneur and communications consultant, Katrina German.

In our conversation, Katrina unpacks some of the knowledge and the strategies she has developed in her book, Action Tracking: Master Your Digital Marketing Strategy in Under 30 Days, to help owners of small- and medium-sized businesses and marketers employed by them create digital marketing plans that will help them break through the digital clutter and stand out against the marketing of much larger businesses.

We discuss the tools business owners and marketers can use to develop their own digital marketing plans, as well as how they can use the data gathered for experiments with these tools to do their own market research to make their marketing plans even better. We also discuss some of the more accessible tools available to small- and medium-sized business owners and marketers from market research agencies, like omnibus research and syndicated reporting, and how they can use them.

Later in the episode, Katrina lays out some of the new trends that she believes digital marketers can expect to see in the future, as well as some tricks that will help get your digital messages noticed.

If you would like more information about Katrina German or would like to contact her, check out her website, katrinagerman.com.

You can also find more information about her book, Action Tracking: Master Your Digital Marketing Strategy in Under 30 Days, on her website as well.

Learn more about the Insightrix OnTopic® omnibus research service and Insightrix syndicated reports, like the Corporate Reputation Index (CRi) and the Saskatchewan Media Usage Study.

More from Insightrix Research

You can follow Insightrix Research on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to never miss a new video on YouTube.

You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcasting app, like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play Music.

We’ve been away for a while, planning and producing a brand new second season of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast for 2019.

Since it’s been a while, we thought we would produce a short schedule update to let you know where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to – as well as to give a sneak peek into what is coming in Season 2.

The seventh episode of Stories of Market Research is your very own ad testing podcast episode! We delve into advertising research practice and describe some of the reasons why organizations test their ads, recent changes to the media landscape and how the practice has changed over the years. We also speak to some of the benefits companies can expect from ad testing.

For this episode, we’re joined by Partha Roy, Insightrix Senior Research Executive and consumer behaviour expert. He provides background and his expertise as co-host for the episode.

With Partha, we interview Advertising and Brand Research Specialist, Majid Khoury, to discuss ad testing as it has changed over recent years, factors that have led to these changes and the takeaways companies can still expect from advertising testing. He also takes some time to discuss the value of copy pre-testing, campaign pre-testing and what that looks like in a rapidly shifting and fractured media terrain.

“I call it the triangle. It’s the best way to look at this is to have the agency, the client and the research – the advertising research – to work together as a team.”

- Majid Khoury, Brand Research Specialist

If you’d like to read a case study describing how Insightrix worked with a client in an advertising testing project involving brand video testing, you can read it here.

If you’d like to read more about Insightrix AdCheck, you can download our brochure here.

We’re joined by Megan McDowell, an Insightrix Communities Account Manager and all-around expert on online communities. She lays out what they are and how they are used, and speaks to an Insightrix Communities project, Young Futures, to illustrate some of their benefits and new ways these powerful research tools can be used.

“These online panels, or communities, are structured over a number of days, which allows the panellists more time to consider what it is that we’re asking them, and maybe result in better quality responses.”

– Adam Thome, Member Insights Manager, Affinity Credit Union

Later in the episode, we’re joined by Adam Thome (Member Insights Manager) and Dylan Cody from Affinity Credit Union, who explains some of the ways their organization has employed market research online communities in one of their recent research projects.

If you’d like to check out what an online community looks like, head over to the Insightrix YouTube channel and watch the bonus video – A Guided Tour of a Market Research Online Community. It will offer an inside view of what they look like, using the Insightrix Communities online community platform as an example.

These young research professionals offer up some of their unique experiences and perspectives as they have worked to begin their careers in MR, and some of the tricks of the trade they’ve picked up over their years on the job and share some of the challenges they’ve faced and overcome, the skill sets and credentials that have helped them secure their positions and to be successful in them, and give us an idea of what a day in the life of an MR professional looks like.

Using mrx to validate marketing initiatives

We welcome a local marketing guru, Paige Gignac, Manager of Marketing and Communications at the United Way of Saskatoon & Area as well as the President of the Saskatchewan Professional Marketing Association (SPMA), as she offers her perspective on the place of market research in marketing, as well as how marketers employ #mrx methodologies (like A/B testing), and reasons why marketers should continue to employ market research firms.

In this episode, learn more about how market research can help validate marketing initiatives, help justify those marketing budgets all marketers struggle with and how to make sense out of data, all while trying to live in the “land of the unicorns” ….

If you’re looking more from Insightrix Research visit
Web: https://insightrix.com
Twitter: @insightrix
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insightrix/

Fuze Conference
Web: https://www.fuzeconf.com/
Twitter: @FuzeConf
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/fuzeconf/

Saskatchewan Professional Marketing Association (SPMA)
Web: https://www.saskmarketing.com/
Twitter: @SaskMarketing
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saskmarketing/

For more information about the SPMA recruiting for 2018-2019 – join SPMA Tuesday, May 29 @ 5:30 – 6:30 PM, Amigos Cantina (806 Dufferin Avenue, Saskatoon, Canada).

John’s perspective on customer experience and Jhumur’s experience provides a great resource for those looking to learn more about emerging technologies, best practices and why customer experience programs are so critical to businesses of all kinds.

“People talk a lot about journey mapping and I think that’s really an effective process that often involves qualitative research and ethnographic work.”

- Jhumur Choudhury

Want to learn more?

For more information on customer experience and how it may benefit you, download this whitepaper about Insightrix CX programs. It will help to fill in any blanks that may have been missed in our discussion of the topic at hand.

Web: https://insightrix.com
Twitter: @insightrix
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insightrix/

We’re joined by phone from Toronto by Joy Robson, co-founder of Data for Good. Joy fills us in on what the organization is all about and how it all got started. After that, Geoff Zakaib, from the Calgary chapter joins us by phone to talk about an event they held in November and to give us his thoughts on the movement of volunteering data science for good.

Rounding out the episode, the founder of the newest chapter in Regina, Kevin Hayes, joins the show to chat about starting the chapter and about upcoming events in Regina, Canada with Data for Good.

“Being blue-sky people, we from the get-go… Canada could build something great, and I think our vision has been reinforced.”

- Joy Robson, Co-Founder of Data for Good

For more information about Data For Good:

Data for Good can be contacted through the Data for Good website.
You can also reach them through Twitter: Calgary Chapter @DataForGoodYYC
Regina Chapter @dataforgoodyqr ‏
National Chapter @Data_for_Good

You can also contact Kevin Hayes for more information about Data for Good and their Regina chapter through his email: kevin.hayes@dataforgood.ca.

For information about Second Harvest Toronto, check out their website.
For information about the Sentinel Project, visit their website.

During the podcast, we chat about the shift that has occurred over the past few years in the way that market research agencies have chosen to report their data to clients and to the public. Rather than the data-dumping style of reporting common in the last few decades, more and more market researchers and their agencies have chosen to adopt a more client-friendly approach to their reports.

They have done this through developing reports that are more narrative in nature, telling the story of the data in ways that are actionable and understandable upon first reading rather than providing reports that leave clients with little more than charts and figures with a little perspective on their importance.

“What we’ve done is started shifting away from the data dump into a more strategic – almost like a professional services-type reporting style where things are a little bit more shorter and more professional - less dependent on numbers and more dependent on story.”

- Ellen Eastwood, Independent Research and Insights Consultant

If you’d like to learn more about the MRIA, check out their website.

Episode Transcript