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Вміст надано Sima Vasa. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією Sima Vasa або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.
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Travel can do amazing things: broaden horizons, build relationships, and rejuvenate the soul. But often, those experiences come at a cost. Welcome back to Peak Travel from WHYY, the show that unpacks how travel shapes communities in hot-spots around the world. We’ll share the wonder that comes with exploring new places, as well as the harm that our worst travel habits can cause. And we’ll try to figure out how we can do it better. Each episode transports you to a new destination. You’ll meet the people who call that place home, hear their stories, and come to understand how tourism has changed their everyday lives. Supported by rich, on-location sound from around the world, Peak Travel examines the $1.9 trillion travel industry and its impact on people and the planet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…
Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
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Unlocking the Secrets of Customer Satisfaction at the Point of Purchase
Manage episode 415556922 series 3497847
Вміст надано Sima Vasa. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією Sima Vasa або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with Georgina Nelson, CEO and Founder of TruRating. They delve into the transformative role of consumer feedback in retail and how Georgina’s varied career path contributed to her innovative approach to business. Key Takeaways: (01:39) Georgina’s journey from psychology to law. (03:00) Reliable consumer data is vital. (04:07) Career twists and following intuition. (06:46) Greetings in retail boost sales. (07:26) Integrating feedback with payment terminals. (09:24) Impact of store greetings on loyalty. (12:00) Ethical data use and supporting charities. (14:10) The challenges of tech in traditional retail. (17:49) TruRating’s growth and scalability. (19:48) Purpose-driven ethics in business. Resources Mentioned: TruRating Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech
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236 епізодів
Manage episode 415556922 series 3497847
Вміст надано Sima Vasa. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією Sima Vasa або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with Georgina Nelson, CEO and Founder of TruRating. They delve into the transformative role of consumer feedback in retail and how Georgina’s varied career path contributed to her innovative approach to business. Key Takeaways: (01:39) Georgina’s journey from psychology to law. (03:00) Reliable consumer data is vital. (04:07) Career twists and following intuition. (06:46) Greetings in retail boost sales. (07:26) Integrating feedback with payment terminals. (09:24) Impact of store greetings on loyalty. (12:00) Ethical data use and supporting charities. (14:10) The challenges of tech in traditional retail. (17:49) TruRating’s growth and scalability. (19:48) Purpose-driven ethics in business. Resources Mentioned: TruRating Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech
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236 епізодів
Усі епізоди
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to George London , Chief Technology Officer of Upwave . George shares insights into the complexities of the advertising ecosystem, the role of data in campaign optimization and the parallels between financial and ad markets. Key Takeaways: (02:14) From philosophy to data leadership. (05:34) Persistence and adaptability shaped George’s path to CTO. (08:15) Causal inference helps Upwave provide reliable insights for large media investments. (11:32) Rigorous measurement turns $10M in ad spend into $20M in value. (13:10) Daily insights from Upwave simplify complex national ad campaigns. (15:12) Actionable insights drive Upwave’s mission to optimize brand investments. (16:23) Targeted surveys reveal brand impact across specific ad campaigns. (17:59) The ad ecosystem spans brands, publishers and a complex chain of intermediaries. (20:36) Generative AI powers Upwave’s automated ad reporting with Trade Desk. (22:47) Advertising shares dynamics with financial markets, including bidding and price discovery. Resources Mentioned: UpWave Trade Desk Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with J. Walker Smith , Knowledge Lead at Kantar . They discuss shifting consumer sentiments, the paradox of strong spending amid uncertainty and changes in market insights. Key Takeaways: (02:14) Experience in trends and futures at Kantar aids in predicting consumer values. (04:37) Consumer spending is strong, but sentiment is recessionary amid uncertainty. (07:57) Consumers seek familiarity and reassurance from brands over novelty. (10:55) Consumers prefer brands focused on well-being and personalization. (13:55) Gen Z prioritizes mental health and values digital convenience. (17:20) Gen Z’s tech-driven shopping requires marketing to algorithms. (19:33) Curating market data to refine key insights and filter noise. (21:48) AI will automate research tasks, shifting insights to focus on growth. (25:36) Future insights roles will prioritize strategic growth over pure research. Resources Mentioned: Kantar Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa speaks with Darrell Bricker , Chief Executive Officer, Public Affairs at Ipsos . They discuss the evolving landscape of public opinion research, the role of emotional connection in politics, and the shifting global demographics shaping our future. Key Takeaways: (02:30) Mentorship and opportunity shape a meaningful career in polling. (05:01) Public affairs research centers on understanding citizens, not consumers. (06:58) Global polling now offers real-time insights into worldwide issues. (08:43) Mobile phones enable global polling access, even in remote areas. (10:28) Decline in deference empowers citizens to challenge authority. (12:56) Political volatility rises as traditional party loyalty declines. (15:04) Constant skepticism in research strengthens accuracy and reliability. (16:29) Emotional connection now outweighs rationality in political appeal. (19:21) A public affairs career thrives on social science and global curiosity. (22:13) Global population is set to peak mid-century, then decline rapidly. (25:42) Urbanization and women’s evolving roles contribute to lower birth rates. Resources Mentioned: Ipsos Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech #publicopinion…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Michael Winnick , Founder and CEO of dscout . They discuss his journey in the worlds of product, design and technology. Michael shares insights on how patience and persistence shaped his entrepreneurial journey and how dscout helps companies conduct innovative, real-time research. Key Takeaways: (02:45) Michael’s journey from startups to founding dscout. (07:16) Democratizing research with new technology. (10:32) How UX and design align with research. (14:24) Adapting products to market shifts. (17:51) Managing the balance between ambition and patience. (21:15) The challenge of bringing products to market. (23:44) The importance of building a great team. (26:02) Success comes from customer impact. Resources Mentioned: The Nielsen Norman Group IDEO Stanford d.school Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Matt Celuszak , Co-Founder and CEO of Element Human , about the intersection of AI and human behavior. Together they explore how data can drive better brand engagement. Matt shares his insights on understanding human emotions and reactions, focusing on attention data and using behavioral understanding to create memorable, impactful campaigns. Key Takeaways: (03:39) AI-driven insights help marketers understand how human emotions affect engagement. (07:15) Attention and stopping power are crucial for creating lasting brand impressions. (11:03) Combining human behavior with data drives personalized marketing strategies. (14:24) Emotional response correlates with memorability and purchase intent. (19:00) Real-world behavioral responses provide complementary data to standard metrics. (23:15) Balancing creators’ authenticity with brand messaging is key to successful influencer marketing. (28:10) The staying power of content is as critical as initial engagement in brand building. (31:30) Understanding the emotional impact of content helps brands connect more effectively with consumers. Resources Mentioned: Element Human homepage Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Tim Hoskins , President of Quester , and Brett Townsend , Senior Vice President of Strategy at Quester , about the future of insights and how to drive meaningful change in the industry. Brett and Tim share revelations from their book, “Insights on the Brink,” and discuss how empathy, emotion and storytelling play critical roles in creating impactful business decisions. Key Takeaways: (03:45) Empathy and emotion are vital for creating successful consumer insights. (07:22) It’s not just about data — turning it into actionable insights is where the magic happens. (10:15) Business strategy should go hand in hand with insights to drive meaningful results. (13:55) Consumer conflict is what drives great storytelling and effective solutions. (17:05) Data-driven decision-making requires a shift in mindset and processes. (21:30) Asking challenging questions can push companies to innovate and break from the status quo. (24:12) High-end consultative insights are critical to providing value in a fast-evolving market. (27:45) The future of insights is in combining talent, empathy and technology to deliver impactful stories. Resources Mentioned: “ Insights on the Brink” on Amazon Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Kai Stübane , Solution Chief Revenue Officer for SAP CX for Middle and Eastern Europe, about the evolving role of customer experience (CX) in driving business success. Key Takeaways: (00:06) Kai’s journey from PwC to SAP. (01:21) CX covers all customer touchpoints. (03:33) SAP uses data to improve CX. (05:48) CX boosts top-line revenue. (09:00) Global shift toward automation and self-service. (13:03) Personalization is critical to customer satisfaction. (16:48) AI’s growing role in customer experience. (17:45) Focus on CX leads to market growth. (21:00) Clean data is crucial for AI and automation. Resources Mentioned: SAP CX Solutions FlixBus Greyhound Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Eugene Murphy , Founder and CEO of Indeemo , who shares insights on how Indeemo is revolutionizing digital ethnography and qualitative research through innovative video solutions. Key Takeaways: (00:06) Eugene’s journey from engineering to founding Indeemo. (02:03) Creating a seamless user experience for all ages. (04:12) Pivoting Indeemo from a social app to a research tool. (08:01) The power of mobile ethnography in market research. (14:07) The importance of capturing authentic customer moments via video. (18:15) Video is more impactful than traditional research methods. (20:06) A seamless user experience is crucial for respondent engagement. (24:15) Generative AI enhances the scalability of video research. (27:00) Teaching clients to create effective, consistent prompts for research. Resources Mentioned: Indeemo Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with Vittorio Raimondi , CEO and Founder/Managing Partner of Foresight Strategy , about the intricacies of leadership, data analytics and the power of creativity and curiosity in driving business success. Key Takeaways: (04:30) Using system dynamics to effectively model complex business environments. (06:45) Mapping consumer journeys to uncover key opportunities for growth. (09:00) How holistic insights are leveraged by big brands such as Hewlett Packard and Coca-Cola. (12:15) The importance of being data-agnostic and tailoring solutions to meet client needs. (16:00) Creativity and curiosity are crucial elements for delivering innovative solutions. (18:45) The challenge of hiring talent that combines both analytical and creative problem-solving skills. (22:30) AI as a tool to enhance efficiency while ensuring human-driven insights remain integral. (24:00) The need for leadership evolution in supporting a skilled and growing team. Resources Mentioned: Foresight Strategy System Dynamics Society McKinsey & Company Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa is joined by Priscilla McKinney , CEO and Founder of Little Bird Marketing , to discuss the evolving landscape of market research, the importance of digital transformation and the value of strong client relationships. Key Takeaways: (03:10) Pivoting to new verticals drives success. (03:28) Deepening relationships with existing clients is key. (04:39) CEOs must confront and manage their fears. (05:09) Entrepreneurs need to overcome fear and seize opportunities. (06:09) Branding in market research is evolving rapidly. (07:48) Demonstrating value in terms of revenue is essential. (10:09) Upskilling is crucial for staying relevant. (12:24) Digital transformation enhances team collaboration and engagement. (14:30) Visibility and relationships are vital for success. (16:42) Emotional intelligence plays a key role in business relationships. (19:54) Small favors can have a big impact in business. (20:24) Collaboration doesn’t always have to be a big deal. Resources Mentioned: Little Bird Marketing Suzy Digital Transformation Success Podcast Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Andrew Moffatt, CEO and Co-Founder of Qrious Insight, to explore the evolution of data analytics, the impact of AI and the future of market research. Andrew discusses how the integration of behavioral data with advanced analytics is transforming the way businesses understand and engage with their audiences. Key Takeaways: (01:19) Andrew reflects on 25 years in market research.(03:07) Founding Qrious Insight and its evolution.(06:20) The importance of behavioral data for accurate insights.(12:53) Informing ad placement with behavioral data.(18:25) High retention rates in behavioral data tracking.(27:31) Generational differences in data privacy and acceptance.(34:30) AI’s transformative role in data analytics.(36:00) The future potential of synthetic data models.(37:00) Bridging insights and marketing with behavioral data. Resources Mentioned: Paradigm SampleSima VasaQrious Insight website Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Steve Bagdasarian, Chief Commercial Officer of Comscore, Inc., to explore the evolution of ad measurement and the convergence of traditional and digital media. Key Takeaways: (02:00) Measurement data offers competitive advantages.(02:05) Media strategy is now driven by actionable data.(04:00) The importance of continual curiosity and adaptation in the media industry.(06:51) Ad formats are evolving, with short-form video and creator-led content gaining traction.(08:07) The shift toward outcome-oriented advertising.(09:19) The role of data regulation and consumer privacy.(10:23) The impact of signal loss on advertising strategies.(15:04) Cross-platform measurement is crucial for optimizing media mix.(18:00) Real-time data processing enhances programmatic advertising efficiency.(20:03) AI's future role in ad and media measurement. Resources Mentioned: Comscore Publishers Clearing House Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Revolutionizing Market Research Using Creativity and Human-Centric Insights with Holland Martini of GOODQUES
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Holland Martini, Chief Insights Officer of GOODQUES, who shares her journey and insights on revolutionizing market research through creativity and human-centric methods. Key Takeaways: (00:00) Holland emphasizes the importance of being comfortable with discomfort. (03:31) The role of data at GOODQUES is not just to validate but to inspire. (04:53) Luck and timing played a significant role in GOODQUES’ early success. (07:00) Considering every individual involved in the research process is crucial. (07:42) The foundation of human-centricity at GOODQUES, from brief to delivery. (14:30) Crafting questions in colloquial language leads to better responses. (22:42) Casting moderators who resonate with respondents improves insights. (26:13) Understanding different disciplines while being an expert in one is key. (30:00) Saying no to projects that don’t fit maintains focus and quality. Resources mentioned: GOODQUES Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Alex Hunt, CEO of Behaviorally, about the transformative role of technology in the market research industry and how Behaviorally leverages AI and digital tools to innovate data insights. Key Takeaways: (00:54) Technology’s inevitable impact on industries. (03:16) Alex’s shift to pioneering behavioral sciences. (05:36) Enhancing decision-making through packaging insights. (07:59) Digital methodologies boost efficiency and cut costs. (09:00) AI’s role in improving predictive accuracy. (10:27) The importance of ethical standards during change. (13:25) Developing predictive models with feedback data. (15:20) Handling organizational resistance to change. (17:32) AI’s future role in market research transformation. (19:50) Leadership aligned with technological advancements. Resources Mentioned: Behaviorally Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with Georgina Nelson, CEO and Founder of TruRating. They delve into the transformative role of consumer feedback in retail and how Georgina’s varied career path contributed to her innovative approach to business. Key Takeaways: (01:39) Georgina’s journey from psychology to law. (03:00) Reliable consumer data is vital. (04:07) Career twists and following intuition. (06:46) Greetings in retail boost sales. (07:26) Integrating feedback with payment terminals. (09:24) Impact of store greetings on loyalty. (12:00) Ethical data use and supporting charities. (14:10) The challenges of tech in traditional retail. (17:49) TruRating’s growth and scalability. (19:48) Purpose-driven ethics in business. Resources Mentioned: TruRating Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Rick West, Co-Founder and CEO of Field Agent. They delve into Rick’s journey from a significant tenure at Procter & Gamble to establishing Field Agent, a company at the forefront of retail and consumer data innovation. The discussion uncovers how Rick’s strategic use of corporate severance as seed money laid the foundation for Field Agent’s success, the company’s growth through acquisitions and the pivotal role of technology in reshaping retail analytics. Rick’s insights provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of consumer data collection and its impact on retail strategies. Key Takeaways: (02:15) Rick West reflects on the leap from Procter & Gamble to entrepreneurship. (05:40) Insight into FieldAgent’s innovative start and market impact. (11:20) Rick discusses using severance as seed money for business ventures. (15:30) Expansion of FieldAgent through strategic acquisitions and technology. (20:45) The crucial role of consumer engagement in data collection. (25:50) Adaptation of retail to technological advancements and consumer expectations. (30:10) The importance of mobile tech in enhancing retail experiences. (33:25) Rick emphasizes the value of real-time data in retail decision-making. (35:40) Looking ahead: The future of retail analytics and consumer data. Resources Mentioned: Field Agent Procter & Gamble Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa sits down with Chris Havemann, CEO of RealityMine, to explore the evolution of data collection and its impact on market research. Chris shares experiences gained from his journey in the insights industry, highlighting the shift from survey data to behavioral data collection. Key Takeaways: (01:18) The beginnings of Chris Havemann’s entrepreneurial journey. (02:12) Chris transitioned from a corporate career to starting his own business and pivoted from the mobile channel to Research Now. (03:09) The growth and success of Research Now and Chris’s personal break before joining RealityMine. (08:27) RealityMine’s focus is on revealing real-life behaviors through passive metering technology. (10:04) The significant role mobile device usage plays in understanding consumer behavior. (14:05) Discussion on the insights industry’s approach to respondent experience and the potential for AI to transform data analysis. (17:25) RealityMine appoints a chief AI officer and the impact of AI on the insights industry. (21:04) Scenario planning for the future use of AI and synthetic data in market research. (23:01) Chris Havemann’s perspective on the future of advertising and the concentration of media power. Resources Mentioned: RealityMine Website Research Now Website Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #Restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode of Data Gurus, Sima Vasa and Patrick Comer, Co-Founders of restecher, delve into the intricacies of the Restech industry. They discuss how it’s reshaping market research, integrating new technologies and influencing business strategies. Their conversation highlights the impact of the Restech landscape on traditional research methods and the emerging role of AI in decision-making processes, offering a unique perspective on the intersection of technology and market insights. Key Takeaways: (01:24) Highlighting the growing importance of Restech in market research. (02:14) Recent developments in mergers, acquisitions and funding in the Restech arena. (03:05) Restech has played a significant role in redefining the market research industry. (06:09) Company roles and identities within the Restech space continue to evolve. (07:59) Reinforcing the value of traditional market research in the face of technological advancements. (10:01) AI exhibits potential — but also challenges — in market research and insights generation. (12:37) What impact has AI had on brand and research agency relationships? (14:26) How veteran research agencies can adapt and utilize historical data in the AI age. (17:33) Continuous technological advancements and their implications in market research. (19:13) Precise decision-making is critical in an AI-influenced research environment. Resources Mentioned: Restech Landscape Restech Website Post your thoughts, using hashtag #restech. Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX #restech…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa sits down with Arman Eshraghi, CEO and Founder of Qrvey, for an in-depth conversation about revolutionizing data analytics through seamless integration of collection, analysis and automation processes. Arman unveils the unique capabilities of Qrvey, highlighting its role in enhancing SaaS applications with advanced embedded business analytics. Key Takeaways: (01:15) Sima Vasa introduces Qrvey’s transformative role in data analytics. (05:20) The pivotal role embedded analytics plays in SaaS application insights. (10:30) The advantages of Qrvey’s OEM model for external analytics. (15:45) Overcoming in-house development challenges with Qrvey. (20:55) Tailoring analytics solutions to industry-specific needs. (25:40) Analytics as a strategic tool in SaaS decision-making. (30:50) Success stories from businesses that have adopted Qrvey. (35:30) Qrvey’s vision for the future of data analytics. Resources Mentioned: Qrvey Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Steve Phillips, Founder and CEO of Zappi, about pioneering automation and artificial intelligence in market research to enhance consumer insight efficiency and quality. Key Takeaways: (01:10) The origin of Zappi for efficient consumer insights. (02:22) Zappi’s evolution toward quality and meta analytics. (03:24) Strategy shifts addressing early challenges. (06:24) The transition to technology-driven solutions. (08:54) Their future as a SAS company with AI integration. (11:18) Managing innovation in a rapidly evolving industry. (13:32) Shifting to a data company for richer insights. (15:49) The future of primary research and consumer behavior understanding. (17:57) Broadening the definition of market research. Resources Mentioned: Zappi Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks with Amishi Takalkar, Co-Founder and CEO of NAILBITER, exploring the transformative role of video in capturing authentic shopper behaviors and insights. Key Takeaways: (01:30) Amishi journeyed from an aspiring VJ at MTV India to the CEO of NAILBITER. (02:17) Amishi’s career evolution, specifically her roles at Frito Lay and AOL, and how experiencing both client and supplier sides of the industry affected her. (06:03) The inception of NAILBITER, aimed at observing consumers’ decision-making processes in real-time. (08:14) Utilizing video as a primary tool for gathering unfiltered shopper insights. (10:06) NAILBITER’s unique approach in tagging and quantifying vast consumer data from videos. (14:00) Product placement and retail strategies significantly impact sales and consumer choices. (17:19) The shift in retailer dynamics and the increasing significance of shopper insights. (20:27) The evolving nature of consumer behavior in an omnichannel shopping environment. (24:31) The impact of COVID-19 on shopper behavior and the need for adaptable strategies. (26:19) The integration and challenges of AI in market research. Resources Mentioned: NAILBITER Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Panayotis Gezerlis, Founder and President of Convert Group, to delve into the evolution of retail and e-commerce through data analytics and transparency. Key Takeaways: (02:25) The shift from consulting to data-driven retail strategies. (06:32) The importance of tactical decision-making in marketing and sales. (06:59) Budget redirection towards e-commerce in leading companies. (11:15) Retail media's influence on consumer behavior. (13:48) Utilizing retail media and basket information for customer targeting. (14:14) The critical role of sales decomposition in retail. (16:56) The future of retail with AI chatbot technology. (17:19) Launching user-friendly text advice platforms for retail decisions. Resources Mentioned: Convert Group Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Ben Hookway, CEO of Relative Insight, who delves into the intricacies of leveraging language analytics and unstructured text data to drive business insights. Key Takeaways: (07:54) Exploring the innovation behind comparative linguistic analysis and its practical applications in various industries. (13:49) Comparing age groups uncovers critical differences in language. (17:25) Understanding the relevance of context in language and how it influences consumer interactions and behaviors. (21:45) The importance of guiding clients through integrating new technology and ensuring they derive value from data and solutions. (35:48) As technology becomes mainstream, there’s a need to balance cutting-edge solutions with basic, user-friendly applications to accommodate varying customer needs. Resources Mentioned: Relative Insight Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa is joined by Matt Britton, Founder and CEO of Suzy, for an enlightening conversation about the direction the market-research industry is headed and how leaders evolve with it. Sima and Matt discuss: - The lagging adoption of new technologies, and how resulting inefficiencies get passed on to the consumer. - Generational changes that signal a greater willingness to implement digital tools. - How failure to evolve is often the result of current leaders’ resistance to change. - How AI will continue to shape the industry in new ways as technology improves. - How to maintain research integrity and methodological fundamentals while also allowing space for industry evolution. Matt’s startup experience demonstrates the delicate balancing act that current industry leaders must perform, avoiding the bleeding edge of innovation without being perceived as falling behind. Resources - Suzy - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this episode, Francesco Guglielmino, CEO of Cuebiq, joins host, Sima Vasa, to discuss the evolution of location data and prioritizing consumer privacy. Key Takeaways: (03:49) Implementing a privacy framework with consent tracking and a withdrawal option, despite challenges. (12:22) How younger generations show greater willingness to use digital tools. (13:25) Doing the right thing and why it means making tough decisions without reward. (15:21) When products are free, users’ data is the product. (20:01) Why weaknesses in the anonymity of location data require solutions. (24:32) Deploying a system to remove all data of users potentially underage. (27:06) Why Francesco’s platform allows clients to customize analytics while protecting privacy. (30:04) Handling location data remains challenging and expensive. Resources Mentioned: Spectus Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa welcomes Basel Fakhoury, CEO and Co-Founder of User Interviews, for an enlightening conversation about Basel’s work in improving data acquisition specificity. During their conversation, Basel and Sima discuss: - Using data to uncover needs in the market to better cater products and services to a particular niche. - The lessons Basel and his team learned from their first failed startup, and how that experience helped build User Interviews. - How finding the right survey respondents, rather than using a random sample, can provide more substantive and relevant data. - Why AI is an aid to finding human respondents rather than a threat to human-centric data. - The potential for growth in the data research industry. Basel and his team’s journey is an excellent case study of both the power of data in the present as well as the industry’s future trajectory. Resources Mentioned: - User Interviews - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa is joined by Dr. Loubna Bouarfa, CEO and Founder of OKRA.ai and Member of the Board of Advisors of the Oxford Internet Institute, who shares her unique perspective on the ethical questions around the increasing capabilities of AI technology. Sima and Dr. Bouarfa discuss the following: - How different business models can leverage new technologies to either improve or harm society. - Why transparency in AI development and implementation is essential to maintaining consumer protections. - How aligning the incentives of regulatory bodies and technology developers can create natural safeguards against harmful business models. - The neutral nature of technology and the potential it holds for both positive and negative implementation. Dr. Bouarfa’s work puts her on the frontier of technological development and gives her a unique insight into the future of data acquisition and consumer privacy as new AI tools are rolled out. - OKRA.ai - Oxford Internet Institute - Sima Vasa - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa is joined by Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, Founder and CEO of Neurons, to hear how he and his team are using large data sets to build AI models that can predict human behavior. In their conversation, Thomas and Sima discuss: - How a public methodology can build consumer trust in the data acquisition industry. - The intersection of data science and neuroscience in building predictive AI models. - The differences between a predictive AI model and a generative AI model. - Divergences between data sets collected in a lab setting and data sets gathered in real-world situations. - Limits on what current AI technology is capable of, and the possible limits of future AI tools. - Ideal use cases for designers and marketers using different kinds of AI tools. Although the technology is still evolving, the methodology Thomas’ organization is using to push predictive AI forward holds a world of possibilities for data scientists and digital marketers. - Neurons - Sima Vasa - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa talks to Rob Pace, Founder and CEO of HundredX, about using data in a mission-driven organization to drive positive outcomes for both the business and the community. Rob and Sima discuss the following: - A business has to be profitable to provide the resources needed to pursue goals aligned with its mission. - Outcomes-based systems are often more effective than product-based systems of organization. - Prioritizing short-term success will inevitably affect the ability to find long-term success. - Aligning the needs of the community with the incentives of the business provides common interests that drive organizational success. - In an environment of mistrust around data and privacy, community collaboration builds relationships between consumers and data organizations that benefit both parties. - Data collection businesses should work with their community partners, not against them. - HundredX - Sima Vasa - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, host Sima Vasa is joined by Chris Barry, CEO of HumanListening™ at The Evolved Group, who discusses the role of AI tools, specifically large language learning models, in data research. Chris and Sima discussed the following in relation to AI and data acquisition: - The ability of AI to elicit better responses from consumers than human surveyors. - Why feedback of extremes is easier to come by than more measured feedback. - How conversational AI can be used to explore the drivers behind customer responses. - Adaptive AI personas that can be rolled out to better engage with specific demographics. - The non-judgemental nature of AI chatbots that provokes better feedback on sensitive topics. - The relationship between AI research tools and the expertise and skill of human researchers. In the evolving digital landscape, the best researchers marry human expertise with digital efficiency. - The Evolved Group - HumanListening™ - Sima Vasa - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #MA #Data #Strategy #Innovation #Acquisitions…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Colson Steber joins Sima on the podcast. He is the Co-CEO of Communications for Research and Co-CEO of Ag Access. In this episode, Colson dives into the origin of Communications for Research and his journey to becoming Co-CEO. He also discusses his passion for personal evolution and relentless learning and explains how he integrates his learning into his personal life and work. Communications for Research Communications for Research is a research logistics business. They provide services for recruiting and data collection. They are unique in that they have a proven process for getting to the research outcomes and doing whatever needs to get done. The history of CFR Colson’s Father started CFR 26 years ago. Colson, along with his business partner and co-CEO, bought the company six and a half years ago. The company could no longer continue operating as it had before. So they had to figure out how to make it work as a business. The company is now almost triple the size it was when they bought it, and they operate as Ag Access in addition to CFR. A struggle In the first three years of his entrepreneurial journey, Colson experienced continual cash flow problems. He spent almost all of 2019 within seven days of insolvency. The least risky thing Through his entrepreneurial journey, Colson learned that the least risky thing was to bet on himself and find the most real-world way of developing himself personally. Transformation Colson wanted to be a leader and understood he was not the leader he needed to be. However, he did not realize the depth and breadth of transformations he would have to go through to get to where he is today. Ag Access They had always done a significant amount of work in the agricultural sector, but none of it stood out. Then, Colson realized that they knew a lot about that sector and it was a niche they could stand out in because it was so unique. So, after the great pause in the spring of 2020, they launched Ag Access. It was an excellent decision because it is the work they do best and has the highest margin. It is also unique. So people can find them easily. Relentless intentional action Relentless intentional action has become part of the fabric of who Colson is. That means he is always working toward aligning his life and business through self-expression and how he sees his purpose in the world. His word for this year is relentless. Reading Colson’s desire to be his own person, design his life, and act intentionally, led him to start reading something every day. He has continued to do so for the last four years. The Art and Science of Joy Colson volunteers for and supports The Art and Science of Joy. His goal is to 10x the joy and abundance in every facet of his life. Living his best life Colson has structured his life so that by the time he sits at his desk at 8 am, he has already spent more than three hours working on his personal development. An entrepreneurial operating system In 2019, Colson took a deep dive into listening better and asking better questions. Since then, they started implementing an entrepreneurial operating system into the business, ingraining the practices, and teaching people how to be the right boss. Trust Even though Colson has built enough trust in his team to be completely open and transparent about their projects, workflow, and mistakes, he feels they are on a journey, so they still have to keep improving on where they are now. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Communications for Research Inc. Ag Access Colson Steber on LinkedIn Colson Steber on Twitter Books mentioned: The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz Atomic Habits by James ClearMastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Dr. Emmanuel Probst joins Sima on the podcast today. He is the bestselling author of Brand Hacks and the newly-published book, Assemblage. In addition to writing books, he is also the Global Lead of Brand Thought-Leadership at Ipsos. In this episode, he talks to Sima about his latest book and the changing narrative he has seen in brand purpose over the last several years. Books The second edition of Brand Hacks came out in September 2021. Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation will be officially released on the 24th of January, 2023. Dr. Probst is considering writing another book in 2024. Curiosity and fulfillment Dr. Probst believes that curiosity is essential for finding solutions and becoming successful in the world of marketing today. He has found it fulfilling to learn from people from different cultures and professional backgrounds. He feels we can learn as much from those who started in the industry recently as we can from industry leaders with C-level titles and many years of experience. The problem with having too many brands and too many product choices Dr. Probst wrote the book Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation because he was seeing way too many products and brands. He feels that having too many choices is counter-productive because having too many options makes it hard for people to know what truly matters and which products to choose. What people expect from brands Studies done by Ipsos have shown that people expect all brands- regardless of the industry, to deliver good products that work for them. They also expect those brands to make an impact on their lives and offer a positive contribution to the world at large. A shift in brand purpose Since Covid, Dr. Probst has seen a shift in brand purpose. As a result of what is going on in the world today and the acceleration of social media, consumers no longer support brands that claim to have a purpose. They now support the brands that demonstrate their purpose intentionally. Harnessing the power of the audience In the past, brand leaders could dictate the narrative of their brand strategy to their audience. That no longer applies today, so in Assemblage, Dr. Probst explains what brands must do to harness the power of their audience, and co-create the narrative of their brand along with their audience. The difference between expectations and intentions Consumers’ product expectations relate to what they hope to receive and how reliably the products work. Intention is a co-creative process between brands and people to activate and inform what comes next. The outcomes of the co-creative process of intention for brands Co-creating with intention extends the value chain for brands because it makes the output more tangible and allows for a return on investment or ad spend to be perceived more realistically. Challenges for brand managers Big data can be overwhelming for brand managers. That’s why it is helpful to have professional guidance from a company like Ipsos, to inform them tactically and strategically, and assist them in teasing out the most significant data. Some advice for brand managers When talking to their audience, brands must understand and appreciate that people tend to get overwhelmed, confused, and anxious about who they are in real life, who they are on social media, and who they will appear to be in the metaverse. So brands need to create meaningful relationships and reassure people about the future of our society. They also need to sell less and provide better products with a longer lifespan. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Emmanuel Probst on LinkedIn Ipsos Dr. Emmanuel Probst’s latest book, Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation, will available on Amazon on January 24, 2023. Books mentioned: The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is delighted to have Mark Stouse, the Chairman and CEO of Proof Analytics, joining her today to dive into his background, the years he spent building Proof Analytics, and the exciting work he is currently doing. Mark’s story Even though Mark understands data science, he is not a data scientist. He is a business leader who got hooked and wanted more after discovering the power of analytics. So he began climbing the hill. Business problems It takes a lot of effort to get a small amount of data. So Mark started focusing on business problems associated with analytics. He decided to adopt the role of a whisperer figure and began building that role within all the different global organizations he ran. Building a team He had to spend millions of dollars each year, mostly on salaries, to build a team that could provide the latency needed for the various businesses. But it worked! A valuable discovery The huge and intricate mega-models that Mark and his team created were time-consuming, and business leaders could never quite wrap their heads around them. That led Mark and his team to discover the value of what is now known as the Minimum Buyable Model. Code Mark and his team wrote some code early on to allow them to federate models in case they needed to make them bigger, more explanatory, or more inclusive. A better way It all took a lot of work. So, Mark looked for a better way of doing things. Something that had never been fully automated or aided before was multivariable linear and non-linear regression. Yet, that is a lean-data analytic that still answers most of the world’s questions. Big data A problem many businesses are facing today is that they have tons of data, but very little of it is big data. The problem with time lags When looking at the impact of marketing on sales, almost everything marketing spends on increasing sales productivity has different time lags associated with each investment. Without knowing the normal time lag for each type of investment, you cannot know how to plan or find an ROI. Proof analytics At Proof Analytics, they used focused and targeted AI to assist and accelerate their modeling process. Once in production and linked to the necessary data sets, their models become mostly autonomous, so business owners need not be regularly involved with them. Their models get recalculated as new data gets presented, so people can see the historical reality, forecasts that get generated, and also, an updated reality as the future becomes the present. Mark’s customers’ favorite part of the tool Mark’s customers like that they can load data into the libraries and then attach file-level security to that data. That makes it impossible for anyone to see the data in the file, yet the algorithm can still see it. Sessions Mark conducts sessions with his customers to help them triage. That is important because even with everything done with the Proof Analytics tool, it is still not fully democratized. So even though it does not require a data scientist to run it, a data analyst or someone switched onto the topic can help marketing teams have a much better experience with it. The ideal customer The ideal customer for the tool is someone already doing all the work the old-fashioned way and looking for a way to do it more efficiently. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Proof Analytics Mark Stouse on Twitter Mark Stouse on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Human Centricity | Ep. 188 25:57
Anita Watkins, the Global Head of Qualitative Research at Kantar, joins Sima today to talk about how she got to where she is and what she does at Qualitative. She also gets into current trends within the industry, offers guidance for coping with uncertainty, and shares some career advice. Anita’s journey After leaving college, Anita worked in sales and insurance sales. She worked hard and did well even though it was not her ideal job. Then, the company asked her to do some focus groups with the field sales force. After her first presentation, she realized that working in qualitative research might be a better fit for her personality type. She applied for a job with a small firm in the research space. She refused to give up when they told her she did not have enough experience, and they eventually gave her the job. The company went through many changes and mergers over the years and finally became Kantar, one of the largest research firms on the planet. Toward the end of 2017, Anita became Kantar’s Global Head of Qualitative Research. Anita’s career advice Anita advises listeners never to give up! She encourages everyone to stay open, keep learning, and adopt a growth mindset. The impact of the pandemic Just a few weeks before everything shut down in 2020 and travel bans kicked in, Anita managed to sneak in a meeting with 65 global qualitative leaders from various countries. In April 2020, 49 of their 55 countries went into lock-down. At that point, 85% of their work got done in person, so they had to figure out how to pivot, execute their work, and save their projects. They managed to shift to working almost entirely online within about six weeks. Coping with uncertainty In times of uncertainty, take the first step, even if you do not have a plan. Just make some phone calls, and get together with those you know you can rely on to brainstorm. Journaling Anita journals a lot because writing helps her to think better and process her thoughts. Collaborative leadership Anita has a collaborative style of leading and problem-solving, so she enjoys talking to people with different points of view. A shift toward a more human-centric approach Since the pandemic, there has been a shift towards a more human-centric approach. As a result, there has been a change in the questions to which her clients ask her to find answers. Many want to understand how mindsets and behaviors have shifted and how people are coping with vulnerability. Imagination According to Kantar’s insights, companies that use imagination in the future are most likely to become successful and outperform the companies that fail to do that. Companies that get to the why and find a story in the human part of that data will have a competitive advantage. Empathy Anita has taken her inspiration from Brene Brown for creating much of the empathy training they do at Kantar. She has found that getting people to put their perspective aside momentarily, role play, and adopt the mindset of putting themselves in someone else’s story, helps them develop more empathy. Bio Promoted to an expanded role in December 2021. In addition to Global Qualitative, now responsible for: Kantar’s Global Innovation Solutions is designed to help clients drive sustainable brand growth. Kantar’s Innovation offer includes helping clients: identify opportunities, co-create concepts, and provide expert guidance in successful product launch through advertising, media, and product optimization. A key focus for this role will be partnering with technology, operations, and analytics to enhance our current portfolio to work even more effectively with the world’s most successful brands. Kantar’s Solutions Learning team which is responsible for creating world-class content for learning across all Kantar solutions areas as well as professional development for our colleagues around the globe. As the Global Head of Qualitative for Kantar, Anita is accountable for all elements of qualitative ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Multiculturalism | Ep. 187 30:20
Data Gurus – Episode 187 – Multiculturalism, with Adriana Waterston Adriana Waterston is Sima’s guest for today’s podcast! She is the Chief Revenue Officer and Insight and Strategy Lead at Horowitz Research. Multiculturalism is an important matter that has become a focal point for society in recent years. At Horowitz Research, they specialize in multicultural research. Adriana joins Sima today to talk about what they are doing at Horowitz Research. She also gets into the concepts of culture and multiculturalism and discusses various issues related to multiculturalism. The origin of Horowitz Research’s focus on multicultural research Back in the mid-1980s, when Horowitz was focused on helping the nascent cable industry, they addressed the question of who would pay for television when television was free. That brought to light that multicultural people- especially black and Latinx individuals, watched the most television and were willing to pay for it. Yet, at the time, cable companies redlined black and Hispanic neighborhoods. So, in addition to their general market work, Horowitz also began to advocate for multicultural audiences and consumers, urban markets, international audiences, and foreign language-dominant communities. Census 2000 The 2000 Census led many people to understand that America would eventually become a multicultural majority country. Adriana joined Horowitz Research in 2001. She is Latine and is fully bilingual and bicultural. Around the time she joined the company, people were starting to talk about multiculturalism in a way that had never happened before. So she began digging into the company’s data on multicultural audiences and developed a passion for it. Multicultural research As the company evolved and conversations about multiculturalism became more relevant and important, Horowitz became known for their thought leadership and advocacy for multicultural communities and audiences and their work in cultural insights. Culture Culture is not static. It is a very fluid and personal concept. It is about the meanings people attach to traditions, objects, experiences, places, and religious activities and the feelings they get from participating in those experiences. Challenges People are multi-faceted, and there is a lot of diversity in every community. A challenge that many marketers face when targeting different groups of consumers is the fluidity of the cultural groups into which people fit. Unlearning Recently, Horowitz has been focusing on helping marketers and content providers unlearn their old ways of reaching different segments and encouraging them to view everyone as part of a broader community. Horowitz’s message Horowitz’s message for marketers and content providers is that everyone’s story is unique yet universal. The more they can understand that, the better the job they can do. Understanding the value of diversity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism Many next-generation people growing up in immigrant communities in America complain of feeling underestimated because they have darker skin, an accent, or a Hispanic last name. In some, that feeling and experience may even open them to overachieving. Fortunately, the United States is now in a very different place in terms of understanding the value of diversity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism. Maintaining a connection The evolution of communications and travel has made it a lot easier for immigrant families to maintain a connection with and revisit their home countries than it was in the past. That strengthens people’s cultural connections and language skills and helps them stay connected with the food, music, and other ways of keeping their cultural traditions alive. Mixed culture families There is a growing number of mixed culture and mixed-race families, but people still tend to stay connected to people in their communities. Over the next few generations, however, we are likely to see an increasing number of mi...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is excited to have Andrew Cannon and Debby Schlesinger-Hellman, the Co-founders of the Art and Science of Joy and EQJOY, joining her today! Andrew and Debby are on a mission to empower people and inspire them to live more joyful lives! They use the art and science of joy to help individuals and companies elevate their personal and business success. In this episode, they talk about what joy is, what they are doing, and what inspired them to do it. Andrew’s inspiration Andrew’s inspiration for what he does comes from his journey to find purpose in life. He loved his career in the market research industry but needed to do more. His struggles led him to realize that he needed joy in his life. He also needed to use his talents and connections to bring joy to others. Debby’s inspiration We are all born with a certain percentage of joy in our DNA. Debby was fortunate to be born with lots of it. However, a few decades ago, due to circumstances, she started feeling less of it. About five years ago, she felt the need to build more joy for herself and realized she could help others do the same. She and Andrew are both research-minded, so they began talking about how they could use the art and science of joy to make the world a better and more successful place for individuals and businesses. An alternative reality Andrew started doing a podcast and spoke to experts on topics like gratitude, empathy, nutrition, crisis, family life, and what they did to help themselves. Talking to those people helped him find an alternative reality that was a much better space! Elevating people Andrew and Debby elevate people, give them a voice, and offer them joy through their connection to the research industry and the people within it. A powerful industry The research industry is powerful! Each year, about 30 million people get touched through research in the US alone! The Year of Joy The Year of Joy is about making 2023 a joyful year of not getting pulled into life's challenges and focusing more on the good things we can do for ourselves and others. It is not about ignoring the challenges but accepting them for what they are and understanding that they are external and beyond our control. The doors to the Year of Joy online community will open on the 17th of January, 2023, and millions of people will be invited to join. EQJOY Joy is about being able to manage our emotions and feelings. It starts with the children, so Andrew developed a game to teach young children (and their parents, caregivers, or teachers) emotional intelligence. Then he and Debby decided to give it away by making it a non-profit. Goals Their goal for EQJOY is for the next generation of parents to instill emotional intelligence in their children and ultimately make the world more joyful within the next three to four generations. Another goal is to give the game to every child in the first grade worldwide. Joy It takes time and effort to build joy. Self-love is a fundamental requirement. Although joy differs for everyone, research has shown that everyone has four building blocks of joy in common: Sense of well-being Sense of belonging Having a positive impact on others Having fun in life Everyone needs a sense of well-being and the ability to love themselves. However, many individuals struggle to achieve that alone. That is why a sense of community is vital to inspire people looking to improve their well-being. The most joyful people are those who positively impact people, the planet, or both. Making a difference Debby and Andrew hope to make a difference by allowing others to make a difference and giving people access to things that will help them become kind humans. Pain Everyone experiences pain in life. However, we can manage that pain, get pat it, and ultimately choose whether or not we suffer. CEOs Some CEOs get Andrew and Debby’s message and understand that joy is a powerful tool for engagement, while some do not.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is delighted to have Nihal Advani, the Founder, and CEO of QualSights, joining her today! Nihal has been on an exciting journey since starting his first business. In today’s episode, he shares his story, gets into how he founded and pivoted his business, and talks about what they are doing at QualSights. Nihal’s story Nihal grew up in India and played tennis for the country. At eighteen, he came to the US to study and play college tennis. In his junior year of college, he was fortunate enough to be one of only ten people selected from more than 3,100 candidates to do an internship at Google. After graduating, he wanted to continue with tech. So he worked for Microsoft for five years and then decided to start a business. Getting selected as a Google intern Nihal got selected as an intern for Google for two reasons. One was that he knew Google inside out after spending an entire semester learning about all their various departments, so he crushed the interviews. The second was his background in sports. Sports and entrepreneurs Nihal believes that sports are important for entrepreneurs because they teach them the qualities they need, like teamwork, leadership, focus, determination, and persistence. Sports also teach entrepreneurs how to deal with losses and celebrate wins. Nihal’s first startup Nihal quit Microsoft in 2012 to start a travel planning company. It was called Georama and started as a recommendation engine to help people find places to go based on their budget, interests, and preferred activities. They were not making enough income by 2014, so Nihal decided to pivot into virtual travel and provide real-time video insights from anywhere in the world. They had great technology and attracted some decent clients, like Marriott, but he felt he had taken on too much. Insights In 2017, Nihal decided to focus on one single vertical. He found a program to help him select the right one and saw that the insights industry resonated very well with his value proposition. QualSights So, in 2018, he pivoted to focus solely on insights. He rebranded Georama to become an all-in-one qualitative suite called QualSights. QualSights is a one-stop shop for deep consumer insights. Growing fast Nihal attributes QualSights’s fast growth to its accelerator platform and having had momentum. Covid Covid forced everyone to go digital. That forced people to use tools they would not have used otherwise. With digital, they found that they could do things fast and easily. With platforms like QualSights, they found additional tools like AI to help them make sense of all the data. Remote ethnography Remote ethnography is powerful because it allows clients to capture consumer insights in-person and in the consumers’ natural environments as they are cooking, cleaning, shopping, or eating. The different stages of QualSights’s research projects: Recruiting (QualSights uses recruiting partners to help them move faster than traditional qualitative research.) Capturing (The QualSights platform starts with the capture side. 90% of their projects get done via their mobile app, and they have a suite of tools to capture the data.) Analyzing (QualSights has a suite of AI tools to help find the moments that matter and analyze the data.) Presenting (On the QualSights platform, photos, videos, audio, or whatever people have captured can be dragged to an area where they can be shared digitally and downloaded with one click.) QualSights is the only platform with that much breadth and depth of capabilities. QualSights’s positioning Qualsights has clients across a wide range of industries, including CPG, pharma, tech, and retail. Links: Conect with Sima Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Connect with Nihal Nihal Advani on LinkedIn QualSights on Twitter (@QualSights)…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Digital Qualitative | Ep. 184 24:07
Sima is happy to have Jim Longo joining her today! Jim is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Discuss. Jim has had an amazing career in the research sector! He talks to Sima about his journey, how he got to where he is in his career, and the benefits of digital qualitative research. He also gets into the features they built at Discuss to improve efficiency and direct analysis. Jim’s background Jim got involved in qualitative research early on in his career. He joined Harris Interactive in 1999 when the internet was already going strong. They brought Jim in to digitize qualitative research. He wanted to introduce video because it allowed him to see people’s reactions and body language when in conversation. At every other organization he joined after leaving Harris, he continued to push for the ability to use video, even though the video quality was poor back then. Discuss Discuss is a tech company that understands qualitative research and has its roots in research. They work with brands, corporate researchers, and their agencies. Engaging with your target audience When Jim and his co-founder got together, they started looking for a way to leverage technology to scale qualitative research. They did some research and learned that being engaged with your target audience and customers mattered. The idea of doing video came up. So they built something specifically for research and incorporated some unique features to make things easier and involve more people in the research process. Technology and automation They managed to prove to the marketplace that it is possible to scale qualitative research by leveraging technology and automation. Keyword search Jim and his partner built the ability to synchronize the video to a transcript. Now, it is possible to do a keyword search on their platform (and others). They subsequently added a tagging capability too, which helps with analysis. Travel Using video has allowed people to save a lot on travel expenses. More exposure Video has given exposure to more people to participate in the research process. Bringing qual to the surface Video brings qualitative research to the surface and gets people excited! Making qualitative research easier, and less costly If the cost of doing qualitative research gets reduced, and research sessions are easier to set up, people are more likely to want to use it. Jim describes that as a strategy of customer closeness or customer connects. Understanding people at the human level Jim’s work is valuable because it helps researchers understand people at the human level. Asynchronous When consumers have the freedom to do a task or record something related to an experience without being in a virtual focus group or an IDI, that is known as asynchronous. Getting answers faster Jim is always thinking of ways to compress the timeline for finding answers when his customers or clients ask a business question. Digital qualitative research participants Right now, people are looking for connection. So when they participate in digital qualitative research, they enjoy knowing that they are being heard and someone is interested in them. A benefit of digital research Jim points out that with digital research, researchers will get the answers they are looking for, and in many instances, they can make decisions without having to travel anywhere. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Discuss Jim Longo on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another engaging and informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is delighted to have Raj Bains, the CEO and Founder at Prophecy, joining her for today’s show! Raj started Prophecy five years ago and decided to build one big product to get data ready for analytics. He talks to Sima about his business and product and where he fits within the industry. Raj’s background Raj started his professional career in the early 2000s. He started with graphics, worked as a developer, got into power tools, and worked at Microsoft. After that, he joined a team at NVIDIA to build CUDA, which now gets used for Bitcoin mining. Then he moved into the data space and shifted from engineering into marketing and product management. While selling big data platforms and managing Apache Hive for the Hadoop Company at Hortonworks, he saw data users struggling to be productive with outdated tools. He solved that problem by building power tools to make it easy to get data ready for analytics very quickly. He has focused on doing that since then. Prophecy Raj started Prophecy in 2017 to build a visual tooling layer to get data ready for analytics. Data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers can use the tool to avoid having to do unnecessary work. Standardization There is a big problem with standardization within large organizations when it comes to building data pipelines. The problem with unstandardized codes In the past, people within the industry used to write scripts. Then they started using standardized visual tools. After that, they moved to the cloud, but nobody wanted to get locked into that tool, so they got rid of the visual development tools and started using codes. The codes within companies are unstandardized, however, so everyone’s code looks different. That has led to many different problems. A solution Prophecy’s clients do visual drag-and-drop development, and Raj and his team write high-quality code for them. That has opened people up to returning to visual development and allowed much more standardization within the industry. Building a solution Raj and his team started working with a few big credit card companies and banks. Then they spent two or three years building their product. They still have a year or two of building ahead of them, but they have reached a point where they can solve the entire problem for companies using their product. An enterprise standard They have created an enterprise standard for all lines of business, where data analysts, data engineers, and everyone else within a company use the same tool and speak the same language. Data pipelines Prophecy makes it quick and easy for companies to build data pipelines. Data pipelines are essential for analytics because they provide the necessary information for asking intelligent questions. The data has to be high-quality, timely, and in the right shape to answer questions quickly. The future Raj believes that they will solve the issues with data management within the next three to five years. Bio: Raj is the founder & CEO of Prophecy. Previously, Raj led project management of Apache Hive at Hortonworks through their IPO. He also headed product management and marketing for a NewSQL database startup. Raj continues to actively develop compiler and database technologies in his quest to create data tools “that don’t suck.” His engineering roles include developing a NewSQL database, building CUDA at NVIDIA as a founding engineer, and as a compiler engineer working on Microsoft Visual Studio. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Connect with Raj Raj Bains on LinkedIn Raj Bains on Twitter…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is excited to have Florian Kahlert, the Chief Data, and Innovation Officer at Telmar, joining her on the show today. Florian recently sold his company, Helixa, to Telmar. In this episode, he gets into the benefits of the integration between Helixa and Telmar and discusses competition, data protection, data sharing, and privacy. Florian’s story Florian has been oscillating between data and ad tech, and the research side of the industry throughout his career. He has worked at several different companies over the last two decades. He ran Helixa until it got acquired by Telmar at the end of last year. Helixa There are two parts to how Helixa fits into the overall data landscape: Transforming data (observational data, social data, etc.) into understanding what people’s interests are. Fulilling the need within the industry for accurate and detailed personas and definitions of audiences, segments, etc., that go beyond demographics and lifestyles to address their product advertising and their product development needs in a fragmented market. Better decisions When you have a data set of hundreds of thousands of influencers, it is hard to figure out which part of your audience goes to which influencer. A lot of detailed information is required to make the right decisions. Helixa builds those audiences in rich and granular detail to help their clients understand more about them and make better decisions. Understanding the competition Helixa also assists their clients strategically, by helping them understand what their competitors’ consumers are doing so they can position themselves similarly or differently. Telmar Telmar is a traditional company that has been innovative in supporting media and advertising agencies on the media planning side. Adding value At Telmar, they process a vast number of data sets on behalf of their clients. They are good at adding value to the data they process. Where Helixa and Telmar match Helixa is on the side of audience intelligence, and Telmar is on the media intelligence side of understanding media information and planning. Together, they provide clients with far more streamlined solutions. Uncertainty Covid has shown that companies react early on and quickly to uncertainty in terms of their cash management and how they control unnecessary expenditure. People have become more cautious with their budgets and spending decisions. A global company Telmar is a company that operates globally. The requirements for what they need to do in the UK versus what they need to do in the US are very different. Generally, they lean towards what works in the UK because when things work in the EU, they tend to work everywhere else. Privacy We are at a point where conversations about privacy are starting to happen on a consumer level. We will see continuous changes that could affect data companies and companies that deal with data. Protective behavior Many companies are currently protecting their data to maintain their competitive edge. Florian’s long-term concern Being part of a consumer company that works with data, Florian constantly worries that data will be generated from fewer and fewer sources in the future. Privately owned data sources have advertising models, so they may not always be willing to make their data available to help companies make decisions. He is concerned that that might impact how we understand the world through data. Bio: Florian Kahlert Chief Data & Innovation Officer Florian built his career at the intersection of Digital Advertising and MarTech and its applications for Market Research. In addition to his experience running research companies, he has been instrumental in growing startup companies. In addition to his experience running research companies (including GfK MRI), he has been instrumental in growing startup companies in the Online Media and Marketing Technology and Resear...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 SampleCon Happy Hour (Part 2) with Sima Vasa , Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, Armen Adjemian | Ep. 181 16:55
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is excited to bring you the second part of the live discussion between herself and four other industry leaders that took place earlier this year at SampleCon. This episode might give those who did not make it to SampleCon this year an idea of what the conference was like, and hopefully bring a fresh perspective to those who were there. You will hear Sima lead an informal and unscripted discussion with Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, and Armen Adjemian. They share their opinions on various topics and discuss their concerns for the industry. Ryan Barry is the President at Zappi. He oversees their commercial operations, operations, and product and engineering groups. Steve Schlesinger is the CEO of Schlesinger Group. He focuses on strategy, acquisitions, and developing the business for the future. Armen Adjemian is a co-founder and CEO of DISQO. He is involved with strategy and marketing. Katie Gross is Chief Customer Officer at Suzy. She oversees sales, customer success, and their Full Service Center of Excellence team. Sima Vasa is a co-founder of Paradigm Sample and CEO of Infinity Squared Ventures. She also does investment banking for Oberon Securities. What concerns Steve? Companies can grow from a startup to great success a lot faster now. So Steve worries about the companies that will grow significantly in a short period and represent large amounts of revenue in three to five years. He is concerned about his blind spots and the things he doesn’t know. What Katie worries about Katie worries about Ted Talks, Twitter, and people who take time and attention from respondents. Creating better value DISQO’s main growth constraint is the member or user. So they think about how the changes that occur in their users’ lives will affect their attention span. They are always thinking of ways to create better value for their users, and they always gravitate to the member experience because that drives growth. The data war Ryan worries about who will win the data war inside big businesses. Because 67% of the media spend of most companies is done programmatically now. Also, most consumer insights departments are still analog and disconnected from a lot of performance optimization. Connecting what people do with what they say Ryan feels that if researchers could connect what people do with what they say, they only will need to ask them two questions. However, people in the industry are not thinking about that. So he worries about what insights departments will look like five years from now. Doing things differently According to earnings reports, many CEOs are responsible for the idea of doing things differently. Ryan feels that much of the drive toward transformation is happening at the level of the CMO and Chief Growth Officer. Change within traditional insights organizations Sima believes the need to transform and move faster has driven much of the change within traditional insights organizations. From the top down Katie thinks some companies have done a great job of starting from the top down and enabling everyone. The hardest thing Armen feels that selling to insights teams over time is the hardest thing because it is difficult to prove ROI from that spend. Fintech Something interesting about fintech, compared with a more traditional CPG, is that the number of buyers within fintech groups is many times more than the number of buyers within more traditional insights departments. Creators Ryan believes that creators are underserved in terms of data. They are the future and need data to inspire them and help them make better decisions. He views insights people as creators because they are part of the process. The digital market Ryan thinks that the digital market is becoming a lot bigger. Global shifts The world is becoming more data-driven. So everyone, regardless of position,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 SampleCon Happy Hour (Part 1) with Sima Vasa , Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, Armen Adjemian| Ep. 180 27:58
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is excited to bring you part of a live discussion between herself and four other industry leaders that took place earlier this year, at SampleCon. For those who did not get to SampleCon this year, this episode will give you an idea of what it was like. You will hear Sima lead an informal and unscripted discussion with Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, and Armen Adjemian. They share their strong opinions on various topics, including leadership, talent management, company culture, respondent experience, and more. Ryan Barry is the President at Zappi. He oversees their commercial operations, operations, and product and engineering groups. Steve Schlesinger is the CEO of Schlesinger Group. He focuses on strategy, acquisitions, and developing the business for the future. Armen Adjemian is a co-founder and CEO of DISQO. He is involved with strategy and marketing Katie Gross is Chief Customer Officer at Suzy. She oversees sales, customer success, and their Full Service Center of Excellence team. Sima Vasa is a co-founder of Paradigm Sample and CEO of Infinity Squared Ventures. She also does investment banking for Oberon Securities. Talent Everyone is trying to figure out how to acquire, hire, and retain talent. Even though there are currently many conversations about technology and automation, Steve feels that it is the talent that generates the value of the business. So people have to be more creative than ever to attract people into their businesses. His company regularly looks at acquisitions as a way to get talent. Katie joined Suzy almost two years ago. Hiring has been nearly a full-time job for her because Suzy needs people with experience and people with different points of view. Working from home It is difficult for parents to raise their children and work. Working from home has been helpful for females in the workplace and brought more balance to many families with working parents. The best team DISQO has been very people-centric across time because Armen believes that whoever has the best team in the long term will win. Remote hiring has allowed them to hire faster. Doubling their staff DISQO doubled its staff by bringing in more than 200 people last year. It was extremely challenging to do in the current environment. Investments Last year, Sima saw a lot of activity in what was said to be a frothy market. Now, there appears to be more scrutiny and caution around investments. Expectations also seem to be more realistic. Debt financing Zappi has gained much traction from debt financing over the last several years. Ryan believes that debt financing is a useful vehicle for growing companies. High salaries Salaries are costing a lot more. That could become a problem if the numbers do not get met. Performance At the end of the day, investment is about performance. Culture It can be difficult for a company to retain its culture in tough times. It helps to have a good environment, hire great people, and treat them like adults. Having open conversations about what the company is going through is also vital. Adapting and changing The culture has to adapt and change as a company grows. Complex culture Steve has a culture of 20 companies amalgamated together. Each company came in with its culture, so the current culture is a complex combination of those. Culture and people Culture and people are the most important criteria for a company. Shared values Shared values are vital for a cultural fit within a company. Respondent experience Market researchers should not support 45-minute conjoint surveys any longer because most people only have a seven-minute attention span. Representative sample The industry has defined representative sample as age, gender, and income. That, and some other industry basics, need to change. A challenge The industry is facing a challenge in that it is constrained by the audience.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Voice of Patients | Ep. 179 26:18
Welcome to another engaging and informative episode of Data Gurus! Today, Sima is happy to have Wes Michael, the Founder and President of Rare Patient Voice, joining her! Wes founded Rare Patient Voice in 2013 to give patients and caregivers with rare diseases the opportunity to voice their opinions in research studies. In this episode, he explains what prompted him to start Rare Patient Voice. He also talks about how he has grown the business and what they do. Wes’s story After graduating, Wes worked for a computer consulting company that did surveys. Then he returned to school to get an MBA and learn about statistics. After that, he worked at General Mills for a few years and learned about market research. He then moved to McCormick, a spice company in Maryland. A big change There was a change in the healthcare world in the nineties when direct-to-consumer ads were made legal. Wes moved into that world when he joined Kantar Health (then known as Migliara/Kaplan). He dealt with companies like Merck, Pfizer, and BMS, which knew everything about marketing to physicians but nothing about TV advertising to mass markets. Wes found it interesting to see those companies move from doing physician research only to doing patient research. Rare diseases One of Wes’s first clients was one of the few thousand people in the entire country in the hemophilia space. That company asked Wes to create a panel to help market their hemophiliac treatment product. The National Hemophilia Foundation Conference Wes went to the National Hemophilia Foundation conference and explained market research. People signed up to do interviews and surveys. After that, they went back every year to recruit more people. A business idea A few years later, a client from a different pharmaceutical company in the hemophilia space asked Wes if they could access his patient panel. That gave Wes the idea to create a panel of people with hemophilia and other diseases and start a business to make it available to multiple companies. Rare Patient Voice When Wes founded his Company, Rare Patient Voice, nine years ago, he started working with the hemophiliac community. He looked at other areas of interest, like multiple sclerosis, later. Referral bonus Patients know other patients. So Wes started offering a referral bonus to people who referred others to do his surveys. Cancer patients Wes did not want to work with cancer patients initially. However, after being inundated with requests from cancer patients, he started working together with David Wasilewski, the creator of WhatNext.com, the social health website of the American Cancer Society. It was a win-win situation for both of them, and it got Wes started with multiple diseases. Hiring more people As the demand increased, Wes hired more people. Then an MS patient from Colorado offered to help and started creating patient events in Colorado. After a while, Wes had fifty people from around the country going to patient events and spreading the word. That eventually became a source of full-time employees. Advocacy groups Many advocacy groups have partnered with Rare Patient Voice. Competition They are competitive and like to win. Even so, Wes likes to think that there are no losers. Some of their competitors are also their clients because even though they have panels, they still don’t have enough to achieve what Rare Patient Voice has done. Patients With every survey, patients get the chance to give some feedback. Wes loves to read out their comments in their monthly meetings. Referral pay-outs Since its inception, Rare Patient Voice has paid more than $9,000,000 for referrals! Other research firms Most of the work Rare Patient Voice does is with other research firms. They are also happy to deal directly with pharma companies, but those companies usually prefer to have a firewall between themselves and the patients. Expanding their horizons When Wes started his company,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast! Sima has selected some interesting and educative past episodes of Data Gurus for you to enjoy in the last few weeks of August. She will return in September with new guests, fresh content, and a few surprises! Today’s episode is a replay of episode 155 with Lilah Raynor, the Founder, and CEO of Logica Research. In this episode, Lilah talks to Sima about a research project she did with a team from the IDEA Council and discusses an ongoing study she is involved in, called The Future of Money. Lilah’s background Lilah comes from a financial services background. Before founding Logica Research, she managed the research team at Charles Schwab. Founding Logica Research Lilah founded Logica Research about fifteen years ago. It was initially called Koski Research. She started her company to provide excellent client service for clients who preferred working with small boutique research firms. Over time, they have become more niche-focused on financial services and fintech. Making a change Owning her own business allowed Lilah to have more flexibility while raising her two young children. It also allowed her to work on different projects and do different types of research. Research around hot topics Lilah participated in and conducted some research to help the research industry understand how to ask questions around ethnicity, race, and gender. The IDEA Council The Insights Association has a group called the IDEA Council that has within it two working groups. One does research on research, and the other focuses more on the profession and talent. The IDEA Council’s research on research group Lilah got involved in the IDEA Council’s research on research group because the purpose of her company is to provide insights for organizations to help improve people’s financial lives. After the murder of George Floyd, and with more focus on inclusion and diversity within the research industry, she wanted to be in a position to provide sample and participants that were both inclusive and diverse. A white paper Lilah and the team at the IDEA Council created a white paper on having more inclusive demographic questions. They focused on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The first step The white paper is the first step in an ongoing series of research studies. It was done to provide a perspective and recommendations on how to ask demographic questions, how to be more sensitive and inclusive when asking demographic questions, and how to use new questions in their sample design. A three-tiered approach recommendation They came up with a three-tiered approach recommendation for asking questions about gender and sex. Non-binary Non-binary has not yet been properly defined or researched, so it might not be clear to older generations. Caution and encouragement Caution has been recommended when using terms that might not have universal definitions. The option for self-identification with an open end is encouraged. Sexual orientation Sexual orientation needs to be differentiated from gender. So they offer suggestions for different ways to ask questions about sexual orientation. Demographic questions Demographic questions should be handled in a sensitive way, similar to questions about household income, assets, or money. Race and ethnicity There is a large section in the white paper on asking questions about race and ethnicity. It has recommendations for different ways in which those questions can be asked. The white paper also identifies terms for race and ethnicity, country of origin, ancestry, culture. USA The recommendations in the white paper are based on and geared for the United States. Race Questions about race should be asked in a sensitive and open-ended way. Having an inclusive and sensitive coding framework is also recommended. Multiple selection and self-identification Allowing for multiple selection and self-identification are also recommended.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast! Sima has curated several illuminating and informative past Data Gurus episodes for you to enjoy in the last weeks of August. She will be back again in September with fresh content, new guests, and a few surprises! Today’s episode is a replay of episode 147, in which Sima shared Part 1 of Investing in Research, a panel discussion about agencies from the WiRe (Women in Research) Conference that took place last year. The discussion is hosted by Nikki Lavoie, and experts Sima Vasa, Sherry Fox, and Elaine Riddel join her to talk about a prominent myth circulating in the insights industry. According to that myth, only tech and SaaS-based companies receive investment funding. In this discussion, the panel of experts clarifies why that myth is false and explains how service-based companies can start accessing investment funding. The experts Sherry Fox is a career Global Insights Strategist focused on health care. She is well-versed in strategic brand development and regulatory environments. Sherry is an industry expert and futuristic thinker who can facilitate collaborations leading to the growth and acquisition of service companies. She has also founded future health strategies to leverage the intersection of data, insights, and technology. Sima Vasa is a multi-faceted business leader in the market research and analytics space with a broad range of expertise from P&L management, operations, business development, marketing, entrepreneurship, and investment banking. Currently, Sima focuses on advising clients on overall business strategy, valuation of strategic options, and execution of investment banking mandates through Oberon Securities, a middle-market-focused investment banking firm. Elaine Riddel is a growth activist who believes that breakthrough potential exists in every company. She unlocks potential by anticipating market changes that will influence client priorities and then building organizational confidence to deliver new value. As A CEO, she transformed mature, stagnant, global insights firms into scalable market leaders that consistently out-performed the market over fifteen years. Her playbook is the foundation for her growth advisories, serving founders, CEOs, and PE firms. Elaine is currently an MD with Oaklins Da Silva and Phillips, a leading investment bank for marketing and media services. Why is there the myth that service-based companies cannot get funding? Sima believes that service-based companies can get investment capital if they want it. It is all about the valuation of a service-based company, compared with a more Saas or tech-enabled company. Investors want to invest in good, financially sound companies that provide their clients with a strong value and serve their markets well. So the question is really around the value of the company. Elaine thinks that everything has its time. Automating much of the back office and the DIY will result in better, faster, and cheaper kinds of foundational services. We are moving into a time where more people with more advanced decision-making capabilities are needed to advise clients. Sherry believes that even with the arrival of big data and AI being used more in the insights industry, people are still necessary to deliver the insights to the pointer lane because you cannot rely on the data to explain why something is true. That is why service-based companies are needed more than ever right now to interpret the data. Having insights translated into action Elaine thinks that some service-based companies will stand out in terms of their areas of expertise because clients are looking for the expertise to translate insights into action with confidence in real-time. Opportunities Service-based companies should look for opportunities to syndicate or create multi-client services- on a subscription basis. Reducing investor risk Service-based companies need to reassure their investors that enough is being done to reduce the...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Exploring Online Industry Trends with Sima Vasa at Infinity Squared Ventures, John Bremer at Phantom 4 Solutions and Bob Fawson at Numerator 19:14
This episode features a conversation between Sima Vasa, CEO and Founder of Infinity Squared Ventures, and John Bremer, President of Phantom 4 Solutions, at a virtual event hosted by Numerator and moderated by Bob Fawson. John and Sima provide insights into the evolution of data collection and analytics in a rapidly-changing consumer landscape. They discuss: - How the real applications of new technologies often outpace their intended use cases, overextending these tech assets. - Human expertise can’t effectively be replaced by digital tools. - Shifting consumer preferences and behaviors continuously alter which data collection methods are most effective, and which ones are losing their usefulness. In an environment where technologies and standard practices are in constant flux, leaders in the data acquisitions space have to stay adaptable to find continued success. - Bob Fawson - Infinity Squared - Numerator - Numerator - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #M&A #Data #Strategy #Innovation…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this episode, host Sima Vasa is pleased to welcome Michalis Michael, CEO at DMR Group, who shares the work his organization is doing with AI to be more efficient in both gathering and analyzing market data. Michalis shared some important insights on the evolution of AI: - AI can be categorized into different types: Narrow AI and Strong AI. - Narrow AI includes machine learning models and is a useful data analytics tool. - Machine learning models are most effective when they’re trained from human inputs, which still leaves some room for subjectivity in the final results. - AI is not a silver bullet but a time-saving tool that more efficiently aggregates and categorizes massive amounts of data. As Michalis tells it, the best AI tools still require a human touch to implement them in a meaningful use case. - DMR - Sima Vasa - Infinity Squared - Infinity Squared - LinkedIn Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #M&A #Data #Strategy #Innovation…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, Sima is joined by Anouar El Haji, Founder and CEO at Veylinx, a behavioral insights platform for answering critical business questions during all stages of product innovation. Topics discussed include: - Anouar’s background and career path. - The evolution of economics from being strictly theoretical to being scientifically tested. - The inherent bias in conducting hypothetical surveys as market research. - Measuring demand by studying subjects with a financial stake tied to their answers. - Why the good nature of humans is detrimental to conducting scientific research studies. - The ways AI could completely change the market research space without the industry proactively adding safeguards. Resources: https://veylinx.com/ Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation. #Analytics #M&A #Data #Strategy #Innovation #MRX…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is delighted to talk with Gordon Allott today! Gordon is the President and CEO of BroadPeak Partners LLC, the company that developed the K3 software. Today's discussion takes a slightly different turn as we introduce Gordon, who is working on various aspects of data. The work done at BroadPeak brings a fresh perspective on the use of data in today's digital age. So, join us as we delve into Gordon's journey and learn about BroadPeak's unique approach to data integration and analysis! Gordon's bio Gordon Allott is the president and CEO of BroadPeak Partners, developer of the K3. K3 is software that takes data from anywhere, allows users to transform, filter, and unify through an intuitive UI, and send it anywhere. Before founding BroadPeak, Gordon was a consultant and attorney in the financial sector. That included advising a wide variety of bulge-bracket banks and hedge funds on derivatives trading. Gordon led the energy trading and risk groups for Sapient, delivering trading projects for Duke, Constellation, JPMorgan, Chevron, and others. Prior to Sapient, he was part of a startup (KWI), leading the USA as VP of Business Development and VP then Asia Pac (now Alstom). Gordon practiced as a derivatives attorney, has a JD from the University of Denver, and a BA from Drake University. About BroadPeak BroadPeak is a data integration consultancy that started in 2007. They specialize in extracting data from different systems, merging and blending data, and creating data pipelines. In 2013-2014, they created a data pipeline platform called K3, which allows employees to use a low-code approach to create connections to various data sources, merge, blend, and clean the data to make it analytically ready. K3 is now commercially available and used by 70 Fortune 500 companies. BroadPeak’s area of focus Broadpeak focuses on helping large corporations extract data from old and painful systems to make it meaningful. They are continuing to move forward in the new data era. Their primary target Their primary target is operational people with real operational goals and the need to get things done for the enterprise. They offer low-code tools that democratize the data integration process enabling non-coders to connect to APIs and extract data from different systems. BroadPeak has a secret value proposition BroadPeak aims to solve the problem of IT teams building their own tools by putting the power in the hands of the people who need it most. They offer a solution through their K3 data pipeline platform, which allows companies to extract data without needing a developer. The platform is a secret value proposition for Broadpeak, as they aim to enable businesses to extract data quickly and efficiently without relying on IT teams. Examples of the various dimensions of work being done at BroadPeak One example is creating daily or hourly P&L reports, with explanations of changes, instead of waiting until the end of the month. Another example is marrying two sets or three sets of data together, which often runs into data quality issues. Their goal is to create an analytical or data control framework that can handle unknown challenges, such as cleaning up data or stitching it together. BroadPeak helps customers assess their challenges Gordon believes that many companies want to sell software without providing any ongoing support to achieve business outcomes. However, the pressure is on for teams to get answers quickly, and delays can result in missed opportunities. BroadPeak helps its customers assess their challenges and develop viable solutions using their platform, teaching them how to use it effectively. Once the customer learns how to use the platform, it becomes easy to move forward. A streaming rules engine BroadPeak has a streaming rules engine that creates case statements using WHEN THEN ELSE statements. That helps with edge cases that take up time,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is happy to have Venkat Venkataramani joining her for today's episode of Data Gurus! Venkat is the CEO and Co-founder of Rockset. Venkat shares his background, dives into the benefits of real-time data analytics and cloud-based infrastructure, and discusses the interesting work they are doing at Rockset. Biography Venkat Venkataramani is CEO and Co-founder of Rockset. In his role, Venkat helps organizations build, grow, and compete with data by making real-time analytics accessible to developers and data teams everywhere. Before he founded Rockset, he was an Engineering Director for the Facebook infrastructure team managing online data services for 1.5 billion users. These systems scaled 1000x during his eight years at Facebook, serving five billion queries per second at single-digit millisecond latency and five 9s of reliability. Before joining Facebook, Venkat worked on tools to make the Oracle database easier to manage. Venkat’s background Before he founded Rockset, Venkat managed online data infrastructure for Facebook between 2007 and 2015. He was fortunate to work with some amazing people and learned a lot from them. His team was responsible for building, scaling, and maintaining a set of services on which Facebook’s online products had been built. When he started, Facebook had around thirty or forty million monthly active users, and when he left, there were about a billion-and-a-half active users. What makes Venkat the proudest What Venkat feels proudest of, having been part of the Facebook online data infrastructure, are all their product launches, and their transition from web to mobile. Facebook’s Like button The load and demand on Facebook's data infrastructure were completely different before and after the installation of the Like button. So they had to keep on innovating and pushing the envelope. The Facebook Newsfeed Most people are surprised to hear that before 2008, the Facebook Newsfeed only got updated once a day! How real-time data has transformed business Real-time data allows people to know what is happening in the present moment. Before the advent of real-time data, strategic decisions were all intuition or experience-based rather than data-driven, and that caused many problems. Facebook’s shift to real-time data During the eight years Venkat spent with Facebook, he saw the shift to real-time data happening across every aspect of the back end of Facebook. The benefits of the cloud The cloud allows everyone to have accessibility without having any specific kind of software or infrastructure within an organization. That enables every company to be a potential client. Rockset’s orientation Rockset’s orientation is cloud, whereas other companies are still transitioning and moving toward the cloud. The benefits of cloud-only infrastructure Cloud-only infrastructure allows businesses to access fast and fresh real-time data analytics. The storage separation of the cloud makes it possible to build massively scalable and very efficient real-time databases and platforms that can be easily and cost-effectively scaled up or down, depending on the demand. About Rockset Rockset is cloud-only, so it requires neither downloads nor installation. All their customers have to do is create an account and explain where their data sources are, and Rockset will automatically transform their data into fast sequel tables. Why do businesses prefer real-time data? Working with cloud-based real-time data streams makes it much quicker and simpler for businesses to scale, monitor their business metrics, eliminate risk, build better products for their customers, and save revenue that could potentially have been lost. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Venkat Venkataramani on LinkedIn Rockset…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is delighted to have Henry Hays joining her on the podcast today! Henry is the energetic and inspiring Co-founder and Disruptor at Henry Hays Consulting. In this episode of Data Gurus, Henry dives into the concept of disruptive innovation. Biography Henry spent most of his adult life in sales and sales leadership- mainly in pharmaceuticals and biotech. He started in the late 1990s and had the good fortune to get promoted to several different roles where he gained a good sense of the business. His break came when he was recruited away from a comfortable job by his professional mentor, and he literally said “yes” before even learning what he was supposed to sell! Within five years, they had grown the company (Avanir Pharmaceuticals) to the point where it was acquired. That gave Henry resources and choice, so he chose that point to step away from the hamster wheel pace. It happened at the time when the first few Blockbuster Video stores began closing, which was crazy for Henry. So he dove head-first into disruptive innovation and has remained in that space since then. Henry’s background Henry describes himself as a lifelong sales guy. He has always been extroverted, so he loves interacting with others. After spending 22 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, he had the opportunity in 2008 to help start a company in the Southern California area. After running the company for almost five years, it got purchased. Soon after, Henry’s intellectual curiosity led him to find Clayton Christiansen, the Harvard teacher who came up with the concept of disruptive innovation. Henry was fascinated with Christiansen’s ideas and decided to dedicate a good portion of his time to evangelizing about disruptive innovation. Tremendous opportunity Society has been experiencing some radical shifts lately. As a result, disruptive innovation has taken on a different and more urgent tone, which provides a tremendous opportunity for business owners. Disrupting businesses Henry believes that if people are not disrupting their own businesses, someone else will do it for them. He feels that disruption is much easier for smaller businesses because they are more agile and less challenging to transform. A moment of doubt It is not unusual for disruptors to experience a moment of doubt and wonder if they have done the right thing. Processing innovation and change Henry has found that the further we get from our years of schooling, the harder it becomes for us to process new things that do not work for us immediately. Now, when he does not want to opt for some change, he seeks to understand the forces driving the change, why it is happening, who stands to lose, and when. That helps him detach from the emotion of the situation and look at it objectively. Disrupt Ready Henry and two other partners recently started a company called Disrupt Ready. They provide simple, face-to-face technical education for legacy executives on how the blockchain works and help them facilitate a connection to the third-party tech players that match what they want. They designed Disrupt Ready with adult principles in mind. The Disruption Innovation Index Henry and his partners at Disrupt Connect came up with what they have called the Disruptive Innovation Index to help executives by giving them a sense of where they are as a company and as an individual. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Henry Hays Consulting Henry Hays on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Tastewise | Ep. 200 25:50
Alon Chen, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Tastewise, joins Sima today to share his career journey and dive into what they are doing at Tastewise. Biography: Alon Chen is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer at Tastewise. He is the developer of an artificial intelligence-based food intelligence platform designed to assist food and beverage businesses and brands. The company's platform works with food brands, manufacturers, ingredient companies, and flavor houses, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Givaudan, Campbell's, and Kraft Heinz, to enhance new product development, build marketing strategies, and accelerate sales in retail and restaurants, enabling restaurants, hospitality groups, and food brands to make smarter decisions for a healthy, sustainable, and delicious future. Alon’s journey Alon was born and raised in Israel. He started his first business at fifteen, building and selling computers. His first real job was at Google, looking after the search quality for Hebrew and then working with their marketing team. He was the Founder of Google Partners, the Google partner program for their advertising business. He soon realized he loved working with technology and facing business and marketing challenges. So that is what he does today with Tastewise. People Alon can program, develop code, and write code. But he prefers working with people. Technology Alon is passionate about technology! Current developments with AI keep him awake all night long, thinking of ways to use AI to improve the food system. What is Tastewise? Alon founded Tastewise in 2018. It is an enterprise solution to help the world’s largest food brands digitize and transform their slow and tedious methods of understanding consumers and their consumption preferences and become more efficient with their product innovation lines. So Tastewise is essentially a data platform that collects data points from every single food delivery app and recipe app across the web to allow organizations to find out what consumers eat and drink, to help them move their new product launches from a 90% failure rate to a 100% success rate. Alon’s idea for Tastewise Alon’s idea for Tastewise started with his family members sending messages to his mom each week on their family Whatsapp group, telling her about their constantly-changing dietary preferences for their Shabbat dinners on Friday nights so that she did not have to prepare dishes no one would eat. He realized that the same thing was happening in the food industry too, with people’s diets changing constantly. The food industry is slow to adapt and change, so he saw a great business opportunity to help brands understand the trends related to consumers’ constantly changing food preferences and get to know which dishes consumers are making with the products they buy. The most difficult part The most difficult part of Alon’s work is applying artificial intelligence to the subtle nuances of a given situation to get to know what consumers actually want. The technology One part of Tastewise’s technology involves collecting vast amounts of data. Another is making sense of all the data. The last part is visualizing and conveying the findings to users and helping organizations move in the right direction. The biggest challenge The biggest challenge to getting more acceptance, acceleration, and use of their new methodology has been explaining to end users why their data set is the right one. Service Tastewise is here to change the industry. So they do whatever it takes to drive value and help their customers. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Tastewise Alon Chen on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Pedro Almeida, the CEO and Co-founder of MindProber, joins Sima on the podcast to share his background and discuss the innovative work they are doing at MindProber. Pedro’s background Pedro studied social psychology with a strong emphasis on market research. As an undergrad, he worked as a research assistant at a small cognitive neuroscience lab and he later did an internship in social psychology. After graduating, he became a market research consultant while also pursuing his research on electrophysiology. His field of interest was effective processes, emotion, and populations with emotional impairment. Pedro did his Master’s in experimental social psychology. He has always combined his two passions of applied psychology on the one hand and the business side of things on the other. Social psychology Social psychology is an experimental field. It looks at social cognition and processes, and how people make social inferences and process social information. That sometimes has to do with social identity- with how people build their social identity and interact with the social identity of others. Social psychology also provides a toolkit for those who want to go into market research and understand data. Cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is a field that looks at the neurobiological implementation of cognitive processes. In other words, what happens in the brain when we think. Even though people tend to make a distinction between cold cognition and hot emotion, all of those processes are still mental processes. MindProber Pedro and his business partner founded MindProber with the idea of taking the principles of consumer neuroscience (also known as neuromarketing) and applying them in business settings to understand whether or not certain messages were effective. They took the opportunity to start a consumer neuroscience company in Portugal back in 2010-2011 because there were none there at the time. Scaling consumer neuroscience There were hurdles to overcome because consumer neuroscience studies were expensive and non-scalable. So Pedro began thinking of ways to scale consumer neuroscience and make it faster and more agile. Getting more input In 2012- 2013, Pedro came up with the idea of taking consumer neuroscience out of the lab and making it remote to make it more agile. He and his partner also started thinking of ways to get more physiological and behavioral input from people while they were on the floor, and came up with the idea of building a platform to allow them to get and distribute data, and centralize and synchronize it with something. Pedro was fortunate to know someone who could build a sensor to capture people’s physical responses while they were in their homes. The platform The MindProber platform has crystalized into becoming a way to access electro-dermal activity in scale, collected from whatever people get exposed to in their homes. The data The data provided by the MindProber platform gives an objective, quantifiable, and valuable metric for understanding the quality of the impressions people are getting exposed to, and also the quality of people’s involvement with that content. The sensor MindProber rewards people for wearing a sensor while they watch television. The sensor is a small device that gets held in the hand while watching something, and people sometimes even forget that they are holding it. Sports tend to produce the highest emotional responses. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com MindProber Pedro Almeida on LinkedIn Pedro Almeida on Twitter (@Pedro_R_Almeida)…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Let’s Go! | Ep. 198 33:17
Reed Cundiff, the newly-appointed CEO of Sago (formerly the Schlesinger Group), joins Sima to talk about how he got to where he is in his career and the exciting journey ahead of him. Reed’s story Reed cut his teeth as a marketing analyst. He spent about ten years tracking the enterprise resource planning industry and then moved to Microsoft, where he ran global insights for almost twelve years. After that, he had the opportunity at Kantar to head an integrated team that initially ran the North American business and later all of the Americas. Becoming the CEO of Sago After managing the insights team at Kantar for a long time, learning a lot, and going through multiple business cycles, Reed jumped at the opportunity of becoming CEO of the Schlesinger Group, now known as Sago. What attracted Reed to Schlesinger? Three things attracted Reed to the idea of running Schlesinger. The first was that he felt there was a lot he could learn from his role as a stand-alone CEO and from looking at the industry from a different angle. He liked the family-oriented culture of the business and was also fascinated with the opportunities that a business with that much breadth could offer. A challenge Ramping up on understanding what a complex business is was challenging for Reed. The macroeconomic headwinds in the market also made it hard for him to go in as a CEO in mid-November of 2022 and help his clients be as proactive as possible. Fortunately, Steve Schlesinger, the former CEO, did a great job of staying connected to the business and educating Reed rapidly while also giving him the space to step into the opportunity of his new role. Finding balance On an ideal day, Reed strives to balance three things: Engaging internally and ensuring his teams have whatever they need to be successful and operate at peak performance. Engaging with clients and ensuring he does not lose touch with any of them. Making sure he has the time to do his work and fit in some exercise. The changing landscape Reed finds this an exciting time to be an insights professional! He has found it interesting to see how technology has transformed how people do their work. He believes that the digital transformation of the industry will change the way the industry evolves. He feels that the volume and variety of raw materials that insights professionals take into their work will expand to include financial data, behavioral data, cultural data, location data, and more. So essentially, the raw materials and organizations are changing, and Reed hopes the way insights get delivered is also changing. Data science versus market research Reed neither favors data science over market research, nor vice versa, because he feels they are both needed to gain momentum in the market. Diversity, equity, and inclusion Reed feels that the industry, as a whole, is not yet where it needs to be in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So the entire industry should commit to improving every day. What he intends to do at Sago is begin promoting from within and proactively ensuring that they have as diverse an applicant pool as possible. He also wants to support his employee research groups and make sure they facilitate open dialogues around gender equality, social inclusivity, mental health awareness, and other topics to ensure that all their employees can show up for work every day without being distracted. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Sago Reed Cundiff on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is happy to have Tim Clover, the CEO and Founder of Glow, and Sherry Frey, the VP of Wellness at Nielsen IQ, joining her on the show to dive into how consumers think about the planet, sustainability, and societal responsibility. About Tim Tim left management consulting almost ten years ago to start Glow, his research technology business. He started Glow to make it easy to get the consumer mindset into the boardroom, remove the layers of complexity using some automation throughout the process, and tie everything together. Tim has had a wonderful journey over the last few years and is very happy to work with Nielsen! What Sherry is doing at Nielsen IQ At Nielsen IQ, they refer to total wellness because consumers think about wellness in terms of their personal health and wellness, the health of the environment, and social responsibility. So they built a team at Nielsen that focuses on helping clients better understand the opportunities in the sustainability and social responsibility space, how to think about the business case, and where brands are regarding moving past business as usual toward sustainability. They also look at regeneration, improving the world, and providing a lot of measurement in that space. They are thrilled to have partners like Glow in their network to help them round out their client offering, give them a 360 view of what is happening in the store, and understand consumer perceptions. Business people are also consumers Clients are business people, but they are also consumers. So they are also considering how to better care for themselves, their families, and the planet. The pandemic The pandemic awakened many people to climate change and knowing there is a disparity around health and wellness. A growing consumer movement The consumer movement has been growing. More and more consumers are discussing the importance of sustainability and social responsibility. As a result, more brands and retailers are bringing offerings to consumers, which further elevates that awareness. Taking a leap As the Founder and CEO of Glow, Tim decided to take a leap and talk about the importance of sustainability and social responsibility. He decided to become an active player in measuring what consumers think about the social responsibility of different brands. As a CEO, he ensures that he builds a sustainable business from the inside out. An increase in awareness There has been more awareness of sustainability and social responsibility from a consumer perspective. Sherry believes that the FMCG space is at the forefront in many cases. Brands are starting to see a business case for sustainability. So they understand they can do good for the planet and people while making a profit. How Glow and Nielsen formed a partnership Several years ago, Glow met with Nielsen in Australia. Nielsen introduced Glow to colleagues in the US who had a technology outfit that could run product and market-related tests that they felt could be useful for Glow’s customers. That ultimately led to Tim meeting with Sherry’s team to pick it up and see if they could take it to market. Nielsen was impressed with Glow for many reasons, including their approach. They appreciated getting a full view of whether or not consumers are actually doing what they say and understanding the gap if there is one. Sustainability has been driving results There is a secondary value that comes with sustainability that makes a brand more appealing. That has been driving results for many brands and retailers. Focusing on sustainability Focusing on sustainability can make businesses more sustainable from a financial standpoint. Food and Grocery Report Glow tracks the measurement of more than 600 brands in various countries. They also take a comparative look at the performance of different industries. The recently-released Food and Grocery report provides context for food and groceries versus other ind...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Cliff Courtney, the President and CEO of Courtney180, joins Sima on the show today. Cliff’s journey Cliff comes from a marketing-driven background. He believes marketing is a good background for all companies. Specifically for him because he has worked predominantly in chief strategy officer roles in Omnicom agencies and then in chief marketing roles, also for Omnicom agencies. As a result, he had good scope for go-to-market plans and how to execute and sell them. Challenges The biggest challenges Cliff ever faced were how to de-commoditize the commoditized brands. (In other words, how to differentiate certain commonly-found items from other, similar items.) Another challenge he faces is that most brands are challenger brands that are competing with companies with bigger budgets and footprints and more impact. So to win these days, he has to be cagey and very smart when optimizing his media messaging. The expanding sphere of influence of the CMO The sphere of influence of the CMO has expanded. Cliff believes that as that has happened, the view of the typical CMO has become too narrow because they regard performance marketing (data) as the be-all and end-all. He believes that all mediums of media performance should have a specified standard, and CMOs should focus more on their relationships with consumers. A disconnect in the data world Cliff sees a big disconnect in the world of data. On the one hand, we live in a world that is quantifiable, and big companies are crunching a lot of data. On the other hand, consumers are complex, messy, and emotional, so their decisions cannot always be quantified. Two things to consider when dealing with data There are two things Cliff advises people to be aware of when dealing with data. One is that data is one thing, but it is not the only thing. The other is not to get caught up in the “numbers do not lie” fallacy because even though data has a lot of value, numbers lie all the time. That is why Cliff advises people to ensure that data is only part of the mix rather than the whole thing. Looking backward Due to independent variables, data cannot be relied on to know what will happen next. That is why Cliff believes that data works best when looking backward. Predictive analytics Cliff feels that predictive analytics is flawed because it is a forecast conclusion- not a foregone conclusion. Independent variables Independent variables cannot be controlled. Unexpected events may happen, and they could affect people’s decisions. Data Cliff believes that data is valuable. However, it must only be a part of the puzzle instead of the whole puzzle. CEOs must have a feel for the market Steve Jobs based his decisions on his understanding of his brand, his read of the market, and his instincts, and his success rate was mostly flawless. So, even though data is necessary, CEOs must also know their customer and have a feel for the market. The key to working with data The key to how to work with data lies in how you look at it and how you interpret it. So those who work with data need to be both intuitive and smart. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Courtney 180 Cliff Courtney on LinkedIn Cliff Courtney on Twitter…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, the Global Executive Vice President of Enterprise Growth for the RepTrak Company, joins Sima to discuss the history and measurement of reputation. They dive into what reputation is, what shapes it, how to measure it, and its consequences. Stephen’s background Stephen was born and raised in the UK, and he has been living in the US since the end of the 1990s. He trained in science for many years and geared himself toward becoming a doctor. But just before he was about to go to medical school, he changed his mind for personal reasons and moved into the realm of branding and reputation. He spent his formative years in the agency world. He joined the RepTrak Company eight years ago. He applies many of the skills he used in the agency world to what he does now at RepTrak. Stephen’s current focus Stephen currently focuses on the premise of reputation, what it is, what drives it, and how it can help elevate the success trajectory of companies. Reputation The concept of reputation, how to measure it, harness it, and capture it as a tangible life force, is only about 25 years old. However, conversations about branding have been happening for around a hundred years. The first written evidence of reputation The first written evidence of what is now known as reputation existed about 4,000 years ago, in ancient China. The definition of reputation A reputation exists in the eye of the beholder. Your reputation is how people perceive you. That gets informed by everything you do and say. Something interesting about reputation Something interesting about reputation is that it ultimately drives behavior. It lies at the heart of the decision-making process when people compare one company with another. Brand versus reputation Your brand is the promise you intend to keep, whereas your reputation is your assessment of whether or not that promise has been fulfilled. A disconnect A disconnect happens when a company has a high-powered brand story but falls short of people’s expectations. That results in a decline in reputation. Three simple parts Reputation can be broken down into three simple parts: How you feel Creating a rational foundation for your emotional belief How you feel and what you think drives your intended behavior Products and services For most companies, products and services are typically the most important driver of their reputation. Conduct and citizenship A company’s conduct and citizenship often become the second most important driver of its reputation. Reputation can be an inhibitor or accelerator A physicist connected the dots and created a measurable outcome to help people understand and appreciate that reputation can either be an inhibitor or an accelerator for a business. A trigger point Whether they decide to do something about it or not, all companies care about their reputations because they understand that reputation is a trigger point for their accelerated success. Fortune companies Fortune companies tend to fixate on their reputations because the stakes and consequences are much higher. Why reputation counts A company’s reputation counts because people are looking to support and work for companies that operate fairly and make a concerted effort to make this world a better place to live. Reputation has become a full-contact sport Power has shifted from corporate and corporate brands to consumers. Stephen feels that that power shift has turned reputation into a full-contact sport because all companies are just one negative Tweet away from a potential crisis. So they now have to constantly focus on managing their reputations. Balancing purpose with profits Companies that balance being purposeful in the way they operate with being profitable tend to do much better in terms of their reputations. The future of reputation management…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Sima joins Gary Laben, the former CEO of Dynata, and Jason Sobel, Head of U.S. Advisory, Evercore Partners, for a panel discussion hosted by Dynata on reinventing and reinvesting. Sima’s background Sima is a research practitioner. She worked on the supplier side early in her career and had some experience on the client side at IBM, understanding how people use information. Then she worked at the NPD Group before becoming an entrepreneur. She currently does advisory services and investment banking through Oberon Securities and has a podcast. Jason’s background For the last 25 years, Jason has been doing investment banking, mergers, and acquisitions in information media and marketing. Before that, he was a singer and songwriter. Common threads that exist amongst companies that thrive in the current environment and any rapidly-changing environment. Sima feels that leadership and employee experience are critical to activate, motivate, and inspire people to produce good quality work. Since Covid, it has also become necessary to account for the mental component and look at the entire person and their life to inspire them to do good work. For companies to thrive in challenging times, Jason feels they must laser-focus on talent development. He also believes that companies must challenge their employees to innovate, be fearless, and go forth unafraid. Leadership Leadership is no longer about command and control. It is about understanding where people are, meeting them there, and motivating them to do better. Investors and buyers Now more than ever, investors and buyers look for focused teams that deliver value for shareholders or buyers. There is currently a lot more concern about risk and uncertainty. Sima feels that investors are asking for way too much right now. What companies that are thriving in the information services world are doing In addition to employees, thriving data companies in the information services world are incorporating more and more AI, analytics, and technology to move up the value chain from descriptive to prescriptive data. That requires more data of all types to be fused, aggregated, synthesized, and integrated in real-time to form an accurate picture. Those companies are also being empathetic about what their clients are going through. So instead of just selling their world of data, they are being more consultative and understanding which other data assets they can infuse into their prescriptive recommendations and insights. Democratizing data Some companies are now looking at a layer of software that allows them to democratize a lot of data within an organization. A tech-enabled services layer Companies and clients require customer service and help. Yet, Jason has found that many data and technology companies resist the tech-enabled service layer, even though it is a critical component. He feels that it is essential for companies to have a services layer to thrive. The four components that make for a good business in information services: Data Technology Domain expertise Services How do companies deliver value to investors? Investors are looking to drive long-term shareholder values. A long-term shareholder value is sustainable and has terminal value. That is a moat, which is what investors try to assess. So companies can deliver value to investors by looking for different sources of moats. Other things investors look for in information companies are barriers to entry and the sustainable shareholder value they can create. Some other critical components that may be overlooked that investors look for in a business Investors look for the value created in a business. They often look at the worst-case scenario and see there is something of value they can ultimately use to recoup their investment. Investors may also look at the agility of a business and its ability to respond. Complacency Sometimes,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Place Your Bets | Ep. 193 36:29
Today, Sima joins Mike Delaney, the Managing Partner of Court Square Capital Partners, and Gary Laben, the Former CEO of Dynata, on a panel discussion to discuss various issues related to the insights and marketing industry. What is the biggest obstacle and gaps you see for the insights and marketing industry moving forward? Sima thinks that the biggest challenges are getting used to all the change and managing all the available data. One of the biggest changes Gary has seen is how talent has been disrupted over the last few years. That has created an entirely different environment for acquisition, retention, growth, and development. How are best practice companies dealing with how to work from home and culture? Gary believes that the values of a company define its culture. Mike believes that culture is singularly the most important thing that defines who will win in the marketplace. He has dealt with many leaders who feel that being in the office is essential for building a culture. However, many workers prefer to work from home. So the companies that tried to mandate going back into the office had to back off and opt for a more virtual environment because they had very high resignation rates. What should industry leaders focus on to ensure their success and help move the industry forward? Mike has seen marketing come a long way in terms of its importance to value creation within the enterprise. He feels that marketing has become a differentiator in how businesses can grow. However, there is so much data available now that typical marketing executives get overwhelmed by it, making it hard for them to take full advantage of it and consume it in a way that adds value to their businesses. So, industry leaders need to focus on making data more easily consumable for marketing executives and more tangible for them in terms of how it translates into actions. Gary thinks leaders must determine the most important KPIs and use them in a disciplined way. How should leaders use various data sources to help them make better decisions? Sima thinks that all the data within an organization should exist culturally as part of that organization. She also thinks leaders need to consider the decisions they need to make and be disciplined in pulling in the right data sets to inform their decisions. What is Dynata doing to transform itself by connecting the insights and marketing industry to grow its addressable market? Dynata is on a journey to use its data in more places than originally intended. In creating more products and services, they have had to retool many technologies to make them fit for a broader application. They have to secure additional permissions to use that application and offer additional training to ensure their people understand where the business is going. They must also create an ecosystem that acknowledges where they are headed and extend their value proposition. Which skill sets are most critical for our industry? People need to take risks, be willing to fail, and be prepared to learn from failing. They also need to learn how to be comfortable outside their comfort zones and be prepared to do things that are data-driven and informed, even when those things are done in an entirely different way from how they were programmed to think about them. Coping with the current economic turbulence Everyone is always looking for higher rates of return. Many marketing departments and people running businesses are thinking about paying off some debts and ways to drive more earnings. Mike thinks we will see a re-rating of how much risk will cost, and people will be more willing to put capital into those investments. He believes that that will impact marketing. Fortunately, marketing budgets are getting more respect than they used to because the return on capital can now be proven. Top predictions for the industry Gary thinks the industry will continue to expand and extend dat...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Aleksandra Bass joins Sima on the podcast today. She is the Vice-president of Product Management at Momentive (makers of Survey Monkey). Aleks has had an exciting career! In today's episode, she talks to Sima about her career journey, what she does at Momentive and various aspects of product management. How Aleks got to where she is in her career It took a bit of luck, some passion, and a lot of hard work for Aleks to get to where she is today in her career. She was passionate about how people think and make decisions, so she studied psychology. When she realized that applied psychology was not the right fit for her personality, she sought business applications for it, and market research was an area where she could use her psychology background to help business answer some core questions. Making changes Aleks worked for a research agency in Los Angeles and loved it. Unfortunately, she saw very little getting done with the data, and it frustrated her. So she switched from research execution on the agency side to becoming part of an in-house research team for an organization. Then, she transitioned again and went into a product marketing role while still doing her research role. Technology Then technologies started surfacing that allowed people to program their surveys without having to know how to code. So, Aleks brought some of those into a few organizations and began to do the in-house research herself. In doing that, she forged a relationship with Qualtrics. So she stepped fully into a product management and product marketing role. What Aleks does day-to-day at Momentive Aleks has one-on-ones with her team to stay in the loop, understand their frustrations and pain points, and help them. She has regular check-ins with her cross-functional partners and ensures that there is alignment with product marketing. She also makes sure that her team is paying attention to the metrics and the broader strategy, certain initiatives get resourced correctly, and everything makes sense and matches with the structure on which the organization has decided. The top three metrics for a product management group From Aleks’s perspective, the top three metrics that the product organization needs to impact through its work in partnership with design and engineering are: Acquisition Retention Expansion The right skills and personality types for product management Aleks believes that the number one skill and personality type that makes or breaks the effectiveness of product managers is their ability to communicate and collaborate without ego. To have the right kind of impact, they need an understanding and respect for the cross-functional partners they work with. Being brave enough not to react to the negativity they encounter and still share and get feedback on their ideas and thought processes is another helpful attribute for product managers. Introversion versus extroversion for product managers Aleks has noticed that there seems to be a bias toward extroversion for those in the product manager role. She feels that her team is pretty balanced between introversion and extroversion. She would encourage more introverts to consider product management because they tend to listen more and have equally effective results. Links: Email me your thoughts Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Aleksandra Bass LinkedIn Momentive…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today’s episode, Sima is happy to welcome you to the podcast, which is the first part of an exciting two-part interview that she did with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata. Today, in the first part of the series, Gary talks to Sima about his journey that led to where he is today. He also talks about his general leadership style and the impact Covid-19 has had on him as a leader and on his business. They close the episode with Gary giving a deeper understanding of how he views the landscape and where Dynata’s core area of focus lies within the market. A perspective of Gary’s career and how he got to Dynata Gary started his career by working his way up in the culinary world over the summers while in college. He was offered a position in a data marketing business, which he did for a summer before graduating. He enjoyed that so much that when he got offered a full-time role in the data marketing business, he put everything else aside to try out the world of data. From there, he moved on to various roles within different data companies. Moving over to Dynata Although he had never worked with first-party data accessibility before, it had always fascinated him. So, when an opportunity arose on that side five years ago, he moved over to the company now known as Dynata. Gary’s experience at Dynata Gary has had tremendous experiences at Dynata and even though the industry is rather tight right now, and people have been moving in and out of the organization, Gary has enjoyed seeing his relationships continue throughout the industry. Learning the business As he learns the business, Gary often jokes that even after five years, there is rarely a meeting that he attends where he knows anything more than anybody else about the subject at hand regarding tools, techniques, and capabilities in market research. Gary’s favorite part of his job Gary loves to meet with clients. The best part of his job is to spend time with the folks interested in working with Dynata, even though things are getting done virtually for the most part right now. The second best part for him is to do little talking and still come out way ahead because his clients will have learned a lot about what Dynata can do better and what they need to do in the future. Getting back out Now, the people at Dynata are talking about ways to make it possible for them to get back out to their offices around the world. It appears that Asia will be the first place to which Gary will be able to return. Virtual engagement At Dynata, they engage with their clients virtually. They also have town halls where they regularly engage at a regional level and an office level. Gary sometimes even gets asked to appear virtually and unannounced, at monthly team meetings. Gary’s leadership style At Dynata, the leadership style needs to be empowerment. They cover all geographies and have broad service offerings, so they have leaders of both geographies and functional areas within the business. Gary feels that he has less familiarity and experience in particular sectors than many of those leaders have. Because of that, he loves to give those people autonomy. They have an aggressive and methodical goal-setting and management process, so allowing people to operate very independently within the boundaries of execution, without having oversight, is the key. Humor The pandemic has shone a light on things far more important than people’s day jobs. Being able to approach leadership with consideration to priorities, and looking for places to inject some humor, is very important for Gary right now. Covid Covid affected the company’s goal-setting process in that they had to think differently. They set themselves up as a business to preserve liquidity and to ensure their employees were safe. New goals One vital new principle they set was to figure out how to thrive. An aggressive expansion strategy They set out an aggressive expansion strategies in parts of the business.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s show, Sima welcomes Mike Page, the Co-founder and Chief Executive of Phebi, as her guest on the podcast. The founding story of Phebi Phebi has been around for a little more than a year and their focus is on the insights industry. Their journey has been around the explosion in voice and voice tech when they saw the whole landscape of how people interact with technology was shifting to voice. That created a wonderful opportunity for insights specialists and researchers. It gave researchers the chance to offer their respondents a better experience while simultaneously creating a richer source of insight for themselves. Talking versus typing People talk more naturally than they type, so you tend to get longer, richer answers. The audio can get people used to listening to how people are speaking and not just responding to written word. Webinars Phebi started with some webinars with friendly companies, like Askia, which were very well received. Then, a London company wanted to try what Phebi was offering, so they presented at a healthcare research conference, and that was how Phebi really got its start. They won the innovation award In January, Phebi went to the IAX Conference and won the innovation award. That was very prestigious for a small company! Phebi continued to grow Soon after they won the award in 2020, the world shut down. Since then, things have continued to grow. Things have taken off Their message resonated. And the ability to capture non-conscious metrics to use alongside things like text analytics from an audio source that is easy to collect in a self-serve manner, has taken off. Non-conscious measurement With non-conscious measurement, you have the potential to pick up more nuanced sentiments and emotions that could not get spotted before. Doing that at scale is much of what Phebi does. Non-conscious measurements can help researchers get to insights quicker and more effectively. It adds the resonance that comes with audio so researchers can capture people’s first sentiments related to a question. Emotional Resonance Score The Emotional Resonance Score is one of the things that they provide for comparing things. Non-conscious measurement is a good predictor When you use a non-conscious measurement to compare things, it is very good at predicting what people are likely to feel the most passionate about or connected to. A live setting They even have some clients who are using Phebi in a live setting, where they are looking at people’s true sentiments and emotions while an interview is in process. Non-conscious measurement combined with a 3-D transcription When a non-conscious measurement gets combined with a 3-D transcription, it opens a lot of opportunity for understanding how people feel about something. Getting better and quicker At Phebi, they have gotten better and better and quicker and quicker at delivering self-serve tools that will help people extract insights from voice. Going faster 2020 has allowed them to establish their technology and grow much faster. Now, everything gets done virtually, so their whole adoption process has accelerated. People don’t always say what they mean People don’t always say what they mean. So hearing how they say things can be very interesting. The Phebi portal After gaining access to the Phebi portal, you can upload any audio into it. There, everything gets organized. You can then create groups and subgroups to get the emotional scores in all the different sections. The Phebi plug-in You will also get the Phebi plug-in to manage the technical aspect of things. It works with all the main survey platforms. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Mike Page on LinkedIn Phebi’s website Email Mike at mike@phebi.ai Sponsors: Paradigm Sample…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today’s episode, Sima is excited to welcome Gangesh Ganesan, the Founder and CEO of PeerNova, as her guest on the show. This podcast is typically about data and the data ecosystem. Today, however, Gangesh takes us into the area of the financial market. In this episode, he explains the importance of ensuring that data has good quality and is accurate. PeerNova PeerNova is a Silicon Valley-based data company founded by Gangesh Ganesan about five years ago. They have offices in Silicon Valley, San Jose, London, and New York. Although their themes mostly get distributed worldwide, the core is in Silicon Valley. Some of their development happens in Eastern Europe and they also have a theme in Brazil. A global company PeerNova is a global company. They are venture-funded and raised a substantial amount of capital to develop their software platform. Software platform The PeerNova software platform is called Cuneiform and offers data quality for financial institutions. Data quality Data quality means ensuring the correctness, completeness, consistency, and timeliness of data that might get distributed across different applications, databases, data stores, and data warehouses in a global financial institution. Making the correct decisions Currently, data quality is vital for making the correct decisions in the financial industry. It has been a big problem in that industry for the last two or three decades. Financial Institutions Financial institutions typically solved their data quality problem by employing many people to ensure that data was correct, complete, and consistent. In some cases, it could take tens of thousands of people to solve the problem for large financial institutions. The Cuneiform platform saves time and money The Cuneiform platform is about applying technology to automate as many of the workflows as possible. It can do that at a substantially lower cost, and more importantly, it does it near real-time. Inspiration Early on, Gangesh was inspired by some ideas that came about in blockchains. A crucial notion in blockchains is that of lineage, with which you can find the origin of any transaction. And you can track it either forward or backward to find the seed or genesis event. That idea inspired Gangesh to build a generic software platform with which every piece of data could get tracked in that way. Data quality They soon realized that maintaining the lineage and ‘audit trails’ of the data quality of financial institutions at scale and solving for correctness, completeness, and consistency problems was a vital challenge. It took them four or five years to build their Cuneiform platform. Financial institutions have been undergoing many changes Financial institutions have been undergoing many changes over the last twenty years. And their pain points have become very acute. The current focus The entire focus of Gangesh’s business is currently in capital markets and financial institutions. The Zero Code Using what is known as Zero Code, Gangesh has ensured business users, who are often tech-savvy but are not developers, can have the four attributes of data quality-correctness, consistency, completeness, and timeliness for all their data. Accuracy In the financial industry, they cannot afford to make any mistakes, so their data quality needs to be accurate one hundred percent of the time. Enterprise selling Enterprise selling of software at very high levels can be a problem, so Gangesh offers his clients the chance to do a free pilot to see if their model works for that specific use case. Reference-able clients are a big deal at PeerNova, so they also try to identify easy-to-replicate use cases to have a step-and-repeat concept that is easy to demonstrate. The problem of data quality The problem of data quality is something fundamental. The financial industry has always lacked a comprehensive end-to-end solution for that problem. Gangesh believes that data quality is a category-making idea for which ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today's show, Sima is excited to host a panel of three powerful and well-respected women as her guests. Tiffany Hays is the CEO of FUEL Global. She is and also CEO of The Focus Room. Aryn O’Donnell is the Vice President of Corporate Services of Fieldwork. And Kelli Hammock is Senior Client Solutions Manager at L&E Research. Tiffany, Aryn, and Kelli are all in the qualitative space in which Covid-19 greatly impacted. The impact of Covid-19 on Fieldwork Fieldwork has in-person qualitative research spaces that got impacted by Covid-19. At Fieldwork, they have always been solving their clients’ problems, and right now, they are solving new problems. They got forced to think differently, ask questions, and find new ways to connect with their industry colleagues. The impact of Covid on L&E Research L&E Research had to make a big pivot to learn how to get proactive around the changes that happened within the industry and the company. They had to come up with solutions to apply to the new problems that their clients were having. The biggest thing for them, professionally, was getting out of the reactive mode and figuring out how to make things work. The Impact of Covid on Tiffany, as a leader The biggest thing for Tiffany, as a leader, was making sure that her employees had even more flexibility than she was used to giving them. There were new challenges that she never expected to face as a leader. She had to set boundaries for her teams to ensure that everyone gave each other space and checked up on one another’s mental health within their organization of about 25 employees. They had to become aware of the new challenges with which people were dealing. The impact of Covid on FUEL Global In the business itself, Tiffany’s clients preferred to be in-person. So there was some push-back to them having to use an online qualitative platform. Working on a global scale, the company had to learn to manage clients across the globe. One of their biggest challenges was ensuring that the clients could get what they needed in the online world. A breaking point Tiffany believes that this will be the breaking point in our industry, where the clients realize that they can do both in-person and virtual. And we will see a permanent reduction in in-person research. Clients are thinking critically Aryn believes that clients are now thinking critically about what the goals of their research are. And they are deciding what they need because all research cannot get done remotely. Producing revenue Understanding client’s objectives clearly, and helping them figure out how to get what they need out of the research is vital right now. Tiffany is helping her clients figure out how to get things done because that is not going away. And that, in itself, produces revenue. Safety within the facility From a facility perspective, Aryn feels that it is her company’s role to educate the clients. And work with them to find the right solution in terms of safety protocols. From where the hesitation to get back to in-person research is coming Kelli does not think that any hesitation to get back to in-person research is coming from the respondents. She feels that it is coming from a corporate legal perspective. Where we are most likely to see in-person research get back to normal We are most likely to see in-person research getting back to normal in the markets with many local clients who need not travel too far to get to the facility. Flexibility and support Some challenges that research companies have to manage currently around their workforce are offering flexibility and support. And setting boundaries. They also have to address the mental health repercussions of the pandemic. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Tiffany Hays on LinkedIn Aryn O’Donnell on LinkedIn Kelli Hammock on LinkedIn Sponsors: Paradigm Sample All Member Audio Podcast Spot…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Sima welcomes Andy Davidson from the Engine Group as her guest. Andy is the Head of Analytics and Data Strategy at Engine. The Engine Group The Engine Group is a full-service marketing services firm specializing in a range of things from insights and analytics to planning and content and distribution. Background Andy has been with the Engine Group for about two years. Before that, he spent twenty-five years in various assignments across research analytics and data science. He worked on the client-side as well as on the agency side. His focus has been on helping advertisers and their agencies in addressing business problems with data analytics. He spent a lot of time helping his clients develop marketing strategies. And then personalizing the customer experience and measuring those efforts in the returns they are getting. Engine specializes in three areas Insights and analytics: This function supports both advertisers and agencies in making better decisions using data and analytics. Planning and content: These are about creative and media strategy and media planning. Distribution: Engine owns a proprietary ad exchange. They have relationships with a lot of the publisher networks. Through that capability, they can place media programmatically for much of the market. That includes both the agencies and the advertisers directly. A combination of services The Engine Group has a combination of services, from a data and analytics perspective and a distribution perspective, that many other firms in their arena don’t normally have. That creates a seamless experience for their customers. Their clients are increasingly becoming multiple threads. They also have plenty of more single-threaded situations. There are some key challenges in the ad space When it comes to audience targeting, media campaigns don’t always reach where they are supposed to. That can happen as often as fifty percent of the time. At Engine, they recognize that challenge, and they have invested a lot in helping their clients overcome it. Data The targeting challenge, at its core, is a data and analytics problem. Data is behind every decision that an advertiser makes around bidding on an opportunity, whether it is a video ad, a display ad, or a CTV-type impression. Accurate data That data is usually pretty accurate when it comes to straight-forward behaviors, like past purchases and demographics. Where things tend to fall apart Things tend to fall apart, and problems become apparent in the area where advertisers spend a lot of money. That area includes attitudes, intentions, and sentiments in the softer type of targeting requirements. A huge opportunity All the requirements around attitudes are a huge opportunity. At Engine, the focus is on investing in solutions that build a better cross-walk between the people who the advertiser wants to reach and the people to whom the advertising gets sold to reach that goal. Programmatic media Programmatic media is all about understanding who you are looking at and what their attitudes and behaviors are. No validation There is no validation for many of the data solutions out there, particularly those related to attitudes. Improving precision At Engine, they are working in the opportunity area of data solutions to improve precision. They do that by building from the ground up using survey research, starting with the voice of the customer. The measure of success Their success can get measured by comparing the legacy model with the new model to see how many more people they have reached in a particular segment. Their best measure of success is whether or not they got to the person they wanted to get to. Their success can also be measured by whether or not the campaign ultimately had the expected effect. The future of ad measurement The future of ad measurement looks very exciting for Andy. We will soon reach the point where most things are connected. All consumers will get connected.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is excited to welcome Erinn Taylor as her guest for today’s podcast. Erinn is the Executive Vice President of Product and Platform at Canvs AI. He has had a breadth of experience within the field of market research. Some of Erinn’s background Erinn grew up in market research. He worked his way up at several different organizations. About a year ago, he met the founder of Canvs and was intrigued with what he was doing related to text analytics, so he joined Canvs. A great year Canvs had a great year last year. They have done a lot technology-wise, and they have grown the platform. Canvs Canvs is a text analytics platform, and they think it is the best solution in marketing. They call it an evolution of sentiment analysis because they use more nuanced emotions. They take data and analyze it and provide themes and insights directly from the consumer. The organization is about six or seven years old. They work with companies like Disney and Netflix. Speaking unnaturally With the technology they were using, they could expose what consumers and viewers were seeing. And what they were saying about programs. They utilized that information to learn how people speak unnaturally. They found that in a modern era with a lot of digital text, we tend to talk differently than we might otherwise because we use shorthand and emojis. Learning new things Things change over time, so we have to keep learning. Many other applications have tried to do text analytics, but it requires a lot of training and data to get and understand a small sample, and Canvs has already done that work. An ontology Canvs has an ontology that they have cultivated through AI and NLP. They also have some social listening tools to see people on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram. The best bring-your-own-get-a-platform Erinn thinks that Canvs is the best bring-your-own-data-platform in the industry to identify what people are saying. Also, to identify how they are feeling about what they are talking about. Any survey platform The Canvs platform is intelligent and easy to use. It works with any survey platform. It’s quick and easy It only takes a few clicks of the mouse, and most data sets get processed in one to two minutes. Sentiment analysis vs emotions Traditional sentiment analysis is positive/negative/neutral. At Canvs, they have their Canvs proprietary emotional mapping, with which they can identify forty-two core emotions. And they have a data science team who have spent many years getting to understand groupings around the core emotions. Things change over time People and language change over time, so they continue to upgrade. The way people speak Through the way people speak, they can identify and expose how they are feeling. And also the context in which they are feeling it. And they can work out what people are talking about. Use cases Canvs started in the media space. Currently, they work with companies like Disney to find out how well people are speaking about their airings, and to see how their movies are trending. They also do ad testings to see what people are saying about the ads. The goal for the future They would like Canvs to be the core platform for analyzing unstructured data for organizations, brands, research partners, and communities. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Erinn on LinkedIn Sponsors: Paradigm Sample All Member Audio Podcast Spot…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Hunter Thurman, the President and Founder of Alpha-Diver, as her guest today. Hunter has been in the insights and strategy world for the last twenty years. Some background for Alpha-Diver In 2011, Hunter got to a point where he felt dissatisfied with how he was doing insights and research and translating it into a strategy. (Subsequently, he learned that his approach had been model-free. And the industry had also been operating in a model-free way at the time.) Around that time, Hunter started exploring, stepping out of the industry, and hanging around with neuroscientists, psychologists, and people from the world of academia. He forged a copasetic relationship with the academics, which became the basis for the company, Alpha-Diver. They use mostly neuroscience. But they also use a lot of psychology, which they translate for business applications to answer the questions that help companies serve their consumers. A framework Hunter later realized that when you have a framework, a place to start, a foundation, and a model, it’s much more rewarding. And it can lead to much richer discoveries. The pain point With the model-free approach, it was hard to explain how they were doing what they were doing. Although Hunter was in a leadership role, he did not feel that he could teach very well because he did not have a model from which to work. In a model-based space In a model-based space, you are going out, and using an established model instead of collecting data broadly and bringing it back to an existing model. Some surprises when talking to people in academia Hunter was surprised at how applicable the academic knowledge that he received was. He was also surprised at how relevant those insights could be, how little connectivity there is from the academic world to the rest of the world, and how dissatisfied many academics are. He had always assumed that neuroscience would be far more technical, far more physiological, and much less applied than he discovered it truly is. Insights challenges Going out, and looking at insights challenges, whether you are looking at the segmentation, the journey mapping, or the drivers and barriers of your brand or category, is very chaotic, noisy, and difficult to organize. That caused researchers to overlook what is going on between the ears of a consumer. Yet we have quite a simple explanation of human cognition and the lenses we use to react to the world around us. What a model-based approach means A model-based approach can be likened to us using all five of our senses. Neuroscience What neuroscience has discovered is that there are durable and predictable drivers and barriers, which are pretty simple, and happen mostly subconsciously in people’s brains. The 9 Whys Hunter and his partners developed a framework that they call The 9 Whys. It tells us that there are four drivers and five barriers that can simplify the world. The drivers The drivers range from very rational and practical, to social and tribal, sensory and exploratory, to impulsive and instinctive. In a given context, one of those four drivers would become the primary lens that a person uses to make decisions. And in a different context, a different driver could apply to the same person. Context We have gained from neuroscience the recognition that context has an enormous impact on the driver that we are using. Currently, occasions are the incarnation of how the industry is looking at context. The five barriers The five barriers are: Price (Price is the least punitive) Time Effort or Physical barriers Social Emotional The questionnaire The questionnaire that Hunter and his team are using is simple in that it can get administered in a regular survey. The data from it provides them with certain tells of an individual's psychology, and their cognitive processes, in the context they are studying. And the algorithms on the back end let the computer know what those resp...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Perspectives on the MRX Industry + Running for President of ESOMAR Council with Kristin Luck | Ep. 124 20:18
Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Kristin Luck once again as her guest! Kristin is the founder and managing partner of Scalehouse Consulting, and Kristi and I are both advisors at Oberon Securities, on the investment banking side. Where the industry is, as related to the impact of Covid The abrupt impact of the pandemic on the overall economy brought the industry to a near standstill last spring. It is unlikely to return to its 2019 turnover levels until 2022. ESOMAR Although ESOMAR initially predicted a downturn in research revenues of up to 30%, we still ended up with a stronger third and fourth quarter than predicted, particularly with tech and digital businesses. The digital side of the industry There is a lot of controversy surrounding the digital side of the industry regarding its accuracy, approach, and basis in terms of true research methodology. A revolution The pandemic is accelerating a revolution in the research space. So there were many naysayers about many of the digital technologies, particularly on the qualitative side of the business, going into 2020. When the pandemic hit, it started to fuel the tech revolution and acted as an accelerator to the dynamic shifts that we were already seeing with the digital technology segments and the established market research segments. Masking the effects of the pandemic The performance of the tech and digitally-enabled segments masked the effect that the pandemic had on the established part of the industry. The established part experienced a downturn of 15% last year, in contrast to the 9% growth expected across the digital and tech-enabled segment. Face-to-face qualitative Kristin does not think that face-to-face qualitative is dead. She feels that there is value in face-to-face contact with respondents. And in many cases, qualitative research can be conducted in a digital format and still produce quality results. Migration to more digital techniques We will see a substantial and permanent migration to more digital techniques. And there will be a combination of methodologies that will integrate both types of tech and digital. Blockchain Most of the companies that started in the blockchain space have pivoted. Although blockchain as a technology still has value, many businesses that were focused on being blockchain-only companies realize that they need to have products that deliver value other than the blockchain platform. Although blockchain is a means to the end and can enhance a portfolio of products and solutions, it is not the end to the product. An ESOMAR member Kristin has been an ESOMAR member for almost eleven years, and she has been on the board called ESOMAR Council for the last six years. For the past two years, she was Vice-President. ESOMAR ESOMAR is a little different from some of the local and regional associations in that they are truly a global association. They look at everything from privacy to data ethics and sound research methods around the globe. And they give those a global perspective. A global perspective Kristin has been involved with ESOMAR for a long time because having that global perspective has been invaluable to her career and the businesses she has developed. Getting some insight into how research gets conducted in other regions gives Americans a broader look at opportunities for researching new and different ways. How ESOMAR differs from other industry associations The overall global look is what sets ESOMAR apart from other industry associations. ESOMAR focused on keeping track of the lobbying for privacy and data ethics all around the world. The structure of ESOMAR The ESOMAR Council consists of elected individuals. Underrepresented North and South America, Africa, and Asia are underrepresented in ESOMAR. So ESOMAR members need to remember to vote for the candidates in their region. Running for President Kristin is running for President of ESOMAR. She was inspired to do so for several reasons.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima Vasa is excited to have Bob Qureshi join her today. Bob is the co-owner and managing partner of i-view viewing facilities in London. Bob talks about the history of his business In the 1960s and 1970s, most of the qualitative research in the UK took place at the home of the recruiter. Over the years, specific facilities for research were being built in the US. Then, in the 80s, that also started to happen in the UK. A game-changer In 2010, Bob looked at the UK facilities and saw that they were all laid out like recruiter’s living rooms. They lacked things like white marker boards, places to put stimulus, and the ability to screen. So Bob decided to start with a game-changer and build everything they needed on one floor, in an easy to get to location in central London, with wide doors and access for people with special needs. They paid specific attention to detail, which means they made sure that they took account of everything. Bob’s background Bob’s background was in the corporate client-side, and he has always had an interest in qualitative research. Best Viewing Facility For the last three years in a row, i-view was awarded Best Viewing Facility in the UK. That is not an easy thing to do, and Bob feels very humbled by it. The impact of the pandemic The impact of the pandemic has been quite devastating for Bob. Collaboration Bob realized that the key thing was to replace the word “competition” with the word “collaboration”. So he decided to talk to the other viewing facilities, to collectively agree on which message they would send, who they would send it to, and how they could drive it forward. Rates relief In stopping unnecessary costs in the UK, they managed to save the municipality rates relief of over a million pounds across all the viewing facilities. They managed to recover very quickly as a result. A similar standard Through the collaboration, all the viewing facilities in the UK are sending out the same message and adopting a similar standard to deal with the prevention and spread of the virus. In-person What Bob and those with whom he is collaborating have to look at, in terms of when in-person will resume, are some of the key statistics and figures that are coming out. Essentially, they are looking for infection rates and death rates to fall and the vaccine levels to increase so that the most vulnerable in their society do not fall prey to the pandemic. When lockdown will finish Bob believes that in the UK, they will not get any indication of when they can open up again until the end of February. He assumes that lockdown will finish in March- possibly mid-March to late March or early April at the latest. Attitudes are changing People’s attitudes are changing because they feel restricted. So they are no longer as cautious as they were at the beginning of the pandemic. Bob’s passion for qualitative research Bob loves qualitative research because he wants to understand the emotional reasons for what drives people’s decision-making and causes them to behave in particular ways. Technology Bob feels very fortunate to run online focus groups or online interviews and test everything beforehand to eliminate any potential problems. Bob’s other business Early on, he decided to have several business areas that would complement each other. It means that if one sector is not doing too well, another will have the opportunity to make up for the shortfall. That is why he also owns another business, a telephone center B2B data collection agency, called Provision Research. And it has been doing very well because people are at home and easy to contact currently. Colour of Research Bob is the cofounder of Colour of Research, which started officially in June of 2020. It is a mentorship program where people of different ethnic groups can see others who look like them, who are either doing well at work or are on the way to doing well. Bob feels that it is one of the best things that has come out of th...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Tim Clover as her guest for today’s podcast. Tim is the CEO and Founder of Glow, based in Australia. Tim is originally from the UK and has been living in Australia for the last ten years. About Glow Glow is an online research platform, and people often compare it with SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about the whole workflow for research. Some background As a kid, Tim was into engineering and finding out how things work. He started his first business after getting his engineering degree. He tried to use Excel macros to standardize processes and do things like process mapping. And he wanted to work out how to create channels into different markets. Although he earned enough to pay the rent and eat, he needed to gain more life and company experience, so he ended up working for a UK company, doing business simulation work. Not fitting the mold A friend called Tim and suggested that he apply for a role at the company he was working for because they needed someone with his skill set. Tim applied for and got the job. But he felt that did not quite fit that mold, which was generally very academic and did not involve much thinking outside the box. Assumptions Tim became interested in the sensitivities around many of the assumptions in the models that were being used in the company he was working for. He wanted to understand where the data was coming from that was feeding those assumptions. That pushed his career within that company into a role of story-telling, and into dealing with much more senior people in the organizations, to challenge them and help them form assumptions. From doing that, he became well-known within the organization. Australia In Australia, they were trying to do a similar thing. They wanted to build a team to analyze data and analytics from an operational perspective. So Tim decided to move there and help the company build a team in Melbourne. Retailers Tim did a lot of work with retailers. A big retailer called Coles was going through a major transformation at the time, and Tim’s team helped them pull together all their data together. The birth of Glow It took a long time to get their customer data together, and Tim started tinkering around to find ways to speed things up. Through his endeavors to find a better way to capture the information, Glow was born. Glow Glow, as a concept, was born because of a gap in the ability to reach consumers. It was a way that companies could tap into their customers more quickly and directly. Initially, Tim did not think of it as a survey platform. He just wanted to close the gap in hard-to-reach places and create experiences for the customers to engage. Good times and bad When starting a business, you have to weigh up the personal risk and realize that the path will be hard. If you’re not absolutely focused and completely determined, you’re going to find the ride pretty tough. Tim has had some fantastic times and some tough times over the last seven years. At first At first, Glow was all about getting data from hard to reach places and leveraging their tech to fund growth. In the background, they were investing more heavily in the ability to write the surveys themselves. Clients could log in After starting to write the surveys themselves, about three years ago, they released the first version of Glow where their clients could log in, look at their account, see the surveys running, and change some of the questions. Getting data Before, Tim was more of an insights person than a researcher. So when he got into research, it was about getting data. Online panel Three years ago, Schweppes asked Tim to do an online panel. He looked into it to find out how it might work, and it eventually took about two hours to get it working beautifully. The panel that Tim created takes people from building a survey to creating links to get responses,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
I am happy to welcome Ken Roshkoff, the CEO of AMC Global, as my guest for today. Ken’s father started AMC Global Ken’s father started their company in 1979. He was a true researcher who loved working with data, doing analytics, and working with project staff. The competitive component Ken always loved the competitive component, so he spent much of his childhood focused on sports. He loved tournaments and competing, so he knew that he would eventually embark on a career with competitive elements. Getting involved with AMC When Ken initially got involved with AMC, his father started training him to crunch the numbers and become an expert in running projects. However, Ken quickly realized that was not going to be his thing. He felt that for him to be excited about what he was doing, he had to bring his clients into a space that would be more interesting to him. Giving the business another shot After less than a year, Ken left the business to go to grad school to get an MBA. Coming out of that, he decided to give the business another shot. He wanted to do things a little differently, however. A unique methodology Given his interest in CPG, he identified an opportunity in product launch tracking. In around 1991, he developed a unique positioning and created and patented a unique methodology that would help major CPG companies capture robust insights from the purchasers of the products in the market. That program became known as PFU (Purchaser Follow Up). Marketing the PFU program Ken then began actively marketing the PFU program to CPG companies. He created a niche. Then he leveraged it to form relationships with some of the largest CPG companies in the world. Working at all stages of the product life cycle AMC does work at all stages of the product life cycle. Where the program fits Ken’s program fits between pre-launch and post-launch work. The launch phase The issue for many of Ken’s clients is that they were not getting reliable repeat information until six months, or longer, into the launch. Ken's launch phase starts from day one of the launches and runs throughout the first three to six months. A robust way to capture insights He developed the PFU program as a robust way to capture insights, both qualitative and quantitative, from the very first purchasers of new products. Then they track those consumers to understand how well the products fit into their lifestyle if they are re-purchasing, and if not, why not. What the PFU program involves The PFU program works by placing an invitation in or on a package, in a slightly disguised way because it is not meant to be a purchase driver. Ken wants people to find the invitation when they get the product home and use it. When they open the product, they typically find an offer for a prepaid cash card. A built-in usage period They build in a usage period. So after the extended usage period, they send the purchasers a cash card with instructions for how to activate it by doing a phase-two survey. It is a bit like an in-market home-use test, and it is flexible. And it can get used globally. The beauty of the system As long as the product sells, they can provide their clients with top-line information at any point during the project. Trends related to launching new products Lately, Ken has been seeing a lot of companies shortening the pre-launch process. And that makes the launch-phase tracking that Ken does even more important. Historical product launch data base Ken uses his historical database to benchmark new products against other similar test products that they have tracked for other clients. Post-launch activities They also do a lot of the more traditional brand health tracking for their clients. Once the products are out there for a longer time, in addition to using more traditional panel-based systems, they also leverage the database they developed from using the PFU program during the launch phase so that they can go back to those consumers a...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
This is the first episode in our MRX Podcast Network series. I am excited to kick this year off with an episode focused on perspectives and thoughts related to our industry for 2021. A year like no other 2020 has been a year like no other. As an industry, we collaborated, we called on each other for help, and we were there for each other, both personally and professionally. That was an important statement, and it showed me that, as an industry, we are resilient, we can adapt, we can pivot, and find a path forward. No playbook We have no playbook to follow. And we can’t look at history to know what will happen with consumer behavior, consumer attitudes, consumer perceptions, and the decisions and choices that companies will make, both on the supplier side and the in-client side. The good news The good news for our industry is that people need information and insights to inform the decisions they have to make. I think that 2021 is going to be a vital time for our industry to get more engaged and to focus on being able to provide solutions. Stakeholder capitalism 2020 was a year when we saw stakeholder capitalism take place. Employees and consumers wanted companies to stand for something beyond profit and loss, and they wanted companies to be linked to the values they represent. They wanted to vote with their dollars as to the companies they believed in, and the products and services they believed in that were in line with their value system. A big question The big question is, as brands, organizations, and companies grow, will that concept allow for sustainable growth? And does that translate to performance and something real that shareholders and investors can believe in? Those are topics that need to be researched and understood. Playing a vital part The silver lining is that our industry can play a vital part in helping companies to answer some of those questions. 2021 is going to be similar to 2020 In 2020, every week felt like a month because many decisions were getting made. So we had to be faster because things were moving. In my mind, 2021 is going to be similar. It will continue to be fast because brands and clients will have to accelerate the speed at which they operate. Technology Technology is essential in our industry. It will cut across the entire landscape. Faster and more efficient Organizations will have to be faster and more efficient in how they go to market, launch new products, develop campaigns, sell, manage their supply chain, manage their employees, and hire. Every function and business process will need to be quicker, and companies will need to keep up because if they don’t do it, a competitor will. Deliver solutions As part of the data, marketing, research, insights ecosystem, we need to deliver solutions to meet those needs. And to do that, we will have to adapt and do things a little differently in 2021. Impacting each part of the data ecosystem Over the years, we have seen tech-enabled companies impacting every part of the data ecosystem. When there is technology, there is scale. And when there’s scale, there is investment. So, I believe that in 2021 and beyond, we will continue to see capital getting put into our industry. And that is a good thing because it keeps innovation alive and allows us to grow our share of the pie in terms of dollars spent. The driver The driver is speed and to facilitate decision-making as efficiently as possible. Strategic research We need to continue doing strategic research and using metrics to understand how we are doing. Parts of the value chain where technology plays a vital role You can enhance what you are doing with technology. You can create a new business model where we are seeing tech and scale, subscription revenue, and a different sales model. API (Application Protocol Interface) API has made a big impact in the sample world and it will continue to be prominent and grow. And we will get additional data sets through API connect...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
I am excited to share some news with you today. Some of my fellow podcasters and I came up with the concept of an MRX Podcast Network. The main mission of the podcast network is to be able to podcast on a topic on our respective podcast channels, and provide multiple points of view, perspectives, and formats on how we address the specific topic, and give all our listeners in the industry a broader perspective as it relates to that topic. We are starting this year with what we think that 2021 holds for our industry. These are not predictions or forecasts. They are about what each one of us wanted to share, related to 2021, and our thoughts about the market research industry, data, and analytics space. We hope you enjoy what we have to share. We will be publishing the first series over the next few days. For this podcast, we have put together a teaser to showcase some of what will be coming up in each of our podcast episodes, related to the outlook for 2021. Stay tuned for more! 2020 We will remember 2020 for many things, including a rise in the number of podcasts. Currently, 37% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly, and in 2020, more than a hundred million Americans listened to at least one podcast each month. It was the first time that that has ever happened. Today’s show We will be hearing from six podcasters today, and each podcaster will give their outlook for market research in 2021. David Paul – The Audible Insights Podcast from the Insights Association This podcast focuses on quick-take conversations during industry events and longer interviews with industry leaders. They strive to keep everyone up to date with the market research industry, the latest methods and techniques, and the trends for the future. Kathryn Korostoff – Conversations for Research Rockstars Podcast Conversations for Research Rockstars is a video podcast that Kathryn has been running for a couple of years. It is about advancing the work and careers of market research and insights professionals. Kathryn has thousands of subscribers, and she has had some amazing conversations in the series. Merill Dubrow – On the M/A/R/C® Merrill has just completed his first year with 56 episodes. There is one episode for every year that M/A/R/C® research has been in business. Each episode is unscripted, uncensored, unrehearsed. There are plenty of takeaways from the amazing guests that he has had, including a mix of professional athletes, insight leaders, and CEOs. Sima Vasa – Data Gurus The mission of the Data Gurus podcast is to help everyone in the data ecosystem navigate the sea of change. Sima speaks to leaders, practitioners, CEOs, and change agents in the industry. Stephen Griffiths – Digging for Insights Podcast The Digging for Insights Podcast is a marketing and career podcast with advice from insights leaders from companies like Nestle, Ipsos, and General Mills. As a client-side researcher, Stephen focuses this podcast on helping client-side and supplier-side folks get the insights they need to grow their careers and the businesses on which they work. Jamin Brazil - Happy Market Research Podcast The Happy Market Research Podcast has had over 300 episodes and covers four industry trends per year. For each trend, they interview subject matter experts from major brands, including Adobe, Microsoft, and Proctor and Gamble. David’s outlook for market research for 2021 David's focus is on seeing the rebound of in-person research happening as soon as possible. He is anxious to support the ability to safely and quickly get people back in-person, doing in-person qualitative, and ramping that part of the industry back up. Kathryn’s outlook for market research for 2021 Kathryn thinks that survey research for 2021 will be about the areas that are likely to be hot. For quality researchers, she thinks that we will see some of the people who had to pivot to online research go back to in-person research, to some extent.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are excited to welcome Steve Schlesinger, the CEO of the Schlesinger Group, as our guest for today’s show. Join us today to learn about Steve’s journey. You will hear the story behind the Schlesinger Group and find out how it got founded by Steve’s mother back in 1966. Steve’s mother’s story The Schlesinger Group was founded by Steve’s mother in 1966. A few years before, she started looking for a part-time job, and a friend of hers who was working for a company in New York City, got her a job as a phone interviewer, working from a bedroom in the house in which Steve grew up. She was very good at what she was doing, and after a year or two, she was promoted to Regional Supervisor. In around 1966, some of the companies she was working for encouraged her to open a company and set herself up so that she could manage several groups of people, and they could feed her business. Her business got incorporated in 1966, and she built up a roster of clients for whom she did the field data collection. A group of women Steve’s mom was part of a phenomenal group of women who all started in the data collection space more or less at the same time in the late 1950s. They built up businesses over the years, and some of those businesses ultimately got bought out by other companies. Those women did a wonderful job of building up the data collection aspect of the market research world. Working for his mother When Steve was seventeen, he started officially working for his mother by doing intercept interviews at New York Airport for United. He did that for her many times while he was in high school. Growing up While Steve was growing up, there were often leftover products from product tests in their house. Occasionally, he would get asked to deliver something to an interviewer or a responder. That was fun for him. Starting to understand Steve’s mother used to do focus groups at their kitchen table when he was a teenager, and while he was growing up, there was generally a lot going on in the house. That was when he started to understand what his mother was doing, and talking about, in terms of ad campaigns. After college Steve took a year off after his first year at Medical School. During that year, his mom insisted that he worked for her while figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. He ended up falling in love with the work he was doing for her and decided to keep on doing it. Building the business In light of that, and knowing that she would soon retire, his mother decided to build up the business to make it more substantial. She also decided to open up an office to get Steve out of the basement of their house. He worked for his mother for about six or seven years before taking over and running the business himself. A strong foundation Steve’s mother had a good reputation, and she was very ethical and honest. That gave their business a strong foundation and allowed it to grow. Steve has always appreciated what his mom gave to the business, and he still lives by those same principles today. Some of the early lessons Steve learned You need to learn as you grow because as the business grows, you need to manage and lead it differently. You need to make new decisions about what you want your business to be and do what it takes to get there. Ultimately, you need to learn from your mistakes, and you need to change as an individual within the organization during all its different stages of growth. Steve’s style of leadership Steve is a good delegator, and he does not enjoy micromanaging. He is a good listener, he is good at putting faith and trust into the people around him, and he believes in staying humble and appreciative, regardless of the success you might have achieved. He is not a control freak. That works when you’re scaling up and trying to evolve a business. The Schlesinger Corporation has been around for 57 years. Adapting, changing, evolving, and staying relevant is what Steve is most proud of having ac...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are excited to welcome Dave Shanker as our guest for this episode. Dave is the CEO and Founder of David Shanker Consulting. Dave’s journey Dave’s career spans more than thirty years, and he has mostly been involved with market research, running different market research agencies. He has also been involved in startups and has had a family business along the way. Dave’s leadership style People have often told Dave that he is authentic and that he wears his heart on his sleeve, so what you see is what you get. And he communicates a lot, he cares, and he gets invested in employees, clients, and the business. Winning Dave wants to win, and he wants his team to win just as much. What makes people scared Early in his career, Dave learned that not knowing is what makes people scared. And if people don’t know, they will make assumptions, and they will probably be wrong. Building trust and credibility You need to be very forthright, upfront, and candid with your employees, over time, to build trust and credibility. Moving an organization to the next level Dave believes that putting together a combination of caring, being passionate about a business, and getting invested in the employees, the clients, and the business, starts a good foundation for building a culture change and moving an organization to the next level. Communication Dave has always sent out weekly emails to his entire company, telling everyone what he has been doing. However, he knew that he needed to change from typing emails to doing video. So one day, he made a video and spoke for five minutes, and he was blown away by the response he got. Lightspeed Dave joined Lightspeed at an interesting time. He had a challenge from day one there in working out how to bring the three different business units together. The fun part of it for him was looking across the three sales teams and thinking about ways to get them working together so that one plus one plus one would equal ten. They were successful because the sales teams all saw the benefits of working together. The start Dave started with the employees. He spent many hours talking to the employees one-on-one. One truth The one truth that Dave found was that you can't get to where you are going unless you know where you are. And for him, the way to do that was to talk to his employees. Customers After talking to the employees, he started talking to his customers because frequent communication is necessary to get your customers to buy-in. Points of resistance Some of the points of resistance that he ran into were around sharing customers, doubts about whether or not his commission would get paid, and whether someone else would manage to deliver as efficiently as he could. Driving growth Through the change, they did not drive growth equally across the three different business units. Because of the things Dave put in place, however, they managed to drive growth in two of the three business units. And they realized some substantial wins in how they went about the day-to-day of the business. After Lightspeed After Lightspeed, Dave went to a B2B media company called Ensemble IQ and had to do some heavy lifting there. He approached it in the same way as he approached Lightspeed, by thinking about what they could do at the back end to create efficiencies and become seamless, to have one operations team delivering across everything. Although the people at Ensemble IQ were very resistant to change, he still managed to do it fairly quickly. Centralization For the most part, Dave likes centralization across shared services, no matter which stage the company is at. The companies that Dave prefers working with Dave enjoys working with companies with challenges in figuring out how to sell into the market they would like to get into. And with companies that are struggling to get to the next level. Account planning Dave leans towards keeping things simple with account planning. For him,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast! Sima has curated a series of interesting and informative past episodes of the podcast for August. She will be back again in September with new guests, fresh content, and a few surprises! Today’s episode is a replay of episode 170 with Adam Jolley, the EVP and General Manager of Americas for Paradigm Sample. In this episode, Adam talks to Sima about how leadership has had to change over the last two years as a result of how the world has changed since the pandemic. Adam’s background It was a shock for everyone when the pandemic hit. It was also a big shock to Adam’s career because he had quit his thirteen-year job as President of a stable company a few months before. At the time, he was navigating what to do for a career. He was also considering whether to get into leadership or be an individual contributor. Having to change If Adam had started with Paradigm immediately after quitting his old job, nothing would have changed, and he would not have gotten any better at what he did. Due to all the changes, including the influence of the change in the mindset of the employees, he had to change how he did everything. A routine Adam feels that before the pandemic, most people were in a routine. They were doing the same job repetitively, so they started getting lazy. People started becoming replaceable, and products became widgets and started becoming commoditized. Competition for your people Before, people had to think about competition in terms of market and product. Now, there is competition for people. Sales It is no longer possible to have a playbook for sales. Currently, there is no one way to manage, sell, or communicate with everybody because that would be limiting. An opportunity for leaders All the changes have created an opportunity for leaders to personalize their message and motivate their people to show up for work. Customizing leadership People learned more about each other when everyone started working remotely and communicating via Zoom. That helped Adam customize his approach to leadership. How Adam changed personally after the pandemic When making decisions, Adam stopped looking at what had happened and what was happening that day. He was forced to think differently about his goals, so he developed an emotional attachment to his job beyond the paycheck, insurance, and other benefits. Teamwork Adam was never a big believer in teamwork before. That has changed because everyone has gone through a hard time and a change together, and everyone needs acceptance. Branding With the change in leadership, there is more emphasis on branding. There is also more emphasis on companies because so much has changed. Personal branding Many leaders focus on their personal brand outside of the company. However, personal branding is just as important internally as it is externally. Have your house in order The most important part of a business is ensuring you have your own house in order before putting anything out there. Leadership and embracing innovation It is scary for people to innovate and have foresight, especially when things are going well. However, to move forward, innovation needs to be company-wide. Everyone, including the sales team, has to think about where things are going and what comes next. A tough balance Even though it is tough to balance, leaders must bring their people along throughout the innovation process. A fine line There is a fine line between taking market feedback, input from sales, input from marketing, and input from people building products, rationalizing what is important, why it is important, and getting everyone to agree about those decisions. Culture An interesting problem for leaders is when they see a company they would like to acquire, but it will not pass the road test for the executive team. Adam believes that is partly due to leaders misunderstanding what culture truly is. Data-driven gambles…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is excited to have Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer for Alter Agents, joining her today to talk about the book she recently co-authored with Rebecca Brooks, called Influencing Shopper Decisions: Unleash the Power of Your Brand to Win Customers. Devora’s book In the book, Devora and Rebecca connect their journeys, careers, and their boss’s journeys with their historical perspectives to show people how market research has evolved, why it is the way it is today and things we need to rethink due to the way the world has changed. Motivation Devora and Rebecca have worked together as research partners since 2008. Early on in their working relationship, they began working on proving how emerging media was and would continue impacting purchasing decisions because that was not clear at that point. They wanted to give marketers a sense of the roles social media, mobile, or digital out-of-home were going to have on their marketing efforts. Google Fourteen years ago, Google started doing extensive and ground-breaking B2B studies to prove that people were using the internet to research products and buy things. That motivated Devora and Rebecca to begin their research. The foundation of their work The foundation of their work began with the idea that shoppers were doing more research than ever before. Shopper promiscuity Promiscuous behavior is about being open and unbound. Promiscuous readers, for example, will read anything. Davora and Rebecca began to see that behavior in shoppers too. They opened to brands, products, and content, in ways that never existed fifteen, ten, or even five years ago. They are also willing to switch brands- even after a lifetime commitment to a particular brand. What is behind shopper promiscuity? More information than ever before is accessible. More people are consuming the information. More innovation is happening. There is no limit to what is available and when and where they are available. We are surrounded by information and choices. That has impacted us by making us more promiscuous, more open to trying new things, and less loyal to brands. An opportunity for brands to shift Shopper promiscuity has allowed brands to shift to become content creators, PR specialists, and values-driven, and also express what they are committed to and what they are willing to stand up for. Brand narcissism In part of the book, they describe what brand narcissism is. (It is much like going on a date with a needy person, and it no longer meets the needs of shoppers who have changed fundamentally.) Growing brands For brands to continue growing, they need a platform for listening and an approach that allows them to be informed continually because the needs of consumers can change rapidly. A shift in power Retailers used to have all the power. Then, things shifted, and brands began to call the shots. Now, we have reached a point where shoppers hold all the power. Source usage Source usage is a metric Davora and Rebecca created when trying to understand what people do before they buy something. It refers to the discreet touch-points people use at each phase of their buying process. Net influence Net influence calculates whether a particular source was influential for more people than it was not influential. It produces a quadrant chart that tells marketers where to find the most people or the right people they can influence to say “yes”. It also reveals the marketing campaigns of competitors’ brands. Changing shopper values One way that shopper values are changing is that there is an overall increase in awareness of issues that impact the supply chain, manufacturing, and best practices as they relate to employee labor practices. Respect for shoppers’ data, and the safety of it, have been increasing over the past year as people become more knowledgeable. Those impacted by Covid are far more likely to rate the corporate social res...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another informative episode of Data Gurus! Sima is excited to have Jason Telner join her on the show today! Jason is a Senior User Researcher within the CIO organization at IBM. His primary purpose is to use various methods to improve the employees’ experience with the apps and tools they use and improve their overall workflow and work experiences. Improving the lives of employees Jason’s role at IBM focuses on improving the employees' lives in terms of their day-to-day productivity, how they relate to the company and the tools they provide. He does that using surveys, user interviews, and collecting data to see how that can improve the design of their entire experience. A unified experience At IBM, they feel that having a unified experience benefits the employees, and the company's response to things in the environment, like Covid or global crises. They have a website for employees to find information, figure things out around their careers, and have a more unified experience. Jason’s journey As an undergrad, Jason focused on neuroscience and cognitive behavior. He wanted to apply the theories he had learned, in terms of how people think, feel, and perceive information to everyday world problems. He considered industrial psychology and did an internship withHuman Systems, a company focused on optimizing human performance using military equipment, command and control, and transportation. Then he got involved in human factors, studied it in grad school, and worked on various projects around redesigning displays for traffic controllers- looking at night vision goggles and different perceptual distortions causing accidents. Later, Jason applied his skills to the digital age of the internet and the user experience. IBM Jason has been with IBM for eight years. He has spent much of his time within the CIO, working on employee engagement and the day-to-day workflow of the employees. Interesting projects Jason has been working on some exciting projects at IBM. With one of them, they are trying to assess whether or not various project teams have the right capabilities and attitudes regarding user experience. An assessment tool Jason and his team created an assessment tool to help teams figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the project teams, pinpoint how they can improve, and recommend the training to equip them to do user research and user experience design. Agile teams Teams need to work in an agile way in terms of designing applications and software. User research User experience research is becoming vital to the overall product, so it must be injected into a design project early. Teams realize that if the user research gets done too late, it is hard to pull back. Creating a digital assistant Another project Jason is working on is creating a digital assistant to help employees in various realms with IT support and answer employee-related questions. They are building it on the information they get from doing user research and data. IBM cares about its employees IBM cares about its employees in various ways. It does that through its phone and online IT support and how they work when big crises, like Covid, happen. UX and data science trends Data science is a hot area. The areas of data science and user experience research are becoming increasingly more integrated as time passes because data does not always give the whole story. Data science and user experience research complement one another, so using them together will help to prevent blind spots. The great resignation The great resignation has made it easier for employees to find new opportunities. Covid Before Covid, many employees in the IT sector were already working remotely. Since Covid, many of those employees have switched roles and gotten recruited by companies outside their regions. Working in-office versus working remotely Younger people starting their careers are less likely to opt for working remotely because they prefer t...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another fascinating episode of Data Gurus! Sima is happy to have Rick Kelly, the Chief Product Officer of Fuel Cycle, joining her on the show today! In this episode, Rick explains how he got to where he is today and discusses Fuel Cycle’s unique approach of linking with multiple API partners to offer different capabilities for specific communities to utilize and positioning itself as the Salesforce for communities. Bio: Rick is currently the Chief Product Officer at Fuel Cycle, where he has worked since 2014. Before his tenure at Fuel Cycle, he worked at an early-stage health tech startup, taught political science, and worked in market research. Outside of work, Rick volunteers with the bleeding disorders community and obsessively learns about food and cooking. How Rick got to where he is in his career Rick started his career in market research by accident. When he left grad school in 2009, the company he was going to work for went insolvent. So he got referred to a sample company and started working in market research. He left market research to spend a year teaching political science and then took some time off to travel to India, where he worked for a tech startup based in San Francisco. After moving back to the US in a hurry because his baby had a rare bleeding disorder, he emailed a former colleague and ended up working at Fuel Cycle. The State of Communities The State of Communities was the title of Rick's presentation at an IIEX Conference in April 2022. Fuel Cycle is known for its research communities, so they are interested in how those communities get used, different use cases, and what leads to the adoption of communities. They run a study each year amongst their research practitioners to better understand how they utilize their communities. That develops their content and informs their product development and where they invest on their platform. Communities Most of Fuel Cycle’s customers are brands, big enterprises, and licensing communities over the long term. In many cases, they put three-year-plus deals together to help their customers stay engaged with key audiences. So when they talk about Fuel Cycle, they take it beyond communities and call it the Market Research Cloud because they enable their customers to maintain a constant connection with their key audiences. They also help accelerate decision-making with their suite of solutions and integrated partner platforms. Integrating with partners Fuel cycle has a platform in a robust set of APIs that allows them to integrate with more than forty partners. A developer platform A decision got made to treat fuel Cycle as a developer platform. They decided to go API first and partner extensively to deliver broader functionality to high-demand researchers. More research Fuel Cycle believes that the world needs more research. They advocate for that. Bad business decisions Bad business decisions get made often. It usually happens because those decisions have neither been validated by customers nor prospective customers. More efficient businesses Businesses will run more efficiently if insights are made more accessible to decision-makers. That will also reduce the existing economic dead-weight loss in the world. The world needs more research The world needs more research. That means market research needs to scale beyond the insights department to be truly effective. Use cases Use cases are growing dramatically outside the core research persona. Delivering value Research practitioners do a challenging job. Rick believes that the best way to deliver value to an organization is to unchain some insights practices from the insights team and push more self-serve capabilities out to stakeholders. Some of the challenges related to communities A community is a program. So it has to be well run and maintained. If you use a community just to run surveys, you are probably over-investing in it. Communities need to be exercised,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Fueling Innovation | Ep. 172 27:18
Welcome to today’s illuminating episode of Data Gurus, recorded live at IIEX in Austin, Texas! Sima is happy to have Paul Gaudette, CEO of Dig Insights, joining her to talk about innovation! There are many opportunities for innovation right now. However, founders of companies are concerned about failure because 80% of the 600,000 new products and CPG launched each year fail, and 50% of all new businesses fail by year three. Dig Insights Dig Insights is a consultancy that has been around for twelve years. They built their own innovation software to assist their clients with innovation exercises and navigating their life cycles. They provide their clients with a foundational understanding of the consumer or the market and fill the gaps across the innovation lifecycle with their platform and other research solutions. Speed and agility There is a lot of pressure for innovation to get out into the market and innovations to be the first ones out. But, sometimes, large organizations get stuck in the process. So speed and agility are critical. Clients are taking more advantage of data Clients are taking more advantage of data, including survey, sales, behavioral, and social data, to find ideas and opportunities for coming up with innovations. Democratization of insights One reason companies present at AIX is that democratization of their insights function is happening across their organization. So they want to empower their internal clients with technological solutions to enable them to research independently and speed up the innovation process. Traditional companies versus smaller brands Years ago, large companies had the advantage because they had the resources, budget, and knowledge to launch new products. Now, they have to compete with many smaller and more agile direct-to-consumer brands with a constant finger on the pulse of the consumer. The stage-gate product development process Most large organizations Paul deals with still subscribe to the stage-gate product development process, but they try to speed up the process and shorten the time it takes to get a new product to market. Medium-sized companies Medium-sized companies are now doing a lot of iterative innovation, getting constant feedback, and optimizing everything before going to market. Equalizing the playing field Lately, startups have also been asking if they can leverage the Dig Insights platform to do their research. That has equalized the playing field and made the competition for larger companies even more stringent. Customer-centricity Most companies recognize that they need to talk to a younger consumer base. They have to be quick in their approach and get feedback fast. They need a way to solicit information quickly, easily, and confidently, so they are looking for innovative, fun, and robust solutions that are agile, engaging, and have a great user experience. Consumer product failures Consumer product failures tend to occur when companies start without a strategy. Or when they do not know what they want to achieve or for whom their innovation is. To overcome that, they need to use specific methodologies to get feedback from a broad audience. On the flip side Some clients want to talk to a very niched customer profile, so they tend to miss potential opportunities outside of that profile. Avoiding problems To avoid those problems, understand who your innovation is for, think broadly, and plan. The market is changing rapidly, so it is vital to think ahead and consider whether your idea will still be relevant in six months or even a year from now. Upsiide Dig Insights has built a platform called Upsiide to help its clients assess innovations quickly and intuitively. It started as a simple way to test ideas. They used the technology of swiping and trade-offs and turned it into a test for innovations. Then it evolved into a DIY innovation platform that clients can utilize independently. Dig Insights has also productized elements of the ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Get the Beat on Sales | Ep. 171 25:45
Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is excited to have Veena Giridhar Gopal, the Co-founder, and CEO of Salesbeat, joining her on the show today! Salesbeat started in March 2019, and when Covid hit early in 2020, Veena and her partner pivoted the business. About Salesbeat Salesbeat has software that processes many different data points, including sales data from supermarkets and external data points, like weather forecasts, to predict how much a supermarket will sell any product for a specific period in the future. The purpose is to eliminate sales losses due to under or overstocking. Overstocking Overstocking has become a big issue since Covid because people have changed how they live. So supermarkets are buying the wrong stocks. Too much stock Veena has worked for companies in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry since 2007, so she knows the area well. She has also been in FMCG sales. So she knew that when Covid happened in March 2020, and people started buying things and stockpiling, it would cause a blip in historical sales numbers the following year. Supermarkets would then place their orders based on those numbers and end up with too much stock. Big losses A problem already existed due to climate change, so beverage companies and personal care companies would not know how much stock to order for some weather conditions, like heat waves. The industry lost up to 30% of its total revenue annually because nobody tracked the lost sales. Recent studies Recent studies show that lost sales increased due to supply chain issues. What they do at Salesbeat On a live basis, Salesbeat looks at how much stock is in the warehouse and whether orders get done regularly. They calculate in theory if orders get issued when they run out of stock. They also look for reasons if they have not placed the orders or made the sales. Factors considered in the Salesbeat model In the Salesbeat pitch, they say that they look at both micro and macro factors. Macro factors Macro factors include things like demographics. Certain items do very well on promotions in middle or lower class areas, whereas they could cause money losses in affluent areas. The same thing applies to people from different backgrounds or ethnic groups. Salesbeat looks at those factors and others to advise supermarkets on what and how much to stock. Micro factors The micro factors they look at include social media. Although influencers increase sales, when regular people rave about a product, and it goes viral, there is even more of an uplift in sales. Weather patterns Weather patterns have been unusual recently. That can upset retailers purchasing decisions. To fix it, Salesbeat looks at daily weather forecasts for the next few weeks and makes predictions based on that. Supermarkets Supermarkets need the service provided by Salesbeat a lot more than brands do. So they now offer their service to supermarkets. Two different views Salesbeat provides two views: They have an automated system for sending orders to supermarket suppliers, and they also offer brands a view of similar data but in a different format. They tell brands which orders to expect from a supermarket at any point so they can plan their inventories properly. An early adopter program They are busy setting up an early adopter program for major supermarkets to try their solution out. How Salesbeat differs from other supply chain solutions Other supply chain solutions differ from that of Salesbeat in that they do not take the daily weather forecasts or social media into account. Also, other supply chain solutions do their forecasts at a national account level rather than looking at specific stores. Online shopping Veena has noticed that e-commerce sales increase when the weather is cold and rainy. People also tend to do bigger shops when they know their purchases will get delivered. The future Salesbeat currently focuses on the retail launch...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is happy to have Adam Jolley, the EVP and General Manager of Americas for Paradigm Sample, joining her today to talk about how leadership has changed due to how the world has changed over the last two years. Adam’s background It was a shock for everyone when the pandemic hit. It was also a big shock to Adam’s career because he had quit his thirteen-year job as President of a stable company a few months before. At the time, he was navigating what to do for a career. He was also considering whether to get into leadership or be an individual contributor. Having to change If Adam had started with Paradigm immediately after quitting his old job, nothing would have changed, and he would not have gotten any better at what he did. Due to all the changes, including the influence of the change in the mindset of the employees, he had to change how he did everything. A routine Adam feels that before the pandemic, most people were in a routine. They were doing the same job repetitively, so they started getting lazy. People started becoming replaceable, and products became widgets and started becoming commoditized. Competition for your people Before, people had to think about competition in terms of market and product. Now, there is competition for people. Sales It is no longer possible to have a playbook for sales. Currently, there is no one way to manage, sell, or communicate with everybody because that would be limiting. An opportunity for leaders All the changes have created an opportunity for leaders to personalize their message and motivate their people to show up for work. Customizing leadership When everyone started working remotely and communicating via Zoom, people learned more about each other. That helped Adam to customize his approach to leadership. How Adam changed personally after the pandemic Adam stopped looking at what had happened and what was happening that day when making decisions. He was forced to think differently about his goals, and he developed an emotional attachment to his job beyond the paycheck, insurance, and other benefits. Teamwork Adam was never a big believer in teamwork before. That has changed because everyone has gone through a hard time and a change together, and everyone needs acceptance. Branding With the change in leadership, there is more emphasis on branding. There is also more emphasis on companies because so much has changed. Personal branding Many leaders focus on their personal brand outside of the company. However, personal branding is just as important internally as it is externally. Have your house in order The most important part of a business is making sure you have your own house in order before putting anything out there. Leadership and embracing innovation It is scary for people to innovate and have foresight, especially when things are going well. However, to move forward, innovation needs to be company-wide. Everyone, including the sales team, needs to be thinking about where things are going and what comes next. A tough balance Even though it is tough to balance, leaders need to bring their people along throughout the innovation process. A fine line There is a fine line between taking market feedback, input from sales, input from marketing, and input from people building products, rationalizing what is important, why it is important, and getting everyone to agree about those decisions. Culture An interesting problem for leaders is when they see a company they would like to acquire, but it will not pass the road test for the executive team. Adam believes that is partly due to leaders misunderstanding what culture truly is. Data-driven gambles Adam’s company has taken on the culture of taking data-driven gambles. Before starting a new product or going after a new client, they do their due diligence. So they know whether or not it stands a good chance of working....…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Visualize | Ep. 169 25:23
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is happy to have Adam Baker and Majeed Saheb-Zadha joining her today. Indico Labs is a data-visualization business and product. They are based in London and have clients across the globe. Majeed is the Founder and CEO, and Adam is the CSO. In this episode, Majeed and Adam talk about their startup journey and discuss the pain points Indico Labs addresses in the marketplace. The pain points addressed by Indico Labs Indico Labs was born as a result of two main forces. The first was a push from the industry to deliver results and insights faster. The second was that the industry has become saturated with data. So researchers did not have the time to interpret it quickly enough to create something deliverable for the client. Indico Labs essentially create a data presentation product that streamlines the process of generating reports. That enables the researchers to interpret the reports quickly, create the visuals, and deliver them to the end client faster. Majeed’s story Before starting Indico Labs, Majeed worked in the Technical Operations Department of YouGov, an end-to-end market research company. Essentially, his job was to address ways to deliver and interpret results faster. The Technical Operations team addressed every part of the company’s workflow and found an obvious bottleneck when it came to the reporting element of the business. They identified that as the main pain point in the entire workflow. A code-based solution Majeed then designed a code-based solution that allowed him to deliver reports to the researchers much faster. He and his team at YouGov managed to save about 80% of the time it took for senior researchers to do data entry. An online product Majeed wanted to give the researchers the power to build PowerPoint decks using data they had already. So he quit his job at YouGov and created an online product that automated the production of data presentations. He wanted to satisfy the needs of tech-enabled products to integrate with his solution and the needs of traditional market research agencies. He launched the product in 2019. After building his prototype, Majeed asked Adam to join him. Adam’s story Adam left YouGov in 2017 and spent a few years doing consultancy work at other market research agencies. Everywhere he went, a lot of time got wasted on the reporting. Then, Majeed contacted him in 2019 to show him the tool he was creating. Adam was blown away by it and wished he had had it ten years earlier! Since then, they have developed that tool even further. Marketing Since day one, there has been a lot of interest in their product from big and small organizations globally. They have spent almost nothing on marketing. Success They have been finding a lot of success with small to medium-sized fast-growing market research agencies that need a way to compete with some of the big players in the market. The sweet spot Adam has been selling, and Majeed has focused on the product side. It took them a year to realize that their sweet spot lies with smaller agencies that don’t have an in-house development team or the money to spend on building in-house solutions. Growing and learning Since starting Indico Labs, Adam and Majeet have developed a lot of resilience. They have done many demos, and they have been learning how to close clients by focusing on the right questions to ask to ascertain whether or not their product will be useful to them. They have also learned to use time-saving marketing tools. Majeed’s advice Majeed advises people to focus on the customers who are happy with what they have right now and sell what they currently have. Funding features If a client asks for a feature you do not already have, ask them to fund its development. They have had clients funding many of their features in the early days. Celebrate the wins It is important to celebrate your wins and impact on your clients.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Emotional Reactions | Ep.168 18:27
Welcome to today’s insightful episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is happy to have Anne Beall, the CEO, and Founder of Beall Research, joining her today! Anne is a research expert and an author. She has been in the market research industry for over twenty-five years. In this episode, she shares her background, talks about her journey in the world of market research, and explains how emotions influence purchasing. Market research Anne got into the market research industry right after graduate school. Soon after, she got recruited to the Boston Consulting Group, where she spent several years in their Chicago office as the head of the market research function. Beall Research Anne had lots of ideas but did not have a platform on which to execute them, so she started her own small research firm, Beall Research, nineteen years ago. She started the business alone and then brought eight employees on board. What Anne loves about research Anne loves the breadth of the studies her company does. She also loves not knowing how things will work out. She enjoys helping companies figure out what they can do differently and how they could be better. Selling Anne’s company is small because she did not want a sales function that pushed the work onto someone else after a sale. She believes that you cannot sell research if you cannot do it, so she wants her senior people to do rather than sell. A strong pipeline For Anne, having a strong pipeline comes from reaching out to people, connecting with them, and filling them in on her latest research. A specialty Beall Research specializes in how emotions influence purchasing, and they have funded studies to become smarter in that area. They study the internal experience of emotion. Particularly the emotions people feel in relation to brands and how those emotions lead them to purchase the same brand repeatedly. Two parts There are two parts to how people’s emotions influence their purchasing decisions. The first part is whether their immediate emotional response to a brand is positive, negative, or neutral. The second part is how much they emotionally identify with a brand. Those two parts go together to create a strong connection. A frustration All humans have some kind of emotional response to different things- even tires! It frustrates Anne when brands fail to take advantage of that, and people have a neutral response when brands could easily have created an emotional response. Memories The first thing people tend to think about when they think of certain brands is a memory of family and friends. Strategic Market Research When business came to a halt in 2007-2008, Anne decided to write a book to keep her sane and give her something to do. She wrote and published the book Strategic Market Research as a marketing piece, and it became an unexpected success. It has been called one of the best books on market research. It gets used in colleges and universities and currently sells about two copies a day on Amazon. Writing other books Since then, Anne has written several other books on various topics. She is currently writing her eleventh book on how emotions influence purchasing decisions. Start writing Anne encourages anyone considering being an author to do it! It is a lot easier to publish a book now than ever before. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Anne Beall on LinkedIn Beall Research Book: Strategic Market Research: A Guide to Conducting Research that Drives Businesses by Anne Beall…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another helpful and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is excited to have Ed Keller joining her today. Ed is a leading expert in word-of-mouth marketing and social media analytics. He is the Co-founder of Keller Fay Group, the former CEO of Engagement Labs, and the author of the book, The Influentials. Ed is passionate about word-of-mouth marketing because it makes a huge difference! It is critical to how brands grow and how consumers make decisions about products and the services they buy. In this episode, Ed talks about word of mouth marketing, explains why he is so passionate about it and discusses its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Intuitive belief Many businesses intuitively believe in word-of-mouth marketing but do not fully understand what to do about it or how to use it to grow their business. Ed’s book Almost twenty years ago, Ed wrote a book called The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy. He was the CEO of RoperASW, a large market research firm, at the time. Malcolm Gladwell had just written The Tipping Point, and Roper had an extensive database about the people that typified what Gladwell was talking about. So they put all the data together in the book. The Keller Fay Group After writing the book, Ed met many budding entrepreneurs in the early stages of social listening. He enjoyed the space and wanted to jump into it as an entrepreneur. So he and a colleague started the Keller Fay Group to become the measurement standard for offline word of mouth. What is word-of-mouth marketing? Word of mouth can be technology-driven or with person-to-person small group interactions. Offline word of mouth happens when people talk face-to-face, over the phone, on a Zoom chat, texting, or IMing. It occurs when people seek advice or want to share an experience with friends and family. Social media and writing reviews are also forms of word of mouth. How important is word of mouth? Word of mouth can explain between thirty and forty percent of purchase decisions. It is not as high as that in fast-moving consumer goods, however. Covid During Covid, word of mouth became even more important to people as they needed new products, and new ways of buying came onto the market. AT&T Mobility AT&T Mobility was one of their first clients to model with word of mouth data. Word of mouth came in as a close second to paid advertising as a determinant of new subscribers. That was the first time that Ed and his partner had concrete evidence of something they intuitively believed important. An important factor After that, they started modeling word of mouth against many different categories. In every case, it proved to be an important factor. It also has an important relationship to the effectiveness of paid advertising. Research Their research found that Americans have about ten word of mouth conversations offline, about brands, per day. Word of mouth marketing People think about word-of-mouth marketing in several different ways. Word-of-mouth marketing agencies recruit people who love talking about brands and are willing to try new products and share their experiences. In other cases, people are doing different types of experiential marketing, hoping that people will end up energized by the experience and talk about it with others. There are also a growing number of companies thinking about creating earned media with their advertising. Helping brands quantify the amount of word of mouth lift Much of the work Ed has done over the years was about helping brands to quantify the amount of word-of-mouth lift they got from their advertising campaigns. Increased offline word of mouth The massive rise in social media has increased the amount of offline word of mouth. There appears to be an interaction effect between digital media and offline due to the growing impact of digital media as the number one driver of offline word of mouth. ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another informative and inspiring episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is excited to have Rob Volpe joining her today. Rob is the CEO of the insights and strategy consultancy, Ignite 360. In this episode, Rob talks about his career path and shares what he did to get to where he is today. He also talks about his book, Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time, and he explains what empathy is all about. Rob’s career path Rob went to Syracuse University. He wanted to be a television network programming executive, so he moved to LA. He found a job as a legal secretary and then moved into business affairs. He enjoyed looking at marketing campaigns for movies, which led him to explore the world of marketing. So he took a marketing class at UCLA Extension and got into marketing in 1995. He did not know that market research existed then, so he started working for a PR firm, doing PR and event marketing. After that, he did various other jobs until someone he met said she was looking to hire someone with his experience. So he went for the necessary training, and a month later, he started his career in insights. He worked with his friend for several years until eleven years ago, when he decided to go out on his own and start Ignite 360. Clues In the years before he started Ignite 360, many clues directed Rob toward that path he needed to follow. It took several years, but he finally got there! Empathy Empathy has always been Rob’s superpower. When a study came out, showing that the university students starting in 2001 had 40% less empathy than students between 1979 and the end of the 1990s, Rob knew that our society was in trouble. He recognized that empathy was common to qualitative researchers. So when he started Ignite 360, he played up the empathetic connection and made sure that his clients understood and connected with who their consumers were. Through that, he learned about the barriers to empathy and began identifying ways to overcome them. Intuition Rob is intrigued with intuition and people’s ability to ignore it. He found in work situations that people have way more successful outcomes when they tie their gut into the numbers. Reconnecting In 2016, Rob did a presentation to university students. He wanted them to become aware of empathy and reconnect with it, so he spoke about empathy and told stories to give examples of what he meant. The audience was rapt and loved his stories! Then Rob realized that was what he needed to write about, and he started writing his book. Rob’s book, Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time In his book, Rob uses stories to help people understand empathy. He did that so that people could bring empathy in whenever they needed to, either in their personal lives or professionally. Writing a book He points out to anyone considering writing a book that his first draft looked nothing like the finished book. So, if you want to write a book, just start and keep on going, even when you stumble. The difference between cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and sympathy Sympathy is about feeling for someone, and empathy is about feeling with someone. We are all born with the ability to empathize, and there are distinct types of empathy. Studies have shown that different types of empathy light up different parts of the brain. Feeling the feelings of others is known as emotional empathy, and seeing other peoples’ points of view is cognitive empathy. Sympathy often tends to link into judgment or pity, and it could create a power dynamic. The 5 steps Rob uses to coach his clients Dismantle your judgment Ask good (broad, open, and exploratory) questions Active listening (It often involves using your intuition) Integrate into understanding (Making sense of when things are different) Using solution imagination Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 The ABCs of Product | Ep. 165 24:37
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Tiama Hanson-Drury, the Chief Product Officer of Minna Technologies, joining her! For Tiama, a product is all about understanding customer pain and solving it in a way that works well for her business. In this episode, she talks about her journey and explains how she discovered her sweet spot and reached the point in her career where she is right now. She also dives into product development, monetizing a product, reducing uncertainty around a new product, and best practices. Tiama’s journey After graduating from college, Tiama planned to spend two years in a small business and two years in a medium business, followed by two years in a large business. Then she planned to go back to college to get her Ph.D. After that, she wanted to become an executive coach and work with CEOs because she loves business. She spent two years working for a wine business and then moved on to a fast-growing tech company called Global Market Insight (GMI). She stayed there a lot longer than two years because she kept asking for promotion opportunities and getting them. That led her to her current career in product development. Making a move After working at GMI for six years, the company got acquired by WPP Kantar, and Tiama began to consider making a move. She wanted to make informed decisions based not only on what someone had said but also on what they had done, and she wanted to have all that data in one place. Building a product Then Tiama started working with the company’s chief scientist, a data science team, and a marketing team, and they built a product. Monetizing a product More and more clients started asking for the product. Tiama realized that if something was built for multiple people with multiple perspectives, and it was built to be repeatable and scalable, it could be monetized. Because after the first sale, the gross margin on all the other sales is much better. Moving into the product space Tiama told the CCO and the company’s new CMO that she was interested in the new discipline and asked if there was anything she could do in that line or else she might consider leaving to do it. So they gave her a chance to move into the product space. She started in product marketing because she had a degree in communications. Since then, she has constantly been moving from one product to another. Product For Tiama, a software product is about understanding customer pain and knowing that they, as a business, can solve it in a way that also works for the business. Invest now for a return later People in service businesses considering experimenting with a product line need to understand the reality of launching their new product. 95% of new products fail, so they have to be willing to invest now for a return in a year to eighteen months. Reducing uncertainty around the success of a new product Gaining insights, doing market and customer research, reading white papers that support trends around what you want to do, and knowing that you have realistic expectations and the DNA to do it, will help reduce uncertainty around launching a new product. Best practices As an industry, we need to look into adjacent areas to see what we can learn about building a product. Many product leaders within the industry know that. They also understand the practice of building a product for one persona at a time. Think about using best practices, and learn from those who have built products well. Three fundamental parts For Tiama, a product has three fundamental parts: Discovery Delivery Optimization Don’t sell vaporware You have only one chance to make a first impression. That's why you should never over-promise or under-deliver. Bringing a client into the co-creation It takes a skilled navigator to bring a client into the co-creation of a product. Do it in the discovery stage. Ask your client about their pains.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another captivating episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is delighted to have Lindsay Zaltman joining her on the show today! Lindsay is Partner and CEO at Olson Zaltman, a world-renowned marketing strategy firm. In this episode, Lindsay shares his background and talks about how he got to where he is currently in his career. He explains the way they work at Olson Zaltman. He also dives into how humans think and experience the world through metaphors and discusses how metaphors can be used as an effective marketing tool. Lindsay’s background Lindsay’s father was one of the founders of Olson Zaltman. He was also a Professor of Marketing, and Lindsay often used to look at the work he was doing. He always encouraged Lindsay to think about things a little differently- as he did in the marketing world. So from early on, Lindsay knew he would make his career in marketing, market research, or insights. Lindsay did his undergrad with an anthropology background and went on to get a Master’s degree in marketing research. He spent some time in the advertising world, doing account planning, and then joined Olson Zaltman. Olson Zaltman Olson Zaltman has been around for the last twenty-five years. They specialize in getting into the unconscious thoughts and feelings of consumers. They were doing System 1 thinking long before it got that label. Lindsay considers Olson Zaltman the founder of applying neuroscience to the area of market research because they specialize in getting into consumers’ deeper thoughts and feelings and helping their clients develop strategies built on deeper thinking to make bigger business impacts. They specialize in metaphor as their primary way of thinking. Metaphors Metaphor is the most basic way humans think about and experience the world around them. Metaphors cross all language, demographic, and cultural barriers. In western languages, we tend to use about five to six metaphors per minute in our conversations. Surface metaphors When consumers talk about a brand, category, or experience in life, they use the surface metaphors that reside in their 5% of conscious level thought, without even realizing it. Those surface metaphors become shorthand for more complex ideas. Deep metaphors At Olson Zaltman, they have bucketed those surface metaphors into deep metaphors. There are only about sixteen to eighteen deep metaphors, and they are unconscious universal frames that all humans share. Balance, container, transformation, freedom, and connection are some of the themes, human truths, or unconscious frames, that all the surface metaphors are tied into. Consumers Consumers don’t know that they have those deep metaphors. Olson Zaltman’s role is to uncover them and help clients leverage them for their product innovations or communications. They explain to their clients how a bundle of surface metaphors fits into a key theme of a deep metaphor. The work they do About half the work they do at Olson Zaltman is marketing, communications, branding, and insights. The other half is research and development, or renovation if the client is getting into a new product category. US patent Their most tried and true product, and the one they are known for, is called ZMET. ZMET is a metaphor elicitation technique developed by Lindsay’s father, and it was the first marketing research technique to get a US patent. It is a qualitative one-on-one in-depth process. A quantitative tool They also have an online quantitative tool, called Simile, to measure the deep metaphors in statistically significant ways. Big data There is a lot of excitement going on with big data. Lindsay feels that the pendulum may have swung too far towards looking for quicker surface-level input versus some of the deeper thinking that techniques like ZMET allow clients to do. However, he does acknowledge that the things learned from big data are the “what” and those create an opportunity for the “why” to be explained.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to this inspiring and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is joined today by Bryan Orme, the president and CEO of Sawtooth Software. For more than 30 years, Sawtooth has helped its clients optimize products and pricing and make better business decisions with their conjoint analysis tools. Bryan has won multiple awards in the marketing research field, published over 100 articles and papers on conjoint analysis, and written three books on related subjects. In today’s show, Bryan helps us understand the differences between conjoint analysis and MaxDiff and highlights how Sawtooth Software tools are doing good things in our world. Bryan’s journey No one chooses an insights and analytics career. While doing his MBA work, Bryan discovered his interest in these research techniques and realized how useful they could be in solving important problems. He worked at IntelliQuest, Inc. for a while before moving to Sawtooth in 1995. An overview of Sawtooth Sawtooth is an insights platform for web-based surveys and surveys/devices not connected to the web. Their tools are used for product and price optimization,needs-based segmentation, and are useful in healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Their survey platform is best known for conjoint analysis and MaxDiff, and their best-kept secret is a powerful survey-writing tool. Who are Sawtooth customers? Sawtooth serves a diverse group of motivated and loyal customers. They serve consultancies from the very large to the very small. Sawtooth customers include companies like Google, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble. They even serve academia and government agencies, but no one customer makes up more than 3% of Sawtooth’s revenue. The shift that has happened In interpreting insights and strategies, there has been a democratization of the platforms and a push toward DIY techniques. There are both good and bad aspects to this shift, but the quality has suffered. Bryan says, “People have become satisfied with a C or C- answer in two hours instead of an A or A+ answer in 1-2 weeks. The pendulum has swung too far in the DIY direction.” Conjoint explained A product or service has several pieces, like brand, functionality, performance, design, price, etc. Conjoint determines what drives people’s choices and what’s most important to them by asking multiple questions with varying features. The tool helps to predict what people do in order to pinpoint the most optimal combination to maximize the potential market share. Product managers, founders, and engineers can use this information to ensure product success in the marketplace. MaxDiff explained MaxDiff is a close cousin to conjoint and a great starting point, but it’s easier to use and more broadly applicable. It can be done by anyone with minimal research experience. “It’s like a one-attribute conjoint with a lot of levels.” Without using a 5-10 point scale, MaxDiff eliminates the cultural tendencies and bias of some people by just showing items and having them labeled as “best” or “worst.” MaxDiff is a statistical analysis of the data with great discrimination. We can think of conjoint analysis as the multiple-attribute extension of MaxDiff. What Bryan is most proud of Bryan is most proud of the good that Sawtooth does in the world. He gives three examples. In Tanzania, Sawtooth Software is used by the government to identify the barriers to prenatal and postnatal care for women with the goal of providing better healthcare. Prompted by a Ph.D. marine biology student in the British Virgin Islands, Sawtooth Software is used to manage tourism sustainably to protect the fragile coral reefs. Research and development at Honda use Sawtooth software to incorporate features like dual sliding doors that are controlled by the key fob on Odyssey minivans. Links: Email me your thoughts! sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Infinity-2.com Sawtooth Software Bryan K. Orme on LinkedIn…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to this informative and inspiring episode of the Data Gurus podcast! In today’s episode, Sima is thrilled to introduce you to Roseanne Luth, CEO and President of Luth Research, based in San Diego. Luth Research is a privately held market research company with over 300 highly trained and dedicated employees. Roseanne’s vision is to advance the research industry to its highest and best potential by establishing the most scientifically valid, internet-based data collection service. Roseanne shares her secrets of success that have allowed her company to grow, evolve, and thrive since 1977! Staying power Roseanne is quick to say that starting a company was very different 45 years ago compared to today. The keys for her have been to stay focused and be committed, with a fair amount of personal stubbornness thrown in for good measure. “If you don’t evolve as the world changes, you’ll be left behind.” The inspiration Even in a male-dominated world, Roseanne found that people were supportive and willing to help her when she began her company back in 1977. Wanting to work for herself and do things her own way was her inspiration for Roseanne. Since she was young, and her husband also ran his own business that provided for their family, she could be more flexible and take more risks. Being vulnerable As her business grew, the time came when Roseanne had to approach the bank and ask for a loan, but she didn’t have the financial background and knowledge to have her “ducks in a row.” The loan officer was helpful and supportive in explaining the steps she needed to take, but she had to be honest and vulnerable in admitting what she did not know. Not defined by gender Roseanne felt that she was defined by what she accomplished and not by her gender. She never felt like a minority because of the confidence she had in herself as a business owner. “How you define yourself has to do with how you perceive the world and how you go out there and do your thing.” Growing and evolving In growing a business, there is always a “next phase.” Technology is always changing and requires you to try something new. To fight against the fear of becoming obsolete, Roseanne knew that she had to be willing to make changes, especially when the online world opened up. As a result of her leap of faith in this new investment, Luth Research doubled its revenue in just two years. Going digital Roseanne’s company plunged into the digital world before it became the norm. Going digital with behavioral data was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up, but it meant that they needed researchers who knew how to use the data. She says that her company would not still exist today if she had not been willing to go in this new direction. The innovation space Roseanne knows that a percentage of her energy and dollars have to be spent on innovation. After looking at the budget from every possible angle, she confers with her people about where to put their dollars and how much to invest, and she makes the final decision as the coach of her team. Regrets? Roseanne tries not to look back and call any of her moves mistakes, but she classifies them as challenges that helped her learn and move on to the next bigger challenge. She recounts the unpredictable timing of COVID as the latest challenge that threw a kink into her plans for her Savvy Shares program. What is Savvy Shares? Savvy Shares is a survey opportunity for people to earn by giving their opinions and data. In short, people complete surveys and acquire shares in Luth Research instead of receiving a check. The panel is made up of thousands of people who receive dividend payouts over a long period of time instead of traditional pay. It’s a concept that is growing, new, different, and definitely innovative. Leadership lessons Roseanne’s leadership is always guided by the principle of doing what is right. She doesn’t allow herself to cry over challenges but looks at each one a...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Talk with Ted | Ep. 146 25:47
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is excited to have Ted Pulsifer, the Executive Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at the Schlesinger Group, as her guest for today’s show. In this episode, Ted talks to Sima about his career, his panel discussion at SampleCon, asking the right questions, and incentivizing people to do research surveys. Ted’s career journey Ted’s started his career in the technology space, working for large companies like General Electric and AOL, and then he spent a year working in the wine business. After that, he was recruited into market research by a company called Peanut Labs that did a lot of real-time sampling through applications on Facebook. He was later part of an acquisition into the company now known as Dynata, after which he moved to Federated Sample, now known as Lucid. In 2014, he joined Market Cube as a partner. They successfully exited and sold the business to Schlesinger early in 2020. Advantages Ted experienced many advantages to being part of a fifty-year-old organization with clients everywhere. He enjoyed applying many of the products and the technology they built and learned from at Market Cube into the Schlesinger Group. Time to sell Ted and his partners decided to sell Market Cube because it was performing well, the metrics were in line, and selling the business then felt natural to all four partners. Ted also thought that it was the right time for him to broaden out and move on. Migrating to online There were some challenging moments in 2020 for Schlesinger’s staff, employees, and respondents. However, online work scales and tends to force change. So Schlesinger did well within the legacy Market Cube business, which is now part of Schlesinger, and Schlesinger Quantitative Solutions because they had many people who might have done in-person research before migrating to online. Larger focus groups In-person focus groups are an extension of the hospitality business. So, like many hotels, resorts, and airlines, Schlesinger had to close that side and make some hard decisions. Fortunately, the digital qualitative platform that Schlesinger acquired from Market Cube was strong and growing, so it boosted the business. Leveraging technology Although nobody knows what November 2021 or January 2022 will look like, Ted feels that leveraging technology to add scale and save money will stick with their clients. SampleCon Ted enjoyed the emotional side and the human aspect of being able to attend the recent SampleCon in-person. He loves that every year SampleCon takes place in a different city with different content and a different set of users. He learned a lot there and was happy to have the opportunity to narrate a panel about how traditional techniques are merging and talk about qualitative research more largely on stage. The key themes The key themes that came out of Ted’s panel discussion at SampleCon related to his belief that traditional quantitative and qualitative are very appropriate methodologies that will remain. He feels that research will continue getting done in the way it has. His goal His goal was to keep an eye on new things emerging that should not be ignored and spend time exploring those ideas. One of Ted’s favorite things to do One of Ted’s favorite things to do is to look at the reports from clients and brands and the people that expose him to global clients each quarter and see the changes in those buying from him. He also likes to see that new companies that did not exist two or three years ago that are purchasing his research are doing interesting things. Ted’s article Ted has recently posted an article called Selecting a Sample Partner with Confidence. The idea behind it is to explain the questions people should ask that they might not know to ask. Incentives People want to have a choice of incentives in return for completing surveys. Ted’s company incentivizes people for updating their profiles...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Sima is excited to bring you an encore episode in which she has a conversation with Mario Carrasco. Enjoy the show! Multi-cultural research, strategy, and understanding is what Sima and Mario Carrasco, Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research, chat about on today’s podcast. Mario worked in the early days of digital marketing, building online communities for MSN Latino, and didn’t know what a research panel was until researching it for a job interview for a closer-to-home job. He got his start in market research building what became the first national representative panels at Garcia Research. As research numbers started pointing to the US becoming a minority-majority country in the near future, Mario realized there was a need for a market research company to be focused on multi-cultural consumers, and this is how his ThinkNow Research came about. Mario is also the newest Board Member to join the SampleCon team! HISPANIC MARKET RESEARCH, THEN AND NOW In the early days of market research, particularly Hispanic research, companies were hesitant to use emerging technologies. Back then it was online, and now it’s mobile. Mario has since learned that multi-cultural consumers, especially Hispanic consumers, are super tech savvy, and applying all these innovative technologies to multi-cultural consumers has been his company’s ethos. DEFINING MULTI-CULTURE At the basic level of a potentially contentious conversation, it is consumers who are not non-Hispanic white, and traditionally that segmented into Hispanic, African American, and Asian, which are the largest cohorts of multi-cultural consumers in the US. These 3 groups comprise 40% of the US population, and is expected to grow. As a nation, non-Hispanic white birth numbers are down, and what drives the increase in multi-cultural population growth is US Hispanic births and Asian immigration. As the country is changing demographically, ThinkNow Research is dedicated to helping other companies interpret these fundamental changes from a marketing and purchasing standpoint. MISCONCEPTION OF ACCULTURATION It’s interesting to see which cultural values that 1st and 2nd gen Latinos and Asians pick and choose. There’s a misconception in acculturation in the marketing industry that the longer you’re in the US, the more “American” you become, as if it’s a linear model. Yes, you are integrating some aspects of the culture, but there are some things about your home culture (or your parents or grandparents culture) that is retained over time. It’s more like a bidimensionality that is happening. BIDIMENSIONALITY IDENTITY MEASURE Mario’s company has done some work for The Journal for Cultural Marketing, where they developed a Bidimensional Identity Measure. It essentially combines two scales, the American Identity Measure and the Ethnic Identity Measure. There are 15 total questions, and what they have discovered is that depending on your ethnicity, you’re going to be scoring differently across these different measures, as opposed to acculturation which assumes a linear progression the longer you’re in the US. We should really be looking at what aspects of culture we’re retaining, in terms of home culture and what aspects we’re integrating from American culture. THE DO'S AND DON'TS OF MULTI-CULTURAL MARKETING Don’t generalize. Do your research beforehand, figure out who your consumer is and delve even deeper by defining that consumer within a subset. Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is excited to share an encore episode she did with Menaka Gopinath, Lead of Social Intelligence and Communities at Ipsos, in which they sit down to discuss the use of social media in social intelligence to help answer business questions. OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM As the market has matured with social intelligence, there’s a lot of amazing things happening in the social intelligence realm for insights, but it’s not being leveraged as broadly it could be. On the flip side, the people who are using social listening tools across the board in marketing and digital functions probably could be getting a lot more insight out of it. The data is already available, but there’s so many ways to use it more strategically. DEFINING SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE This can be many things to many people, but from the perspective of Ipsos, it’s about leveraging the datasets for insights. From a classic research sense, most clients are using a social listening tool and at the baseline they are listening to what people are saying about their brand, and may be listening to their core competitive set. From the purposes of Ipsos, this is not necessarily social intelligence, as much as it is social listening, which is still an important aspect of marketing. How one uses the dataset to address a core set of business objectives from an insights perspective is at the heart of social intelligence. SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE AND USE CASES Some of the core areas where a lot of Ipsos’ work is done is in market understanding and category landscape. Understanding what your category looks like can be a difficult question to answer these days, so what social data can provide from a very consumer-centric perspective is how people are talking about the “need” or the “occasion”. You don’t have to start from the perspective of brands. This is a different way of approaching market landscape work. Cultural trends and forecasting and foresight against what is bubbling up and what is worth focusing on versus what might just be a flash in the pan is another area where Ipsos is using social intelligence a lot. APPROACH IN MARKET ENGAGEMENT In the context of market landscape there are different ways of approach, as Menaka explains in a high-level overview. This is ultimately driven by what consumers are organically saying about these brands in the social conversation. Imagery is a critical part of the analysis, and video is an emerging area in terms of the technology capabilities for analyzing, but in terms of what is done with it is gaining in importance. Contextual research is always presented along with custom research to help provide clients with a bigger picture of what the data represents. Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter The lower wagering requirement, the better. The Company Behind Yako Casino Yako Casino is owned by L&L Europe Ltd, which is registered in Malta and currently not trading publicly. Supported by the technologically advanced Microgaming Software, that it was gambling that decided who got to rule Olympus in Greek mythology https://melhorescassinos.net/. There are also lots of special-feature slots available like Megaways, respin feature and 243-paylines, among others.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, we’re excited to be airing an encore episode of an interview with Vivek Bhaskaran, who is the founder and CEO of QuestionPro. He's here today to share his experience bootstrapping QuestionPro. About Vivek Vivek grew up in India. After completing his primary education there, he left the country and moved to Russia, where he lived from 1995 to 1997. When he left Russia, he moved to the United States, and there, he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in Utah. Founding QuestionPro After obtaining his Bachelor’s Degree, Vivek moved to Seattle, and he started QuestionPro in 2005. He has never raised any capital for the business from outside investors, and he has managed to build his company up by himself, slowly, over time. What QuestioPro does QuestionPro started as a survey platform, and currently, it serves as both a survey platform and as an experience management platform. Over the last couple of years, the company has turned upmarket, and Vivek has identified three different areas that have added confidence to the business: Consumer insights and market research Customer experience Surveys targeted towards employees QuestionPro started initially as a survey platform. It then expanded into offering a survey toolset, and they have now also identified three buyer patterns within their ecosystem. Vivek shares his experience of bootstrapping back in the early days Vivek feels that he has been lucky in business. When he built QuestionPro, back in 2005, the term SEO had not yet been coined. So, as a software geek/hacker, Vivek created the QuestionPro platform, and he then started looking for ways to market it. He thought that the marketing of his platform would be easy. All he would have to do would be to become “number one” on Google. SEO is an analytical exercise Vivek points out that SEO is not a creative exercise, and that most people don’t seem to understand that it is analytical. Vivek does not think that SEO is the right thing for marketing purposes. He believes that SEO should fall under the category of engineering, and it should work as an analytical exercise. Getting to #1 on Google Vivek thought that getting to number one on Google would not be too complicated if he were to adopt a trial-and-error mindset as a scientist would. That is what he did, and it worked! So they got traffic inbound, they started selling, and they started making money. And Vivek came to realize that his business is intrinsically extremely viral. A viral business Vivek realized that his company is one of the few B2B platforms with a viral index. He understood that if he could get a customer who would send out a survey to a million people, it would be a good thing for his business. Gaining value from his product Vivek saw that for anyone to get value from his product, they would have to send it out, either to their employees or to their customers. And that would be a benefit to his business. Why bootstrapping QuestionPro worked The reason that Vivek was able to bootstrap QuestionPro, in the beginning, was because he did not need a lot of money to market it. And once he got started, he was able to keep the business operation going. Living a good life and doing new things Vivek explains that right now, he’s living the COVID life because he is waking up each day and doing whatever he feels like doing. He is currently launching a podcast, and he is also coming up with new ideas for products. Execution is everything For Vivek, having the flexibility of coming up with new ideas is vital. However, it is the actual execution of the new ideas that counts for him. So much so, that he finds the final execution of an idea to be even more important than the idea itself. Moving to Austin, Texas Vivek started his business in Seattle, and he lived there for about ten years. He then moved the company to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. And at the beginning of 2020,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima shares the second part of the two-part series related to her recent opening session at SampleCon. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered a range of different topics. For this episode, the focus is on the implications of the capital coming into the industry, user engagement, proving the process of user engagement, and some key lessons learned by the esteemed members of the panel, both personally and professionally, related to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents. The industry Over the last several years and even more over the last twenty months, the amount of capital coming into the market has increased. Mergers and acquisitions have also increased, and the ecosystem appears to have expanded. New digital players are enabling more insights, and there are new buying audiences within corporations. The opportunities available for people today Mario feels that we are sitting on some incredible data which has been overlooked by marketers for a long time. He does not think that the digital add-in industry has come to grips with how that will impact the world. He feels that the sample industry is poised to fill many of the data gaps that will occur in a post-cookie world. Bob does not know how anyone in the future can be successful as a sales, brand, or operations manager without also being a bit of a data scientist. He feels that we have just seen the beginning of it because data is becoming harder to get, and more people are figuring out what data scientists do, and seeing the value of it. Patrick feels that the industry is sitting on a gold mine because, as a collective group, we have first-party data and permission to ask questions every day. What got built over the years through data insights and surveys has suddenly become interesting to many other players. Rebecca thinks that new money, new investors, and new ideas coming into the space is excellent for the industry. She is excited about having the opportunity to do something different, build differently, and think about things differently. Something else that came out of the pandemic for her was that many systems and traditional ways of doing things got exposed to be either flawed or broken. Urgency Bob feels that we have moved into a space where there is more urgency. There is money coming into the research space. There is the opportunity, so we need to start treating the people who fuel our industry like human beings. Staying nimble Rebecca feels that companies holding onto the way things were or who try to put things back into the box will fail. Business leaders need to be nimble, open, and adaptive. Machine learning Bob thinks that we, as an industry, need to move towards machine learning. He feels that the new capital coming into the industry will facilitate that. Res tech Patrick feels that res tech plays beautifully into the direction in which things are moving. It all comes down to us holding our own in an environment where we are up against mar tech and ad tech. We need to attract talent and capital to the industry. The value of res tech The value of res tech is allowing people who do not understand our industry to feel like they do. Supply Supply is a hot topic right now because there appears to be a shortage of it. Investments scaled back when the pandemic started, and everyone resorted to purchasing on the various exchanges out there. Helping Rebecca’s approach to the supply problem is to come at it from the angle of looking for ways to help people. Candid At Alter Agents, they are candid with their clients when talking about the issues they are having. They look for ways to create checks and systems to help their provid...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima shares the first part of a two-part series she created from the session she moderated at SampleCon, which took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered topics that included talent topics related to how people will return to work, supply topics, and market dynamics. The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents. What work looks like for the next six to twelve months Rebecca: Alter Agents had an easy transition to working full-time remotely during the pandemic. Their staff also doubled during that time. They decided to allow their lease to lapse at the end of June 2021 and keep on working remotely. It has been challenging not to have the usual opportunities to interact and chat with colleagues. So Rebecca has scheduled time to meet with everybody one-on-one, once a month, to keep connected and talk about business or personal matters. Overall, her staff is happy and working better than ever. Working from home has released them from some of the stress they were experiencing from being at work. They now communicate with one another fluidly via Slack. Rebecca’s primary concern is upholding the company values and maintaining its culture. Bob: Bob feels a little concerned about onboarding and helping new team members find mentors and learn how to work in a professional environment. They have been pursuing a hybrid model, which was a shift for their company. Bob is not sure that anyone knows what their preference will be six months from now, but he is looking forward to that evolution. Bob has enjoyed seeing how resilient people are. He hopes to end up with a little more balance between work and non-work life. Mario: When ThinkNow was founded back in 2010, working from home was a core tenet. They wanted to be a cloud-first company. Their leadership works from their headquarters in Los Angeles, and they have sales staff around the country, project management teams in India, and development teams in Latin America. The hardest part of the pandemic was finding themselves unable to see their overseas employees at their annual or bi-annual gatherings. Although technology has helped, they still miss getting together in person and interacting. They have taken the approach of opening their office and letting people come in when they want to. So far, that has been working well. About 70% of the employees go in two to three times a week, and the rest go every day. They are looking at people from a holistic perspective, rather than only looking at them only from a work lens, to address some of the mental wear and tear after the pandemic. Patrick: Lucid is a global company, so they are constantly aware that the pandemic affects different parts of the world differently, and it is not over yet. They have done their best to live up to their core value of compassion. The team went out of its way to offer help to Indian people and their families and assist them in staying connected and doing business. Patrick remembers having to remind their team in India that they could have extra days off if they or their families were sick. Sharing an experience, and knowing that we are all innately very human at this time, has made Patrick a more empathetic person, and hopefully a more compassionate person too. Connecting people Bob It was supportive of Bob’s company culture to see the offices in Europe or the Philippines take on the work that others could not. That connected people across cultures and across the legacy companies that make up Dynata. It has been a catalyst for a lot of expression of good within the company. Moving forward Moving forward needs to be an organic process. The labor market…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Insight Platforms | Ep. 140 28:20
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is excited to have Mike Stevens, the Founder of Insight Platforms, as her guest for today’s show. Mike is joining Sima today to talk about his company, Insight Platforms, and discuss the changes happening in the data and insights space. About Insight Platforms Insight Platforms was originated as a directory of platforms for insights, software, and data tools, across the spectrum of market research, UX research, CX research, and analytics. The Genesis of Insight Platforms Mike has always worked in the intersection between insight, marketing strategy, and technology. The genesis of Insight Platforms was Mike’s consulting business, where he did lots of advisory work around digital transformation. A surprising number of new startups were happening in that space, so he built a directory. Mike’s background In the late 1990s, Mike started his career working in a niche boutique marketing strategy consulting business, helping people create strategies for getting into new markets. He worked for several other consultancies after that. He then spent a few years working with a Canadian software business formerly known as Vision Critical and later rebranded to Alida. After leaving that company a few years ago, he set up on his own as an independent consultant. Pressure Enterprise insight market research teams have been under various kinds of pressures. They have been pressured to work faster, be more agile, and have more influence, and there has also been a gradual erosion of who owns the knowledge about the customers. A data science component Much of Mike’s initial client base were teams looking to upskill, harness technology, change the skills mix in their teams, and bring a data science component into their primary research skill base. They also wanted to adapt their operating models to be continuous providers of data and insights. Three sides to the market There are three sides to the market: They are enterprise buyers, service providers and agencies, and technology providers with whom agencies and enterprise clients will have relationships. The changing landscape Technology companies need help with their go-to-market strategies and expansion. Agencies also need help with figuring out what their likely proposition will be within the changing landscape. That creates fertile ground for strategy consulting, which is both interesting and rewarding. Embracing change Mike enjoys working with teams who are keen to embrace change and want genuine help to get there. The new insight model Although there is a lot of fear and discomfort in any rapidly-changing market, things are starting to shape up right now in the area of new insight models. There are a lot of opportunities available for those who want them. Abundance We are generating an abundance of data currently across many mechanisms, consumer groups, and locations. As a result, some of the challenges in this exponential age will be about processing abundance rather than scarcity. New data sources There are currently many new and different types of data sources. The various starting points will result in different takes on the data and insights business. An interesting trend A trend is that more people are getting more hands-on with research and insights data. A lot of decision-making is currently due to customer-driven data. A layered approach The craft of understanding methodology and putting data into the correct perspective has now become one layer within a multi-layered approach to analyzing data. An evolutionary process The data industry is undergoing an evolutionary process. The different layers should become more clarified over the next ten to fifteen years. Different categories Mike distilled the complexity that he saw initially into about thirty different categories of software and data tools. It became apparent to him, however, that that was insufficient for the breadth and comple...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to Part Two of an exciting two-part series on the future of work. Today, Sima continues her conversation with Kelly Monahan, the Thought Leadership Research Principal Director at Accenture Research. In this episode, Kelly and Sima discuss the different models that companies are considering, to bring people back into the office, create hybrid models, or go completely remote. Going back to the traditional model Some employers think they might encourage their employees to go back to the traditional model by compensating them with higher pay. Others are considering paying their employees less if they do not return to the office. A rational economic move Incentivizing people to work in less than preferred conditions was a rational economic move that was popular in the late 1970s. Henry Ford was a master of that tactic. In the short term In the short term, there will be a segment prepared to work in terms of an incentive to maintain an old paradigm. In the long run In the long run, however, it will not work. Incentivizing people to work in less than preferred conditions is a dangerous strategy because once the financial incentive reaches a certain amount, people’s motivation for work drops dramatically. They will start seeking out situations where they feel dignified and can have meaningful engagements with their coworkers. The leadership experience It is all about the leadership experience. Under poor leadership, people will leave eventually, regardless of how much they earn, because it compromises their ability to be human. Industrial and organizational psychology Kelly has been studying the future of work for the last seven years. It frustrates her to see how little industrial and organizational psychology and behavioral science gets brought into leadership decision-making and boardrooms. Understanding more Kelly feels that if we understood more about how people behave, what incentivizes them, and what matters to them, we would have very different organizations today. An old model Our philosophical assumptions in the business realm have not become updated. The focus in MBA business administration and how people get taught to lead in organizations is based on four principles: planning, organizing, directing, and leading resources. That is an old model that no longer works today. In the past Even in the past, those four principles did not create an ideal model. The labor strikes back in the 1920s and 1930s prove that. The government outlawed Frederick Taylor’s way of doing business because it was considered a dehumanized method. Yet, today, our MBA programs are still anchored in that method. New leaders Some new leaders are doing things very differently from what they have inherited and learned. They have decided to work more humanly, even though it becomes more difficult as a business scales. For a business to scale The further you get from your employee population, the harder it is to have human kindness, compassion, and dignity because those qualities become transactional for a business to scale. The question we need to ask In the future of work, we need to ask ourselves what our success metric will be. A new leadership playbook In the future of the digital economy, hypergrowth, innovation, creativity, and creating environments where people can do things differently will scale. That will require a new leadership playbook. The digital economy A digital economy requires a complete change in the skill sets that people have. So we need to create long runways in our organizations to do that without leaving anyone behind. Creating value In today’s digital economy, people and organizations need to be as intelligent as possible to create value. To get to intelligence, organizations will have to invest in research and development, innovation, and upskilling programs. Reframing education systems Children should learn how to be curious. They also need to learn to be okay with failing and how to bounce back with ne...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to the first part of an exciting two-part series on the future of work. Sima is happy to have Kelly Monahan, the Global Lead Talent Researcher/ Principle Director at Accenture, joining her as the guest for the series. Research on the future of work Accenture took an in-depth look at the future of work. They wanted to understand what people need and feel today. So they went out and looked at more than 9300 global workers across ten different industries and ten different countries to represent a global workforce. Similar sentiments They had within their data set 70% workers and 30% leadership. So they could make some comparisons. They found that most people, workers and leaders alike, had similar sentiments. Predicting They wanted to predict what was causing people to feel a certain way or make them want to go back on site. How people are feeling about work Some people were optimistic and energized, but the majority were somewhere in the middle and or negative. Disgruntled people A third of the people felt disgruntled. When thinking about the future of work, they were pessimistic, tired, and burned out. They experienced micro-aggressions and felt fatigued. Going through the motions About 30% of people said that they were simply going through the motions of life. They were feeling neither negative nor positive. They were unsure and waiting to see how the leadership would make their key decisions about people returning to work before making a true sentiment on how they feel. Optimistic About 42% are thriving, optimistic, and energized. Researchers Researchers want to know what is going on underneath to cause those differences in sentiment. Life enhancement When looking at mental health scores, Accenture looks at a concept called Life Enhancement which is about whether your work is adding to your life or taking away from it. Net Better Off Net Better Off is a concept that determines whether or not your job is leaving you better off than most other humans in terms of dignity and money in your pocket. Generational differences From a generational perspective, they saw a statistically significant difference with the young people. Gen-Z is struggling the most with mental health, and they tend to be more pessimistic about their future than the other generations. Gen-Xers are also struggling with their mental health, and like Gen-Zers, are unsure about the concepts of Life Enhancement and Net Better Off. Baby Boomers Baby Boomers, however, tend to be pretty optimistic and have adapted well to the new world of work. Millennials Millennials are still fairly optimistic about work and their ability to create change and adapt to the hybrid world. Key moments The key moments in people’s lives tend to impact their expectations and the way they view work. Gen-Z Gen-Zers tend to be hungry for social connections. They feel a need to leave their parental home, grow up, learn to understand things and be mentored. They need in-person interaction to do that. The physical world of work Both millennials and Gen-Z are looking to experience the physical world of work. Work as an experience Gen-Zers tend to view work as an experience, not just a transactional operation to support life. They want their work to contribute to their life. They tend to view their work and personal identities as one thing, rather than having separate professional and personal identities. So they want to see the companies they work for representing their personal values and ethics. C-Suite companies There has been a profound shift with C-suite leaders. CEOs now tend to feel a need to comment on societal issues. Important issues for those who work for C-suite companies have become what a company believes in, how it helps society, and its morality, ethics, and values. Corporations cannot hide Corporations cannot hide any longer because they are now interacting on platforms where all their comments are visible.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Josh Chasin, the Chief Measurability Officer of Videoamp, as her guest for the show. Josh’s career journey Josh is an audience measurement professional in the world of market research. He has specialized in both media research and audience measurement and has always viewed his career as living at the place where research and marketing overlap. His first job was as a number-cruncher at Arbitron while he was still in college. He then moved on to a full-time job in Arbitron’s Statistical Services department. He was also studying marketing and doing an MBA, which enabled him to get a job as Arbitron’s Manager of Market Development. Learning from the best Josh spent his first seven years at Arbitron gaining a solid grounding and learning sample design from some of the best people in the business. Then he spent another seven years working for their advertiser agency group in marketing, positioning their services to the buy-side users. For his last three years at Arbitron, Josh was their VP of Marketing for new ventures. That was at the time when the internet was emerging. After leaving Arbitron After leaving Arbitron, Josh spent a few years as an entrepreneur and then became President at Simmons for a short time. A consulting practice In the early 2000s, Josh owned a consulting practice for about seven years. Comscore Comscore was one of Josh’s consulting clients. He later became their Chief Research Officer and spent the next thirteen years doing that. Videoamp After leaving Comscore, Josh joined Videoamp. Videoamp lives in the ad tech ecosystem. Founded in 2014, it has become known primarily as a DSP (Demand Side Platform) that helps buy-side agencies plan, buy, execute, optimize, and measure the performance of their buys. Videoamp has recently expanded into the measurement space. Measurement Measurement is at the core of everything happening in advertising. The next generation of cross-platform measurement One of the things that led Josh to Videoamp was that he liked their vision for doing the next generation of cross-platform measurement and wanted to help. Cross-platform measurement The dream of advertisers is to know on an impression-by-impression basis where an impression was delivered and how it contributed to the performance of their campaign. The goal of advertising The goal of advertising is to shift from a mass-broadcast game to a granular one-to-one game where advertisers will know precisely where impressions are going and how they are working. A challenge One of the difficulties that Videoamp faces in media advertising is that heavy viewers tend to consume a disproportionate share of impressions. Their challenge is to distribute impressions to those who do not have their eyes on their screens as often. Reaching consumers on different screens Viewers have different tolerance levels for ad loads in streaming content versus ad loads in traditional linear content. So advertisers need to figure out how to get impressions in front of people in different places. One of the things that cross-platform enables is ways to reach consumers on different screens. The ad spend for Facebook and Google Currently, Facebook and Google account for between 65 and 70% of the total digital ad spend in the US. So they know everything there is to know about how the advertising is working on their platforms. However, advertisers want to understand their advertising campaigns across the platform and holistically. So it is not enough to know only about everything is that is happening inside Facebook or Google. Advertisers want to shift advertising amongst Facebook, Google, NBC, ABC, CBS, and other media channels. Privacy Although Facebook and Google know that people need to understand their advertising campaigns holistically, they have covenants with their users. So they have to respect the privacy of their users.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today’s episode is a little different. Sima will be focusing on people, or founders, who are considering selling their company. In today’s episode, Sima hosts John Sipala, one of her colleagues at Oberon Securities. John is a Managing Director at Oberon Securities and has more than 25 years of experience in investment banking. The market right now Private equity firms want to be in the market and are looking for companies, so there is a lot of dry powder in the market right now. Many tech companies are performing very well coming out of Covid. Selling is not simple When the market is very active, people start thinking about selling. When talking to the founders of companies, John initially asks them why they want to sell and why they want to sell now. That tells him whether they have thought things through, whether they truly want to sell, and if they need to raise capital. Often, the founders don’t understand that selling will require them to go through several in-between steps. Common themes for people wanting to sell Some people want to sell their company when they feel they have brought it as far as possible. Other owners need to bring in more capital, and some are simply tired and feel ready to move onto something else. Dialogue Business partners should engage in a dialogue before they decide to sell, which will help them understand what others want to do and ensure they are all in lockstep when they eventually do the transaction. A personal involvement When John does a deal, he gets personally invested and it’s not just a transaction for him. He makes sure that he is aligned with the seller’s expectations and there is a high level of success associated with the transaction. The role and value of an investment banker Selling a company involves complex transactions that are often very different from any the founders have experienced before. The transactions are multifaceted, and there are many things, even beyond evaluations, that could affect them. The role of the investment banker is to ensure that all the transactions get done in the right way, from beginning to end. Culture Before selling, consider the culture of the buyer, what their intentions are for the business, and what your role will be after the sale. The market The market is important, but it is not the only driving factor. The timing of the market should not be your primary reason for selling. You have to understand the external part of the market before bringing a deal forward. Strategy Having a strategy for what you want to do and how you intend to go about doing it will add a lot of value to your company when it goes to market. Buyers Avoid making changes to your business when it goes to market. Buyers want things to be going as they are supposed to go. Some high-level things founders should think about when selling: 1. The transition period will be at least six months or even a year. 2. Most buyers like the founders to stay on for longer than the transaction period. It could take as long as two years, so make sure that the role you have during the transaction is the role you want. 3. If you opt for an earn-out, try to keep it short and make sure that you run the business during that time. Roll-over of equity Buying a business with a roll-over of equity is the best way to align the interests of the management with the buyer because if the business performs, everyone benefits. The sellers also benefit because they can get another turn to profit as the business grows. A typical transaction From start to finish, a typical transaction takes between eight months and a year. It could take longer, however, if you need to re-market. The Oberon model The Oberon model adds expertise to the upfront piece of the transaction, which involves talking to the client and obtaining information. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Oberon Securities…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Social Asking | Ep. 135 20:52
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Tim Wilson as her guest for the show. Tim is the CEO and Co-Founder of Qutee. Tim’s journey After attaining a legal degree in the UK, Tim went to music school in Hollywood. He later returned to the UK, received some funding for a record label, and ended up touring with bands like Def Leppard and Alice Cooper and releasing some records. In 2009, after gambling with a few commercial projects in the UK, Tim moved to New York. Then, in 2012, he and his business partner acquired some NLP technology and embarked on a slow process of looking for areas where they could use the technology in unique ways. A comments platform They built a comments platform over the following two years. It was a simple yet ground-breaking plug-in to filter user’s comments. It could be used to listen, help engagement, and have smarter conversations with more insights. A survey tool They also built a survey tool that was used with some major health engagements, like the National Health Service in the UK. Creating a social UX They then came up with the idea of creating something bigger. Having already built a cutting-edge comments system that provided them with analytics, they decided to create a social UX. They wanted to provide consumers with smart conversations and a smart conversation experience while also engaging with them in a social environment and collecting qualitative and resilient insights. They hoped it would stimulate more participation in surveys and allow brands to create panels and focus groups overnight. That was the gestation of Qutee. Investors When Tim and his partner showed their investors what they wanted to do, the investors agreed to help them build it. Starting small They started as a small team, doing fundraisers from time to time, and eventually got Qutee up and running. Influencers They started working with three or four gaming tech influencers very early on when they were still in the alpha stage of their development. For the next two-and-a-half years, the influencers pushed their audiences towards Tim and his partner while they drove insights, created reports, and perfected their technology, analytics methodology, and reporting. Pre-Covid Just before Covid, they were about to go to market. Not able to do that as a result of Covid, they accepted that things would move slowly and decided to keep working on their API and technology. Now, things have started to accelerate. Qutee They call Qutee social asking. It is a place where you can have an open-ended conversation. You can share it with your audiences via social media and CRM and use influencer audiences to drive conversations. People comment and answer via polls, and it gets analyzed in real-time. They also have an analytics dashboard, and with the click of a button, they will give you a comprehensive call-on-call report. Their focus Qutee focuses on allowing brands to engage their passionate audiences, social, and CRM at scale within hours. Insights methodologyQutee’s insights methodology is superior to sentiment analysis because they ask users to type their comments or sentiment and then analyze them using augmented/collaborative AI. Report They then create a comprehensive and relevant report showing all the participation numbers and NPS they pull out using the AI representative comments. They also give the polls, the conversational breakdown, topics, and the representative comments across verticals of tagging and NLP. Consumer-focused Qutee is consumer-focused. They have created an environment where consumers feel happy to collaborate with the brands and feel their voices are heard. They can also work on an industrial scale. Games For games, it is vital to get the player’s perspective. Getting information and insights on the issues they are experiencing and how they think they should get fixed is very important. That is where Qutee comes in because it allows users to...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to welcome Anton Umnov, the VP of Consumer Insights and Partnerships at Drop Technologies Inc., as her guest for the show. Anton’s journey to where he is today Anton started working in the consumer insights and data space about ten years ago. He spent a long time at Nielsen Data Analytics, where he had many engagements on the client-side with various experiences across multiple categories. Then, about a year ago, he joined Drop. Data analytics and consumer research Anton loves data analytics and consumer research. He particularly enjoys the intersection between data and research. Drop Drop is a consumer app with about four million users based primarily in the US and Canada. It is a downloadable platform that focuses on driving loyalty rewards and value for the clients, users, or consumers. Apart from getting great deals, shoppers can also get rewarded for doing surveys and playing games. Why Drop is different You can connect the information from your bank account to Drop. That will allow you to unlock better deals and offers from brands and retailers automatically. So you do not have to scan receipts or use loyalty cards. Drop users The majority of Drop users are millennials and Gen Z. In most cases, the users are willing to connect their bank accounts to Drop for a seamless experience and better deals. Security Security is one of Drop’s primary concerns. A younger audience Although the big retailers already have many shoppers, they still work with Drop as clients because they think of Drop as having a younger millennial audience and consider it a user acquisition gain. Retailers Smaller retailers use Drop to attract new customers after launching a new brand or product. For the bigger retailers, it is all about the loyalty play. Drop can share a lot of data with the retailers because they have their customers’ banking information. They can see exactly where the customers were shopping in the last six months. That allows them to prove to the retailers that the customer that they attracted is incremental for them. Share wallet switches At Drop, they can see the share wallet switches, which allows them to provide all their partners with additional analytics that help them evaluate the success of their campaigns. It also allows their partners to see if they gained any volume over the last few weeks and where their sales originated. Data by category At Drop, they sell data by category. They are currently tracking about forty different categories. Those include food delivery, CPG, financial services, and travel. They also go to specific retailers and brands to see who is winning and losing and why. Launching surveys automatically At Drop, they see spending transactions almost immediately. So they can do an NPS-type survey, or a more complex one, right away. A hybrid product They have a hybrid product on the market that has quite a large amount of transactional data. They also talk to people to find out why they switched to another brand or retailer. Two pillars At Drop, they have two pillars that work hand-in-hand. They have an app to maximize the number of points and rewards that their consumers will get. They also have the data side of the business that works in conjunction with the app itself because the more data they monetize on the market from working with different brands, the more value they can provide for their users in terms of rewards. Market research analytics Market research analytics is a big part of Drop’s overall business. It is one of their key pillars for 2021 and beyond. Expanding Drop is trying to expand outside of traditional CPG and pressure retail. They are also focusing on some of the newer industries, like food delivery and crypto. Stimulus tracker Via their Stimulus Tracker study, they tried to help the banks and hedge funds understand how people were spending the stimulus money that was deposited into th...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this exciting episode, Sima is excited to have Nitzan Shaer, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Wevo, joining her. Nitzan’s background Wevo is the fourth company that Nitzan has either started or joined early on. He loves the thrill of joining a team of like-minded people in the early days of a new venture. Skype was among the companies that he joined early on, which were all in the space of trying to help consumers solve a big problem. Wevo The context for Wevo got formulated while Nitzan was with Skype. He started thinking about other industries where the cost-per-minute was very expensive, and reducing the costs would make them more efficient. A nightmare At Skype, they wanted to understand more about their customers, but it was too expensive. It was also a nightmare to collect user research to know which products to build and which features to improve. The background for creating Wevo Wanting to listen to their customers more, and knowing they were in an industry where costs could get reduced dramatically, were factors behind the creation of Wevo. Reducing the time it takes At Wevo, they take a process that usually takes about 200 hours to run, like a feasibility study or focus group, and reduce it to a half hour. What Wevo does Wevo is an AI tool to listen to customers, hear their needs and challenges with their user or entire customer experience, and provide validated insights on the core problems, the core hurdles, and the things that are working very well. They answer why people are experiencing a challenge in their user experience. That enables a team to generate a better user experience. They also enable their users to validate their ideas. The user With Wevo, the user needs to define its target audience and identify the experience he is trying to optimize. That usually takes less than ten minutes. At the end of the process, the user gets a report with all the needed information. Updates The expectations of users are continuously evolving. Wevo believes in a continuous flow of updates around what people are feeling and how they are responding. Partnership Wevo has a partnership with multiple participant providers to help its customers find their exact target audience. Three lenses It is hard to evaluate the user experience, so through a process that began about four years ago, they have developed three primary lenses through which they look at each user experience: What happens on the pages of a user experience Areas that are roadblocks or hurdles to conversion Areas that are helping the engagement Diagnostic drivers The diagnostic driver, which examines areas to understand them and to benchmark progress. Areas examined include clarity, appeal, credibility, relevance, and overall experience. Expectations versus reality The technology asks people about their hopes and concerns when considering purchasing a product or service. Then, once they have experienced it, they ask them to answer whether their expectation got met or not. Human-augmented AI is vital in that process. The Wevo Sentiment Map The Wevo Sentiment Map shows the areas of the biggest problems in the experience and the areas that are the biggest helpers. Quant and qual Everything they do is quant and qual, so they also explain why there is a problem. (They call that qualt.) Nitzan points out that many systems today lack the partnership between quantitative and qualitative. Those who gravitate to the Wevo solution They are currently seeing much adoption with UX researchers, designers, marketers, and product managers. Engineering teams have also started using it. The disruptive power of Wevo Wevo is compressing the time it takes for people to get validated feedback. That means that organizations can move quickly because their learning starts to accelerate. Their ability to take risks also accelerates because they can test everything. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Wevo…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to today’s podcast! In today’s special episode, Sima continues her conversation with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata in the second part of the exciting two-part interview. In this episode, Gary and Sima continue with their discussion about the things that influence the size of opportunity within the industry and discuss whether doing things faster will denigrate the research process. They also talk about standardizing the data-collection process, acquisitions, integration, and culture. The size of the opportunity for the entire Industry Up until now, many people have defined the size of the market research industry at around 80 billion dollars worldwide. However, the advancement of technology is bringing more players and different buying audiences into the space. Gary believes that two things drive the number: the changes that are going on within traditional market research from a technological standpoint and the marketing services ecosystem, which Gary sees as being continuous. The work that gets done in market research Gary believes that market research is inextricably connected to lead and demand generation, CRM, and advertising. And the work that gets done in market research is ultimately to understand someone so that some behavior, purchase, or customer relationship can get driven. Gary believes the data that drives the decisions at the start should be the underlying or first-party data that drives the execution of those ideas. If you can keep that data consistent along that continuum, you will reduce the opportunities for getting it wrong. An order of magnitude Gary thinks there is an order of magnitude of size and opportunity in market research. And the rest of the marketing services spectrum is another order of magnitude on top of that. Gary estimates the total value to be a couple of trillion dollars, which is very exciting! Agile research The introduction of agile research into the industry has allowed Gary and his team to address the challenges in they could not reach previously. Will faster denigrate the research process? Gary believes that market researchers have to be fast, ask the right questions, and have a sound methodology and diverse representation. They should also ensure the fidelity of a given project. Value proposition Dynata’s value proposition will always be to provide the highest quality first-party data to drive their outcomes. They will not drop that in the pursuit of speed or any other metric that adjusts to the changing market dynamics. Standardizing data As an industry, we have not made the progress we need, so Gary thinks that standardizing the way data gets collected for market research is vital. Acquisition Dynata makes its acquisitions in one of two ways. If they want to expand their data asset or the capabilities surrounding it, they look for businesses in geographies where they might be under-represented, like the African continent. They look for companies and assets that would help them to build out their insights platform. Insights platform Dynata launched their insights platform a couple of years ago with the idea of having one place for their clients to come to do everything from accessing their data to performing the entire set of market research activities related to their data. They have been working toward arranging all the puzzle pieces to ensure the platform is a complete offering for their clients. Dynata hired third-parties to achieve integration with their acquired companies and to create value. Culture Gary points out that a shared purpose binds people together and wants to ensure the strategy and direction they have chosen at Dynata is the best it can possibly be. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Dynata…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Shifts in Human Beings | Ep. 161 30:56
Welcome to another informative and exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Zain Raj, the CEO and Chairman of Shapiro+Raj Agency, joining her! Zain has had a very interesting journey! In this episode, he dives into how he got to where he is today and talks about his company, Shapiro+Raj. He also gets into how we need to shift and adapt to a changing world. How Zain’s journey started Zain graduated in India with an economics and finance degree, intending to become a CPA. After graduating, he pivoted and signed up for a new advertising program. He has now spent thirty-six years in the marketing industry. He has never experienced even one unhappy day because he loves what he does so much! Moving to the US Zain met an Indian woman living in the US, married her, and stayed in India for a year before moving to the US. He has been living in Chicago since then. Advertising After moving to the US, Zain got into the advertising industry and ran big global clients. He moved from brand advertising into direct marketing and then into data analytics. Then he joined the world of digital advertising. Creative Zain loves advertising because it requires empathy and creativity. You also get to be analytical and have the opportunity to work with a diversity of talent. Critical qualities Zain feels that depth and empathy are critical qualities for any business. Shapiro+Raj After working with big companies for a year, Zain wanted to spend more time with his family and spend the next stage of his career doing something more fulfilling. He saw many of his clients struggling with insights, so he decided to build a new model of an insights company. He bought Shapiro in 2015 because it was one of the largest independent companies based in Chicago with whom he had a long history. He then rid the company of the pieces they did not need and added a digital agency and a creative ideation capability to the platform. They brought in a brand strategist from advertising agencies and consulting forums and added the other necessary pieces to become a strategic insights consultancy capable of helping their clients get to market faster and spark transformative outcomes. Growth Over the last five years, Shapiro+Raj has tripled in size organically, without having either a sales or a business development team. Equity value appreciation Zain’s firm and their team have added more than 91 billion dollars of equity value appreciation for their clients over the last four years. Two parts Zain’s business has two parts. The one part is a life-sciences business, working with pharma companies. The other focuses on financial services, home improvements, building materials, retail, and technology. Radical shift Zain’s company approaches the radical shift brought about by Covid by considering how human beings will respond to the changing world. They also look at the changes in the economic, geopolitical environment, and the individual’s environment. The uncertainty in the world today They currently see a world with no framework, so most people and consumers have no idea how to think about their lives. People are constantly trying to figure things out, and that is why so many people are having mental issues right now. The uncertainty on a business level On a business level, everything is in short supply. So people are unsure of when their supply problems will get solved and what their pricing will be. Predicting the future Zain’s team has been helping their clients by using their methodologies to predict the future and then working backward. What will happen in the future? There is a negative rebound with building materials, home improvements, and financial services. Groceries have pivoted to a delivery model and will stay strong. Talent will continue to be an issue. A new trend A new trend is growing, around delivery apps, and with companies like Uber and Lyft. Talent For companies to find new talent,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Winning Edge Mindset | Ep. 160 29:12
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is happy to have Richard Jackson, the Chairman of the Winning Edge Mindset, joining her on the show today! Richard has spent the last thirty-eight years helping people understand their mindset and shape it to achieve their goals. To change our mindset, we need to think about how we think. Yet very few of us ever do that. In this episode, Richard shares his journey and talks about what he teaches people in his Winning Edge course. He discusses what drives mindset and explains how our values impact how we feel. He also shares strategies for navigating tough times and structuring a goal-oriented mindset geared for success. Richard’s background Richard got divorced in the early 1980s. He felt bad and complained a lot, so a good friend suggested that he work on himself. Richard got a notebook and spent the next few years speaking to anyone he thought was doing better than him. He asked parents, CEOs of large companies, Olympic gold medal winners, and people who seemed happy what made them the people they were. He wanted to know what was going on in their heads that made them set exciting goals and forge ahead when it seemed that most others were not doing that. Then he made notes. Starting a business A few years later, Richard had the crazy idea to start a business using his hobby. He codified his notes and spoke to psychologists and neuroscientists to learn why we do what we do. Growing a successful business Richard started working with small companies initially, and later larger companies heard about what he was doing and wanted to work with him. He has worked in 19 countries, with companies of all sizes and anyone wanting to do better. The first thing The first thing people have to do when they start working with Richard is to define what better means to them. Richard’s daughters Richard now has three of his daughters working with him in the business. The way we think The way we think gets shaped by how we take inputs from the world around us. We easily take on stuff from other people without questioning it. Shaping the mindset Shaping our mindset starts with us questioning ourselves and the way we think. Unfortunately, very few people ever think about the way they think. We will never change if we don’t think about how we think. Covid Covid has been a driver for people starting to think about the way they think. The people who did Richard’s Winning Edge course before Covid are grateful to have done it because it helped them navigate their way through the hardships brought on by Covid. They learned that even though they could do nothing to change Covid, they could change the way they think about it. Richard’s program Richard’s program starts with a gentle journey. They sometimes do big conferences, but there are usually about twelve people on the program, which lasts for two days, plus one. They help people set goals and get clear about what they want to get from life and the person they want to be. Companies gain Companies gain from their employees doing Richard’s course because they will become more proactive and creative; therefore, they come up with more innovative ideas for the business, be happier and more satisfied, and know that they are working where they want to work. Anxiety Anxiety is the result of people being unable to interpret everything going on around them. Our process When people say nasty things about us, we don’t get upset by what they say, but we become upset by the way we process what they say. In other words, we upset ourselves based on what they said. Strength We gain a lot of strength when we understand what truly upsets us and use it in a way that helps us rather than letting us hinder us. Adult maturity The pinnacle of adult maturity is to know that everything you do gets done to satisfy a value or an emotional need. Responsibility Richard believes that no human being can be truly happy until they ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to the latest interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast. Today, Sima is happy to have Martin Filz, the CEO of Pureprofile, joining her on the show. In this episode, Martin shares his background and career trajectory. He discusses authentic leadership, explains how to form a passionate, engaged, and efficient execution team, and talks about creating a successful business in the market research industry. He also highlights the importance of the panel and dives into how Pureprofile engages and interacts with its panelists. Martin’s background Martin was born in London. He loves insights and data! He first got involved in technology back in the 1980s and 90s, and it was an exciting time for him! He got into research for the first time in the 1990s. It happened when he headed up the European section during the startup of Redshare, a company that tracked the website behavior of users for brands. Right from the get-go, he loved working with consumer insights! Nielsen Martin also spent some time with Nielsen, integrating their teams across Europe. Australia Martin has an Australian wife and two daughters, so he moved to Australia in 2008. Research Now Martin Filz had a friend at Research Now who told him they were looking for someone to head Asia. He spoke to them and got involved with the company. Research Now was an exciting company with great leaders. Martin went from working with behavioral data to working directly with insights and sentiments, which were the things he truly cared about! Getting headhunted Martin got headhunted from Research Now to work at Lightspeed. Working at Lightspeed was exciting because they changed how insights got gathered. He later left Lightspeed to join Eureka, a company all about big data. Big data Big data was another eye-opening discovery for him! Pureprofile After Covid struck, Martin wanted to be closer to home. Pureprofile did not have a CEO and was a perfect fit, so he joined the company. He helped them create a core strategy around being global, having great technology, and delivering the data, insights, and media campaigns their clients wanted. He also helped them get rid of their mountain of debt, which inspired clients to spend much more with them, partners to sign with them, and team members to get a lot more involved. Martin’s skill Even though many founders and entrepreneurs have brilliant ideas, they still need an executive team to make their ideas a reality. Martin understands that building a great execution team involves giving people the tools they need to flourish and then backing off and letting them get on with what they have to do. Staying open and excited Martin advises everyone to be hungry to learn and stay open to getting excited and discovering something new throughout their career! Who needs to use data? Data insights will be helpful for anyone who needs to make a business decision. The metrics needed for a successful business To have a successful business, you need to have engaged and passionate team members who love their work. You also need to have satisfied customers. Clients and customers Companies should adopt a personal approach and always put their customers first. Additionally, they should also be flexible with their clients and deliver what they want. Panelists Panelists should be given what they want and need and we should look at surveys in terms of how they will further the panelists' lives, and panelists should get well rewarded for participating in surveys. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Pureprofile Book mentioned: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Transformation | Ep. 158 35:25
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Camille Nicita, the CEO of Gongos, joining her as her guest for the show. Camille is one of the four founding partners of Gongos. In this episode, Camille shares her early career experiences and the journey she has been on since the founding of Gongos thirty years ago, which culminated in her becoming CEO. She also discusses the step-by-step transformation of Gongos and explains what they do to meet their clients’ needs in a world of big data. How Gongos came about While she was doing an internship at an automotive group for a research company, John Gongos asked Camille and three others to join him when he decided to go out on his own and do a startup. Camille was young and had no commitments at the time, so she took a leap of faith and agreed. A great experience Camille found getting thrown in at the deep end a good learning experience! From the get-go, she loved being part of Gongos because she was with a group of smart people with whom she enjoyed doing things. Restless dissatisfaction Part of the DNA of Gongos is continuous improvement. Every year since she started working at Gongos, Camille has continued to learn, grow, and become better than she was before. At Gongos, they call never resting on their laurels restless dissatisfaction. Seeding the future of the organization As the company grew, Camille started to interview people, recruit talent, and place the right people in the appropriate positions. She always kept her eye on the future and where the organization was going. She made sure that she always took on board the kind of talent that would seed the future of the organization. Camille’s path to becoming CEO Throughout her years at Gongos, Camille always took on new challenges and opportunities. Early on, she became a member of the leadership or strategy team that determined the key direction of the company. She took on many different roles and learned as much as possible about the organization. She also stayed at the forefront with all her client interactions. She listened carefully to what her clients needed and brought back what she learned and fused it into all the areas of the organization. That primed her well to become CEO. Camille never aspired to be CEO In 2012, John Gongos passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Camille was COO and a minority shareholder at the time. When John passed, she became the controlling shareholder. It was natural that she also became the CEO because she honored John and felt that he would have wanted her to do it. A new vision After John passed away, Camille and the other leaders in the organization rallied together to prove to the world that they could carry on running Gongos in the same successful way as before. Big data was coming onto the scene at the time, so they also took the opportunity to create a new vision for the organization. Customer-centricity At Gongos, they have always been into customer-centricity and helping their clients make good decisions. When their clients started to rely on data that was not created by them, they started looking at their capabilities beyond qualitative and quantitative research that could help them to help their clients thrive in a world where data is abundant. Challenging data The most challenging data for them to work with was big, messy sets of enterprise data. They soon learned that they needed to structure that data to work with it. They also needed to have data engineers on their team in addition to data scientists, to structure the messy data. New talent They started bringing into the organization people who are potentially good researchers with business acumen who could also consult well with the clients. Gongos now has a great combination of talent that includes researchers, data scientists, consultants, strategists from various walks of life, and creatives who take all the information and put it i...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Building Savanta | Ep. 157 26:35
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is excited to have Vin DeRobertis, the CEO of Savanta, joining her on the show today! In this episode, Vin shares his career journey and talks about building Savanta. He discusses acquisitions, gives his perspective on the research industry, and talks about the challenges he experienced with doing a UK startup on American soil. Vin’s career journey Vin spent about three years working as a programmer for the NPD Group before moving on to their Online Operations. He left the NPD Group to work for Carbonview and later joined e-Rewards, where he remained for the next eleven years. Vin started working for MIG Global in 2017. They needed to create an economy of scale, so in February of 2019, they built a house of brands that comes together under the research umbrella of Savanta at Next 15 Communications. Vendors Vendors at large research firms have a unique view of the field. Vin has sold sample and other research services to well over 1,000 agencies globally, so he had the opportunity to see how different businesses performed. Although he was surprised at times, most of his guesses were correct. That helped him make some of his deals. Doing successful deals In America, Savanta did three successful deals. Vin had to reach out to many different companies to achieve that. Acquisitions When looking at acquisitions, the most challenging part of Vin’s job is finding the right-sized company that wants to sell to him at the right time. The ultimate success For Vin, the ultimate success is offering someone 115% of what they thought they would get two years before. Finding the right buyer You need to know which approach to take with your buyers. Sometimes, you know that someone is 100% your buyer. When you really get into what you are doing, you start to see that someone who looks like they are only 50% of your buyer could also be your buyer, but you have to speak to them differently. Vin’s his perspective of the industry Vin feels that research has been a cottage industry for a long time, and it gets dwarfed by marketing and advertising. He believes that even though research is a slower-moving industry, it is still worth investing in because there is a lot of money to be made. Research is getting more penetration within the brands Sima has noticed that research is penetrating more departments, more people, and more functions within the brands, and it is enabling tools to get used on a broader scale, which is good for the industry. Research is no longer being held hostage in one group within an organization. Thoughtful, rigorous, and analytical research is still valued professionally, and research will continue to evolve. DIY tools Many of those who use DIY research tools think that anyone can be a researcher. However, what they put in shows that not everyone can be a researcher. Doing a UK startup on American soil Vin has enjoyed coming from the headquarters in the UK and doing a startup on American soil. There is a cultural difference between British and American people, and he has found it amusing to see how much can get lost in an English-to-English translation. Some things work in the UK market, but not in the American market, and vice versa. Cross-pollination To integrate their UK and American businesses, Savanta sometimes cross-pollinates. They are not always successful in doing that, however. Their goal is to make businesses roll under Savanta. A challenge Certain parts of their UK/USA crossover, like health insurance, are challenging to make global. Although those things might appear trivial, they require a lot of work. Hire your finance person sooner rather than later Vin advises anyone starting a business to hire a finance person earlier than they think they need to. The hardest part of Vin’s role The hardest part of Vin’s role right now is finding a pipeline of deals that fits what he wants. Links:…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome back to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Elys Roberts, the Founder, and CEO of Beesy, joining her on the show. In this episode, Elys discusses his career journey, describes conscious versus non-conscious behavior, and talks about the exciting things they are doing with behavioral science at Beesy. Elys’s background While with Eli Lilly in the UK, Eli joined a leadership program and did several different jobs. They included district sales management, marketing, market research, sales training, and sales. Then he moved to the US to join a small startup company where he did pharmaceutical market research online. More recently, he became the CEO of Ipsos Healthcare. He then took on a broader role within Ipsos, managing six divisions in North America, with about 600 people reporting to him. After that, he established Beesy, a behavioral science insights agency. A masterplan Starting Beesy was part of Elys’s master plan. In 1997, while at Eli Lilly, he did an inspiring training course on mindset management called The Winning Edge. It was a game-changer for him. It forced him to get his act together and taught him to be purposeful when setting goals. After that, he wanted to start a company, but he had no experience. So he left the UK and went to the US to join an early-stage startup to expose himself to entrepreneurialism. From that time on, every role he took was to help him build a business. Looking at risk from a behavioral science perspective Some people find risk-taking and decision-making a lot tougher than others do. Much of it has to do with how people perceive it. For Elys, taking a risk made a lot of sense because he looked at it from a behavioral science perspective. He knew that he would either succeed or learn a lot by failing. A regret aversion perspective Elys also looked at risk from a regret aversion perspective. So he considered whether he would regret doing what he did as an old man or whether he would regret not having done it. Starting a business was an easy decision because he knew he would regret not doing it. About Beesy Beesy is a behavioral-based insights agency, so they are in the business of understanding and impacting decision-making. They mainly help out many major pharma-biotech companies and consumer packaged goods companies. Conscious versus non-conscious behavior 80-90% of all decision-making is reflexive, non-conscious, and effortless. That is known as System One or autopilot, and it is always on. To make a conscious decision that overrides the autopilot, the pilot brain needs to be proactively switched on. It takes effort and cognitive energy, so most humans do not like to do that. An effective marketing campaign Beesy has to understand and know how to impact people's behavior to execute an effective marketing campaign. So they tell their clients that when trying to persuade people, they can get an incremental benefit by tapping into the other side of the brain and nudging their customers appropriately towards the desired behavior. Behavioral science Behavioral science is serious and meaningful science. Beesy has some smart, top-notch behavioral scientists who analyze customer behavior. They do a lot of primary market research to understand what is going on beneath the surface with their respondents and learn what drives their behavior. Beesy’s approaches Beesy works with three broad approaches: They do behavioral audits based on prior research and external empirical research in the public domain. They do qualitative research. They do quantitative research. Everything they do has a foundation in behavioral science. Factors that drive people’s behavior Behavioral science allows us to understand why people behave the way they do. The factors outside of people’s attitudes that impact and drive their behavior include their habits, biases, beliefs, sense of identity,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is happy to have Lilah Raynor, the Founder, and CEO of Logica Research joining her today! In this episode, Lilah talks about the research project she did with a team from the IDEA Council and the ongoing study she is involved in, called The Future of Money. Lilah’s background Lilah comes from a financial services background. Before founding Logica Research, she managed the research team at Charles Schwab. Founding Logica Research Lilah founded Logica Research about fifteen years ago. It was initially called Koski Research. She started her company to provide excellent client service for clients who preferred working with small boutique research firms. Over time, they have become more niche-focused on financial services and fintech. Making a change Owning her own business allowed Lilah to have more flexibility while raising her two young children. It also allowed her to work on different projects and do different types of research. Research around hot topics Lilah participated in and conducted some research to help the research industry understand how to ask questions around ethnicity, race, and gender. The IDEA Council The Insights Association has a group called the IDEA Council that has within it two working groups. One does research on research, and the other focuses more on the profession and talent. The IDEA Council’s research on research group Lilah got involved in the IDEA Council’s research on research group because the purpose of her company is to provide insights for organizations to help improve people’s financial lives. After the murder of George Floyd, and with more focus on inclusion and diversity within the research industry, she wanted to be in a position to provide sample and participants that were both inclusive and diverse. A white paper Lilah and the team at the IDEA Council created a white paper on having more inclusive demographic questions. They focused on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The first step The white paper is the first step in an ongoing series of research studies. It was done to provide a perspective and recommendations on how to ask demographic questions, how to be more sensitive and inclusive when asking demographic questions, and how to use new questions in their sample design. A three-tiered approach recommendation They came up with a three-tiered approach recommendation for asking questions about gender and sex. Non-binary Non-binary has not yet been properly defined or researched, so it might not be clear to older generations. Caution and encouragement Caution has been recommended when using terms that might not have universal definitions. The option for self-identification with an open end is encouraged. Sexual orientation Sexual orientation needs to be differentiated from gender. So they offer suggestions for different ways to ask questions about sexual orientation. Demographic questions Demographic questions should be handled in a sensitive way, similar to questions about household income, assets, or money. Race and ethnicity There is a large section in the white paper on asking questions about race and ethnicity. It has recommendations for different ways in which those questions can be asked. The white paper also identifies terms for race and ethnicity, country of origin, ancestry, culture. USA The recommendations in the white paper are based on and geared for the United States. Race Questions about race should be asked in a sensitive and open-ended way. Having an inclusive and sensitive coding framework is also recommended. Multiple selection and self-identification Allowing for multiple selection and self-identification are also recommended. Where do you find the white paper? The white paper can be found on the Insights Association IDEA Council website. The Future of Money Lilah is also involved with an ongoing study on the financial an...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is happy to have James Norman, the CEO and Founder of Pilotly, joining her today. In this episode, James talks about his varied career and highlights the difficulties he experienced as a person of color, raising investment capital. He also discusses his initiatives to help black founders raise money for their businesses and explains how Pilotly came about and why Pilotly is such an important company for the United States. James’s career trajectory James started his career selling video games. After that, he spent some time selling car audio and then started his first “real” company, MJH Sound.com, in 1995 and sold car audio online. After running that business for about four years, James went to the University of Michigan and got a degree in electrical engineering. Pivoting James’s audio business pivoted during that time, and they started creating custom parts and building unique cars for vehicle manufacturers. Custom cars for movies Then, in 2005, James moved to LA and started building custom cars for movies like The Fast and the Furious. Video streaming In 2008, when the recession hit, James got into streaming video. After encountering several challenges, he realized that most people could not do what he was doing. So he shifted away from the failing auto industry and seized the opportunity to create a streamlined video streaming product. A product planner James also spent some time working as a product planner for Mitsubishi and then went back to doing his own thing. New ways of raising money When his friend started Dropbox, it opened James’s eyes to new ways of raising money for companies. Before that, he had no idea of what it would take to get enough capital together to scale a team and build an organization. Ubi James built Ubi, the first online electronic programming guide, and spent his time between 2008 and 2013 doing his best to convince people that nobody would have cable by 2020. Getting feedback from some high-level executives who shared his point of view encouraged James to keep on with what he was doing. He spent the next five or six years running Ubi and ran into many different problems during that time. Becoming a shining star In 2011, James applied for the NewMe program, designed to help people of color break into Silicon Valley. He got into the program, and that was his introduction to the San Francisco Bay Area. He was blown away by all the opportunities there, so he decided to stay on and become a shining star! Software development James spent a year working as a software developer for a publishing company and learned a lot about software structure. He also learned how toxic the development environment was because of people’s unconscious bias towards black people. Communication James learned that as a CEO, you need to communicate effectively. No investment capital After putting a rock star team together, James started pitching his ideas to potential investors. Some investors told him that if he could get the content contracts they would give him the money he needed. Even though he managed to get several content contracts for an electronic sell-through model he developed for a subscription TV service, including one from Warner Brothers, nobody ever showed up with any investment capital. Testing content and starting Pilotly James learned the necessary processes from experienced experts and started Pilotly because he needed to test pilot his content effectively with the right audience. Creating a program for investment James and his team knew all the right people, but nobody wanted to give them any funding. So they created a program to put the best people of color in front of potential investors and decided to call the investors out if they were still not willing to give them any funding after that. Transparent Collective Transparent Collective is a program that represents women and founders o...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another fascinating and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is happy to have Jeremy King, the CEO and Founder of Attest, joining her on the show today! In this episode, Jeremy talks about his unique career journey, discusses the genesis of Attest, and explains how Attest helps organizations use their existing data in better ways to make smarter decisions. Jeremy’s journey Jeremy started his career as a scientist. He worked in ecology, genetics, and what is now known as synthetic biology, focusing on mathematical models of reef fish behavior and proving how the entire underwater ecology is driven by sound. That was where his love for data, empiricism, following hypotheses, testing, and learning originated. After that, Jeremy joined McKinsey and spent nine years traveling around the world helping big companies sort out problems that they could not solve for themselves. Learning Traveling to different countries and showing up at new businesses, sectors, and teams every one to three months helped Jeremy learn about businesses countries and cultures very quickly. A trend Jeremy became interested in the world of Attest because all the businesses he worked with spoke about being more data-driven and using their existing data in better ways to make smarter decisions. Using their internal data and existing customer data much more was a big trend. Data about future customers What was missing in almost all those businesses was data about the customers that they did not have yet. To overcome that gap businesses need to commission a market research project, look into social data, use existing customers as a proxy for future customers, or extrapolate the gut feel of experts to try new product launches. Gut feelings Unfortunately, 95% of all product launches fail, and most gut feelings are wrong. Knowing more about the target customer Knowing more about the target customer is vital. But that was missing in every business and sector that Jeremy visited. Getting the data Where data is missing, businesses need to go out and get it, produce it, or find it because that is how they will ultimately win or lose. The genesis of Attest Jeremy thought there had to be a better way to do more market research for more people in more places more often. So he started thinking of ways to automate to make that market bigger, better, and easier for more people. That was how Attest was born. Assessing target customers Data and customers are at the heart of a business. So a lot more needs to be spent on assessing target customers and finding opportunities in unknown areas. Making market research easier When market research is easier to do, it creates opportunities for more to happen in more places for more people more often. Different markets Attest serves many different markets, so their challenge is to build one product and software suite for all the services, needs, buyer personas, and sectors. Attest The simplicity, power, and quality of Attest set it apart from all other platforms in the industry. A tailor-made experience Attest aims to deliver an experience that does everything exactly how organizations want to do it. They will do that in a way that is neither overbearing nor scary. Insights Attest strives to show the obvious results and make it easy for organizations to see things they would not otherwise have seen. They enable organizations to communicate those insights internally, which helps them to work in new and more intuitive ways. About Attest Attest has its headquarters are in London, and they are big in New York. They also have some team members scattered in many different areas. The company is half commercial and half data science engineering and product design. Their client base is in Europe and the US, and they also have a growing mix of clients around the world. The organization is growing at a rate of about 99%, year on year. Links: Email me your thoughts!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Digital Citizenship | Ep. 152 28:38
Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Singe Deakins joining her on the show. Singe is the London-based CEO and Founder of CitizenMe. In this episode, Singe shares his background and talks about how the ecosystem is changing and shifting data processing out to the edge. He also discusses how Citizen Me is combining economic impact with social value, bringing more civility to the internet, and helping people to manage their data and choose what they want to do with it. Singe’s background Singe has a background in digital innovation that goes back about two decades. He spent the early days of his career putting newspapers online and helping British Airways get their booking systems online. In about 2000, he started using multi-digital channels and using mobile at the center of everything. Asia He spent the next twelve years in Asia, based in Singapore, doing open internet work. He helped several hundred million individuals get on the internet with the platforms he was building up in the emerging market of telco systems. The next problem to solve After selling his last business to an American private equity company, Singe started looking for the next big problem he could solve. Looking at how the internet and the digital world were evolving, he realized that it should be about people, and the core transactional value would be about the data about the people. An internet that works for everybody It became clear to Singe that we need an internet that works for everybody. That is easy to imagine, but the actual mechanics could be disruptive and require an evolution from where the internet currently is. An issue One of Singe’s biggest issues has been working out how to govern across the internet in terms of data. He would like to find a way to get to where we all have rights regarding our data and how it gets used. Consumers Singe has been on a long journey of getting to understand how people interact with their data. Consumers understand much more now than they did before about what they are giving away with their data. We are moving into a different space around what people want and do not want with their data. Ephemeral data Ephemeral data digital tools give people a choice and help them manage how their data gets shared. Sharing data There is a big marketplace worth trillions of dollars exchanging everyone’s data all the time, but none of us can participate in it. By using their smartphones, people are constantly sharing huge amounts of their data without even realizing it. Solving the issue At CitizenMe, they are looking for the best ways to solve that issue. Their job is to represent citizens, help them manage their data, and find ways to do what they want with their data. The CitizenMe app The CitizenMe app allows people to access the insights that already exist about them. It lets them generate their own insights, have a real-time opportunity to transact with those insights, and get paid for it. Combining economic impact with social value At CitizenMe, they currently have about 350,000 people on the app. People can either transact their data for cash or share it as a donation towards medical research. Real-time CitizenMe is fresh, participatory, and open in the way it works. It allows businesses to have real-time interactions and real-time digital conversations with their customers. End game CitizenMe.com is a working example of edge data (zero data and zero data tech). Their end game is to change how data gets handled on the internet, and their mission is to shift the data out to the edge and let people participate. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter CitizenMe…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Dara Gurus podcast! Sima is excited to have Katie Gross as her guest for today’s podcast! Katie is the Chief Customer Officer at Suzy. In this episode, Katie discusses her background. She also shares her secret to being a successful woman and talks about what Suzy is doing to help and empower companies. Humble beginnings Katie grew up in Plymouth, England. Her mother wanted Katie and her siblings to have everything she did not have, so she insisted that all her children had the best education possible. Meeting different people Katie met people from different places and different walks of life when she was at university. Being surrounded by smart and ambitious people opened her eyes to exciting new possibilities for the future. Entering the market research space Katie got into the market research space partly by choice and partly accidentally. She studied psychology and criminal justice at university and came out of that with an SPSS skill set. She joined a food and beverage company in the UK that dealt primarily with Italian private label products in UK grocery stores. Then she moved to London and worked for Mintel on their consultancy team. Moving to sales Katie started working for Mintel as a researcher and later moved into a sales position, which she loved. Having come from a similar role in market research, she was genuinely curious about what her clients were using and how they were doing things. That made it easy for her to come up with solutions to help her clients operate better, faster, and in a more educated way. Staying in sales Initially, Katie thought she would only stay in sales long enough to pay off her student debt. However, she remained there when she finally realized how much she loved being in a sales role. A natural fit At the time, sales was mostly a hybrid of selling to new companies and renewing current clients. Since then, sales in most companies have been separated into sales and customer success. So it felt like a natural fit for Katie to have managed a combination of sales and customer success teams throughout her journey. Managing Katie enjoys helping to shape and mold the people she manages. She also loves to see them succeed. Moving to the USA Ten years ago, Mintel opened a new division in the USA. So they asked Katie to move there. A successful woman Katie wants to be a strong leader for both men and women. Her secret to being a successful woman is not allowing herself to dwell on the negative and sexist comments and helping those around her to do the same. At Suzy, there is a “Women at Suzy” group. The women also support each other. Suzy Suzy is different in that it owns a panel of its own. They are solving to eradicate the need for overlapping technologies in a fragmented market by moving everything into one place. A platform Suzy has created a platform where qualitative and quantitative can be integrated and run quickly and seamlessly with the same respondents. Two kinds of teams Some company’s teams are getting empowered on their new journey of agile research by having a playbook and being educated around their new kind of responsibility. The more cumbersome bits are getting automated, giving them more time to be creative. Other companies, however, tend to buy a tool like Suzy’s but do not know how to utilize it because they have never worked in an agile way before. Empowering Suzy is helping companies understand that they are there to help them automate and do things faster, and their tool will empower their teams rather than take away their roles and responsibilities. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Suzy…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Richard Thornton joining her. Richard used to work at CINT, and he recently founded an advisory services business. In this episode, Richard shares his career journey. He also talks about taking risks, his mindset, and his core beliefs. Stay tuned to hear more! Richard’s journey Richard studied Business and Marketing at university. After that, he joined a business that served hardware and software players in the imaging space, like Hewlett Packard, Xerox, and Canon. He worked as a research analyst, supporting a team delivering content and insights around subscription syndicated services. That exposed him to working with data. He saw the value that data-driven insights could bring to organizations and gained a toolkit that he utilized extensively later in his career. After spending four years there, he moved on and became a consultant. Entering the market research industry In 2003, Richard fell into the market research industry by chance after being offered a position with Channel Surveys. He was fortunate to enter the industry just in time to ride the new wave of online data collection and digital insights. He was eventually put into the position of European Co-Managing Director, managing more than 300 employees in Europe. He left in 2008 when the business got sold to Microsoft. Joining CINT In 2009, Richard joined CINT, a Swedish-based technology company that was way ahead of its time. That was the start of a journey that took him out of his comfort zone and lasted for the next twelve years. Going public Richard was fortunate to be part of the leadership team at CINT that eventually took the business public in February 2021. Leaving Richard left CINT in 2021 after the business had gone public. People-driven Richard has always been people-driven in his decision-making. He felt driven to meet his mentors in the process of evaluating opportunities that came his way. Taking a risk Richard has a good appetite for risk with his work and making investments. After making sure that the business model was sound, he always followed his gut feelings when new opportunities came his way. What leaving CINT felt like It was tough for Richard to leave CINT, but it felt a little easier because it was a planned move. He gave up a lot when he left, and that required a massive mental adjustment. Although he is still grappling with those adjustments to some extent, he has no regrets about his decision to leave. Re-learning Now, Richard feels as if he has gone from a teacher to a student again because he has to re-learn a new craft. It is humbling but healthy because it keeps him grounded. It has also given him a fresh perspective. Mindset You get to feel needed, wanted, and valuable when you’re part of a growing organization. Richard misses feeling that way, so he had to adjust his mindset after leaving CINT. Choice Richard is grateful to be in a financial position that gives him a choice. Right now, he is considering what the best choice should be. A portfolio approach Richard always wanted to build a portfolio approach to work. That means that he has had to move into advisory roles. He intends to get onto the boards of some tech-led or enabled businesses and combine that with some angel investing. How Richard is spending his time Richard has been networking and looking for opportunities. He has built up a portfolio of businesses that he is advising. They are mostly founder-led and tech-enabled or SaaS businesses. He has taken a seat on the board of most of them and invested in some. He is bringing commercial excellence to the table and helping the founders scale. Diversity Richard loves the diversity of working with different businesses and being inspired by the founders and leadership teams. Driving diversity Richard is a supporter of driving better representation and diversity in the industry.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 The Journey to CEO | Ep. 149 23:33
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is delighted to have Lisa Wilding Brown, the CEO of Innovate MR, joining her today as her guest for the podcast. In this episode, Lisa talks about her journey to becoming a CEO, building confidence, the importance of role models and culture, and what the future holds for market research. Lisa’s journey Like many others, Lisa had no intention of getting into market research. After accidentally falling into the industry almost twenty years ago, she quickly got hooked! She started as a project manager of an online research team and then moved over to the panel team, where she worked closely with the survey methodology team researching research. She got to know a lot about methodological implications and learned how to do things the right way. In 2009, she moved to uSamp. Moving from a large global traditional research firm to a tech startup with only a few employees was an uncomfortable change. In 2014, Lisa joined Innovate MR when the company was still in the startup phase. Now, the company has more than 150 employees in multiple offices worldwide. Inspired by her colleagues Looking back at her journey to becoming CEO, Lisa gives credit to the network of friends and colleagues she has met through WIRexec who inspired and invigorated her so many years ago. Little things Over time, Lisa started doing little things to get everyone to know her brand and who she was and become more involved in the industry. That helped pave the way to her becoming a leader and the CEO of a business. Role models It is vital to have excellent role models. Unfortunately, women do not have as many role models. Building confidence While growing up, Lisa never even considered that she might become the CEO of a business. Like many others, she had insecurities and a fear of failure, so she focused on building her confidence. Encouragement Lisa encourages everyone to focus on the present moment, have new experiences, leverage opportunities, build their skill sets, and gain new levels of expertise. Being the CEO Lisa has a level of empathy that her team appreciates, and she feels that she is accessible to everyone. She feels confident that she will be successful in her role as the CEO because she knows the inner workings of the business and has a great relationship with her team. She hopes to inspire other young women and young professionals in the research space. Culture As companies grow, they should not lose sight of the dynamic and culture they enjoyed when they were small companies. Lisa is fiercely protective of her company’s culture. Disruption There has recently been a lot of disruption in the sample space. That allows for scale, growth, and efficiency in the future. Brands are shifting Brands are becoming more hands-on, and they are working with different, less traditional providers. The future of market research Although Lisa does not think that traditional market research will ever go away, she feels that surveys will reduce in the future, and we will see many more short micro-burst surveys. Stats and data Stats and data are becoming part of the mainstream. The uncertainty of the pandemic reinforced the need for data, so the average person now appreciates data a lot more than they did before the pandemic started. Links: Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter Dynata…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Sima is excited to have Bob Fawson, the EVP of Business Strategy at Dynata, joining her today. In this episode, Bob and Sima cover several hot topics related to challenges within the industry around data and sampling. Bob Fawson’s background Bob has an academic background. Before getting his Ph.D., he decided to take a break for a while and work. So Bob applied for a sales job at a research company. He enjoyed the experience, and after a short time, he and a few others in the research company started a panel business. They grew the business. It merged with SSI, which merged with another company to later become Dynata. Bob has played various interesting and fun roles in the company over the years, from sales and operations to research science. Most of his career has been in building and maintaining Dynata’s supply. What’s driving the data and sampling segment of the industry? Several things are driving the data and sampling segment of the industry. One factor is the increasing quest to measure and manage data quality. Inextricably tied to that is the user experience, and modernizing what we do in the insights industry to attract and retain participants better. Another factor is finding and retaining the right talent to do those things. An opportunity A lot of new talent is coming into the insights space. That is creating an opportunity for those within the space to learn from those people, grow, and change the way they think about how research gets executed. An interesting analogy We tend to see a single price for each make and model in the used car market and little differentiation in terms of how cars get sold. That is because it is difficult for buyers to evaluate the quality of a used car before buying it. It is also difficult for the seller to communicate quality credibly before a sale. That lack of information drives a market where the items get sold based on the average quality at an average market price. Lemon markets In many lemon markets, we see commodity pricing (as with sugar or grain) or decreasing quality and decreasing prices as the market finds equilibrium. Bob thinks that the same thing has happened in many data markets. Reputation Reputation is a primary way for lemon markets to become more efficient. The drivers of quality Although it is hard to define quality within the insights space, a quality survey needs three elements: Identity validation. The collected data must accurately reflect what is studied. Good in-survey behavior. (The respondents need to have a high level of participation and trust.) Grids Even though researchers love grids because they are structured and provide structured data, grids tend to drive more disengagement than anything else. Quality data Researchers should remember that they are dealing with real people on the other side of the research process. That’s why they need to take the time to think through the simple steps of putting questionnaires in front of people, to get the quality data they require. Why do people participate? People tend to participate in surveys because they have an innate desire to share. They also participate to get a reward of some kind. Improving the research industry There is better engagement when the topic is well-matched to the audience. So to benefit from people’s innate desire to share, researchers need to do a better job of profiling qualifying people into their surveys. Researchers will also benefit from gaining more trust from consumers and motivating them to become panelists and share. Recruitment Bob feels that the research industry faces more of a challenge with retention than with recruitment. Data breaches with big companies like Google and Facebook have fostered a tremendous lack of trust. So, researchers need to follow through with a good experience after engaging consumers if they want the engagement to stick and be produc...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Investing in Research | Ep. 147 51:59
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima shares Part 1 of Investing in Research, a panel discussion about agencies from the recent WIRe (Women in Research) Conference. In this discussion hosted by Nikki Lavoie, experts Sima Vasa, Sherry Fox, and Elaine Riddel talk about one of the prominent myths currently circulating in the insights industry. According to that myth, only tech and SaaS-based companies receive investment funding. The panel of experts will explain why that myth is untrue and clarify how service-based companies can begin to access investment funding if they wish to do so. The experts Sherry Fox is a career Global Insights Strategist focused on health care. She is well-versed in strategic brand development and regulatory environments. Sherry is an industry expert and futuristic thinker who can facilitate collaborations leading to the growth and acquisition of service companies. She has also founded future health strategies to leverage the intersection of data, insights, and technology. Sima Vasa is a multi-faceted business leader in the market research and analytics space with a broad range of expertise from P&L management, operations, business development, marketing, entrepreneurship, and investment banking. Currently, Sima focuses on advising clients on overall business strategy, valuation of strategic options, and execution of investment banking mandates through Oberon Securities, a middle-market-focused investment banking firm. Elaine Riddel is a growth activist who believes that breakthrough potential exists in every company. She unlocks potential by anticipating market changes that will influence client priorities and then building organizational confidence to deliver new value. As A CEO, she transformed mature, stagnant, global insights firms into scalable market leaders that consistently out-performed the market over fifteen years. Her playbook is the foundation for her growth advisories, serving founders, CEOs, and PE firms. Elaine is currently an MD with Oaklins Da Silva and Phillips, a leading investment bank for marketing and media services. Why is there the myth that service-based companies cannot get funding? Sima believes that service-based companies can get investment capital if they want it. It is all about the valuation of a service-based company, compared with a more Saas or tech-enabled company. Investors want to invest in good, financially sound companies that provide their clients with a strong value and serve their markets well. So the question is really around the value of the company. Elaine thinks that everything has its time. Automating much of the back office and the DIY will result in better, faster, and cheaper kinds of foundational services. We are moving into a time where more people with more advanced decision-making capabilities are needed to advise clients. Sherry believes that even with the arrival of big data and AI being used more in the insights industry, people are still necessary to deliver the insights to the pointer lane because you cannot rely on the data to explain why something is true. That is why service-based companies are needed more than ever right now to interpret the data. Having insights translated into action Elaine thinks that some service-based companies will stand out in terms of their areas of expertise because clients are looking for the expertise to translate insights into action with confidence in real-time. Opportunities Service-based companies should look for opportunities to syndicate or create multi-client services- on a subscription basis. Reducing investor risk Service-based companies need to reassure their investors that enough is being done to reduce the risk. Becoming trusted advisors Market research agencies should position themselves as strategic partners and collaborators with their clients to become their trusted advisors. Actionability…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ben Smithee is the CEO of The Smithee Group, a digital marketing agency based in New York City. On this episode, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about what they do, how they do it, and how millennial research has affected the marketing sphere. “I think there’s a new shift… marketing in the moment and not for the moment.” - Ben Smithee Ben Smithee - The Smithee Group’s Pedigree His full-service digital marketing agency focuses a lot on small-medium businesses but still serve large enterprise companies with intelligence and insights work. They work with luxury brands—the jewelry industry—, which as Ben says, is every marketer’s dream. Their background is founded on research and analytics. With this history, they are able to take their learnings and understanding of how consumer behavior works and apply them in what they do. Research-based Execution Ben started his company with a big emphasis on execution and not just research. Of course, the two should go together. Effective decisions are made based on facts and figures instead of gut instinct and sometimes, politics. “I would suggest any marketer… start in research because the fundamentals in learning: consumer insights, consumer behavior, solid research skills… it makes you so much more effective and efficient as a marketer.” - Ben Smithee Assessments: Crux of Marketing All of The Smithee Group’s endeavors begin with digital brand assessment. Before they launch any marketing campaign, they must first look at where the brand is and where it could potentially be. This also comes with understanding audience segmentation. Back in the day, these assessments entail diving into and tweaking things targeting focus groups. But at present, marketers can run these tests and repeat and learn from them live on the field. This shift has come from knowing customer behavior and having the background necessary to make informed decisions. “That's what I'm thankful for some of the background in millennial research which obviously led us to digital… and being that trusted partner.” - Ben Smithee Quick links to connect with Ben Smithee: Website - The Smithee Group Twitter - The Smithee Group Website - Ben Smithee Twitter - Ben Smithee Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We’re very happy to welcome AJ Keirans, the Vice-President of Business Development at Disqo, as our guest for today! AJ started at Disqo three months ago. Joining them was a logical decision for him because of where he is currently at in his career, and he is very proud of the unique and special work that they are doing. Why Disqo is different The business and events industry is changing and there has been a lot of consolidation taking place within the industry recently. At Disqo, there are only a few areas of focus. They don’t utilize any exchanges as they prefer to use partners or river traffic. Also, the company remains its own asset and they don’t try to productize everything. The majority of Disqo’s panel-asset is made up of US consumers, and all their discussions are transparent. And because the relationship that Disqo has with its panelists is focused on validating who the panelists are, and on quality and simplicity, it has been a very easy sell for AJ. What AJ likes about Disqo, and what makes him proud, is the way that the company has returned to focusing on quality and propriety. The panelists that join Disqo The panelists that join Disqo do so because they want to be there. And AJ believes that Disqo is a unique and scalable asset for them to have. Focusing on one panel-asset At Disqo, they have only one panel-asset, and that’s where their focus lies. Having only one panel-asset allows them to have a uniform strategy for how they engage with their panelists, and for how their panelists are rewarded. Low threshold Disqo has a very low threshold. That is part of their validation and quality process, and it allows for a win-win situation for everyone involved. Respect Nobody is likely to get rich from taking surveys. However, when people feel that their time and their money are being respected, they tend to be more eager to participate, and they do so more actively. What Disqo is doing with passive metering and with the tracking of consumer behavior What Disqo has been doing with passive metering, and with the tracking of consumer behavior, has been a point of differentiation for AJ. He explains that their approach to passive metering, and the use of rich data, is a new way of thinking. It is also a first-party, and it is scalable. Passive metering allows Disqo to track the behavior of consumers online, to see behind their walled gardens, to see the ads they are exposed to, and it enables them to be privy to consumers’ purchase behavior. Passive metering can be done on a desktop as well as on mobile devices and it allows for a truly rich understanding of the consumer. This is very significant right now, with the way that consumer behavior is changing due to the coronavirus pandemic. Transparency is key The way that Disqo tracks consumer data is done transparently, and their passive metering software is installed without any cookies. Consumers choose to participate, so they can opt-in if they want to, and they are rewarded for doing so. Consumers need to trust a brand to allow it to track their behavior, so transparency is the key here. Allowing consumers to control what is happening with their data, and engaging them in an opt-in, is ethical, and it is also very important in maintaining their trust. Doing something unique The way that Disqo is going about doing its passive metering is truly unique. Everything it does is above board, honest, and transparent. This is very important because people tend to question the validity of the data. Covid reports For quite some time now, the Disqo team has been asking questions and using surveys, and digital behavior, to create Covid reports. They started tracking people’s behavior as early as February, and the reports are now available on the Disqo website. Positioned for success AJ is convinced that Disqo is perfectly positioned for success going forward because he knows that what they do, and the way they are trusted,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Options to Consider From an Investment Banking Perspective During Covid-19 with Adam Breslawsky | Ep. 99 28:06
Today, we’re excited to have Adam Breslawsky joining us! Adam is Managing Partner, and he’s also a member of Oberon’s management committee at Oberon Securities, which is a middle-market investment banking firm. Adam is an investment banker by trade. He grew up and gained his early experience in product groups like mergers and acquisitions, and underwriting high-yield bonds, at large investment banks. Having worked with companies across the industry spectrum, he finds the current environment to be the most challenging operating environment for all kinds of companies. This is because there are very few industries that have been spared from the carnage that has affected an enormous number of companies, due to the pandemic. Coming up with a game plan At this point, the initial shock of the global pandemic has worn off, so people are now doing whatever they can to marshal their resources and come up with a game plan. Providing a framework to help people navigate their next steps The projected loss in the market research industry, as a result of the pandemic, is about nineteen billion dollars, worldwide. In today’s episode of Data Gurus, we will be providing a framework to help business owners think about how to operate their businesses, and how they can best navigate their next steps. Businesses are losing money Many businesses that were making a few million dollars on an annual basis before are now losing money. Drawing credit Some business owners, who are very responsible cash managers with access to a line of credit, and have been operating historically without any debt, are now deciding to draw their entire line of credit in cash, even though they might not need the money right away. They are doing this to ensure that the banks don’t shut down their lines of credit. Different types of companies Adam has noticed that the companies that were struggling before the pandemic are the types of companies that are now filing for bankruptcy. And some of the companies that are filing for bankruptcy now can be expected to liquidate, as opposed to restructuring. Other companies have found ways to weather the storm, and the owners of those companies are focusing on strategic, long-term initiatives. And there are also a lot of companies that are poised to become more successful than ever. So once we have turned the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, they will perform better than they have ever done before because they will be leaner, more flexible, and more focused. Bankruptcy versus liquidation Both business owners and investment bankers prefer to help businesses restructure outside of the bankruptcy process, rather than liquidating the businesses. The companies that are going to weather the storm The companies that are most likely to weather the coronavirus storm are the companies that were operating well enough before the pandemic. Those companies have been hunkering down, negotiating with their vendors, reducing their salaries, and cutting down on their expenses as much as possible. The mindset of the owners of those companies is evolving more rapidly than Adam has ever seen before. And they are often looking at raising some debt, as a reserve. Qualifying for PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) The Paycheck Protection Program involves a short application. A company’s ability to qualify for PPP is based solely upon that company being able to demonstrate that their business has been negatively affected. And businesses also have to be small enough to qualify for PPP. A great opportunity for some people For some people, this is the first opportunity that they’ve had in more than a decade to acquire a business in a market that is more friendly to them, as buyers, than it is to sellers. There are also fewer buyers now than there were before, so if someone expresses an interest in a company, it is certainly worthwhile, in the current economic climate, for the owner to pay attention to that. Private equities…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We’re very happy to have Adam Jolley joining us today. Very soon, Adam will be starting with Survey Monkey, which will be a huge and exciting change for him. Adam’s career path up to now has been an interesting one. He started in sales, for a small EMI market research company that had only six employees. After ten years in sales with EMI, he went into leadership and became the president of the company. That was a great achievement for Adam and it allowed him to learn a lot about all the other parts of the work that the company was doing. What Adam loves about market research As a market researcher, Adam was always very curious about everything that was going on. When he became the President of EMI, he was able to learn many new things, about the business side, how to communicate, how to manage employees, and even about the psychology of the business. Throughout the time Adam spent at EMI, he continued to be driven by his insatiable curiosity about everything that was going on in the world. What small businesses should be doing right now Right now, as the pandemic is settling in, as the fear creeps in, and as people are starting to wonder what life will look like when it’s all finally over, Adam believes that entrepreneurs and small businesses need to be innovating. Pivoting The current situation with the global pandemic motivated Adam to pivot and start looking for something new. So he courageously went from being the president of an online sample company to a situation where almost all of his clients are full-service market research firms. At Survey Monkey, a 400-million dollar publically-traded technology company, Adam is a salesperson selling market research, concept testing, ad testing, and automation, to brands. Feeling fortunate With all the change he’s been through, Adam still has the curiosity that came from market research. He is optimistic and he feels very lucky to have had a choice, so that he didn’t have to compromise himself or jump into any old job, just to get through the rest of the year. Having been the president of a company was like a scarlet letter for Adam at job interviews. So he often didn’t even make it past the resume for many of the jobs he applied for. And the feedback that he got was always that those companies did not want a president coming in to shake things up at this time when everyone is unsure of what the future holds. Now, he gets to fuel his passion, stimulate his curiosity, learn something new, and sell to a different group of people, during a time when many people are being laid off and some companies are not hiring anyone at all. Adam’s goal For Adam, what matters is having an end goal in sight, and planning for his career, even though he does know that it’s very easy to lose track of the journey when you’re focused on the destination. It’s been a huge blessing for him to have had the opportunity to level and re-center himself around what he wants to do, and where his purpose lies. Moving forward, Adam now feels that by innovating himself and having been set up for the rest of his career, he will be better suited to what life will be like at the end of the pandemic. Living in the moment Adam thinks that there are business lessons that we’re learning right now that can set us all up for a better future. Although he likes to learn from the past and plan for the future, he lives in the present moment. And this moment is presenting a lot of opportunities for everyone to correct their course in both lifestyle and business. He points out that if we look into the past, or become nostalgic, we’re not going to grow, and that’s what is happening with the companies that are failing right now. The song of the moment Sima asked Adam to pick some songs that best describe for him a theme in our industry today. The first song that Adam chose was I Just called To say I Love You by Stevie Wonder because it talks to him very directly about sales messaging and cold calling at this time.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Jacqueline Rosales, the Chief Operating Officer of SoapboxSample, joins Sima to talk about market research, entrepreneurship, COVID-19 research, and cannabis. Jacqueline heads up multiple research divisions at the ISA Group, including SoapboxSample and icanmakeitbetter. SoapboxSample recently celebrated eight years. About three or four years ago, they made a strategic decision to acquire icanmakeitbetter because their focus was on digital agility and that could help Soapbox to stay flexible, nimble, and at the forefront as it continued to grow. Some background In 2012, Jacqueline was asked to join the ISA Group to build a panel company. It seemed a little odd, as she had done that several years before. But what it came down to was that there were certain areas of business that still could not be covered by either traditional or new methodologies. So they decided to position themselves online with the idea of evolving into the digital space and entering the business of legally buying and selling people. Working with academic researchers and scientists Since the onset of COVID-19, Jacqueline has been working with academic researchers and scientists. She’s shared with them the history and evolution of market research and the consumer industry, and she’s also explained to them how the industry engages with people electronically, digitally, and telephonically. That’s where Soapbox shines because they do all three. And that put them in a very good position, two years ago, to go all-in on cannabis. Current research This has been a very interesting time for Jacqueline. Currently, even though Soapbox still has its typical clients, they are working mainly on cannabis and Covid-related research. What Jacqueline is enjoying One of the things that Jacqueline is enjoying right now is working on projects that would otherwise seem very challenging. Although these projects are still a challenge, she’s been finding that everyone is now on an equal playing field because the walls between client and partner have come down. So now they are all simply partners. Looking at things from the data collection perspective All the collected data forms the foundation for research. So Soapbox now has the brands, the universities, and even the big media organizations knocking on their door and asking for advice about how to collect data. Collecting data for Covid research Soapbox has done a lot of traditional-style Covid research, and that positioned them to move into some antibody testing research. Also, some academic researchers needed to get a representative population of the LA County, which is very diverse, but they didn’t know how to reach everyone, so they asked Soapbox to assist them in reaching all of the various groups within the LA population. The trick was that they needed to get people to show up at a testing site where they could drive through and have a finger-prick-based antibody test. So Soapbox had to build a system that allowed them to go through that entire process. Significant media coverage People got wind of what was happening with the antibody research, so after Soapbox’s pilot was released, they got some very significant local and national media coverage. As a result, people started writing to Jacqueline and telling her their stories. An interesting process Collecting data for Covid research has been a very interesting process. Soapbox was in the right place at the right time, and their nimbleness was very important in allowing them to collect the data for the Covid research. They were able to take the information that they had, apply it to something different, and then do with it what they already knew how to do. Getting approval Every single step in the process has required approval from the IRB. If even a single word in a survey is changed, it has to go back and be approved once again. And Jacqueline’s entire team had to take courses on human factors research. Pivoting…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Dan Foreman joins Sima for today’s episode, to talk about his journey, as an entrepreneur, into market research. He is currently involved with the Zappy Store, Course 5i, Borderless Access, Dalia, Bakamo Social, Veylinx, MindProber, and Haystack. Dan consciously chose to join the market research industry when he was midway through university. He was doing a degree in psychology at the time, and he liked what he had seen in a presentation given at the university by someone from a market research company. In his final year, Dan interviewed for many different jobs. He was offered several positions, three of which were in market research. He chose the highest paid, most exciting job, with Research International, which was the largest customer research agency in the world at the time. He worked in their Drinks and Leisure Division, which was a lot of fun, and his first clients were Guinness and Alton Towers. Climbing the ladder Dan spent some time in research and he also worked at a marketing agency, called Added Value, which became Kantar Added Value, and is now Kantar Consulting. He then worked, client-side, at Kimberly-Clark. After that, he went into management consultancy, and then into advertising. He joined Focus Vision when they were expanding outside of the US, as their first non-American employee. The business then saw extremely rapid growth, and about eighteen months later, it was sold to Schroder Ventures, and it changed from a family-owned business to a private entity. Taking the entrepreneurial route Dan later started going down the entrepreneurial route. And he got involved with several different companies with lots of interesting applications to modernize the world of market research. The three types of businesses that Dan is involved with Dan got involved with three different types of companies. With some of them, he got involved right from the outset, at the startup. Other companies were already going and they had some revenue, but they were struggling to scale, so they needed expert help in navigating the market and figuring out their product/market fit. With these two types of companies, there is always an investment relationship. The final group consists of companies that were already very well established but they had hit a plateau, so they required some fresh thinking about the business. With this group, Dan’s role is typically advisory, as these companies are looking for support and not necessarily investment. The way that Dan connects with organizations Dan has a very clear picture of the kind of organizations that he wants to get involved with, and of the kind of future market research that he would like to help craft. He actively seeks out businesses in these areas. He also has many people asking him for support or an exploratory conversation about their business. Occasionally, he has come across completely opportunistic situations, with which he has done his best to connect the dots, bring them into the industry, and make them successful. Some of the themes Dan considers Recently, Dan took a position with a language technology firm. This is something he has been actively looking for, for years, because he is aware of the huge amount of opportunity that exists around all the unstructured data there, which has become even more complex and varied with the addition of videos and images. He is also interested in anything that enhances the understanding of the brain, and anything related to emotions and behavioral-based measurement. Dan is interested in anything which advances his reach, so the more brains that he can access around the world the better it is for him. Is data the new oil? Dan has an interest in anything which truly captures the value of data. Data is said to be the new oil. And if data is indeed the new oil, Dan believes that he and his people should be the richest in the world as they have access to what’s in people’s brains, hearts, and guts.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
David Dixon and Pete Cain join Sima in today’s episode to discuss marketing analytics and econometric modeling. David Dixon is the Managing Partner of Marketscience. Before launching Truesight (now named Marketscience), David was global CEO and managing partner of Ninah Consulting. Pete Cain is the Executive Partner of Marketscience. Prior to the Marketscience merger with Truesight, Peter was the sole founder and CEO of Marketscience, which he established in 2012 with the goal of blending academic, commercially relevant analytics and strategic advice for business. David and Peter each have more than twenty years of experience in the marketing industry, with David focusing on marketing analytics, management consulting, and organizational leadership, while Pete’s expertise includes commercial and academic experience in economics and marketing science designing econometric business solutions for blue-chip companies and organizations. Marketscience provides custom application of the latest statistical and econometric techniques to inform marketing investment decisions and engages the organization through training and hands-on support. Marketscience offers various service models, such as Whether you are Do-it-yourself (DIY), Do-it-for-me (DIFM), or Do-it-with-me (DIWM). They not only measure ROI but help the client by managing and understanding it. Marketing Analytics Marketing is about economics, and about how consumers behave. If you think about marketing analytics as the subject, it is the economics of human behavior. The benefit of having worked 12 years in the media agencies has given David a unique perspective of the end-user, and how marketing decisions are made in the absence of analytics. Marketing Attribution Once Marketscience has an understanding of the consumer consumption point of view, then they can figure out how best to market it, arriving at the decision from an economic perspective. Consumer behavior has become a lot more complex and sophisticated over the last twenty years, when the more you charged, the higher the price, and the less volume you sell. Today, marketing works to shift those demand curves and shift people’s perception of pricing, sometimes to obscure pricing or make them less sensitive to it. Therefore, the way consumer behavior is measured has also become a lot more complex and sophisticated. Intel Case Study Looking to reduce budgets, the CFO of Intel brought in Marketscience. Marketscience ran the models, and what they found was that long-term drivers tend to be more perceptual things that are what consumers are thinking, versus the economy, because people act on what they think. They were looking to understand how the perception of Intel as a technology leader was changing, and how it was changing by different kinds of important customer segments. These models reveal opportunities to build a stronger brand and leverage brand investments and to reduce short-term investments because you have a stronger brand. When you have a stronger baseline that makes all of your short-term dollars work harder. The Future of Transparency Both David and Pete agree that things are getting better as organizations try to bring more transparency in the day-to-day trading of digital media. There is much more awareness now, especially with the current COVID-19 event as more people are spending time at home. We will likely have to wait months or years to fully understand how this event has shaped the economy. With our families in proximity, this could shift even more perceptions about the marketing environment and make stronger demands on brands to be more responsible and responsive. David states that as economists, rather than econometricians, it’s vital to think on how this is going to impact the hearts and minds of people and the supply chains, and how this will all come together to shape the economy going forward. What they often see these days is they get results from suppliers,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima sits down with Melanie Courtright, CEO of Insights Association, to discuss the rapidly changing scene and the diligent work that Melanie’s team is doing in providing additional resources and perspectives on how to deal with the fallout of the Corona Virus and its impact to the industry. Melanie began serving as CEO of the Insights Association on January 1, 2020. Previously Melanie served as Executive Vice President, Research Science & Data Strategy at Dynata. A respected, passionate voice on market research trends, standards and quality, Melanie has participated in many industry organizations, events and initiatives. She serves on the executive board of the University of Georgia’s MRII Education program and is an active member of Women in Research (WIRe). Previously Melanie served as President of IA’s Southwest Chapter and as a U.S. representative to ESOMAR. Insights Association’s Call-to-Action There are times when the industry goes through rapid change, of course, and that rapid change is usually due to technology disruption or a new methodology that enters the space, but this particular disruption is totally unplanned and one that we’re facing as a nation. Melanie has observed that in normal times we would ordinarily see healthy competition all around us, but this crisis has pulled the industry together as a community. She has been seeing giveaways of all sorts of free services, software, and licenses. Conversely, when attending some of Insights Association’s Town Halls, you’ll hear fears being expressed by people regarding the viability of their businesses, their jobs and the people that they support. Insights Association’s primary purpose is twofold: to put as much information and resources into the hands of the industry and to advocate as hard as they can into the Administration and government on behalf of the industry. Virtual Town Halls - Information and Resources Each Friday, Insights Association holds a virtual Town Hall with speakers outside of the industry to talk to our industry to discuss topics such as crisis leadership, economics and economics forecasting, financial resources, and how consumer sentiment is shifting. Although the webinars utilize speakers outside of the industry, speakers inside the industry take the time to leverage the meetings with their industry perspectives. Insights Association is also generating as much content as possible into a written format. They’re doing research on research and measuring the impact through the industry. They are also measuring what the corporate buyers believe their future in research looks like and much, much more. Advocation on Behalf of the Industry Melanie explains that they are currently working on a letter to the Administration regarding the large number of small businesses, the large number of independent contractors and the industry’s self-employed sector. They’re reminding the Administration of the size of the research as pertains to the United States specifically, the importance of research as an industry to the government, to the voice of the population and to polling, and the tremendous value that we, as an industry, deliver. Insights Association is encouraging the Administration to remember the insights industry and to not let the industry die out. They will be copying the letter and giving it out to its members so they can sign it, as well. Melanie provides an overview of additional matters for which they advocate. _______________ Email me your thoughts! Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review! Melanie’s LinkedIn Insights Association Insights Association’s Twitter Insights Association’s Facebook If you would like to get involved, please send Melanie an EMAIL!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Creating a More Efficient and Effective Market Research Process with Andrew Moffatt | Ep. 93 29:19
Andrew Moffatt, Chief Strategy Officer and Partner of OpinionRoute joins Sima today in discussing technology products that help address some of the market research problems that are prevalent today. The market leader in Insights Process Management, OpinionRoute is focused on helping clients succeed in the rapidly evolving market research industry. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, their “made for research” services and technology solutions power authentic insights and create efficiency in the research process. OpinionRoute is dedicated to protecting the integrity and effectiveness of market research. Creating Scalable Technology Products About a year ago, Andrew and Terence McCarron, Founder and CEO of OpinionRoute, decided that their future would be in building technology and taking their experience and expertise and trying to apply that to scalable technology products to help solve some of the problems in market research that they had observed. The resulting initial products that they have created have been on the supply side of the industry focused on fraud management, mitigation, identification, validating respondents for B2B research, and developing tools to enable faster healthcare research. Although this is part of their overall vision, most of what they build in the future will be technology that tries to help both create a more efficient market research process but also a more effective one by creating better data through cleaning and filtering it better before it gets to the client survey. Validating and Enhancing Your Data From the panel point of view, OpinionRoute is seeing very interesting data that they can append to panelists on the B2B side without asking questions of the respondents and being able to create a validated silo of your panel that is validated for B2B surveys and has that data overlaid on top of that information so you can be more confident in selling that information as well as being cleaner in terms of information that you’re collecting from panelists. The supply side is as interested as the buying side because in that same scenario where 50% of completes are being removed, you have, as panel manager, decisions to make also. Many times these decisions are subjective, as well as the decision to remove that person to begin with. Blockchain’s Role in Technology Blockchain as a technology will be around for a long time, Andrew predicts, especially in the financial world. The opportunity that it provides from a data privacy point of view is vast but there are larger hurdles that it needs to get through to be more widely useable and accessible. Once it passes those hurdles, some of which Andrew delves into, he thinks everything will change. Evolving to a data economy where users get a larger portion of transaction or get to control their data or choose to sell their data at whatever point they want to is a world that Andrew supports. From OpinionRoute’s technology point of view, blockchain has some elements where they can store things that are necessary within the blockchain but it won’t run through their entire platform. Designing the Fraud Prevention Technology Platform ValidID and CleanID are OpinionRoute’s fraud prevention technologies and are created in such a way that gives the user a lot of control and transparency of what they’re getting. Over time, OpinionRoute wants to enable everyone to have the same level of data and decision-making that some of the larger consolidated companies have. The platforms that they are creating are designed with this in mind. Sima and Andrew exchange thoughts on consolidation pro’s and con’s and wrap up their conversation with the company challenges that Andrew sees them overcoming. ______________________ Email me your thoughts! Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Sima chats with Patrick Comer, CEO of Lucid, LLC, to discuss how COVID-19 has forced everybody to stay at home and how consumer behaviors are changing in the face of this pandemic, as a result. Listen in to hear more about this swiftly-changing scenario! Lucid, LLC, unites buyers and sellers of survey samples in over 90 countries – bridging the divide between global questions and human answers. Every day, millions of questions are answered via Lucid’s programmatic marketplace – enabling anyone, in any industry, to get real answers. Lucid’s clients can ask questions of targeted audiences and measure the effectiveness of their digital advertising. This authentic, first-party data drives powerful insights, in real-time. Lucid is headquartered in New Orleans with offices in London, New York, Gurgaon, and Sydney. A Surprising Duality The month of March has been a rollercoaster ride for Lucid. Amidst the economic storm clouds that are brewing right now, there’s a lot of volume and strength on platforms and the number of interviews and the number of transactions have gone up. This duality has been a challenge to navigate, so Lucid has been taking a closer look behind the scenes. Not surprisingly, the surveys involving COVID-19 have increased. What they also found was that people were pushing to complete projects quickly, as companies started to invoice in order to get account payables secured while waiting for their next project. Looking Forward Will Require a Look Backward There are radical changes in behavior, purchasing, and opinion with everybody being at home right now, but analyzing this will require sorting out over time. Lucid has seen that some companies are slowing, pausing, or canceling work; and in other areas, they are speeding up, accelerating, and moving work. More companies are doing fast general population surveys without much targeting to get a couple of quick hits and then moving on, versus longer, tailored, targeted-audience surveys, just to get a handle on how things are moving around so quickly. Tough Decisions The COVID-19 pandemic has produced at least two crises: a healthcare crisis and a financial crisis, and with this in mind, Lucid has had to make some difficult decisions. Patrick addresses staffing changes and Lucid’s philosophy in assisting its terminated employees in finding other work in the market research space, as well as discussing how Lucid has been taking action regarding the impact of its remaining employees’ health and safety globally. He quotes Michael Leavitt, Former Secretary of Health and Human Services: “Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after a pandemic will seem inadequate.” In the face of the coming financial crisis, Patrick feels confident that his company has moved quickly and strategically to create capability, stability, and confidence in Lucid’s liquidity from a transaction-buying viewpoint. A New Normal and Its Challenges Sima and Patrick reflect on life and business post-COVID, and how the decisions we make now impact our future. There is no going back to “normal”, and many companies will suffer. Conversely, an economic downturn is an incredible time to start a company and to implement procedures that will help it endure through the toughest of times. Patrick speaks to the various challenges that leaders face and how they should be part of the solution that needs to happen now versus using this time for company gain. _______________________________ Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review! Connect with Patrick: Patrick’s Linkedin Lucid,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima is joined today by Steve Wagner, a Senior Marketing Manager, to chat about email hygiene and enhancing data lists. Steve Wagner leads the strategic marketing function for Webbula. He has over 15 years of experience in demand generation, digital marketing, and account-based marketing programs. He's previously led these efforts across several organizations, including Sales Performance International, ShowClix, and Ariba. Isn't Email Dead? Webbula assists with email list hygiene by driving the best marketing performance possible in such categories as deliverability and open rates and helps to enrich the organization’s data by finding missing parts of their information. Year after year, email marketing proves to be one of the top revenue drivers for businesses, despite proclamations that email is dead. Although there are certainly trends in digital these last couple of years, each year circles back to having a solid email address in order for people to validate their accounts or to drive certain messaging to. What is Email Hygiene, Anyway? When looking at an email list with a million names, most marketers tend to stop by wondering how many of those email addresses are valid, and how they might be identified. However, that is not enough. There are a lot of threats out there, and they do deliver. Webbula breaks these threats into four major categories: 1) reputation threats; 2) fraud threats; 3) delivery threats; and 4) conversion threats. Steve relates examples for each and how his company mitigates these risks. Actual Data vs. Model Data Webbula also has a data-enrichment side that will append additional information or missing gaps for people on their customer lists. 100% of Webbula data is self-reported, deterministic, and individually linked so each piece of data they collect can be traced back to the individual who self-reported it. This information often comes from publisher partners, transactional events, social media surveys, and other data providers that rely on that same level of data to apply to their third-party data. Steve shares some benefits of using self-reported data. Looking Ahead Google is phasing out the third-party cookies over the next couple of years and this has really shaken a lot of marketers who have relied heavily on digital. Thankfully, Google is aware of the potential fallout and have applied a grace period. Steve discloses what he sees for the future of marketing and Webbula. _______________________________ Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review! Connect with Steve: His Linkedin His Twitter His Website…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima brings you a special episode regarding the current Corona Virus outbreak and addresses questions she’s been receiving on a wide range of topics. She hopes you will find this information helpful! Additionally, Sima would like to extend her sincerest gratitude to all of the healthcare workers and their families out there who are putting their lives on the line for all of us to help our friends and loved ones get better. What Is The Likely Impact Of The Corona Virus For The Market Research Industry? Qualitative research will certainly be impacted. Enterprise clients are dealing with the same uncertainty that we’re all dealing with, regarding the economy and our physical well-being, so we just can’t know what is going to take place. Clients will still need to make decisions around marketing spend, product development, and innovation. The only way they can reduce that uncertainty around their decisions is due to market research. Budgets will be tighter, but it would not be logical for a company to make a multi-million dollar decision without research. As A Business Owner, Do You Have A Plan? The stress we feel right now is because of the uncertainty. If you have not already done so, take this time to start working on your contingency plans and incorporate multiple scenarios. Although it may not feel like it right now, we are not actually in the heat of the crisis yet. If we do hit that bigger, deeper crisis level, having a plan or plans of action will give you something to focus on and the confidence in knowing what you’re going to do. Speaking of Contingency Plans, Is This The Right Time To Raise Capital? Or Should I Sell My Company? If you think your company is going to lose value during this time period, it’s something to consider. You need to understand your tolerance for risk, and that’s the gut-check of what you’re willing to do. It is a personal decision. What’s Your Plan For Your Kids? In talking to her family, Sima says it was agreed on that they would have to work harder than ever to ensure that they are doing their part in this crisis: managing a business, helping the industry, helping others in the community, and solving tough problems for their partners and other clients. This work will require many additional work hours and also require Sima’s kids to step up and do their part, such as doing their chores, managing their schedule, staying off of social media, being engaged, and being responsible. Email me your thoughts! Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima has a special treat for you today, and that’s a conversation from the archives with Eileen Campbell, Co-Founder and Executive Chair for The Reid Campbell Group. She and Sima discuss the insights industry, how her company brings authenticity to chat, and her hopes for the future of the insights. An Exciting Startup The Reid Campbell Group is a holding company. It owns two companies: Rival Technologies and Reach3 Insights. Rival Technologies is an insights tech company, an enterprise-grade platform that brings voice, video, and chat to the insights world. Rival is a SaaS business so there will be clients who use it on a DIY basis. Reach3 is a full-service consulting business that uses Rival’s technology as the backbone of their operations. Introducing new technology to the industry through skilled consultants who can teach you how to “drive” is a great way to integrate the technology. Authenticity In Brands Frustrations that Eileen and her partner, Andrew Reid, have experienced over the years birthed the idea for The Reid Campbell Group. Consumers want authenticity in brands, they want to have real conversations with brands. In the insights world, the way we talk to consumers is not the way anybody would talk to a typical consumer. So what The Reid Campbell Group strives to do is bring the authenticity of chat with the rigor of research. Their platform uses Facebook Messenger or phone SMS to carry on real conversations via chat with consumers but at scale and with the structure of a typical survey. A Consumer’s Experience From the consumer’s point of view, it’s a much more conversational experience. How The Reid Campbell Group designs the inquiry is really important and audience-specific. They use lots of emojis, real language, and ensure that whoever crafted the chat knows the target audience. Although questions are served up one at a time, the questions are interspersed with dialogue. This feels much more like natural language. Benefits Of Rival Technologies Platform The Rival Technologies platform offers the benefit of real-life and real-time transcribing and translating of everything, and this is especially amazing for international needs. What’s most compelling is that people engage differently with this platform as compared to traditional surveys. In a traditional survey, on average, you will get about 20 words from somebody in an open-ended question. With this one, however, you can get about 127 words. You can do your open-ended questions in straight audio, so that you can hear people’s voices and inflections if you’re the client. On video, you can see the people. There are additional capabilities on the front-end to design the tools, and the back-end capabilities assist in analyzing the data. The bottom line is all of these factors contribute to a more natural-feeling conversation. Sourcing the Consumers Andrew Reid, Eileen’s partner, was the Founder of Vision Critical, which is probably the largest purveyor of customer communities. They are starting to do some communities where they recruit from a loyalty program or someone’s social media followings, for example. A lot of their sampling comes from building communities. Eileen shares a variety of other ways that they are trying to bring in new voices and provides some experiences for context. New Horizons Eileen has always hated the self-flagellation of the insights industry because what they do contributes greatly to the success of their clients’ organizations. Clients should be made stars within their own organization, and Eileen’s company works very hard on deliverables that are cool and feel modern, that are PowerPoint presentations that have the ability to go viral within their own organization: like shareable, mobile-based reports that are more like a blog, or 1-3 minutes shareable videos. Eileen’s continuing crusade is to help the insights industry and the people who choose it get the recognition they deserve and feel really proud...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 How to Build Brands by Fulfilling the Human Quest for Meaning with Dr. Emmanuel Probst | Ep. 88 31:26
Dr. Emmanuel Probst joins Sima in this thought-provoking episode of Data Gurus. Although the subject of today’s show is about marketing, it’s even more so about life and looking at consumers from an elemental level: looking at their needs, their perspectives, and what motivates them. It’s about pushing brands to think about these considerations first, over short-term metrics. This ultimately connects a respective brand to the consumer’s basic wants and needs. Listen in to this conversation where marketing and psychology intersect and prepare to have your thinking challenged. Dr. Emmanuel Probst is the author of the widely-acclaimed book, Brand Hacks: Fulfilling the Human Quest for Meaning. He is also the Senior Vice President of Ipsos, focusing on Brand Health Tracking. Consumer Curiosity Understanding why people do what they do is the backbone of Dr. Probst’s career, and also what led him to brand health and writing his book. He was intrigued about how we as a society decide what is good and what is not; what brands make sense and what brands don’t make sense; and why we purchase the products that we do. Over six hundred billion dollars per year are spent on advertising to market to consumers, but half is wasted and brands are unclear on the impact of their own marketing dollars. The reason for the waste is that the majority of advertising is targeted, tactical, and designed to push sales in the short term. The intention may also be to create traffic, or support short-term goals for brands. This results in advertising that is often not sustainable, as it lacks depth or meaning to consumers. Finding Meaning Dr. Probst’s research suggests that people aren’t interested in buying more products or seeking more brands. They aren’t seeking more advertising. What they DO look for is engagement in activities that are meaningful to them. They want to find meaning. Once you understand what people find meaningful, then you can create brands that help fulfill these needs. This is the mission of Dr. Probst’s book. Connected, But Lonelier Than Ever The more connected we are to technology, the more lonely consumers feel, Dr. Probst has discovered. In a world of social media connectedness, this seems counter-intuitive. Technology can keep us in touch with our friends and family on the other side of the world, but conversely, that doesn’t necessarily help build community close to us. People are losing the ability to create connections in the real world. It is said that millennials have to educated on how to connect and socialize with people in real life, due to the early and constant exposure to technology that often can be a substitute for real-life relationships. Social Media Influencers A social media influencer is an individual who uses a variety of social media platforms to influence their audience by expressing their own opinions regarding specific brands, products, and celebrities. They may be a blogger, product reviewer, industry expert, or a trusted source of information but their goal is to build relationships in order to impact others’ thinking. The strength of a social media influencer is to reduce the social distance between them and the audience. Where celebrities are concerned, many of them have influencers to create content for them that make them seem more relatable and impactful but tend to engage with too many brands. The shortcoming is that you might like their work as a celebrity but you can’t closely relate to them due to alliances with brands that don’t align with your own personal values. In this sense, influencers can be misleading and deceptive to both their audience and their marketers, as they build the illusion that they’re closer to their audience than they really are. A Brand That "Gets" Consumers Listen in as Dr. Probst expounds on one of the brands that understand what consumers want, and why! He and Sima also chat about how “imperfect is perfect”,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, and the sponsor of this series on data quality, and Vedant Misra, an engineer who is managing the reasoning algorithm team at OpenAI, join Sima to deliberate on AI, looking at its evolution, breaking down some of the terminology, delving into the conceptual themes around AI and how it might impact or help improve data quality. OpenAI is a research laboratory based in San Francisco, California, whose mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—meaning highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity. OpenAI attempts to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider their mission fulfilled if their work aids others to achieve this outcome. OpenAI is governed by the board of OpenAI Nonprofit, which consists of both OpenAI LP employees and non-employees. Their investors include Microsoft, Reid Hoffman’s charitable foundation, and Khosla Ventures. Safety in Artificial Intelligence The dystopian, apocalyptic kill-a-robot-scenario is a bit farfetched in the realm of AI safety. The only way this situation would occur is if we built a system that is so amazing that we trust it implicitly for a long, long time. Engineered into our society, it could rise up against us because it decides it’s the right thing for “it” to do. So although it’s possible that we could end up in that kind of world, it seems like a concern that is so much further off than immediate safety concerns. More immediate safety concerns involve the ways that a variety of agents are using artificial intelligence, even today. One example includes the application of machine vision and perception systems to surveillance, and is of utmost concern from a civil rights perspective. There are state actors and governments that are using this technology already in a broad-based and expansive way. There are also concerns about the disruption of the labor market, which is also safe in a different way in terms of making sure that our society can adapt to this technology and that the way that we’re deploying it is not disruptive to what we all think should be happening. Massive unemployment where people could not support their families would not be desirable. Another critical thought in safety in AI is the way we train the systems. They ultimately learn from data, which means the information that goes in is numbers, and what comes out is numbers. What they learn is ultimately represented in the space of math and it’s not always the case that the math these systems have learned maps onto the values and things that we want them to learn. It’s important to think about how we can get the math to align more closely with what we actually want these systems to learn. AI's Evolution Neural networks have been some of the most successful phenomenon over the last decade or so. This field kicked off sometime in the early 1950’s at a darkness conference focused on understanding artificial intelligence. This turned into a very long brainstorming session where some of the biggest thought-leaders in the field ended up making major and influential contributions. They laid the groundwork for much of the theory and advancements that came later. Since the 1950’s, excitement about artificial intelligence has blown up again, waned again, and now we’re in this resurgence for a third time. Whenever limitations in technology are discovered, interest has historically waned until progress is made. Vedant covers the 1960’s through the 1980s, where serious advancement was seen, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that people started applying neural networks for real problems, such as image recognition, and in the early 2000s, for speech. In the past 10-15 years, is when we’ve seen a major resurgence of this technique, of deep learning, in particular. This paradigm of neural networks can work very well if you put them in the right setting,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this continuation of a special series on data quality, you’ll hear different perspectives from other industries regarding market research and the analytics industry. This episode, Sima chats with Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, and the sponsor of this series on data quality, and Bill Reinstein, who is CEO and CTO of MedData Group. Bill is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of expertise building interactive media and technology-enabled service organizations. Bill has built MedData Group into the leading provider of healthcare professional data for digital marketing From Direct Email Marketer to Aggregator of HCP Data MedData Group offers extensive demographics, firmographics, clinical behavior, and full contact data including email and digital IDs to support multi-channel marketing outreach. It also creates custom programs for vendors seeking program registrations, leads and/or web site traffic from its databases of over 4.2 million healthcare professionals. Originally Bill’s company had a product that was focused on email direct marketing for the healthcare segment, specifically targeting healthcare professionals. As noted by Bill, HCP’s include physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and a wide range of allied health professionals, such as psychologists and chiropractors. His company evolved into a data-licenser and data provider extending beyond the performance-based marketing business. A few years ago, MedData Group became one of the largest aggregators of healthcare professional data and they realized they had an opportunity in the digital marketing (also known as “omnichannel”) space, leveraging that very large scale of offline data. Through some of their proprietary processes, they were able to link that data to what are called online identities, in a privacy-safe way. MedData Group’s customers are primarily pharmaceutical brands and their associated advertising agencies, and they are able to target digital advertising through different channels. Public Domain Data The large volume of MedData Group’s data is in the public domain, or what is better known as the “quasi-public domain”. Healthcare differs from other professional segments because of the nature of the services that they provide. Every healthcare professional has to be licensed at both the state level and at the federal level, and they all have a common identifier (also known as a “key”), and that’s the National Provider Identifier or NPI. This identifier remains with them through the bulk of their career. Due to certain types of federal legislation such as the Sunshine Act, and in terms of transparency of what drugs the HCP’s provide and what diagnoses they’ve made when it’s related to federal reimbursement programs, for example, this information is out there. It’s not necessarily easy to find nor is it easy to aggregate, but that’s not what makes this data valuable. Rather, it’s the value-add that the company provides that makes the aggregation of structure and normalization valuable. Measuring Data Quality It’s necessary to bifurcate and look at the data in different buckets, Bill explains. At the top level, the dividing line is whether it’s offline data or online data. Starting in the offline space, there are around 100 input sources of data from every state-licensed database and multiple federal-level databases of information, as well as commercial data that MedData Group licenses that come from medical claims data. This medical claims data is at the patient level but is HIPAA protected in a non-identifying kind of way. On the front end, it starts with the various ETL (extract, transform, and load) processes that the data management team examines by automated scripting in the platforms that they use. The scripting looks for anomalies and then moves to more demographic data. In addition to automated review, there is a team of researchers that are responsible for quality checking some of this data for ac...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this special series on data quality, you’ll hear different perspectives from other industries regarding market research and the analytics industry. Today, Sima sits down with Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, and the sponsor of this series on data quality, and Anders Ekman, President of V12. Combining Data and Technology to Deliver Marketing Outcomes V12 is a company that combines data and technology to deliver marketing outcomes for clients. V12 originally started life as a data quality software company and have grown as data has grown and customer engagement has become more complex, into what they are today: a company that uses much more data and many more technologies that, in part, solve the complex interactions that consumers have with businesses. V12 provides a whole range of products and services that help clients manage their own client or customer relationships. One place that happens is in V12’s Velocity Customer Data Platform (“CDP”) where clients have an omnichannel customer-view around their customers and how they can best monetize the relationship while serving them well. And, since prospecting is as important as managing customer relationships, the CDP is evolving towards a more “Prospect Data Platform”. Not only does this enable V12’s clients to get that omnichannel view of their own customers as previously mentioned, but it provides them with a view of who their next best prospects are. All of this is topped off by the V12 Signals, which is a data product that telegraphs consumer intent. V12 harnesses behavioral data from mobile location and online browsing and connects that to actual people with names and addresses. All of this puts a fine point on data quality. The Changing Marketplace Having started out as a data quality software company that sold mostly to technology professionals, V12 has experienced growth organically and via acquisition over the last 5 or 6 year period. What is seen now is marketers continuing to take over the technology stack that is related to marketing. They are much more focused on data, the quality of that data, and how data and technology mesh to deliver the outcome. Not only have the sets of data changed and the technology has changed, but the clients have started to change, as well. Anders points out that although IT is most definitely still involved, marketers have really stepped up and become much more technology-literate and keyed in to the issues of data quality and addressability over the last few years. Evolving Platforms In the behavioral data business, there are billions of interactions coming at you all at once. In order to keep up with this, platforms have had to evolve into a much more automated “read and react” kind of mode. Read and react is “if we see a behavior like this, then the customer journey needs to be like that”. This has replaced the “batch and blast”, which identified a target audience and communicated with them en masse through direct channels. Audiences are now getting down to the atomic level. It’s that one person you have to manage that experience for. How Clients Measure Data Quality Less than ten years ago, the unit of measure was basic name and address and simple attribute-matching. Those kinds of measures were the indicators of initial quality and then you put it out on the market via mail. If you received a lot of return mail, then you knew you had a problem. Now, with omnichannel and digital data, it’s really easy to lose the thread on quality. If you’re merging together digital datasets that are billions of records, especially given the opaque nature of the digital advertising eco-system and fraud, it’s often very hard to understand. V12’s safe haven, as well as their clients’ safe haven, is marketing effectiveness and return on marketing investment, as well as the operational metrics (such as whether datasets matched, did emails bounce, did mail get returned, etc.).…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this special series on data quality, you’ll hear different perspectives from other industries regarding market research and the analytics industry. Sima chats with Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, and the sponsor of this series on data quality, and Matt Staudt, CEO of Venture Development Center. Bringing Traditional and Alternative Assets to the Marketplace Venture Development Center, started in 1996, is an organization that works in the big data market space, primarily with traditional data and alternative data. They have assembled 190 relationships with organizations that have the traditional and alternative assets and Venture DC looks to bring these assets to the marketplace that they’ve created where buyers of data can be traditional players themselves. They can be brands or professional service organizations, and Venture DC assists with helping them to understand these assets and how they might be used in particular use cases, thereby creating licensing events and making these matches. Traditional and Alternative Data as Transformational From the perspective of Venture DC, traditional data is the kind that has been around for 30 years. In other words, demographic dataset, which typically consists of a mailing address, business name, business sector, contact name, and email address. Matt defines alternative data as the behavioral activities, such as signal data, geolocation, search, transactional, and crowdsource. The amount of data Venture DC represents in the marketplace is tremendous. They have access to transactional data files that cover the spectrum of all types of activities, and are terabytes in size. The traditional models can be incredibly enhanced by looking at the alternative behavioral activities. Looking at models isn’t a question of accuracy but the timeliness of it. The behavioral and signal aspects is immediate and when you have access to it you can react quickly. There are privacy compliance concerns when you start using it but using it properly can be transformative. Representative Criteria and Measuring Quality In order for Venture DC to represent an organization, there are 3 factors at play: (1) Compliance. The organization needs to be in a position where the data they’re getting is being collected in a compliant fashion. (2) Historical data. Is it represented there? People may have great data that they’re collecting but if they don’t have some sort of history associated with it, then it’s hard to test. (3) The future. Are they going to be able to collect this data for the foreseeable future? They don’t want to represent any file where a potential buying entity within their portfolio utilizes the data and then all of a sudden, it’s no longer available. One of the biggest challenges is pricing, which depends on unique data points of value and what kind of use-cases it can be used in. How unique is it? Are there data points of value within the dataset that are compelling, and if they are, how unique are they? How do they measure up against other things that are represented in the marketplace? The Impact of Privacy Issues Matt discusses how many companies have ignored privacy issues, the ensuing lawsuits, CCPA, and more. Sima suggests that there’s a positive side to this, however, in that it makes everybody rise and clears the bad actors out of the system. There needs to be a country-wide level of legislation because complying with all the nuances that exist state to state poses a challenge. _______________________________ Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review! This 4 part series is sponsored by Imperium.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima joins some of her peers on a panel discussion as it relates to M&A trends, what’s going on in the industry, and some insights for founders, as they consider their alternatives for the future. In light of the recent acquisitions for staggering amounts of money, such as SAP acquiring Qualtrics for $8B, Tableau being acquired by Salesforce for $17B, and Bain Capital acquiring 60% of Kantar, today’s show will focus on key drivers of investment and M&A activity in market research. Listen in to this mashup, as they help to de-mystify the big questions and considerations that founders often have. Global Market Report from Esomar Congress The GMR is a wonderful market trend report that Esomar Congress publishes each year. It is free for members and can be purchased on their website for non-members. The first place Kristin Luck, Advisor at Oberon Securities and host of this panel, flips to is the helpful chart that shows where industry growth is coming from. This chart is always located around pages 32 or 33, and this year you can find it on page 33. Kristin finds it especially interesting this year because, for the first time ever, traditionally-defined market research is in decline globally by .3% over the last year. The growth of the industry is coming from verticals like surveys software, social media monitoring, consulting firm research, IT telecom research, and syndicated research. Investments and incoming money are going more towards these tech-centric verticals. What Does This Growth and Monetization Ability Mean for Traditional, Full-Service Research Firms? Panel Member Sima Vasa, Founder of Paradigm Sample and Advisor of M&A services at Oberon Securities, takes the lead on addressing the answer to this question. It will be challenging for traditional market research companies because of new methodology. As a founder, you must know what you want. You can’t be reactive. It’s imperative to understand your goals and put together a plan for proactive implementation. Although it may be tough, Sima feels there are still opportunities to stay in the game and partner with other companies to specialize. She provides some examples of companies that are doing very well providing vertical specialization and suggests other options for traditional, full-service companies. Is There Space for Research Generalists? Lisa Courtade, Executive Director and Global Consumer Insights at Merck and new Chairperson for the Insights Association, tackles this question. Lisa thinks that the answer lies in understanding the needs and the problems that you have today that you’re trying to solve. Traditional research generalists are a shrinking pool. You’re looking for that full complement, that missing piece. Often that missing piece is a new start-up or an agency that specializes in an emerging area. Industry Trends and the Impact of M&A Activity Sören Haefcke, Vice President of Bain Capital, addresses this topic. What the traditional players need to do is to adopt some of the methodologies out there in order to be able to compete fully in the marketplace, which is his perspective. One of the great things about technology is that it’s very accessible to anybody. Great customer access, great customer understanding, and a great understanding of what the data means are things that are very hard to replicate in many cases. Sören predicts that bringing together a traditional approach with a more tech-driven approach is the way the industry will go in the long run. Advice for Founders Around Positioning Your Firm for Funding Kristof De Wulf, Co-Founder & CEO of InSites Consulting, provides direction on this matter. First and foremost, it is important to make sure that you are ready. As Kristof explains, “ready” involves many considerations: being mentally ready, making sure that everyone is aligned to do this, that it is the best model going forward, do you need private equity money,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 SampleCon 2020 | Ep. 82 24:49
Sima has a special treat in store for today’s show. As Chair of SampleCon, she and the other Board Members have been knee-deep in planning for the 2020 conference to ensure its continued success. She will be chatting with some of the board for a peek as to what’s coming and the importance it holds for each member. For Sima, she loves that there’s no other conference that focuses specifically on online data collection and sampling and she finds that refreshing. Additionally, the conference is a way to influence, shape and collaborate with other leaders to share best practices and network with other people. Representing the Buyer Community Corey Julseth, Managing Director of Sample Strategy at J.D. Power weighs in with his opinion as the only buyer of sample on the board. Corey thinks sellers are very sophisticated in their approach, leveraging marketplaces and programmatic, but the buyers are somewhat lagging, and this is a great opportunity to represent the buyer community in the SampleCon arena. At J.D. Powers, Corey finds it necessary to stitch together many suppliers to support a single syndicated study, so it becomes really challenging from a purchasing standpoint. They’re looking to evolve that landscape and SampleCon provides a venue and forum to collaborate with others who do that very well. Corey appreciates that there’s going to be a healthy mix of familiar topics and a fresh line-up of innovative speakers. Another great aspect he’s looking forward to is the networking because SampleCon is a well-attended conference across a diverse audience of buyers and sellers. He desires two takeaways for the attendees, and the first is an exposure and opportunity to participate with the latest and greatest around sampling innovation, as this conference is very unique in that it focuses on only sampling. Second, Corey wants people to have fun networking and collaborating with their peers in the industry. Community of Like-Minded Folks Sima hears from Nancy Brigham, SVP of Global Head of Sampling at Ipsos Interactive Services. It is both Ipsos’s and her own personal belief that as an industry leader they need to help drive the industry forward and help shape the direction that it's going. SampleCon provides that platform to drive that change and gives them a community of like-minded folks who have the same passion and commitment to sample. Not only does it benefit their clients and company, but it also benefits the industry as a whole. One of the things Nancy likes about SampleCon is suggested in its name: sample conversation. With frank, transparent conversation about sample across many different climes and types of industry stakeholders, the bar is raised for all of them: buyers, sellers, and respondents. Nancy shares that she is most excited about the focus on new, innovative approaches in sample and data collection as it relates to the respondent. A lot of what is happening now in automation benefits respondents directly in various ways. The more we can reduce the cognitive load on respondents the better data will be. Nancy encourages frank conversations with fellow attendees because if someone has an issue or question there’s a very good chance someone else does, too so this is one way that networking can be valuable. There’s a finite pool of respondents and they all draw from the same pool. Content on Hispanic and Minority Sample Mario Carrasco, Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow shares the two main reasons he is attracted to SampleCon. His entry into market research was in the sample space, and at the time there wasn’t any industry conference based on sample, which was something that he had become passionate about. Additionally, SampleCon since early on has been one of the few conferences in the market research industry that has really made a consistent effort each year to include content on Hispanic and minority sample reaching minority audiences in the US.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima and Menaka Gopinath, Lead of Social Intelligence and Communities at Ipsos, sit down to discuss the use of social media in social intelligence to help answer business questions. Opposite Ends of the Spectrum As the market has matured with social intelligence, there’s a lot of amazing things happening in the social intelligence realm for insights, but it’s not being leveraged as broadly it could be. On the flip side, the people who are using social listening tools across the board in marketing and digital functions probably could be getting a lot more insight out of it. The data is already available, but there are so many ways to use it more strategically. Defining Social Intelligence This can be many things to many people, but from the perspective of Ipsos, it’s about leveraging the datasets for insights. From a classic research sense, most clients are using a social listening tool and at the baseline, they are listening to what people are saying about their brand and maybe listening to their core competitive set. From the purposes of Ipsos, this is not necessarily social intelligence, as much as it is social listening, which is still an important aspect of marketing. How one uses the dataset to address a core set of business objectives from an insights perspective is at the heart of social intelligence. Social Intelligence and Use Cases Some of the core areas where a lot of Ipsos’ work is done is in market understanding and category landscape. Understanding what your category looks like can be a difficult question to answer these days, so what social data can provide from a very consumer-centric perspective is how people are talking about the “need” or the “occasion”. You don’t have to start from the perspective of brands. This is a different way of approaching market landscape work. Cultural trends and forecasting and foresight against what is bubbling up and what is worth focusing on versus what might just be a flash in the pan is another area where Ipsos is using social intelligence a lot. Approach in Market Engagement In the context of market landscape, there are different ways of approach, as Menage explains in a high-level overview. This is ultimately driven by what consumers are organically saying about these brands in the social conversation. Imagery is a critical part of the analysis, and video is an emerging area in terms of the technology capabilities for analyzing, but in terms of what is done with it is gaining in importance. Contextual research is always presented along with custom research to help provide clients with a bigger picture of what the data represents. Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com Connect with Menaka: LinkedIn Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
If you’re a Founder or CEO of a company that is looking to scale their business, this episode provides some great insight and advice. Steve August joins Sima on today’s show, which serves as a great refresher course on things that we might already know. Listen in for timely reminders on how to really consider the next steps for your business! Steve is the Founder and CEO of Steve August Coaching. Scaling Businesses in the Market Research Space For more than 15 years, Steve has been in the market research space and takes what he’s learned to help business founders and owners scale beyond what they’re able to imagine. Steve’s method is to examine, break down, and understand what’s going on in the business and the metaphysical life of the owner, then help the owner decide what changes need to be made, and the steps needed to implement them. Although Steve’s career paths previously focused on the creative application of technology, he entered the market research space quite by accident by way of his wife, as he explains. First Time Founder Journey Steve discusses the family business in which he started out as the marketing and tech guy. As blogs started making their way onto the web, he and his wife stumbled upon a shift that changed the whole dynamic of their business. Up until this time, online qualitative research was basically replicating focus groups in online space. Steve and his wife wanted something more: to take advantage of that opportunity to access those peoples’ experiences so that they had a very ethnographic view of it. Once they started using this and speaking about it, it drew attention and others wanted to try it. This led to the development of the first product version in 2007. Lessons in Selling Building a great business was not the same as building a great product, as Steve soon found out. He would soon discover what his strengths and challenges were as a leader. In 2014, the product was acquired by FocusVision. FocusVision would later package it up with other products and resell it. Steve got to experience two exits due to his options: the first exit was as the Founder, and the second exit was as part of the Management Team. The lessons that came out of these negotiations, as well as his being part of a team negotiating the acquisition of other companies, is how he got into coaching. After he left FocusVision in 2017, people started asking him for his perspective on business matters, and he realized he had valuable information to offer. Core Stories Your core story is what drives the proverbial bus. These are the ideas in our heads that say we’re not worthy, or we’re imposters or any other negative mental chatter that might have served to protect us in past scenarios, but now prevent us from moving forward. When you’re leading the company, you have to change your core story in order to change the trajectory of your company. You can’t have a path, the fundamentals, the vision, the right team, the right processes, and a plan of execution until you have clarity of yourself. Steve and Sima discuss scenarios where core stories can make us stumble, and ways to recover. Steve's Thoughts on Exits 1. Either be for sale or don’t be for sale. 2. You’re worth pretty much what the market says you’re worth, and the leverage you have. The Importance of Taking Time Everything is reactionary, putting out a fire. You have to get to a point where you can get perspective of your own situation, and that means getting a bit outside of your own situation. Going off-line for a time, taking time to meditate, or getting away, such as to Steve’s Digital Detox Retreat, gets you away from day-to-day thinking and helps you change the way you think and be more receptive to potential solutions. Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com Connect with Steve: LinkedIn Twitter…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima brings something a little different on today’s podcast, and that is her perspective on how we think about and accept new approaches and methodologies in the industry. Believe it or not, words DO matter, as you will soon discover! Something Shiny We’ve all lived through the introduction of new and exciting technology. Our first thoughts are typically along the lines of: “What is that? How do you do that? What are its implications as it relates to something new in the industry?” The success or failure of market acceptance of new technology or methodology is determined by us, both as an individual and as a company. The words we speak can be incredibly polarizing, and people sometimes make provocative statements just to encourage the discussion and ensuing fallout. This is divisive enough to create serious tension among us. In some, it creates anxiety and in others, it can create a mental block with just not wanting to think about it, because things will eventually settle down. Separating Myths from Truths Many years ago, it was thought that all surveys would only be taken on a mobile device but they are taken across multiple platforms in reality. At one point in time, social analytics was going to replace all traditional brand tracking. Also not true. Social analytics is a crucial component to understanding the impact of a brand. Another blanket assertion is that big data is going to challenge (or even replace) traditional research. We do not yet know if this one is true or not. Methodology Considerations In the industry, there’s a lot of buzz about research and its fit in the world of technology, machine learning, automation and big data. What’s the solution that a company might be offering? And who is it targeted to? What decisions are they trying to make? Sima raises some thought-provoking questions that beg us, as leaders, to take responsibility in encouraging understanding and rationalization when it comes to the pain points that we’re trying to serve within the client organization. Words matter. Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! Email: Sima@infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s show, Sima introduces Andrea Zurbriggen, the Strategic Sourcing Manager of Escalent, and Katie Egge from Paradigm Sample. Listen in to discover the shades of grey that occur between a client and partner relationship. The Approach Makes the Difference Andrea manages vendors of all types: technology platform, sample supplier, or an executive-level recruiter or moderator. It’s her job to find the right source for each particular type of job that comes up. As a buyer of sample, Andrea appreciated Katie’s initial approach of questions that enabled Katie’s understanding of Escalent, of Andrea, and of her specific business needs. Others have approached her with panel books, or an overview of their programming and analytics. This, however, is information that can easily be learned by googling the company’s website, so it's crucial to have conversations about what you do, what your company specializes in, and how you can best support them during the initial courting-calls. Courting Calls and Red Flags Always give the dignity of a response, even if you can tell it’s something you wouldn’t utilize or from an unreliable source. Consider a quick response explaining that you’re not currently looking to expand your vendor network but will save their number in case something changes in the future. Keep yourself open to learning about new sources, though, because you never know what’s going to come around in the industry, as it is constantly changing. Andrea discusses what she considers “red flags” from vendors, such as canned emails with bad grammar, companies that have too many “Z’s” in their names, sloppy websites, and an initial email or call that claims their company can “do it all”. Transparency on Outsourcing Nobody can do it all, and that is okay! Each company has its specialties and expertise. What is not okay is pitching yourself as a “do-it-all” because buyers already know that you’re outsourcing much of it. Always be specific in how you are able to meet a client's needs and objectives. Packaging other company's assets and selling it as your own is shady. Curtain Call The curtain between the “client" and the “panel source” needs to go, says Andrea. She wants to be able to peek behind the proverbial curtain and understand your processes and protocols, who you’re partnering with, and why. Her clients have started to ask really great questions about where all of these people are coming from, and that never used to be a question. As someone who manages the panel vendors that she partners with, Andrea has to be able to give them very clear-cut answers. It’s sometimes difficult to get answers from certain companies. There are some companies, however, that are really strong about communicating those processes and sharing the sources they’re using and why. It’s fine if you have a reason for utilizing a certain source for a certain population as long as she can clearly communicate to the parties involved why those sources are being used. Double-Edged Sword Katie explains the reasons why some companies are not as transparent concerning the revealing of sources as others. As she relates, it is a double-edged sword. The first reason is if you are a sample provider and that is your primary asset, your partner network is then an extension of your asset, and there’s a fear that your client will simply go to your partners directly to cut costs. The second reason is that there may actually be something shady going on behind the scenes and they don’t want to disclose it. End Client Engagement Andrea has observed that end clients are starting to get involved in understanding sourcing and sample. They are looking at the entire research process that drives the deliverable insights. This shows investment in the process and commitment to quality. The end client is interested in learning how panels are created and how they’re cared for. Katie considers this increase in engagement by the end clients a very g...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Charlie Allieri, CEO of Imperium, joins Sima on today’s show to discuss data quality in the market research space. Imperium offers a full suite of solutions, but their goal is to help customers with data quality issues that they’re dealing with. Data quality in the market research space usually aligns with people and machines who are intentionally providing bad data (also known as fraud). A Device Solution RelevantID® is a solution that focuses on the device, ensuring that the device isn’t coming back multiple times trying to take a survey. This involves digital fingerprinting and de-duping and represents the first level of defense. On top of this, there are other indicators and data points that can be used to triangulate in order to get a more precise determination on whether that person is really fraudulent or not. Measuring the Bad and the Good The Verity® service they offer has two parts: the first part is making sure the respondents are not bad, and the second part is verifying the respondents are good. “Fraudsters have an incentive to misbehave, and the barrier to technology to do these things are getting lower and lower.” There are behaviors around the community that they see in their data. That’s the first solution they were able to create by mining all the data that they have access to, and seeing behaviors across all of their customers and being able to indicate if a respondent’s quality is not going to be very good or it’s outright fraud. Contextual Awareness Another Imperium solution involves analyzing the behaviors in open-end responses: Are they speeding through? Are they cutting and pasting? And the latest contextual awareness: Does that answer actually apply to the question being answered? “The ability to deliver value within that cost requirement is key to this market.” Traditionally, humans would be used to look at all the responses, but Imperium can look at the responses in real-time and kick it out, or give a score to customers that indicate they should not allow that data to get into their systems. Patterns in Data One of the biggest indicators of somebody’s next behavior is their past behavior. Being able to mine data to find behaviors and patterns of behaviors allow the creation of models that are predictive of bad data, or indicative of an expected outcome. “I think there’s an exorbitant interest rate on bad data once it gets into your systems, and the longer it sits there, the more it costs you.” The most useable solution is an IP Blacklist, and this is shared across all customers. Fascinating Data Insight Charlie shares an interesting tidbit that has been gleaned from Imperium’s huge repository of data: From a contextual nature, the words “hope” and “joy” are two of the most popular words used. Quick links to connect with Charlie Allieri: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Multi-cultural research, strategy, and understanding is what Sima and Mario X. Carrasco, Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research, chat about on today’s podcast. Mario worked in the early days of digital marketing, building online communities for MSN Latino, and didn’t know what a research panel was until researching it for a job interview for a closer-to-home job. He got his start in market research building what became the first national representative panels at Garcia Research. As research numbers started pointing to the US becoming a minority-majority country in the near future, Mario realized there was a need for a market research company to be focused on multi-cultural consumers, and this is how his ThinkNow Research came about. Mario is also the newest Board Member to join the SampleCon team! Hispanic Market Research, Then and Now In the early days of market research, particularly Hispanic research, companies were hesitant to use emerging technologies. Back then it was online, and now it’s mobile. Mario has since learned that multi-cultural consumers, especially Hispanic consumers, are super tech-savvy, and applying all these innovative technologies to multi-cultural consumers has been his company’s ethos. Defining Multi-Culture At the basic level of a potentially contentious conversation, it is consumers who are not non-Hispanic white, and traditionally that segmented into Hispanic, African American, and Asian, which are the largest cohorts of multi-cultural consumers in the US. These 3 groups comprise 40% of the US population and are expected to grow. As a nation, non-Hispanic white birth numbers are down, and what drives the increase in multi-cultural population growth is US Hispanic births and Asian immigration. “If I take an acculturation algorithm, it’s gonna say that I’m extremely acculturated.” As the country is changing demographically, ThinkNow Research is dedicated to helping other companies interpret these fundamental changes from a marketing and purchasing standpoint. Misconception of Acculturation It’s interesting to see which cultural values that 1st and 2nd gen Latinos and Asians pick and choose. There’s a misconception in acculturation in the marketing industry that the longer you’re in the US, the more “American” you become as if it’s a linear model. “You never really think about acculturation until you have to form a human being and guide them through the process.” Yes, you are integrating some aspects of the culture, but there are some things about your home culture (or your parent's or grandparent's culture) that are retained over time. It’s more like a bi-dimensionality that is happening. Bi-Dimensionality Identity Measure Mario’s company has done some work for The Journal for Cultural Marketing, where they developed a Bi-dimensional Identity Measure. It essentially combines two scales, the American Identity Measure and the Ethnic Identity Measure. There are 15 total questions, and what they have discovered is that depending on your ethnicity, you’re going to be scoring differently across these different measures, as opposed to acculturation which assumes a linear progression the longer you’re in the US. “I think one of the things that rips right through culture is social media.” We should really be looking at what aspects of culture we’re retaining, in terms of home culture and what aspects we’re integrating from American culture. The Do's and Don't of Multi-Cultural Marketing Don’t generalize. “I think for me, personally, what I’ve realized about social media and the internet, in general, is that I’m actually able to connect with my culture in a way that I didn’t, pre-internet.” Do your research beforehand, figure out who your consumer is and delve even deeper by defining that consumer within a subset. Quick links to connect with Mario X. Carrasco: Twitter LinkedIn Think Now Twitter Think Now LinkedIn Think Now Facebook…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Kevin Lonnie, CEO of KL Communications, joins Sima in today’s podcast to talk about innovation. Kevin entered Rutgers College of Engineering then decided he didn’t want to be an engineer and switched to Business and Psychology. From there, he took a course in Market Research and realized he’d stumbled on to a profession that involved both disciplines of Business and Psychology. He’s been in Market Research since leaving college and started KL Communications in 1996. Online communities and panels have been their bread and butter for the last 20 years but they are more recently focusing on customer centricity as it relates to product innovation, and are currently building new tools to help make that happen. The Growth of Online Communities When you combine adjacent industries to traditional market research, the online communities space and quasi-online vs. communities and quals seems to be a segment that’s growing and taking hold for many brands. “One of the things we look to do is establish the value proposition in the community at the beginning. We look to do that both from the participant’s point of view but also from the client’s perspective.” Online communities have been growing because it’s a cost-effective infrastructure for an organization to be able to do a lot of their qual work. An organization can have 24/7 infrastructure and when you do the cross-comparisons of what it would take to do these as ad-hoc projects as opposed to running it through the community and the panel, it is this cost-effectiveness that is one of the reasons they have been gaining more acceptance. Communities as an Internal Brand Within client organizations, there’s dedication to ensure that communities are leveraged on a consistent basis on the brand side. “We try to focus on some strategic learning, as well. I think that helps make it more longitudinal and the organizations are not just simply being used for tactical, nice-to-know things.” Having an internal champion pointing out the potential and the benefits of the community and the ability to do things really quickly is often of great interest to potential clients. Quarterly in-person presentations are just one best practice that KL Communications advocates in promoting an online community as a brand. Ensuring a Great Experience Setting up an intrinsic and extrinsic incentive system are ways to be sensitive to participants' needs. “It’s one thing to say you’re customer-centric and you’re willing to embrace innovation, but it’s hard to break down the barriers to really let your customers participate and to allow for innovation to take place.” Reinforce to the participant that the brand that they’re a community member of truly values what they have to say, and share with them how their input is making a difference in terms of the direction that the brand is going. They are, in effect, customer advisors. CrowdWeaving® CrowdWeaving® came about due to the desire to be customer-centric and engaging customers at the inception of the product innovation process and was somewhat inspired by the wisdom of crowds and crowdsourcing. “The wisdom of crowds really comes from the combined aggregate of individuals, rather from them talking together.” The idea behind CrowdWeaving® is to flip the relationship from the customer to where they’re always in a reactive stage to where they actually start off at the ideation process, right from the inception of the business challenge. This results in unmet needs becoming apparent, and therefore becomes the inspiration to the internal creatives and hopefully gets them at a better starting point. Quick links to connect with Kevin Lonnie: Twitter LinkedIn Email Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Mike Bloxham joins Sima in a discussion involving consumer data, consumer behavior, viewer perceptions of video content at an emotional level, and how this is used. Mike is the Senior Vice-President of The Global Media and Entertainment Division at Magid. He is involved in the development of different services and products that get taken out to the market place, and liaison and delivery around different types of projects, such as qualitative, quantitative, development issues, or understanding performance of particular products in the market place The State of Media Purchasing There’s a large-scale move towards making use of data. We’ve gained use to more granular data as a result of technology, with a better ability to integrate different datasets. This has enabled us to look across broader spans of data to gain deeper insights about consumers, about behavior, and about how the media will function with regard to consumer direction and engagement, which is incredibly important. Some think, however, that the pendulum has swung towards the opportunity that data represents, a little too fast and a little too far, and somewhat at the expense of the insights side of the business. "Emotional" DNA It’s imperative to address the human side of why people behave the way they do, both why they engage or why they do not engage, with the different offerings available to them. If this is not done, you’re not getting the fullest picture. EmotionalDNA® is a product has been on the market for about five years and can be accessed on a syndicated basis, as well as on a custom basis. It’s a large-scale, systematic, quantitative assessment of viewer perceptions of video content at an emotional level. It’s a viewer-derived portrait of the emotional tonality of the video lens. Measuring Viewer Engagement Magid spent 18 months in the development of EmotionalDNA® before it became available on the market place. During that process, Magid arrived at 36 key attributes, or descriptors, that people use. Their research is still ongoing and utilizes around 1,000 people a week, who are not from the same town. Over the course of a year, they have research from over 50,000 people. There are currently over 3,500 shows in the dataset and more than 200 networks and platforms. At the core of the exercise, they ask people about seven shows that they have watched in the last several months, and ask one key question: “Out of the following 36 key attributes, or descriptors, which of these terms would you use to describe the show?” The viewer can choose as many terms as they would like, which are then used to conduct a factor analysis. Advertising and Changing Behaviors Horizon Media was the first agency to buy into the EmotionalDNA® product, and have integrated it into many of their planning and buying procedures. Mike discusses one metric within the product, intentionality, and how Horizon Media might it use it as a proxy for engagement. He goes on to say that some advertisers are driven by engagement, and so the intentionality score becomes something which is indicative of that. An overview of different metrics and different TV shows provides a fascinating glimpse as to how the underlying power of television, and of video, actually impacts audiences. That’s what TV and advertising is all about: moving audiences. Quick links to connect with Mike Bloxham: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 The Use of Technology and Data to Mitigate Fraud with Steve Danziger, Vignesh Krishnan and Alex Leger| Ep. 73 32:27
Sima listens in today as Steve Danziger interviews Vignesh Krishnan and Alex Leger, and their discussion about how technology involves our interactions in data quality and respondents’ experience, and how the technology discussion shapes our agenda going forward. Steve Danziger is Executive Director of Paradigm Innovation Labs, which gives us the marriage of technology and operations, and other avenues throughout the company. Vignesh Krishnan is the CEO and Founder of SampleChain, LLC, a software company focusing on quality and fraud management issues and market research. Alex Leger is the SVP of Product at Market Cube, which helps out on things like technology sample and the like. Technological Advancements Speed The speed of our industry’s ability to adapt to advancements in technology is a lot quicker than we give it credit for. Vignesh notes that as recently as 6 years ago, he does not recall any companies doing API deliveries for his company. Today, over 98% are being delivered by API. He further observes that almost 100% of the companies with which he’s familiar is at least investigating machine learning in some form, at the least using a big database to manage high volumes of data. Although not as quick to adapt as ag-tech or finance, Vignesh believes that the technology industry is its own worst critic, and is still ahead of other industries in terms of the speed of embracing advancements. The technology industry may not have the innovation or technology budgets of the ag-tech and finance industries, but being aware of these factors can go a long way. The Rise of Big-Data, Online Mobile Survey Data As the industry evolves, Vignesh stresses that we must be cognizant of the fact that we are literally sitting on a gold mine. Other large data companies might be able to tell you what happened up until this moment, whereas we can ask intent questions, such as ‘What is this group of respondents going to do tomorrow?’ or ‘What is their sentiment, going into the next month or quarter?’ We continue to make these investments and ensure that we’re gleaning all the data as it’s coming through. Industry models have lowered the barrier of entry into this space. We’re seeing more players interact and source respondents for this type of data collection. Steve feels that this puts more pressure on us to be more diligent about the impact that these sources can have on the quality of survey data. 8 Billion Dollars and Growing Out-of-home advertising is growing! It is the only traditional channel that is on the upswing, and there are a few reasons for that. People are moving around in urban environments in different ways than they have before, more people are living in big cities and taking mass transit, and they are being exposed to opportunities to the channel more than ever before. Data Quality and Different Types of Fraudsters There are basically two different types of fraudsters: those on the sample side, and those on the client-side, as Alex explains. They can be broadly grouped into unorganized individuals, who may provide fake answers to surveys that they’re taking, and organized humans, who may be operating out of other countries, behind VPN’s, or going deeper into the tech side of things so they can cheat. There is a third category that is not human, but bots; a machine doing all of the cheating. As Sima points out, the people who develop these bots benefit from getting all of the inside notes for populating surveys. From the client perspective, it’s just bad data that is produced in the system. Mitigating Duplication & Location - A Look Back Using CAPTCHA’S when building a survey program makes it very difficult for a bot to navigate, but it seems that the number, letters, and pictures are getting more difficult for even us humans to discern. Browser-based validation checks have been an industry standard. A digital fingerprint is when a user accesses a website,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
The President of Geopath, Kym Frank, sits down with Sima Vasa for today’s chat. They discuss the history of Geopath, how they use eye-tracking studies, and location data The Uniqueness of Geopath Geopath is a unique organization founded in 1933, as a joint venture between The Agency Trade Association, The Advertiser Trade Association, and the Out of Home Advertising Association. This organization was founded as the Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement Inc., and rebranded in 2016 as Geopath. Their core organizational mission is two-fold: to independently audit all out-of-home advertising inventory across the United States. For example, making sure a billboard is where it’s supposed to be, or checking the angle to oncoming traffic, or perhaps verifying whether it’s a digital or printed format. Goepath performs this work across all varieties of out-of-home advertising: billboards, benches, city kiosks, subways, bars, restaurants, airports, and malls. They currently audit about two million pieces of inventory across the country. to measure how many people are exposed to those pieces of inventory. Geopath just recently overhauled their measurement system to go along with their new name. This new system focuses more on the geographic pathways that people are taking across the country as they intersect with out-of-home advertising. Eye-Tracking Studies Eye-tracking studies are performed by Geopath to determine the probability of somebody making eye contact with an out-of-home advertisement. Although it may sound futuristic, it’s just a matter of putting eye-tracking goggles on people to help identify what drives them to make eye contact with an ad. It could be the size, the angle to oncoming traffic, many different factors that drive a person to make eye contact. Not everyone who walks or drives by an ad will look at that ad, so Geopath is trying to be responsible about the way that they’re measuring the channel. This will be helpful as out-of-home starts entering a more audience-based buying programmatic ecosystem, which is where we’re starting to migrate to, as a culture, today. 8 Billion Dollars and Growing Out-of-home advertising is growing! It is the only traditional channel that is on the upswing, and there’s a few reasons for that. People are moving around in urban environments in different ways than they have before, more people are living in big cities and taking mass transit, and they are being exposed to opportunities to the channel more than ever before. Harnessing the Power of Local Data Geopath is overhauling the measurement system. The core is built in aggregated and anonymized location data from mobile devices throughout the entire United States. Geopath also uses information from connected car dashboards, specifically speed information. This is useful because if you pass a digital billboard doing 60mph, you’re only able to see a certain number of ads on that billboard, which rotate every 8 seconds. But if you’re stuck in traffic or moving a lot slower, you will be able to see more of those rotations. These factors really go into play in Geopath’s measurement system, as they are harnessing new audience demographics, psychographics, and computer graphic information. The information provided better enables them to target the kinds of consumers that advertisers are looking for, and makes them super-relevant for the consumers as they’re passing by. The Buzz of Changing Behavior Geopath anticipates more opportunities to approach advertisers with good stories about the people that they’re trying to communicate with, and in ways that they’ve never been able to do that before. This should shift the way advertisers think about out-of-home, and it positions this channel as innovative and technologically savvy. As the oldest medium, it’s gaining a lot of buzz about how innovative the channel really is, and budgets are starting to migrate from other channels. Eventually,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
I’m happy to welcome Rebecca Brooks to the show. She’s the founder and CEO of Alter Agents, a full-service, strategic market research consultancy reimagining research in an era of shifting decision making. Rebecca has enjoyed an amazing trajectory to her successful career, and her work has never been more relevant and necessary than it is in today’s world. About Rebecca Rebecca fell into market research without intending to make it her career, but she quickly fell in love with this kind of work. Ironically, her college background was in primate behavior, which she touts as entirely applicable to her work today. How Alter Agents has matured Rebecca felt strongly that she shouldn’t have to choose between a career she loved and the family she wanted. She decided that she could run a great market research company and do it differently by focusing on her employees’ priorities. Ten years later, Alter Agents has had their best year ever, even in the time of COVID; they have hired seven new people in 2020. What makes Rebecca the proudest of her company is that she lives up to her commitment by creating a culture that employees want to join. Highlights of a study in friendship During the time of COVID, we are all trying to understand how relationships are changing and what the challenges are in a new environment. Rebecca’s company joined in a study with Snapchat that encompassed 16 countries and 30,000 interviews. Alter Agents helped develop tools to help Snapchat grow in the friendship space and capitalize on a basic human need. What you can learn from the refrigerator The friendship study research showed an interesting practice in the immigrant community. Many people are using a visual platform like Snapchat to check up on loved ones by asking for a picture of what is in their refrigerator to make sure they have what they need. Much more than a text or phone call, Snapchat’s platform has become a positive way for technology to help friends and families to stay connected. Fear and anxiety in the time of COVID Alter Agents began a survey in the US in November 2019 to ask what made people feel fearful in their daily lives. The conclusion was that fear and anxiety in the general public was way worse than most people realized--and this was before the pandemic began. The same research a few months later showed a startling decline in comfort and safety for Americans, especially for the African-American population. How COVID has highlighted the differences COVID clearly exacerbated the problems in our economic systems, and the disadvantages were magnified. This occurred more dramatically in the African-American community because of their history of being under cared for in our healthcare system. The differences were also dramatically revealed in the Native American population. The Alter Agents study found that COVID highlighted the brokenness of our system for non-Caucasian people. Rebecca’s advice to brands People want the brands they purchase to align with them politically and ethically like never before. They turn to corporations for stability and structure when their government isn’t working well, and they vote with their dollars. Corporations need to recognize this tendency and realize that it goes far beyond a marketing campaign. Rebecca’s advice is to evaluate the position you take in marketing and who you are, and what you stand for all the way up the supply chain. Women in the workplace Even before COVID, the research showed that the disparity between moms and dads as they parent is even greater than the difference between men and women in the workplace. COVID has disproportionately affected women as many have left the workplace in making the unimaginable choice between their careers and caring for their children. COVID took away the support structure that women relied upon while expecting the same workload and results. The challenge for corporations is how to best support their employees. Links:…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Understanding the Psychology of Sales (Part 2) with Julie Kurd, Rick Odello& Kenny Thompson | Ep. 115 27:19
Sima’s goal for this two-part podcast series is to help senior leaders understand the mindset and psychology of sales. She would like to help sales leaders understand how they need to think about sales as a profession, how sales integrate into an organization, and the psychology behind what makes a salesperson tick. So many companies struggle with one of the biggest components of scaling their businesses, which is sales. That means getting a balance of the right personality and the right leader and making sure that there is lockstep with the product. Adam Jolley joins Sima today in presenting the second part of this two-part series. This week we have Julie Kurd, the VP of Sales and Revenue at CMB, Kenny Thompson, Director of Client Solutions at Schlesinger Group, and Ricky Odello, the VP of Sales at Lucid, as panelists. CMB is not a SaaS company CMB is a strategic consultancy and not a SaaS company. Their process begins with the client and not with a product. The sales process for consulting Typically, the sales process for consulting is based on selling relationships. It is about establishing long-term relationships and focusing on different kinds of problem-solving and various kinds of longer-term play. A unique perspective Ricky comes from a traditional ad hoc type sales environment, which has given him a unique history and perspective. He was with FSI for about ten years, and then he moved to Lucid which is more of a software subscription focused organization. Ad hoc sales environment Ricky has found that in a more ad hoc type of sales environment, you are typically dealing with fewer stakeholders, so it is like selling to a person rather than to an enterprise. And the cycle can be a lot faster. Software subscription sales Selling the software subscription involves a much longer sales cycle and possibly more stakeholders. Although it takes time, it can be most rewarding once you achieve the contract. Offering qualitative and quantitative solutions At the Schlesinger group, they can offer qualitative and quantitative solutions to their clients at scale. They grow their relationships long-term at the facility level through engagements and bidding. Schlesinger has done a great job of having a comprehensive solution set for the industry and their clients so that they can provide them with solutions for all their needs. A human touch Kenny brings a human touch to everything, making it warm, fun, and real. Your personality and style Everyone is different in the way they work with their customers. Whether you work for a product company or a consultative sale company, either way, you can bring your personality and your style. One starts with the product, and the other one without a product, to begin. It is important to be genuine It is important to be genuine and authentic about who you are because your colleagues and customers can feel when you are real, and when you are not. The human connection Salespeople sometimes get a bad rap, or a stigma, about not being real and authentic and just going in for the sale. Realizing that you are helping people to solve their complex business problems can motivate you to do more research and also help you in the execution of the sale. You need to find a human connection. Failure Julie points out that failure is a part of sales. We win and lose every day. Characteristics For success in sales and sales management, Ricky feels you need to be a leader within your organization, and you need to have good ethics. Trust and authenticity Kenny has always inspired trust in people. He is genuinely interested in others. As a result, he is authentic with them. And he always felt he could believe in himself to succeed if he put in the effort. For sales, you need to have tenacity and authenticity. You also need to build trust and be hyper-responsive in your communication. Coping with the highs and lows of sales You need to remain calm and keep focused if you want to weath...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Understanding the Psychology of Sales (Part 1) with Calista Corley and Tacie Avedikian | Ep. 114 34:20
One of the biggest components for scaling any business is sales, and yet so many companies tend to struggle with it. It involves finding a balance between the right personality, the right leader, and ensuring that there’s lockstep with the product. Adam Jolley is joining Sima in presenting this two-part podcast series on sales. Much of the sales piece tends to be forgotten in all industries, and there are no white papers or conferences just on sales. Adam feels that people don’t even want to talk about sales, so, he decided that it would be very helpful to talk about sales in terms of what it takes, and also in terms of some of the intangibles that people have when it comes to sales. Sima’s goal for this podcast series is to help senior leaders understand the psychology of sales. She would like to help sales leaders understand how they need to think about sales as a profession, how sales integrate into an organization, and the psychology behind what makes a salesperson tick. Today, we have Calista Corley, the Chief Revenue Officer of Fuel Cycle, and Tacie Avedikian, the Senior Director of Customer Development at Innovate MR, joining us as our first panel of sales professionals. They talk to us about their journeys, people’s misperceptions around sales, and what it takes to be a successful sales professional. Why Tacie is in sales Tacie did not start her career in sales. As her career progressed, she realized how much she enjoyed connecting with people and gaining a deeper understanding of their problems, their likes, and their lives. And people used to go and talk to her because they trusted her. Eventually, her boss suggested that she should go into sales because he thought she would enjoy it and she was well suited to it. So she gave it a run, and she’s still doing it and loving it now, seven years later. Why Calista is in sales Calista started her career in operations, and she progressed to leading operations teams. She was always front-facing and dealing with escalations. Although she excelled in that area, she realized that she was able to connect with people and solve problems, and that is what sales is all about for her. People tend to get the wrong image of sales Calista thinks that when people think about sales jobs, they often get the wrong image. The truth is that many of the best sales leaders and salespeople want to learn constantly. A thirst for knowledge A thirst for knowledge and improvement should drive people towards having in-depth conversations about solving problems. Tacie’s initial reservation around sales Tacie never wanted to lose herself in pitching something cheesy or something that she did not believe in. Sales is about sharing Sales is about sharing something with people that can change things positively for them. A stigma Tacie feels that the sales title has an unfortunate tendency to create a stigma. Sales is a hard job Calista finds sales harder than ever right now. She believes that you cannot be a great sales talent or leader without being intelligent, thoughtful, educated, researched, and able to identify patterns and pivot quickly. And you need to be competitive as well. Calista loves mentoring people It means a lot to Calista when young women approach her to find out about her journey to becoming a CRO. That motivates her to keep on doing what she is doing in her profession. The qualities of a successful salesperson A successful salesperson primarily needs to be able to connect and engage with people. They also need to be real, authentic, and curious, have a desire to keep learning and growing, and have the ability to self-motivate and pivot if necessary. Men and women differ in terms of sales Diversity is necessary for a sales team. Men and women have certain differences in the way that they sell, and together, they work better. Calista finds that women naturally have empathy and a sense of connection when it comes to selling. And that works very well.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are excited to welcome Tim Hoskins today. Tim is the President of Quester, an insights and strategies company. He is joining us today to talk about his journey and driving business results. Tim’s journey While in college, Tom needed a job, so he answered an ad for a lead-generation specialist at an information security startup. He worked there for two years while he was in college, and then post-college, he got hired by the same company and started as a sales rep. In the startup world, you get to do everything, and Tim did not like not knowing all the answers, so he read the entire manual. He also started taking all the developers out to lunch to pick their brains, and that led to him becoming the Sales Engineer. His final role there was as a Product Manager. A consultant doing some work for Quester reached out to Tim, so he left the startup world to join Quester. He did not realize at the time that the company was, in fact, a forty-year-old startup. There, he worked in client services, became the head of sales and marketing, and about five or six years ago, he got promoted to President. The history of Quester Dr. Charles Cleveland, the founder of Quester, was a professor at Drake University. He started the company as a communications company with a foundation in linguistics, and they spent years doing qualitative research. They always applied linguistic analysis techniques to help drive communication. The founder’s dream was for executives on the client-side to look at a qualitative insight with the same confidence as a quantitative insight, someday. Dr. Cleveland passed away suddenly in 2005. The company was then purchased by three partners who kept on pushing forward with the technology and the same vision. In 2006, they launched the first, simple version. In 2007, they started to develop artificial intelligence, and the team has been working on that ever since. The current technology at Quester Today, Questor’s technology fully automates a one-on-one interview of up to forty minutes with a consumer. Those interviews are chat-based, or consumers can leverage the voice-based software on their phones. What their technology does Their technology analyses people’s responses and identifies a key or interesting idea that they are communicating. It then delivers a contextual-based follow-up question to find even more information. 2011 In 2011, the industry was not ready for artificial intelligence. Proving themselves There are always clients out there who know that you can’t solve the same problem with the same solution every single time. Those people give companies like Quester a chance to prove themselves. And that gives the rest of the market the confidence that those companies can do what they say they can do. The culture The average tenure of a Quester employee is seven years. Their culture is one of a family, and they do their best to have the mentality of a startup every single day. Insurgent mission The book, The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth, helped Tim and his team to focus on finding their insurgent mission and the reason for their existence. Driving business results They came to realize that their mission was not about the technology or the linguistic and qualitative analysis. It was about driving business results for their clients. You can’t have a business result unless you have strong and differentiated insights. And you can’t get strong and differentiated insights unless you have a different methodology to collect and analyze data. The company that delivers business results Tim and his team decided that they wanted to stand for the company that delivers business results. Behind every business result is a great strategy, and behind every great strategy is a consumer-centric insight. Changing in one year In 2018 and 2019, they changed their marketing. They doubled down on strategic insights, and they empowered their team by hyper-focusing them on...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We have the pleasure of welcoming Mark Simon, the Managing Partner for Hawkmoon Advisors, as our guest for today’s podcast. Mark is joining us to talk about his journey and share his experiences with the kind of work he has been doing to help small businesses scale, grow, and reach their goals. He also talks about what ten-million-dollar companies need to be thinking about if they want to scale. About Mark Mark disappeared off the research industry radar for a while after leaving Toluna at the end of 2019 and moving back to the UK. He joined an IT SaaS business in the UK called Datto, and after that gig came to a close, he set up a consulting business that helped small SaaS businesses get going. Mark’s journey After finishing university, Mark spent a few years in Paris, teaching English at a high school. After that, he spent most of the rest of his twenties playing the guitar in a rock and roll band, touring around, and having lots of fun. Then he went to work for a marketing agency that won a contract to take AOL to the UK. At the time, Mark was about to get married, and being a bit bored with the work he was doing, he started looking around for something new. He ended up spending an enjoyable year as an individual contributor for a company called Greenfield Online in Europe, where he learned a lot. He then got a call from someone at Toluna, saying that they were about to list the company on the London Stock Exchange, and they wanted him to lead them in doing that. Toluna Mark took a risk and joined Toluna. He now feels that was one of the smartest things that he has ever done. He set up a digital practice there, and they went to market properly. He had great fun getting them up to eight figures. An issue Toluna had an issue in their North American business, and they asked Mark to go there to turn it around, which he did. He managed to turn things around fairly quickly, and he ended up staying there for another six years before returning to the UK. What ten-million-dollar companies need to think about in terms of scaling Mark explains that at any point in your company’s trajectory, you have to think and act like you’re bigger than you are, and that applies from the CEO down to the people who you hire. Hiring is critical In Mark’s experience with fast-moving companies, he was spending 70-80 percent of his time hiring or coaching people. He points out that if you don’t do that as a leader, and you’re trying to scale, you are probably focusing on the wrong things. The people you hire Look for people who can act one level up but could also be capable of thinking two levels up. Recurring business Think about some way to get recurring business and repeatable, predictable cash flow. That will build value in your company. Incentives For a ten-million-dollar business, all your incentives need to be in line. It is vital to over-emphasize rewards for long-term contracts. Customers Your customers’ satisfaction needs to be ahead of your acquisitions. The Rule of Forty At ten million, you need to make sure that your company can exceed the Rule of Forty. That is very important for any recurring revenue business. Expanding internationally You should not expand your company internationally too quickly because that could be dangerous if you don’t have a cultural understanding of what works well in different places. A framework for hiring salespeople Interviewing salespeople can be difficult to do, so it helps to build a framework for hiring salespeople. Three things that are important to include in that process, regardless of the environment you’re in, are: Coachability A competitive streak Empathy, rapport-building, listening, and cultural alignment Also, any toxic high-achievers need to get removed from the team. Hiring a Head of Sales Hiring the right Head of Sales can be a scary decision for a CEO to have to make, especially if that CEO does not come from a sales background.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, we have the second part of the podcast series Data Gurus for IEX. We have been focusing on the concept of the last mile. In our industry, the last mile relates to empowering and getting the insights and value that clients want to get from research. Today, we invited Paul Gaudette, the co-founder of Dig Insights, to give us his perspective on how he looks at his clients from that perspective, to be able to empower and enable his client base to garner the value they need. Bio Paul Gaudette is co-founder of Dig Insights, Toronto-based consumer insights, and technology company. Started 10 years ago, Dig continues to be one of the fastest-growing insights companies and has been rated as one of the most innovative research companies globally for the past four years. Paul has worked in the industry for over 15 years and has led/executed projects for clients across a range of industries (including CPG, QSR, Technology, Financial, Retail, Alcohol, and Cannabis). He is a strategic thinker with an analytical background; a combination that allows him to understand complex business issues and address them creatively. A passion for strategy and innovation lead Paul into consumer insights after finishing his degree in Strategic Management at EDHEC Business School in France. Paul currently spends most of his time focused on strategic growth opportunities, which includes private equity investment opportunities, acquisition opportunities for geographic and portfolio expansion, and additional revenue-generating opportunities within Dig’s current operations. Paul’s background Paul’s background was mostly educational before he got into market research. He did a business degree, followed by a master’s degree in strategic management. He then joined a company focused more on the innovation side of consumer insights. It was from there that he started Dig Insights, ten years ago. Starting Dig Insights He started Dig Insights because he saw a need in the market to focus more on consumer behaviors rather than attitude. It was almost a game-changer at the time. Expertise Their expertise since their inception was around their sophisticated knowledge of data and their analytics capabilities. Dig Insights Dig Insights is based in Toronto, and they have offices in Chicago, on the west coast of Canada, and in London. They are slowly migrating to the rest of the world. Client base Dig Insights typically serve Fortune 500-type clients. That is evolving, as there are currently two aspects to the business. One is the consulting side, where the majority of their work happens, and the other is more of a tech side. Tech platform Dig Insights has developed a tech platform that is much more focused on early-stage innovation testing. Their clients range from McDonald’s, Pepsi, and global retail to small and medium enterprises that are looking to gain access to more cost-effective and faster insights through their tech platform. The consumer side On the consumer side, they are speaking to consumers and leveraging the technology that they use on a day-to-day basis to get that insight. The client-side On the client-side, they are speaking to clients as if they are running a business. A need in the marketplace Paul saw a need in the marketplace to develop a tool that would allow them to get those insights quicker, using technology that consumers were already familiar with, and delivering those insights to the clients faster. Playing in both places They made a strategic choice to play in both places, and they made an active effort to focus on the higher end customer work that was competing more with the big firms and also Accenture and Deloitte that were living in that space. That is where they built up their client base. Grow and scale To grow and scale, they needed to invest in some technology. Early-stage innovation testing The technology that they are investing in, and developing, is in the early stage innovation testing area where t...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Key Takeaways of the Impact of Covid-19 on Middle Market Firms with Nicole Schmidt and Chuck Mitchell | Ep. 110 40:37
Nicole Schmidt and Chuck Mitchell are joining Sima today as panelists for a webinar on the impact of Covid 19 on middle-market firms. People have been impacted by Covid 19 all over the world. The purpose of this webinar is to provide context, perspective, and some key takeaways for executives to consider as they plan for the future beyond 2020. About Sima Sima Vasa is a Senior Advisor at Oberon Securities. She has over ten years of entrepreneurial experience, operator experience, running a business unit of 45 million dollars for one of the largest market research firms, and also as an executive at IBM. Currently, she has an advisory services firm called Infinity Squared Ventures. About Nicole Nicole Schmidt is the managing partner and co-founder of Oberon Securities. She is a member of Oberon’s management team, and she brings more than 22 years of entrepreneurial experience and leadership to the firm. She spearheads Oberon’s consumer and retail group and is actively involved in the firm’s TMT practice. Before co-founding Oberon in 2001, Nicole was a partner at a software incubator. She also spent eight years as a senior equity analyst on both the buy-side and sell-side, covering a range of technologies. About Chuck Chuck Mitchell is the executive director at The Conference Board. Since he joined The Conference Board in 1997, as the head of publishing, he has authored dozens of reports on business and economic issues. They include the most recent, Beyond Technology, Building a New Organizational Culture to Succeed in an Era of Digital Transformation and Inclusion Plus Innovation, Leveraging Diversity of Thought to Generate Business Growth. Chuck also co-authors The Conference Board’s annual CEO Challenge Report. He recently completed a two-and-a-half-year assignment, Asian Pacific, based in Hong Kong. Transforming organizations into digitally-driven enterprises C-level executives see an opportunity to transform their organizations into digitally-driven enterprises that will make them leaner and more agile. Being digitally driven The mandate of being digitally driven requires the acquisition of new skills and investment. Chuck points out that the trend was already underway pre Covid, and Covid has accelerated the movement towards it. It requires a thoughtful and strategic plan to avoid sacrificing the long term for the short-term. Collaboration through technology Nicole points out that today, people are no longer centralized, so they have to collaborate through technology. A lot of companies currently think that the physical space might not be quite as important as they historically thought. A cultural challenge The challenge in the Covid era is about cultural transformation within organizations. And operating remotely compounds the difficulty of transforming that culture internally. The function level in digitally transformed organizations Artificial intelligence and robotic processes will start to replace routine tasks, so the function will be impacted by changing the jobs people do and how they interact with technology. Things are likely to become smaller and leaner to cut costs. Business travel Business travel is unlikely to come back as robust as it was pre-Covid. Cost-cutting strategies Travel and marketing budgets are getting cut. And another cost-cutting strategy, according to the CEOs who responded to Chuck’s survey, is a movement towards a more contingent and flexible workforce, or fewer full-timers. Manufacturing abroad More C-suite executives appear to be re-evaluating whether their manufacturing should be abroad, particularly of products that are critical for consumers, like pharmaceuticals and auto supplies. Empowering workers Chuck sees that empowering workers is going to be one of the changes in the workplace going forward. Changes in leadership style Leaders have to adjust and find ways of leading in the new and unproven territory. They also need to be empathetic,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are excited to have Danielle Blugrind, a Senior Consumer Insights Manager at Roku, joining us today. In today’s episode, Danielle talks to us about her journey in the field of market research. She discusses the difference between the client and the supplier sides of the industry, company culture, creative solutions, pivoting, how traditional survey research compares with big data, and how things have changed in the research space since Covid. Danielle’s background Danielle has a background in Consumer Behavior, which is very similar to psychology but is more focused on real-life behavior than on laboratory testing. She also loves math and statistics, and many years ago, several people suggested that she should look into a career in the field of market research. Danielle looked into it, and she made a conscious decision to embark on a career in consumer research as soon as she completed her MBA. Starting with fun brands with fun products Danielle started working for Mattel, and she went straight into the fun or the client-side of the business. After about eight years, she left Mattel and went on to join Taco Bell, where she remained for the next eight years. Doing her own thing After leaving Taco Bell, Danielle became a consultant for a while, and then she went on to do some research on the supplier side of the industry. Back on the client-side After joining Roku, Danielle found herself back in her happy place on the client-side. A love of research Danielle feels that a love of research should be central to both the supplier and the client sides of the industry. The client-side Danielle explains that on the client-side, you get to go deeply into your industry, your brand, and the consumer. She loves that everything she does on the client-side builds on itself. And every time she does another project, she is adding to her knowledge base, and it is like adding another piece to the same puzzle. Everything comes together into one big picture, so she knows what happened before, and she knows the action that is resulting from her research. The client-side versus the supplier side On the client-side, you become an expert in an industry or a brand. On the supplier side, however, you become more of an expert in the methodology or the approach. The consumer The longer Danielle works at a brand, the more that consumer starts to come to life in her head. The research piece Danielle says she would always love the research piece, no matter which company she is working for or the industry she is in. She loves the feeling she gets when she hears from consumers who have an opinion about a brand that is meaningful to them. Culture is important to Danielle Culture is a big part of why Danielle chooses to work where she does. From the consumer point of view, if a company seems like a great place to work, but it gets run in an old-school or an unfriendly way, then it is not the right brand for her. Proactive At Raku, Danielle is proactive in driving people to try new things. Creative solutions If a client needs something done urgently, Danielle is happy to do several different things to address their immediate needs and get them up and running as soon as possible. She then takes some time to develop a full report and a presentation, which she usually delivers a week or two later. Talking things through is critical After her presentation, Danielle talks everything through with all the relevant parties. That is critical because it ensures that her research has the most impact possible. Accessing internal data Danielle loves having access to the various pieces of data that have been collected internally over the years because it helps her to survey exactly the people she wants to and it also gives her some behavioral information to go with her survey data. Traditional survey research versus big data Danielle is not doing any less traditional online survey research because she has more behavioral data accessible to ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are honored to be part of the special video podcast series for IEX, which is part of the Data Gurus platform. We are focusing on something a little different today, related to trends in the market research or analytics space. We have Anthony Franklin, the CEO of Infotools, joining us from New Zealand to talk about data visualization, data processing, and his experience. Ant’s story Ant has a degree in social science. He married a New Zealander in London, thirty-two years ago, and they decided to settle in Auckland. Unfortunately, his wife passed away a few years ago. An introduction to market research Ant had previously worked in sales and marketing in the UK, so he was able to use that experience in his role at a company called AGB McNair, the largest research company at the time in New Zealand. He did a lot of syndicated work, ad hoc work, and media there. Working for AGB McNair in the syndicated area was interesting, and it was Ant’s introduction to the world of market research. A revolutionary platform Infotools was founded to transform the manual process of data collection into something completely different. It can capture data and interrogate it easily. The platform was revolutionary because nothing like it had ever existed before, and the market was open and ready for it. The early days Infotools used to do a lot of work with some of the big multinationals in the early days. BAT was an early supporter of Infotools, and they ended up working with BAT worldwide because BAT wanted to empower their researchers. In those days, Infotools did a lot of work to utilize the power of the computer to sift and find information through the data. Changing the perception Infotools was trying to harness the power of the computer to change the perception about cross tabs and give the individual the ability to use the computer and the desktop platform to find the necessary information in the data automatically. Infotools’s programs Infotools’ programs have always been designed specifically by market researchers for market researchers. So, although the developers are cutting the code, they still need a market researcher to explain the end that the result is trying to achieve. Moving into the cloud Six years ago, Infotools made a conscious decision to move into the cloud and to build a platform that allows their knowledge to be accessible in that way. They decided to do that because market research data is very complex, and it does not easily fit into the normal IT world. The power of machine learning Using the power of machine learning is a very efficient way to do data updates. Clients When Ant works with a corporate client or an enterprise brand, huge numbers of people have access to the data he has collected. Value All the value and the treasure is in the collected data, and Infotools’s software allows organizations to keep their data alive and fresh and get a return on their investment in the research. The right fit The clients who get what the data is revealing are the right fit for Infotools. Changes for the future in the market research space Business intelligence tools have moved into the market research space, and they are primarily driven by IT budgets, which are substantial when compared with the relatively modest budgets allocated for market research. So there is a promise of delivery. Aggregated data, however, does not hit the mark for market research. Data lakes The tools required for getting information in and out of data lakes have not quite worked as yet, for market research. Tools As a company, Infotools used Waterfall tools for many years. To a great extent, Waterfall is reflective of market research projects in that all the work and the planning gets done upfront, and the data is available at the end of it. With interactive tools like the Harmoni Platform, however, they can get into the data much earlier on, and they can be more agile in helping organizations to get started more effic...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We’re excited to welcome Michael McCrary, the CEO, and Founder of PureSpectrum, as our guest for the podcast. Michael helps to solve business, economic, and even social issues with the valuable data and insights that he provides for companies and organizations. He is joining us today to talk about his choice to take the risk of becoming an entrepreneur, rather than remaining a wantrepreneur. Michael’s bio PureSpectrum is a modern-day sample automation platform based in Los Angeles, California. In 2003, Michael joined Greenfield Online, where he became the company’s SVP of North America Sales. He played an instrumental role in Greenfield’s public offering and eventual sale to Microsoft. From 2008 to 2014, Michael helped pioneer Cint as Managing Director, and Lucid as President. In 2015 Michael went full time as an entrepreneur and founded PureSpectrum, which is one of the fastest-growing consumer insight tech firms. Michael’s background Michael started with market research and data collection about seventeen or eighteen years ago, and since then, he has had a wonderful journey within the market research industry. The last jump he took just before that was working for the Meredith Corporation in their Direct Response to Advertising group, where he had the pleasure of representing the Mid-West Living magazine. It was not an easy sell to the agencies, however, and Michael had to use a lot of data to support the magazine’s claims about its readers. Taking the leap In the early days of Greenfield Online, Keith Price was looking for salespeople, and he contacted Michael, who decided to take the leap. Ever since then, Michael has very much enjoyed working in the industry. A stimulating industry The umbrella of the insight industry, in general, is filled with great and intelligent people, and Michael finds it intellectually stimulating to know that the work he is participating in helps solve business, economic, or even social issues. An entrepreneur, versus a wantrepreneur Michael spent much of his life as a wantrepreneur, which is somebody who talks about wanting to be an entrepreneur. Later on, he had to decide whether he wanted to remain a wantrepreneur or become an entrepreneur, who is someone who attempts to do it. Making a tough decision Deciding to become an entrepreneur is risky. It was a big choice for Michael to make because he is married with three children and a mortgage, so he spent about six months thinking about it before deciding to become an entrepreneur. A supportive ecosystem Having a supportive ecosystem is vital for entrepreneurs. Michael’s wife encouraged him to go for it, and he also had the support of his investors, yet he still felt he needed some support from someone who was exclusively in his corner. A mentor Michael very much appreciated getting the support of his late mentor, who did not expect getting anything in return for his mentorship. The dark years Michael’s first years as an entrepreneur were so tough that he refers to that time as ‘the dark years’. Online sample and data collection Michael has spent his time in the industry on the online sample and data collection side of things. PureSpectrum PureSpectrum is a programmatic platform that provides a lot of value to several agencies. It is very nuanced and complicated because it involves many different and exacting technology connections to suppliers. The focus of the platform is on being simple and easy for anyone to use, and on improving the efficiency automation of the data collection process. An automated sampling platform PureSpectrum has an automated sampling platform that brings all the different pieces together to change the trajectory of the speed and time in which everything gets done. It saves business owners a lot of time and money. The future of survey data collection The survey research process provides data that doesn’t already exist, so Michael feels confident that survey data collection will find a spa...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ravi Parmeswar is a VP at Johnson & Johnson. He's in charge of global strategic insights and analytics. He has significant experience in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods). "The Chinese proverb 'May you live in interesting times.' we certainly are." - Ravi Parmeswar The Changing Face of Analytics Ravi's responsibilities take global strategic insights and analytics to drive insights from any source. It's a global responsibility across all of the consumer business at J&J. In the last 3 years, things have changed drastically thinking about big data. It's becoming more real for CPG. When you get access to first body data the game changes significantly. Ravi Parmeswar Personalized Analytics Ravi thinks the way marketing is moving right now is the model of more data and more personalized data. It's better to look at the landscape of data we have right now and how to better connect and how best to use that for targeted marketing. The traditional way for brand positioning marketing was using attitudinal segments. It was about what people feel and need but that is going away. Behavioral segments are a lot more actionable. For instance, you'll have data of what a person bought, if he bought mine or a competitor's product, what else he buys, what are his media habits and what his digital habits are. With this information, you can target your market more accurately. To hear what Ravi has to say about working in teams using the left and right side of the brain, download and listen to Ravi Parmeswar Winning the CPG Analytics Race! Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions, and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com I’m passionate about data and I love to share, learn, and help others that share my passion. If you love data as much as I do, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We are delighted today to welcome Christa Chaffinch, the Qualitative Research Manager at Comcast Business, as our guest. Christa is joining us today to talk about quantitative research Christa’s bio Christa has a background in psychology, sociology, and new product development. She has a master’s degree in creative writing, as well as an MBA. About ten years ago, she started her career in market research, where she uncovers insights in customer experiences and journeys, product messaging and positioning, and market intelligence, using mainly qualitative methods. Christa is currently managing qualitative research and competitive intelligence across all areas of Comcast Business. Christa loves her job Christa loves her job! And she has a unique way of describing market research in terms of what it means, as well as in terms of the skills that are required to deliver insightful and actionable research. What Christa does at Comcast Christa is part of a relatively small, but mighty team at Comcast Business. Her role revolves mainly around qualitative research, and it involves focus groups, in-depth interviewing, and any kind of sentiment analysis. She also takes care of certain aspects of competitive intelligence gathering, to figure out where Comcast Business sits in the marketplace at large. Doing valuable qualitative work Christa feels very fortunate to work at a place where qualitative research is highly valued. A lot of what Comcast Business sells is what people tend to think of as commodities, like voice-lines and the internet. And a lot of what they do there, especially when they’re looking for new product development sites, and different ways of segmenting their customers and messaging to them, is thought of in their qualitative research. Where quantitative research is used Hearing people’s opinions about how they run their businesses, what their values are, how they decide which vendors to use, and even about their hiring processes, helps Christa to learn about the different ways that people run businesses. And that’s why the team at Comcast Business makes use of so much qualitative research. WhyComcast Business does qualitative research Christa’s research is focused mainly on businesses, and she explains that by doing qualitative research, her team can gain some deep insights. She hopes that the depth of those insights makes what they have to offer to their customers a little different. Focusing on virtual focus groups Currently, Christa’s team has switched over to doing only virtual focus groups. They have even managed to complete two or three projects, from start to finish, doing all their qualitative research virtually. The virtual focus groups have worked out so well that Christa doesn’t think that her team will ever go back to doing their research in the way they did it before. Doing different types of quantitative research With small businesses, Christa’s team likes to get a lot of different people in the room, so that they can all bounce their ideas off of each other. With universities, health systems, and large companies, their interviews are more in-depth, to give her team more insight into how those large enterprises make their decisions. The way they do their research depends on what they want to learn, and to whom they are talking. The total number of projects In 2019, Christa’s team managed a total of about hundred-and-fifty projects, from beginning to end. At any given time, Christa usually has about two qualitative projects going on at once. And, over a year, she averages out at around twenty-five projects. Things are changing The way that Christa’s internal clients are consuming the results of qualitative research has been changing over the last year or so. And, over time, people seem to be coming to understand the value of qualitative research more. Working with every department in the company Christa’s team does a lot of varied and interesting projects,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We’re delighted to have Mike Berland, the CEO, and founder of Decode_M, joining us on the show today. Mike is with us today to talk about data collection, analytics, and momentum. About Mike We currently live in a world that runs on data, and Mike holds the belief that everything is knowable, as long as you know where to look. Mike is the former chair of the Gotham Chapter of the New York City Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), and he is a Commonwealth Scholar from the University of Massachusetts. He has worked with many leading brands, including Airbnb, Lyft, Nike, Microsoft, Facebook, Estée Lauder Companies, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball. Mike has written three books. In 2009 he released a book that he co-authored with Doug Schoen, titled What Makes You Tick? How Successful People Do It and What You Can Learn from Them. Then, in 2005, he co-authored the number one bestseller, Fat-Burning Machine: The 12-Week Diet, with former Olympic triathlon coach Gale Bernhard. And he has now written a new book called Maximum Momentum: How to Build it and How to Keep It, which got released in January 2020. Mike has two adult children, and he lives in Manhattan, New York, with his wife of more than twenty-five years. About Decode_M Decode_M is a research, analytics, and insights firm that decodes data into momentum for its clients. It is a fast-moving firm that arms its clients with the actionable information they need to make critical decisions. As a team of passionate problem-solvers and data-driven storytellers, they use a diverse mix of data sets to identify the right answers and solutions so that their clients can take the right action immediately, with confidence. Collecting & analyzing the right data is where the job starts for the Decode_M team. Strategy, activation, and how the data gets used is what they are all about. Why Mike started Decode_M Mike started Decode_M because he felt that there was another analytical tool needed in the data research and analytics space. The most important question When he started his career as a pollster, Mike asked questions, and he received answers. However, the answers were always limited to the data set. And Mike explains that when you’re a pollster, the most important questions are usually the ones you did not ask. So when you get the data and analyze it, you often realize that there are many other things that you wish that you had asked. Going beyond polling Over time, more and more data started becoming available, so Mike wanted to go beyond polling. He wanted to start analyzing all the data that was out there, using a new approach, new concepts, and new tools. New ways of gathering data fast In the old days, Mike had to call people on the phone and ask them questions to obtain the data that he needed. Now that he has a computer and cloud computing, he can process as much data as any top research lab in a matter of hours. And he can now also continuously go back to the social media data, or the behavioral data, rewrite the queries and keep building. Completing a project Before, with surveys, the project was complete once the report had been presented. Now, with Decode_M’s current analytics, the project is never really done because the data can continue to get mined. Momentum Mike wrote a book called Maximum Momentum, with the idea that momentum is an amorphous word that may work in many different and varied contexts, and he wanted to quantify momentum. The M-Factor In physics, momentum equals mass times velocity. So Mike had to create the metrics from mass and velocity and then put them together to create what he calls the M-Factor. Mike explains that the mass is the volume of conversation, and the velocity is the engagement and the sentiment. How the market was getting things wrong Mike thought that the market was getting things wrong because all the metrics for social media were volume metrics,…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, we’re excited to be interviewing Vivek Bhaskaran, who is the founder and CEO of QuestionPro. He's here today to share his experience bootstrapping QuestionPro. About Vivek Vivek grew up in India. After completing his primary education there, he left the country and moved to Russia, where he lived from 1995 to 1997. When he left Russia, he moved to the United States, and there, he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in Utah. Founding QuestionPro After obtaining his Bachelor’s Degree, Vivek moved to Seattle, and he started QuestionPro in 2005. He has never raised any capital for the business from outside investors, and he has managed to build his company up by himself, slowly, over time. What QuestioPro does QuestionPro started as a survey platform, and currently, it serves as both a survey platform and as an experience management platform. Over the last couple of years, the company has turned upmarket, and Vivek has identified three different areas that have added confidence to the business: Consumer insights and market research Customer experience Surveys targeted towards employees QuestionPro started initially as a survey platform. It then expanded into offering a survey toolset, and they have now also identified three buyer patterns within their ecosystem. Vivek shares his experience of bootstrapping back in the early days Vivek feels that he has been lucky in business. When he built QuestionPro, back in 2005, the term SEO had not yet been coined. So, as a software geek/hacker, Vivek created the QuestionPro platform, and he then started looking for ways to market it. He thought that the marketing of his platform would be easy. All he would have to do would be to become “number one” on Google. SEO is an analytical exercise Vivek points out that SEO is not a creative exercise, and that most people don’t seem to understand that it is analytical. Vivek does not think that SEO is the right thing for marketing purposes. He believes that SEO should fall under the category of engineering, and it should work as an analytical exercise. Getting to #1 on Google Vivek thought that getting to number one on Google would not be too complicated if he were to adopt a trial-and-error mindset as a scientist would. That is what he did, and it worked! So they got traffic inbound, they started selling, and they started making money. And Vivek came to realize that his business is intrinsically extremely viral. A viral business Vivek realized that his company is one of the few B2B platforms with a viral index. He understood that if he could get a customer who would send out a survey to a million people, it would be a good thing for his business. Gaining value from his product Vivek saw that for anyone to get value from his product, they would have to send it out, either to their employees or to their customers. And that would be a benefit to his business. Why bootstrapping QuestionPro worked The reason that Vivek was able to bootstrap QuestionPro, in the beginning, was because he did not need a lot of money to market it. And once he got started, he was able to keep the business operation going. Living a good life and doing new things Vivek explains that right now, he’s living the COVID life because he is waking up each day and doing whatever he feels like doing. He is currently launching a podcast, and he is also coming up with new ideas for products. Execution is everything For Vivek, having the flexibility of coming up with new ideas is vital. However, it is the actual execution of the new ideas that counts for him. So much so, that he finds the final execution of an idea to be even more important than the idea itself. Moving to Austin, Texas Vivek started his business in Seattle, and he lived there for about ten years. He then moved the company to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. And at the beginning of 2020, he moved the company once again, this time, to Austin, Texas.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
We’re delighted to have Tony Bevilacqua joining us today! Tony is the CEO and Founder of Cognitive3D, which is based in Vancouver, Canada. About the previous company that Tony founded Cognitive3D is the second company that Tony has founded. His previous company was focused on revenue optimization, and it had a very heavy analytics back-end, so they made a lot of decisions which were based on collected data, and the company helped its clients build a better revenue optimization. With his first company, Tony spent a lot of time working in the game space, and he had some early exposure to the Oculus DK1 and DK2. (The Oculus DK1 and DK2 were the very early development kits that Palmer Luckey created for the Oculus, which is a head-mounted display for virtual reality.) Founding Cognitive3D After selling his first company, Tony wanted to spin off and do something in the virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality space, so he ended up founding Cognitive3D late in 2015. From there, he started to construct a new way to visualize spatial outlooks. The different definitions of virtual reality, and what they mean Virtual Reality (VR) is when a user is wearing a head-mounted display that fully encompasses their field of view, and everything they see is computer-generated within the headset. Augmented Reality (AR) is a pass-through experience where the user’s world is augmented. However, AR does not necessarily influence or overtake the user’s field of view. Mixed Reality (MR) is when the user’s field of view is augmented with additional 3D items, objects, and experiences. A headset can also be a great vehicle for data collection Tony points out that if one thinks of the headset as a vehicle for data collection, it can provide a lot of great opportunities to understand both human behavior and human performance. How Tony went about developing the new, cutting-edge technology When Tony first encountered the capabilities of the new 3D technology, he saw it as a whole new opportunity to collect insights on how people interact. He understood games and entertainment well, and he was very excited about the potential that virtual reality held. He knew that by using it, he could build a product that could help game developers create even better content, so Cognitive3D started building out a platform for collecting spatial insights. Taking his new product to the market When Tony took his company's new product to market in 2016, he saw that plenty of game developers and entertainment companies were using it. And it was also being used for enterprise, with the two pre-dominant use cases being in consumer research, and training and simulation. By the beginning of 2017, Tony had fully pivoted his company towards enterprise uses, focusing on consumer research, and training and simulation. A study done with Kellogg’s A while ago, Kellogg’s introduced a new product to the market. They wanted to understand the different placements of the product on the shelf and how they could potentially influence users to notice it. So, Cognitive3D, working alongside with Accenture, Qualcomm, and InContext Solutions, built out a use case and scenario for them in the form of a two-cell study. The first cell was their traditional placements, and the second cell was in an alternate location that was suggested by the Cognitive 3D team, with the additional use of some signage. In the study, they discovered that although users purchased more products from an eye-level location, they still managed to create enough sales and visibility for the new product, without cannibalizing the rest of the brand category, when they placed the new product at a lower location. Tony explains that by placing the new product at a lower location, it left the premium display row open to generate sales in the way that it would normally do, and they also had the opportunity to introduce a new product. Kellogg’s was able to create an eighteen percent lift in their brand sales by ...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
CEO and Founder of MindSpark Research International, Nikki Lavoie, joins Sima Vasa today. They discuss the two niches that Nikki has found work really well together for her Paris-based company: 1) international qualitative research and 2) UX research. MindSpark: Born Out of Necessity From a young age, Nikki Lavoie knew she wanted to travel around the world. With a background in market research, both qualitative and quantitative, she accepted a job in Paris but eventually outgrew it, and was ready to move on to something else. Not quite ready to return to working in the States, her options for breaking into the local job market as an American abroad were limited. Starting out as a freelancer 5 years ago, she quickly began taking on more projects than she could handle alone, and thus, MindSpark Research International was born. “I got offered a job in Paris, and surprisingly, I actually almost said ‘no’. Somewhere, that little phone conversation got to me, and I was like, ‘Your 15-year-old self would be furious if you said no to this job’." Nikki Lavoie Qualitative Research Nikki shares how she truly enjoyed working on the quantitative side of research and studies. She found herself fascinated by the things she saw in the data, but it left her with more questions. Qualitative doesn’t answer every single question one could possibly have, but it’s certainly more immersive. “Qualitative research: that’s where all the good stuff is!” - Nikki Lavoie Human connections and having really deep conversations about research topics are fulfilling and useful for the client because you’re using what you’re learning about them to help better their life or their situation in some way. “Heartbeats before spreadsheets.” - Nikki Lavoie An Impactful Story Some interactions can be instantaneously meaningful, and some interactions are impactful in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. Nikki provides an example. “This whole ‘Don’t connect with people’ and ‘Don’t get emotionally involved’ - I don’t believe in that. I don’t personally function with that was as a researcher because people can feel that, when you’re holding back from them. And then they hold back from you.” - Nikki Lavoie Asking questions and enjoying the conversation can help you learn a lot from the researcher perspective, but it also enables you to give back in a meaningful way to the people with whom you’re conversing. UX Research The terms “qualitative research” and “UX research” are sometimes used interchangeably. To confuse things even further, there’s “market research”. Nikki sets the record straight on these terms, and how companies are going into qualitative research with the same goal: to connect with users and understand them. “From MindSpark’s perspective, all qualitative research is user research, and UX is user research. The point of user research is to empathize with the user, not to just observe them but to really feel what they’re feeling, experience what they’re experiencing so that you can take that on and go forth and do something useful with it.” - Nikki Lavoie The contentious part of the terms concern infographics comparing market research and UX, in which there are a lot of differences. Market studies are not the same as user research. Quick links to connect with Nikki Lavoie: MindSparkLab.com Facebook - MindSparkLab Twitter - MindSparkLab LinkedIn - Mindspark Research International LLC Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In this episode, Sima Vasa converses with Chief Evangelist for Quantifind, Malcolm De Leo. He shares with us how Quantifind detects signals to help predict outcomes, how he embraces innovation in his career and how he enforced the philosophy of “Corporate accountable, locally responsible.” Chief Evangelist Malcolm serves as a Chief Evangelist for 20 years now, 5 years of it has been spent with Quantifind. He proudly shares that his main focus is to help the company drive sales through understanding and developing use cases and defining how they can scale and grow these for repeat sales. “I've spent probably my entire time in Silicon Valley, helping people understand how to use data intelligently so that they can make better decisions faster.” - Malcolm De Leo Extracting Signals From Data He further shares that Quantifind's core competency is finding signals and noise — they take unstructured data and build mathematical algorithms that create intelligent flares that signal extraction. Further, Quantifind's goal is to identify used cases in a larger organization where they can extract that valuable signal from that data. “Unstructured data has grown 85% every 3 years. Companies who are able to find that 10% of the data that matters or extract the signal from that data—are the ones who are gonna win.” - Malcolm De Leo Decision-makers of companies rely on these signals to assist them in reacting, most specifically, in reacting to relevant events. Clients of the company not only include brands but the government as well, sending signals for fraud or money laundering. “If you are using traditional means that are out there, around collecting social data day by day, you may react to how much people talk. You may react to how passionate they feel about something but, if it’s not tied to something like viewership or revenue (an outcome), you may be reacting to the wrong things.” - Malcolm De Leo Philosophy of innovation Sima Vasa digs deep into Malcolm’s philosophy of innovation. Malcolm shared that his first and foremost priority is aligning culture strongly. He follows his philosophy of “Me, We and the Enterprise.” He believes that the enterprise sets the tone for everyone. However, the “me” or the individual is equally important because he/she must understand his or her own process of innovation and interaction with others. This leads to the concept of “we” where collectively, they can work together to drive the needs of the enterprise. “If you can align those three things, you start to get a much more systematic culture.” - Malcolm De Leo Sima and Malcolm discuss more corporate culture and innovation as well as trends in the insights space. Quick links to connect with Malcolm De Leo: LinkedIn - Malcolm De Leo LinkedIn - Quantifind Twitter - @innovationmuse Twitter - @evangelistdna Instagram -@innovationmuse Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today’s episode is our second for our two-part series with guest Merrill Dubrow, the President, and CEO of M/A/R/C Research. He shares with us what gets him excited, especially after serving the industry for 25 years. Merrill Dubrow, a thought leader, also gave some relevant advice for industry professionals that is definitely worth listening to. Getting and Staying Excited For someone who has been in the business for 25 years, financial gain is not entirely something to be excited about. He candidly shared with our host, Sima Vasa, the main thing that excites him is moving things forward, in terms of the whole enterprise or the insights association. “The reality is I love moving the business forward. We got a nice pipeline of products that are coming out over the past year and they're all having success. We want to continue to have partnerships — the right partnerships.” - Merrill Dubrow Moreover, Merrill said he gets excited mentoring people — having the ability to move people's career forward. On Mergers & Acquisitions Merrill shared his opinion on the recent trend of mergers and acquisitions in the insights industry. He says this is not going to change as it is largely driven by investors. However, he warned that it could change a lot of the dynamics of the company. “I think the M&A it not going to slow down at all. I was approached not soon after I transacted this company, I could've sold it, told them I'm not gonna do that. Everybody is for sale and those aren't are still getting approached.” - Merrill Dubrow He further continued saying that company goals are not all financial. As for himself, he refused to transact M/A/R/C because, at his age, his focus is giving back to the industry. Advice for Insights Executives Merrill gave two pieces of advice for insights executives and those who are starting out their careers in the industry. For insights executives, he points out the importance of staying on trend but carefully choosing which technology to pursue. “I’m not saying don’t go after technology. Go after the right technology — for your staff, for your clients — so you can build a business that is profitable and long-standing. Don't go after a shiny toy because everybody else is going after it, I think that the wrong way.” - Merrill Dubrow Additionally, she then shared the importance of joining associations and increasing networks. It is a form of continuous learning as well as an avenue to give back to the community. “If you have a large pool of contacts and if you are involved in an association, you will see what's coming next, you'll see the cutting edge methodologies are.” - Merrill Dubrow Quick links to connect with Merrrill Dubrow: LinkedIn - Merrill Dubrow Twitter - @merrilldubrow Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today’s guest is Merrill Dubrow, the President, and CEO of M/A/R/C Research. He shares with us some important industry perspectives on automation and the consultative role of insights companies. This is an episode for industry professionals who wish to stay relevant in this field of work. Six Decades of Excellence Merrill Dubrow has been leading his company towards its 6th decade. He has a passion for building strong relationships and a mission to drive innovation. Through the years, he has witnessed the evolution of the insights industry. Particularly, he mentions in this episode how the automation of information gathering such Do-it-yourself information kiosks, has done a massive impact on the industry. Merrill further shared that clients want responses quicker and faster, and yet want them a lot less expensive. “I think that’s the future, I think that’s really where it’s going and you’re gonna hear a lot of clients building storefronts and a lot of companies coming out with platforms such as Zappi — that’s where it’s gonna be headed in the next 3-5 years.” - Merrill Dubrow Insights Companies and Management Consultancy Firms Sima posed a very important question about the gap — as it relates to higher-level analysis or consultation. Most of the time, management consulting companies are usually in charge of integrating business strategy based on these analyses. However, Merrill provided his point of view on this gap. “Two things — if clients are gonna continue to use DIY platforms, they need analysis and consultation. If they do, shame on the insights. The company such as mine and other large research insight companies out there haven't done their job. If we have, that work would come to us.” - Merrill Dubrow In addition, Merill stated that in reality, clients need companies to come in for consulting and marketing. This is something that insights companies have not yet done in the past and if they continue to not meet this client demand, the business will go elsewhere. “There are a lot of things happening to a lot of companies because the balance between today and tomorrow, you can’t minimize that symmetry. It is the biggest challenge ever. It’s one thing to know where the industry is going it’s another thing to position your Titanic-of-company to get there and it’s not easy at all.” - Merrill Dubrow Challenge to Stay Relevant Merrill points out the importance of staying relevant in the industry. He discusses the significance of keeping clients, employees and staying on top of industry events. “The reality, when you talk about longevity, it’s relevancy. You got to be relevant. You gotta be relevant in three marks — clients, employees and industry.” Merrill Dubrow He gives a blow-by-blow account of how to stay relevant in this industry. Some pointers he raised are offering new products and services to clients, making sure fitting Project managers assists them and likewise, keeping these employees happy, by engaging them with a positive corporate culture. Quick links to connect with Merrrill Dubrow: LinkedIn - Merrill Dubrow Twitter - @merrilldubrow Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today’s guest, Chief People Officer Nicole Patel joins Sima Vasa to discuss the recruitment process and employee retention at LUCID. Further, she shares the processes they employ within the organization and the culture they promote that is centered on openness and transparency. Nicole and LUCID Lucid was founded in 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana and currently has offices in New Orleans, Gurgaon, London, New York, and Sydney. Nicole has provided much support to the growing company, as she helped grow Lucid's staff by 500%. Before joining LUCID, Nicole spent 15 years in human resources across multiple industries. After working in corporate financial benefits at Baker Hughes, she spent the next 12 years in financial services at Lehman Brothers and Neuberger Berman. Ultimately, Nicole left financial services and moved to New Orleans and has been at Lucid ever since. Growing and Retaining People Nicole and her team pride themselves in growing the company — from 30 to 50 percent, growth in customers and revenue and definitely because they hired the right people. LUCID is always on the look-out for smart, quick and hardworking folks. Nicole shares in this episode the five values of LUCID and how they, the People Department, discuss these during the interview process and performance review process. Further, Nicole believes that this set of values attracts the right people. “We have a bi-weekly, all-hands meeting for the entire company — where someone talks about their favorite value and how they feel adhering to that value and how they aspired to be better at that value.” - Nicole Patel Corporate Culture at LUCID Nicole shares how they maintain the Lucid Culture across all the offices around the globe and also integrate local culture. They value individual identities and they allow freedom of expression. Employees foster unique identities as long as they don’t deviate from LUCID values. “The key is finding the right balance of your brand and your culture, resonating and being consistent globally, across all occasion, while also allowing for these locations to have their own identity, based on the country or city they are in or based on their point of growth.” - Nicole Patel Additionally, she shares a method of getting feedback from employees. It is through a software that tracks employees' current outlook in their career and for the company as a whole. For other information about recruitment and retention of employees as well as the promotion of culture based on transparency and openness, listen to this episode. Quick links to connect with Nicole Patel: LinkedIn - Nicole Patel Website - LUCID Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today’s guest entrepreneur Jason Krantz of Strategy Titan joins Sima Vasa to discuss a wealth of information about data analytics and insights in the B2B space. He shares his personal experience in having a balance between technical and business skills. Further, he discusses how these skills helped him navigate the elusive HVAC industry. The Immense Power of Analytics With over 10 years of business analytics, data science, and strategic leadership experience, Jason Krantz recognized the power of analytics early on his career. He also has extensive executive experience in sales and marketing strategy design, financial reporting, market research, price management, and supply chain optimization. “It's amazing, it continues to amaze me. The raw power of data, analytics and the ability to generate insights and ultimately helps inform strategy and in the end, drive financial results.” - Jason Krantz He pursued entrepreneurship and founded his company, Strategy Titan, which helps companies "weaponize" data and transform it into a competitive advantage. Further, he was recognized as an HVAC “Top 40 Under 40” in 2017. The Balance Between Technical and Business Skills In this episode, Krantz points out the importance of striking a balance between data analytics and business skills. A company may have the best data engineers but without strong business knowledge, it would be challenging to provide value for the data analysis. “By understanding the business strategy, you can go into an initiative—crystal clear—into how exactly what you are working at is going to help a specific segment of the business.” - Jason Krantz Analytics, by itself, cannot deliver certain results for a company, such as a price increase, for example. However, if the analytics team would proceed with exploratory analysis and understand the challenges of the channel or of a region, then they would be equipped with sound decisions. This places data into context. “Now its that process of understanding and presenting the case to the business in a manner which they can understand it but also see the opportunity.” -Jason Krantz Navigating the HVAC Industry Sima Vasa, our host, shares her admiration for Krantz as he successfully navigated the HVAC Industry. In the market research world, HVAC is considered a category considered a difficult industry. Krantz pulled out a number of powerful insights from data sources, which aided stakeholders in further understanding the industry. “If you can answer any five questions about your business, your market, channel, whatever it is, what questions would you ask? Virtually everything that we ask is market-centric.” - Jason Krantz He shares more on this interview, his personal experiences and success, the process that he made for data curation and how he managed to handle the HVAC executives to gather insights. Quick links to connect with Jason Krantz: LinkedIn - Jason Krantz Linkedin - Strategy Titan Website - Strategy Titan @strategy_titan - Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today’s episode, Sima Vasa sits with Executive Director of Client Development at Paradigm Sample Katie Sands, together with Sr. Consultant for Sampling at Burke Inc., Brad Franz. Both are considered next-generation of leaders for the market research industry. Together, they discuss perspectives on data collection and shifts in the industry both for clients and the overall market. Next-Gen Leaders As a member of Paradigm Sample, Katie Sands has cultivated a diverse portfolio of accounts—ranging from market research, technology, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods companies. She is the Executive Director of Client Development. Her colleagues consider her a very passionate person—when it comes to her job in the market research industry. Likewise, Brad Franz is considered another next-gen leader. He’s been working at Burke Inc. for 12 years and is currently Sr. Consultant for Sampling. He is considered to be highly skilled at Quantitative Research, Market Research, and Online Research. Shifts in Data Collection Franz shares that in the last several years, there has been a very observable shift in the world of market research. Primarily, the changes are now focused on delivering quality data. Sands agreed to this shift as historically, she observed that when quality is not a concern, the pricing would come into play. “There’s a pendulum swing back to the idea of quality and how data collection and sampling is really the foundation of those insights.” - Brad Franz In the past, market research agencies drove the price very low and very competitive. Clients are more open to discussing the inclusions and range of a project and what is driving the prices. Moreover, they are more open to considering higher-priced samples in exchange for better quality data. Focus on Quality Franz stressed the importance of having conversations on what quality means. Through this, clients and researchers are able to define the expectations about price, field time, overall research objectives and the impacts that they can have along the way. Vasa also shared her personal input in this episode. She shared how companies can propose quality data to clients: by looking at both the input and output side. This means that focus should not only be on choosing and targeting the right respondents but preparing the questionnaire as well. “Balancing the client needs and respondent engagement, that something that all three of us is passionate about. I'm optimistic that we're finally getting to a point where we can start focusing on respondent engagement because the impact is starting to showcase itself in the higher quality.” - Katie Sands More discussions on perspectives on data gathering and collection, as well as respondent engagement are in this episode. Quick links to connect with Katie Sands and Brad Franz: Katie Sands - LinkedIn Brad Franz - LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today’s episode, Sima Vasa sits with Priscilla McKinney, CEO of LiTTLE Bird Marketing. Together, they talk about her company and their edge in content marketing, some tips on personal branding and her struggles and triumph as an entrepreneur. LiTTLE Bird Marketing Priscilla McKinney has a background in Cultural Anthropology. She finds herself an easy fit in the world of Market Research (MR) because she comes from a social science perspective and she understands the nature of the work, which is relatable to ethnography—a systematic study of people and cultures. She then spearheaded her own company named LiTTLE Bird Marketing. The company is a marketing agency that specializes in content marketing strategies that bring lead generation. They cater to busy leaders who need confidence in their content marketing and who ensure that this content resonates with both long term and short term goals. Marketing in Marketing Research Priscilla’s experience and understanding of the core principles and application of marketing contributed greatly to her career in the MR world. As Sima puts it, “it is a big deal in market research because if you don't understand the fundamentals, you lose credibility quickly.” However, Priscilla gave honest feedback about professionals in the Marketing Research industry. She says that their knowledge of “numbers” doesn’t necessarily equate to their knowledge of themselves and what they can offer. “Market researchers are bad at marketing themselves. Not only that they are not good at marketing themselves—like understanding really who they serve and what they offer and how they solve the problem uniquely—they also don't research on themselves.” - Priscilla McKinney On Personal Branding and Self-Promotion Sima discusses why some women, especially those in the MR industry, don't want to talk or even participate in self-promoting activities. Senior level female professionals do not have personal branding and it affects the representation of women in this field of work. “People talk about the look—I have a scarf or sunglasses—there should be a look that needs to be consistent. A little deeper on personal branding is the “feel.” Like, how you feel about customer service or your stance on a topic. It may also be how you made the other person feel about you.” - Priscilla McKinney Priscilla, however, said that self-promotion doesn’t have to be hard selling oneself. It will still boil down to authenticity. Further, she pinpoints the importance of knowing oneself, as we know we cannot be consistent all the time. Quick links to connect with Priscilla Mckinney: Priscilla McKinney - LinkedIn LiTTLE Bird Marketing - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Karen Lynch, Senior Director of Qualitative Insights at InsightsNow Inc. joins us today to talk about PlayFULL Insights™, an innovative approach to qualitative research. Karen was granted the Market Research Disruptive Innovator award for her work which benefits consumers, clients, and fellow researchers. The Rise of Qualitative Data Researchers and marketers want to gain more insights into the patterns and trends behind the figures of quantitative researches. They want to understand why these figures are such and what forces are driving it. This is why the need for qualitative data is on the rise. The bulk of the work done by Qualitative Insights is for people who are just trying to understand the consumer journey, what's attributing to what, and the drivers of the ratings or rankings. “Its all about telling stories. If we understand the data, we can tell a better story about it ‘cause once we know the reason and rationale for what the trends are showing us, it becomes more actionable.” - Karen Lynch The Methodology of PlayFULL insights™ PlayFULL insights™ is a method that leverages people’s imagination. It is highly valuable in the innovation space for people to understand what the content of one’s imagination might be—their aspirations, wishes, hopes and even fears projected out in the future. According to scientists, the frontal lobe of the brain shuts down when asked about the future. However, using “play” as a part of their qualitative research, researchers are able to effectively dive deep into the subject’s thoughts, in a very safe, strategic and deliberate way. “PlayFULL insights a way for us to use the power of play to unlock that imaginative perspective thinking.” - Karen Lynch Adaptation of LEGO® Serious Play® Psychologists theorize that the idea of building tangible models helps children—not only to understand the world around them—but to easily communicate their learnings and knowledge to other people. Within those theories, LEGO® Serious Play® developed a method which they can use in their board rooms to aid their strategic planning and communication set-backs. Karen has a certificate in Facilitating and Designing Workshops with LEGO® Serious Play® Method. She adapted the methods used by LEGO in creating PlayFULL insights. Quick links to connect with Karen Lynch: Karen Lynch - LinkedIn InsightsNow - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Finn Raben, Director General of ESOMAR, joins us today to confer about how data collection and analysis have shifted to data curation. With huge amounts of data available today, Raben emphasized the importance of providing correct and effective analyses to governments and trade organizations. Commitment To Quality Research ESOMAR is a non-profit organization that was created in Europe in 1947. The company owners recognized that they cannot guarantee the quality and commitment to research during this post-war period. Due to this, ESOMAR developed a code of conduct for excellence which aims to advocate, promote and defend the cost of data, analytics and insights. With such a rich history, Finn Raben shared that the organization prides itself on continuously evolving whilst maintaining its role as information disseminators to governments and trade organizations. ESOMAR has created standards for the industry and they have lived up to their commitments. From Collection to Curation The evolution of the industry brought market research companies from a position of traditional gatekeepers of information to the curators of information. Around 20 to 30 years ago, the only means of reaching citizens and consumers is done via market agencies. Agencies focused on extolling its skills to being able to source information and collect that from people involved, thereafter to ensure its validity and its protection. “In previous years, it was market research, with a focus on data collection, as today we do less collection but more of curation and analysis than before” - Finn Raben Everyone's default mechanism today is digital. Due to excessive data availability, data collection has become an increasingly less important part of the business. However, picking the right data to answer whatever question it may be—commercial, legal, societal—became the primary driver of the business. Outlook For The Industry Finn Raben is positive that the industry has a very bright future, as much as there will only be much data creation. He mentioned the common phrase “we’re data rich, but insight poor” but is optimistic that data analysts of today can validate accuracy, understand the nuances and pull together the entire story. Furthermore, applying the right level of rigor and checking the provenance of data is more important today than it ever was before. “Having somebody who knows how to look at data and finding the right answers, I think will have an increasingly valuable asset.” - Finn Raben Quick links to connect with Finn Raben: Finn Raben - LinkedIn ESOMAR - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today’s episode, Sima Vasa sits with Tania Yuki, CEO of Shareablee. Together, they talk about what inspired her to create Shareablee and how it helped advertisers, influencers, publishers and brand owners determine share-worthy content. Lawyer Turned Social Media Analyst Tania Yuki tried her luck as an Internet attorney before finding her way to social media analytics. At the moment, she is considered an expert on social media marketing, digital audience measurement, and web analytics, among others. "It started into something like 'Im so intrigued as to why people would take this brand video and share it out to everyone they even know'" - Tanya Yuki Where It All Began Shareablee originated from Yuki’s natural curiosity on “people’s motivation in sharing social media content”. From there, the platform focused on measurement, advertising effectiveness and deep content analytics on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. "Shareablee was really born out of my personal curiosity about why people share content on mobile social platforms, so we began looking mostly on Facebook and Twitter. Now the ecosystem has quickly exploded in many more platforms, Instagram being the most important right now." - Tanya Yuki Users understand how their content is resonating with the audience and in turn, make effective and compelling content. They can also filter the best platform to reach their audience to drive a particular objective. What Makes Content Shareable Social media users share content online because of the “Four Baskets of Motivation.” First is Social Proof—these are the content that would make users look smarter, funnier, caring or more in-the-know. Second is Usefulness. Examples of posts that fall under “usefulness” are product testimonials or great sale. Then, there’s Storytelling, as humans are naturally inclined to gather around the campfire and tell stories to one another. The final driver for users to share a post is Emotion. If the post triggered happiness or empathy or inspiration, then it’s enough reason to share it with connections. “Just a fun fact, story-telling is not a useful driver among millenials. It is not that they don’t care about stories, but they wanted stories where they could be a part of, so you could ask their opinion” -Tania Yuki Quick links to connect with Tania Yuki: Tania Yuki - LinkedIn Shareablee - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Co-founder and executive chair for Reid Campbell Group Eileen Campbell joins Sima Vasa today. Together, they talk about Eileen’s history and her undying curiosity, passion and hard work that ultimately birthed her tremendous career in the industry. “I think if you're intellectually curious, it's a completely gratifying way to make a living.” - Eileen Campbell Eileen Campbell - Starting Out Early Eileen started in the industry really young when she was still the proverbial starving student in university. She worked full-time in a company called NFO (then they dubbed the National Family Opinion) through her final year of university. There, she met incredibly talented women leaders who became not only her mentors but life-long friends. Throughout her career, she had the opportunity to keep reinventing. She handled project coordination, management, and even worked directly with clients. Then at 26, she convinced her boss to let her move to Minneapolis and put up an office, a transformative step. “When you have some place that you kind of turn on the lights, where the success of the team depends on you being committed and dedicated... that's a real turning point I think in many people's careers. It certainly was for mine.” - Eileen Campbell Startups and Working for Kantar For a few years, Eileen took care of the Minneapolis office before moving on to work for the Angus Reid Group. There, she met her partners in her new venture, her first experience with a startup. She was then recruited to run Kantar Millard Brown in North America before getting promoted to the global CEO role. Staying Motivated Throughout Since Eileen started the business really young, she stepped down from her bigger jobs just as early. All her ventures, as much as anything, are driven by a restless spirit. She was never good at being idle and has always been fascinated by the market research industry. And this constant fascination and her curiosity for the industry fuel her every day to keep growing. “I think the only job that I was really rotten at was being retired.” - Eileen Campbell Quick links to connect with Eileen Campbell: Eileen Campbell - LinkedIn Reid Campbell Group Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Sima sits down with the co-founder and managing partner of Oberon Securities, Nicole Schmidt. On this episode, they talk about Oberon, investments and the role perseverance plays in earning entrepreneurial success. “It's really 90% perseverance and 5% talent and 5% luck because I think in a way, you make your own opportunities by sticking it out.” - Nicole Schmidt Nicole Schmidt - Backing Up Entrepreneurial Endeavors Armed with her knowledge of what it takes to get a business off the ground, Nicole has always been supportive of entrepreneurial pursuits. This is only fitting. After all, people trust those who work in the investment banking space to represent their business in an objective manner. Pretty much any business takes blood, sweat and tears to build up. Most entrepreneurs spend 15-20 years to grow their business into self-reliant entities. Only then can they truly operate on their own, which is why Nicole co-founded Oberon. ‘Sticktuitiveness’ and the Formula to Success Nicole teaches an entrepreneurial class at her alma mater. She would always tell her students that making it big as an entrepreneur usually takes a mix of perseverance, talent and luck. If you stick it out long enough, then good things happen and you are able to capitalize on them. Most failures stem not from not being smart. These failures come from the frustration with the process and the overwhelm of building a business from the ground up. “I think the real talent lies in having some malleability and what I would call, ‘sticktuitiveness.’ And I think those are the differential points that I have seen in entrepreneurs and in my partners.” - Nicole Schmidt Risks and Non-Existent Shortcuts There clearly is no such thing as a shortcut. Putting the time in to know what you initially don’t know will be key to your success. To grow a business requires grit day in and day out. “What makes you ultimately a successful business person at the helm of a successful business is making those mistakes and not letting them be catastrophic and ultimately learning from them.” - Nicole Schmidt Risk taking also plays a part in the overall entrepreneurial process. It does comprise 5% of the formula and therefore a constant in any business' journey. Quick links to connect with Nicole Schmidt: Nicole Schmidt - LinkedIn Oberon Securities, LLC Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, the CEO and founder of Gazelle Global Anne Brown sits with Sima Vasa. Together, they talk about the company’s beautiful 25 years from its conception to present celebration. Anne Brown - Taking Stock of 25 Years Anne says that this moment is incredibly opportune to take stock and look back where they started. When Gazelle Global was but a fledgling, it was nothing to send a job out to 60 sites—even with the limited power of copiers. After all, her job let her experience a lot of new things. “I have an extreme love of working internationally and what I liked about that time was that if you worked internationally, you had to go.” - Anne Brown Building Gazelle Global Gazelle Global started out when Anne was vice president of operations at CRC. In one meeting, one of her clients turned to her and her co-founder and said he lacked in-house operations. He then offered that they worked on the field and DP to build the business, and they proceeded to write their history. For small to midsize research companies, it does not always pay for them to have the operations inside. The idea was that researchers and ops people should stick to what they do best and that researchers should not be charged for the ops people unless they need them. And so their business came to be. “We were a niche business… Not a lot of people were doing this but it made so much sense even back then.” - Anne Brown Celebrating 25 Years For their 25th year in the industry, Anne and the company did a graffiti wall that was filled with writings by the end of their celebratory conference. Even their international partners wrote on the wall in their native tongue. Their employees, of course, were treated to great food and bottles of champagne. “It's just a wonderful thing to think that this is a family, that we support a lot of families here and that we've been a work family for a long time now.” - Anne Brown Sima concurs. It is interesting to achieve a completely different orientation in business, especially after going through the many ups and downs from when you were a startup. Quick links to connect with Anne Brown: Anne Brown - LinkedIn Gazelle Global Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, P2Sample’s Chief Revenue Officer JD Deitch joins Sima Vasa. They have a fascinating conversation about JD’s transition to revenue functions from research and analytics, what has changed within the sample industry over the last ten years, and so much more. “So much of what we do is digital and the effort to try to attract people's attention and get them to do something—whether that is to buy a product or to do a survey—all that happens online and happens at a massive scale.” - JD Deitch JD Deitch - Learning How Insight Businesses Operate Truth be told, JD's transition into his current position at P2Sample did not go quickly. He was head of research and analytics at The NPD Group. As part of the European Management Committee, he came to learn how insight businesses function. After he left NPD, he ended up in a great transitional role where he worked in teaching research as well as taking care of methodologies that build surveys. Finally, when he moved to IPSOS, he became responsible for all of IPSOS' North American panel and sampling operations. While there was the implicit research element in his job role, he also concerned himself with how to get the business done, deliver good outcomes for clients, and manage a huge budget. Marriage of Research, Revenue and Sample All his previous experiences eventually became his stepping stone. He managed to parlay all his learnings into the path that eventually led him to P2Sample. When he thought about it, his position at the agency is the second time that he has taken up the responsibility for an overall revenue function. “For me, what actually plays into it is I do know how the business operates... I've had plenty of time in front of clients knowing what they want and been able to express that into things like marketing strategy to help our sales and business development teams grow.” - JD Deitch Digitization: The Great Driving Force The aim of most research projects has not changed much. They all wish to understand the behavior of a population from a smaller group of people. However, the techniques and methods to operationalize research have completely evolved for the past 10 years. That everything has become digital drives the change, especially from a sample point of view. In turn, most agencies need to adapt to work with these changes. Nobody wants to just read a PowerPoint presentation—they wish to execute and apply insights pronto, and so the era of automation came to be. “I think you're seeing the endpoints really driving change towards the middle, and right now, probably the biggest stressors are on the agencies to transform themselves and react to that.” - JD Deitch Quick links to connect with JD Deitch: JD Deitch - LinkedIn JD Deitch - Twitter P2Sample - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, the Founder and Chief Experience Officer of MESH Experience Fiona Blades sits with Sima Vasa. She shares how she leveraged mobile advertising long before it became mainstream and how experiential marketing is even more relevant today. Fiona Blades - Company Founded on Encounters Fiona founded MESH for the same reason everyone else starts a company. She was working as Planning Director at Claydon Heeley, handling famous brands like Mercedes Benz. Back then, she knew that it was not just TV advertising but also the plethora of everyday experiences—ranging from a dealership or a neighbor’s purchase—that make people want to buy the car. “Different encounters were making a difference to how people perceive the brand.” - Fiona Blades Knowing all that, Fiona felt that there was a gap that needed to be filled. This was how she came to realize the potential of the mobile phone. Unsung Potential of Mobile Phones Fiona thought that if they could get people to tell them whenever they see, hear and experience anything to do with a particular brand through the mobile phone, they could then work out which of the experiences were positive or less positive. That way, they could figure out how to help clients optimize their marketing investments. She went through a number of little steps before she could push through with the idea. It all began in another research company's suggestion that they sent a text message to a thousand young people to gather some data. Seeing actual responses coming through, Fiona figured that they could brief people to be more proactive in the data collection. Taking on Experiential Marketing Their data-collecting text brigades had two uses: as an ethnographic diary and as an evaluation. Through this effort, they began to see how respondents reacted to TV advertisements, posters, and even other people’s brand experiences. Not too long after, Fiona met her business partner who shared the same vision that she had. They decided to take on an award-winning project with a more qualitative approach to evaluating the brand experience. They launched some pilot tests that eventually proved that they could be onto something. “After I saw the data coming back in, I think two things happened. One was, I thought, 'If I can do that, somebody else can easily copy, so why would anyone buy it?' But the more important one was, I wanted to do it. I saw the data and I thought, 'Okay, I know how this could help marketers.'” - Fiona Blades on starting MESH as an agency Quick links to connect with Fiona Blades: Fiona Blades - LinkedIn Fiona Blades - Twitter MESH Experience - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Sima Vasa sits with Ted McConnell, SVP of Lucid. Together, they talk about his background, how advertising has changed and what marketers need to do to improve targeting. Finding His Way to Marketing Ted spent about the first half of his career in technology communications where he built networks and operating systems. He transitioned into technology development and, when the Internet came along, marketing. From there, he worked as a consultant for lots of data projects with various media companies. And now, he is a man with an unbelievable passion for data and data quality, steeped in the challenges and opportunities within the industry. Changes in Advertising Ted also shares how advertising has changed over the years. The landscape is fraught with various new channels and assumptions that marketers make about what consumers are doing. “What hasn't changed is you still want to get the right message to the right person... and what has changed is how you get it there.” - Ted McConnell Access to consumers is now data-driven, going through these various channels. The data aids in understanding who the consumer is and how marketers should deal with each of these channels. To Truly Improve Targeting The industry has gotten more sophisticated with the technology that allows for more precise allocation of advertising campaigns to specific segments. But to Ted, we have not gotten better at targeting. “What we've done is overcome the complexity of having many, many channels without necessarily becoming much better at getting to the right audiences.” - Ted McConnell Ted realized that the industry has yet to truly solve this problem in attribution. He set out to seek answers, realizing that the simplest solution to figuring out intentions is to ask the audience. And this pursuit eventually led him to Lucid. “The ‘who” is the principal driver and if you don’t know that, if that’s the missing link in your attribution, then you don’t know anything.” - Ted McConnell Quick links to connect with Ted McConnell: Ted McConnell - LinkedIn Lucid - Website Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
The world’s insight exchange and management platform is evolving with the market research industry. On this first episode of our second season, Richard Thornton and Greg Dunbar join Sima Vasa in a conversation about the changes astride at Cint. A 20-Year-Old Vision Cint is a technology company headquartered in Stockholm. Built 20 years ago to fit into the European market research industry, it has since achieved a global presence. Their platform helps deliver solutions to clients and partners in order to transform how they gather online survey data through insights. Richard, COO and Deputy CEO at Cint, says that their founder built the company with a mission to simplify the industry’s supply chain. They wanted to make it more readily available to customers and partners. This would allow for smarter, faster and cost-effective access to insights to help drive decisions and outcomes. Simplifying a Fragmented Platform It took a while for the market research industry to be ready as it is today for Cint’s disruptive vision back then. The adoption of the type of sampling and platform that they offer has become more acceptable in the last five or six years. “We are all aware that in market research, the supply chain is fragmented, antiquated and inefficient.” - Richard Thornton But the language has changed. The conversation has changed. Working in the changing environment has prompted Cint to start reshaping and redefining the business to cater to today’s industry. Evolving with the Industry Greg works as the EVP of Enterprise Solutions and recently joined Cint to help in its global acceleration. He admits that he is new to the market research industry. On top of growing the company, Greg wishes to help transform the business into a genuine SaaS platform offering fully-automated end-to-end solutions. They hope to achieve this not through a big shift in strategy but by using the existing platform and their tools that have evolved through Cint's twenty years in the industry. “It's evolving the toolset and the roadmap to enable our market research customers to actually manage their entire supply chain in one place.” - Greg Dunbar Quick links to connect with Richard Thornton and Greg Dunbar: Richard Thornton - LinkedIn Greg Dunbar - LinkedIn Cint - Website Cint - Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, fellow market research industry podcaster Jamin Brazil joins Sima Vasa. He shares the story behind his company, Happy Market Research, and his eponymous podcast. Jamin Brazil - Birth of a Mantra Jamin has had the life mantra that sometimes, you just have to laugh. He intentionally injected smiles and laughter into his life during difficult times. This belief stemmed from a study of clinically-depressed individuals. Half were treated with medication and the other half, with a 30-minute forced smiling exercise. The latter induced an improved mindset in the individuals who went through it, and this inspired Jamin. “The hallmark for me in starting Happy Market Research was exactly that — to create an emotional connection to the brand.” - Jamin Brazil Maintaining Relevance in MR Traditionally, market research has not been a very happy industry, especially in the old days. This is why Jamin feels that there’s power in infusing joy and playfulness into what researchers are doing. With this change, there will hopefully be more positive outcomes in the industry. He became the CEO of a large technology-based organization in market research without a single clue as to what he was going to do. Jamin started asking himself how he would be able to maintain relevance and connection to the industry that he loves. A Need for Conversation He went through a six-month journey of assessing the state of market research through different conversations with agencies and brands. This brought to him a couple of realizations. “There is this fundamental divide between what market researchers were offering and what the brands really wanted.” - Jamin Brazil And so he felt the need to find a way to facilitate a conversation between these two divisions. Hence the birth of his podcast, which creates an intimacy with its listeners in a very unique manner. This intimacy comes from the fact that most consumption is happening while listeners are doing something that they don’t necessarily love. “It's as if you're partnering with that individual psychologically and helping them through that drudgery and then also, of course, adding to them some value.” - Jamin Brazil Quick links to connect with Jamin Brazil: LinkedIn Twitter Instagram Happy Market Research Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, co-founder and CMO of Measure Protocol Paul Neto joins Sima Vasa. Together, they talk about the value blockchain plays in today’s market research landscape, and how Measure is promoting fair compensation and usage of consumer data. Paul Neto - Measure on Blockchain in MR There has been a lot of discussions about what blockchain means for the market research industry, and Paul and his team has seen its value. Measure is a blockchain-based protocol or platform that facilitates the marketplace that is full of so-called person-based data. In this marketplace, individuals have full control of their data that they can monetize. Contributions to this pool of data are made through various types of tasks such as participating in surveys and sharing of behavioral data. All these are done to benefit two core stakeholders. These are the correspondent or contributor, and the researcher and data buyer. “We specifically utilize blockchain and cryptography to build what we’d call protocols, and it’s really just defining a set of rules of engagement.” - Paul Neto Consumer Trust and Data Quality Measure aims for building consumer and buyer trust and driving data quality. Their founding principles include data sovereignty, privacy, transparency, and compensation. Their scheme allows consumers to engage with various data offers and tasks, from which an exhaustive data contribution profile can be drawn. And to complete the process, they employ a series of mechanisms that allow them to request access to the data. Contributors are then compensated fairly. “The idea is to have utilization of the protocol whether you are a brand, whether you are a panel or an existing research house.” - Paul Neto Symptoms of a Broken Industry A lot of people have yet to understand the magnitude of what might be broken in the industry in terms of respondent experience or respondent rates. When asked what the problems are, they would often talk about long surveys, declining participation, and fraud. But Paul thinks these are simply symptoms of the actual problem. Quick links to connect with Paul Neto: LinkedIn Twitter Measure Protocol Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Newly appointed President of EMI Research Solutions Adam Jolley joins Sima Vasa in this episode. He shares his future plans for the company, how the sample industry has changed, and how EMI is going to adapt to these key changes. Adam Jolley - Future of EMI Adam has been with EMI for more than a decade. His take over has been a long time coming, an itch of what’s next. He’s all in, and he wants more not only for his career but for the entire EMI. With this new chapter of his life comes a lot of planning. They are trying to diversify to be in line with the changes in the industry, like the new ways to go about finding samples, different types of plans and different applications. Research buyers have also changed, a general observation by people within the sample industry. “Maybe it's just the reallocation of the same money, but the buyers have changed so we need to adapt to that also.” - Adam Jolley Changing with the Industry The changing of traditional research buyers prompts a need to reinvent EMI’s messaging, products, and direction. They have been a consultative aggregator for the longest time. But now, they aim to focus on working with different types of clients, as well as incorporate more APIs. Becoming a Disruptor The recent shifts within the industry make market research beyond the typical. These also offer a lot more opportunities that are broader and bigger than the industry itself. Changes in market research are constant, like how qualitative data gained as much importance as quantitative data over time. It takes disruptors to break down walls and make these changes to help the industry evolve and keep it alive. And to be a disruptor is also Adam’s dream for EMI. “Can we get to the point where we’re the ones telling people that our way is the disruptive type of way?” - Adam Jolley Quick links to connect with Adam Jolley: LinkedIn Twitter EMI Profile Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, CEO and Founder of Kork Robert Wensley joins Sima Vasa. They talk about the company’s conception, its mission, and how Robert is changing the data brokerage landscape with his dedicated team. Robert Wensley - Kork’s Mission Kork is one of the world’s first consumer sourced data brokerage companies. Presently, data brokers are making about 200B in a year off of data. But here’s the catch: They do it without our consent. A lot of data brokers know more about us than our best friend or families. We also don’t have any control over the types of data that get shared. Kork has decided to sink their teeth into this challenge. “We’re trying to disrupt the traditional data brokers by creating a next-generation data brokerage platform where consumers themselves are in control over their data.” - Robert Wensley A Little History Robert studied in computer science, economics, and finance at Harvard. While he got lots of job offers for finance, he didn’t like it and went for real estate. After all, it seemed like an industry where he could make a decent amount of money without having to work many hours. He worked with a house flipping company, which was doing very large-scale business with hundreds of properties. But the problem was that they weren’t making a lot of money. When he came in, he suggested that they pivoted the business model to focus on making deals since this step in the process brought in all the revenue. On Data and Ethics They completely redirected the company’s focus on marketing and technology. Then they started buying data for every household in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. Their machines looked into 1,500 to 2,000 data points to figure out which had the highest statistical probability of getting sold at 70% market price or lower. Over the next three years, the company skyrocketed and hit record profit-level every month. But then an ethical problem arose—the algorithms were picking up all the bad things that would happen to a person. They had to protect consumers from unselective brokers. “We decided to build this simple product that will just automate that entire process, that will opt out of all the largest data brokers in the United States.” - Robert Wensley Quick links to connect with Robert Wensley: LinkedIn Twitter Kork Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
For 2019’s first episode, Toni Clayton Hine, B2B marketer and former CMO of Xerox Corporation joins Sima Vasa. They discuss what it was like to market one of the most iconic brands in the world at a time when digital technologies were emerging and how data played a big role in defining their marketing agenda. Toni Clayton Hine - Xerox's Marketing Agenda Toni worked at Xerox for five years during a time when a lot of transformation was going on. The company was the prominent brand associated with print and copy, and Toni came into a division tasked to build out a new market. She became the CMO shortly after the company split in 2017. Toni says that even after the split, the agenda was the same for both sides, how do you take the best of the Xerox brand in the print element and show people how that is still relevant? “That means showcasing how we lived at the intersection of both physical and digital”. - Toni Clayton Hine Understanding Customer Perception In order to be relevant in a modern, digital way, Toni needed to change people’s perception of Xerox as a mere print and copy brand through advertising and other vehicles. To create the perfect story, she had to research the perception of the end customer. She approached the research by making sure her team gathered current customer perception and requirements. Additionally, they had to know how these differ by country, offering or market segment. Challenges in Research Like any other endeavor, they faced a couple of challenges. These included the fact that they had the opportunity to ask people questions. “It was more making sure we were looking at the insights with an open mind.” - Toni Clayton Hine Toni wanted to make sure that they weren’t skewing the way they asked their questions to get the answers they wanted. They also had to be really open to how they were perceived in a competitive landscape. On top of this, they had to make sure they had enough data points to slice and dice. Quick links to connect with Toni Clayton Hine: LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On the sixth episode of this Attribution Acceleration round-up series, Lawrence Chan joins Sima Vasa. He talks about location intelligence and how persistent and accurate location data play important roles in market research and attribution. “When you have those types of signals basically dictating whether or not somebody went somewhere, without that persistent context of where someone came from or where they spent time, it becomes really, really good for folks to do meaningful attribution.” - Lawrence Chan Lawrence Chan - Cuebiq and Location Intelligence Lawrence Chan is the SVP of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Cuebiq. They are a location intelligence company focused on data quality and persistent location data. He has been part of the team since its inception. He now identifies innovative opportunities and strategic partnerships to drive the company’s expansion. They have found a way to scale the usage of persistent and accurate location data in a way that could be meaningful for many marketers as well as retailers to use for decision making. Persistent Location Data The importance of looking at persistent location data when assessing marketing strategies and consumer behavior can’t be undermined. Using a single location data point to break down and conclude that one’s advertising worked is often erroneous. You can never be 100% accurate when making this attribution. “When you have sparse amounts of data that's not persistent, you can't really do much with it. It's a guess that's not based on anything.” - Lawrence Chan The Importance of Context This is especially obvious when taken in the context of real-life establishments like the movie theater. It may be inconclusive to say that a marketing effort was effective if a consumer spends five minutes in a theater. It’s also important to take note of the pathways that led them to the location to ascertain their interaction. “That time context really creates a huge difference in terms of understanding what a consumer actually did versus what we saw from the location data.” - Lawrence Chan Quick links to connect with Lawrence Chan: LinkedIn Twitter - Lawrence Chan Cuebiq Twitter - Cuebiq Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
For the final episode of this Attribution Accelerator round-up series, Jane Clarke sits with Sima Vasa. They talk about the forum and the deeper focus on the topic of attribution. They also discuss the growth of granular measurement of data across media platforms. Jane Clarke - On CIMM and the Attribution Accelerator Jane is the CEO and Managing Director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). She is responsible for developing CIMM’s strategy and vision and overseeing operations. She says that the Attribution Accelerator is one of the only places where people can get a deep-dive focus on the topic of attribution. This has become very important for all marketers and media companies trying to sell their advertising platforms. Improvements and Challenges There has been some improvement in the granulation of data in relation to television and other media platforms. While this is considered a way forward, there has also been some challenges especially with the more rigid privacy compliance policies. Particularly, the linking of all these data sets for full cross-channel attribution has been challenging because of Google, Facebook and GDPR. Consequently, some people use privacy as an excuse not to share their IDs that link all the exposure on their platforms versus the other platforms that an advertiser can then put together. “I do think there's some hope that the industry can work out a way to do this in a way that works for consumers that is privacy-compliant.” - Jane Clarke Excitement in Television The present challenge of having to match data multiple times from different platforms for an advertiser to arrive at conclusions exists. Despite this, there is excitement in the television side. “There never has been granular TV ad exposure data available before so they can now do some studies done in digital for years.” - Jane Clarke on improvements in TV data measurement Advertisers can’t necessarily link these data. But they are able to get a deeper dive into television that was previously impossible. This is so important for many advertisers since this gives them more credence to rationalize every dollar spent on TV advertising, which continues to be a huge platform. Quick links to connect with Jane Clarke: LinkedIn CIMM Twitter - CIMM Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Jeff Greenfield sits with Sima Vasa today for the sixth installment of this Attribution Accelerator round-up series. He shares how marketing mix models differ from multi-touch attribution, as well as how the latter helps marketers play in the modern space. Jeff Greenfield - C3 Metrics and Attribution Jeff is the COO and Co-Founder of C3 metrics. He says that attribution in the way C3 plays it is a convergence of all things coming together. Prior to multi-touch attribution, marketers were stuck with broad, top-down marketing mix models. A progressive company gets a new model done every year and this model will dictate budget allocation. However, there are no clear-cut goals in terms of a feedback loop to direct marketing channels. Marketing Mix and Multi-touch Attribution While the next model will help in adjustments, there’s no real feedback to the actual ground people in terms of telling them what they have to do. “Multi-touch attribution tells you how to allocate it within that specific channel and cross-channel at a very, very granular level.” - Jeff Greenfield Marketing mix allows marketers to know if they have hit their costs. Meanwhile, the multi-touch attribution tells which media channels are working. This is key to effective marketing, since the media environment is so fragmented. Marketing Then and Now Back in the days, buying the services of Carson will ensure that 80% of America will know of your brand and services the next day. But now, with all the distractions and wide array of things consumers are exposed to, it is difficult to pin down the right track. “All you had to do is have enough money. You don't actually have to measure back then.” - Jeff Greenfield Without the ability to determine the channel that works, most marketers will have to go with their gut. Most marketers fall in love with tactic and strategy, then all of a sudden it’s three weeks before the end of the quarter. They also often cut everybody by 90%, but having the tool will tell you precisely what to cut so it won’t hurt next quarter. Quick links to connect with Jeff Greenfield: LinkedIn Twitter - Jeff Greenfield C3 Metrics Twitter - C3 Metrics Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Christian Bartens of Equifax and Datalicious touches base with Sima Vasa for this fourth episode of the Attribution Accelerator 2018 series. He talks about what Equifax and Datalicious offer to their customers. Together with Sima, he also shares a little more about the topic he tackled for the forum. Christian Bartens - Data-Driven Marketing (DDM) Christian’s company, Datalicious, has been acquired by Equifax of which he is now the Marketing Measurement Leader. “Equifax has a lot of very interesting data assets that have been in the data game for a very long time.” - Christian Bartens They don’t have many people but they have their own dedicated marketing service that is called data-driven marketing or DDM. The people behind DDM break down into four capabilities, which they called link, reveal, engage and measure. Four Capabilities of DDM Link is all about linking data sets, getting rid of data silos and creating the mythical single customer view. The people who do this are an army of data analysts that help customers analyze their data to find juicy segments within the sets, like where their most profitable customers are. This is the reveal part. Equifax also helps find more of the same, which they call engage. They have integrations where they can create targeted email lists to help in this goal. And then, Datalicious comes in for the final part, measure. “We're filling that measurement capability to help people actually analyze [whether] what they're doing doesn't work or not and then do more of the same.” - Christian Bartens on Datalicious as part of Equifax Purchase Path by Datalicious Christian started Datalicious ten years ago in Australia and Asia. It has grown all over Asia since. Now, they’re trying to build the same capability for Equifax in the US, specializing in attribution. They build what is called the purchase path. “We assemble every single touch point people have with the brand before they buy something or do something of value.” - Christian Bartens Quick links to connect with Christian Bartens: LinkedIn Twitter Datalicious Equifax Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
For the third episode of the Attribution Accelerator 2018 round-up series, Maggie Merklin joins Sima Vasa. She shares a bit about her talk and her company’s key to great relationships with their clients. She also discusses how TV and digital platforms drive success. Maggie Merklin - Analytics Partners and Choice Hotels Maggie is the Executive Vice President at Analytic Partners. They have been working with Choice Hotels for over eight years now. Her talk revolves around how attribution is being adopted, particularly by this client. Over the years, they have seen significant increases in Choice Hotels’ return on investment. They collaborated with Choice and their media agency to develop a PSA test. These gave similar results that aligned with the advanced analytics that they have been providing Choice. “It’s a great example of collaboration across agencies, as well as transparency to the approach, and then validation to help drive that buy-in.” - Maggie Merklin Transparency for Success The key to success in this partnership is transparency. Like any other analytics company, they want their clients to adopt their results. They like to be challenged, and this helps with proving their validity. “The results we provide through our analytics are only as good as an organization is going to use them.” - Maggie Merklin Their collaboration helped prove this. Developing the PSA tests took a lot of work to make sure there was no spillover, among other things. A lot went into this specific collaboration, which showcased their commitment. ROI Genome Project For Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome project, they collect all of the results they performed with their various clients, including ROI trends, spend trends, as well as savings. There has been a shift towards more spending online versus offline, which isn’t really surprising. But what has been interesting is the convergence in terms of investment from online vehicles, like displays and paid search, and with offline, like in TV. “A lot of that is really driven by not necessarily the effectiveness of digital advertising but just the pressure with costing.” - Maggie Merklin Quick links to connect with Maggie Merklin: LinkedIn Analytic Partners Twitter - Analytic Partners Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
1 Abha Dawesar – Linking the Entire Customer Journey from Acquisition to Long-term Retention | Ep. 043 16:37
Abha Dawesar, Marketing Strategy Director at HSBC joins Sima Vasa for this second episode of the Attribution Accelerator 2018 roundup series. She shares what she spoke about at the forum. She also talks about assigning business growth to marketing investment. “A lot of the consumer behaviors might be linked to the things that got them to the gate in the first place.” - Abha Dawesar Abha Dawesar - In-Depth Tracking of Insights Most of the industry ends up getting third-party analytics that often show highly-aggregated data. Abha gets involved in campaign designing and analytics at the beginning in order to come up with a set of data that they can track at a very granular level. For instance, they not only look at the offer, segment and geography, but also go into the details of a campaign. They inspect a test all the way down and then build the customer journey after they became customers. This takes away the limit of seeing only what offer is converting or how conversion and acquisition happened. “We were able to overlay a variety of categories and touch points with the customers to get to qualitative metrics.” - Abha Dawesar Seeking Long-Term Relationships There’s no undermining the importance of looking into the entire life cycle of a customer and closing the loop to gain better insight. A plethora of questions come up by doing so. You can launch a campaign with the intention to answer short-term and medium-term business needs. But in the end, you’re looking for customers that fit your brand and that you’re able to service in a way that they need for the long-term. “You’re really looking at a far longer term relationship as a financial institution with your customers and so these quality metrics are really critical to have in place.” - Abha Dawesar Deep-Layered Work for Patterns A lot of what is happening at the front end of a marketing cycle is very quantitative. It is remarkable to note that when you start doing this deep-layered work, through time, you will see customer behavior patterns. Quick links to connect with Abha Dawesar: LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
For the first episode of Attribution Accelerator 2018 series, Thomas Bauer, Partner at McKinsey & Company joins Sima Vasa. He rounds up some of his realizations from the forum and how marketing has become a true pillar of growth for the industry. “It's never really the analytics that do the job but without the analytics, it's a tough business for a senior marketing executive.” - Thomas Bauer Thomas Bauer - On Attribution Accelerator 2018 Thomas has always seen the Attribution Accelerator as extremely engaging. He likes to see the community coming together and talking about attribution. There has been a lot of movement recently and the scene is constantly evolving. For this particular year, Thomas moderated a session on brand attribution when last year there was none. He is very happy that things are progressing. “The way that attribution is looked at is becoming even more comprehensive.” - Thomas Bauer Economic Value of Marketing This progress is apparent when people look at the entire economic value created by marketing and making sure that they pay attention to it analytically. For instance, when people talk about brand ROI, it is one thing to have a very strong contribution and a solid view on the short-term effects. Mathematically, you can do quite a few things wrong on short-term. But it is another matter to aim for capturing the long-term effect of marketing properly. “We see some convergence towards a more granular model, towards people-based models, more attention to data stitching.” - Thomas Bauer Marketing as a True Pillar of Growth Brands have to deal with the difference between short-term and long-term goals based on marketing ROI in measured marketing dollars. Budgeting is always a short-term focus and it is hard to defend the case to invest more because there is a lack of credible ROI measurement. However, people must subscribe to the case of marketing as a true pillar of growth. This is why it's important to have the best analytical weapons to support these discussions. Quick links to connect with Thomas Bauer: LinkedIn McKinsey & Company Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Karyn Schoenbart, CEO of NPD Group, joins Sima Vasa today. They talk about the data, insights, leadership and how each of these are shaping up in the near future of NPD and the market research industry. “The best results in the future aren't going to be from consumer surveys or POS retail scanners or receipts. It will be a combination of all of those.” - Karyn Schoenbart Karyn Schoenbart - NPD’s Readiness to Face Changes The NPD Group is one of the top 10 market research companies in the world. With the fast-changing industry, Karyn worries about the company’s relevance like any other CEO. The good news is that NPD is well-poised to address the changes. “I have to make sure that our folks don't become complacent and that there is this sense of urgency throughout the company.” - Karyn Schoenbart Long-Term over Short-Term Results There’s a ceaseless struggle with the balance of hitting short-term goals and creating the sense of urgency for the future. But NPD’s strength lies in their history. Their track record for innovation goes a long way, from Nielsen Homescan to the first online surveys. Karyn considers NPD lucky to have an owner that is willing to invest in the future. It’s a competitive advantage that they get to focus on what’s right for the business and their clients in the long-term and not the short-term, quarterly results. Keeping True to Their Mission With all these in mind, they pick certain industries that they will be part of. They test data and couple these with industry expertise and prescriptive analytics. Innovations must fall into these areas and help advance their key mission before the company invests in them. “It comes back to staying true to our mission and why we exist and not just chasing things because they're interesting.” - Karyn Schoenbart on core values in their innovations Karyn agrees completely that long surveys and other things that burden consumers are not good in the long run. This is the very reason they are investing heavily in receipt harvesting, among other efforts. Quick links to connect with Karyn Schoenbart: Karyn Schoenbart LinkedIn Twitter NPD Group Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Nik Samoylov, founder of Conjoint.ly joins Sima Vasa. Together they talk about how Nik fell into market research and how automation has affected the industry and its methods. “If anything, core research skills like drafting questionnaires will definitely stay in demand.” - Nik Samoylov Nik Samoylov - Choosing Market Research With the marketing and statistics courses he took in college, Nik wanted to pursue a career in market research. For three years after graduation, Nik was involved in consulting. When he decided to focus on market research, he didn’t go looking for a job. Instead, Nik started his own market research company, Conjoint.ly it's has been around for a little over two years and they launched their platform a year ago. Conjoint.ly Working with Companies Nik’s established company helps others with product pricing and research. They do this mainly through their platform, where clients can log in, put in their stimuli, and choose who they want to survey. Reports then follow, which answers their clients' market-related questions. “The biggest selling point is the ease of using the platform and the outputs that it gives.” - Nik Samoylov on Conjoint.ly’s platform They also build custom projects for companies. One benefit of this is that clients get to learn from what they need and translate these into automated polls. Through this, everyone gets to use something that has been tested multiple times with a huge sample. Automation and Research Methods With automation among the rising stars in the market research industry, a question has arisen. Do we still need researchers to write and design questionnaires when this art and science could potentially go away in the long run? Nik says that even in automation, there is the need to use templates. People make their research similar to what they or other people have done in the past for consistency and reliability. But when they need to answer a question differently, the need to draft your own question becomes even more obvious and is something that’s not going to go away despite automation. To hear the rest of Nik's insight into automation and research, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Nik Samoylov: Conjoint.ly LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Natasha Stevens is the Executive President of Strategy at GFK North America. On today’s episode, she sits with Sima Vasa to talk about how market research is blossoming as an industry. She also shares how client data drive innovation in present-day endeavors. “It's really striking a balance between staying very committed to what the overall mission is but also having that flexibility and to realize that you're going to have to make changes along the way based on what you're hearing in the market.” - Natasha Stevens Natasha Stevens - An Exciting Time for Marketing Research There's a lot of changes going on within market research and the same goes for GFK, which has undergone some exciting changes as an organization. GFK has transformed from being a broad-range market research company to a technology-enabled data and analytics intelligence firm. GFK, among other firms, is currently awash in data coming in across from all parts of the organization and even externally. But ultimately, how do they utilize all these data to make better business decisions? “There's no challenge in getting that data. But how do we bring it together, how do we make sense of it, how do we process it, how do we use it to actually democratize and share information?” - Natasha Stevens Changes Driven by Clients Natasha focuses on the part of strategy that still needs that transformation in North America. She and her team have their eyes set on what drives change in the market based on client needs. One of the things they look into are the core competencies of the market as they relate to data assets and core industries such as media, technology and retail. Consolidated, these things help clients answer their business questions. Charting the Course for the Organization By bringing together all these data, Natasha and her team enable clients to pave the road from insight to prediction. They do all these in a dynamic marketplace, as they redefine GFK and move in the core space of data analytics and intelligence. Quick links to connect with Natasha Stevens: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Barry Jennings handles the central market research team at Microsoft. On today’s episode, he speaks with Sima Vasa about how research is involved in and has evolved at his workplace. “Realistically, the job of delivering impactful insights, that part doesn't change. But we have significant challenges, like the speed of business... data proliferation.” - Barry Jennings Barry Jennings - Market Research Director at Microsoft At Microsoft, Barry and his team focus on endeavors related to the cloud, servers, as well as technical audiences like IT pros, developers and data scientists. His work keeps him busy on the daily, but it’s the kind that doesn’t allow a single dull moment. In fact, his workday is highly variable. Barry’s fundamental job is to bring insights to the business. They take things to the next level and extend what research brings to the picture in terms of changing the minds of people in the organization, product development and even messaging. “We try to understand what questions the business is facing and we try to bring fact-driven customer insights to the table that help drive our essential business decisions.” - Barry Jennings Involvement of Market Research Market research came to be to bring in the most innovative customer insights function in the world. The team has this very high-end aspiration that drew Barry to the job. The central market research team also has a seat at the table as a partner, as a thought leader, and as that part of the business that helps advance Microsoft's vision Changes and Challenges Barry and his core team are under significant transition with the current changes in market research. They work in a function that looks at what people feel, what they want, what they do, and market research is great for that. A pretty robust qualitative and quantitative practice in the field has also existed for the longest time. However, there is definitely an inflection point thanks to the growth in other disciplines like data science. There are a lot more analytics and data to be taken into account. As market researchers, they need to make sure they understand how what they do integrates with the broader set of insights that are out there. Quick links to connect with Barry Jennings: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Patrick Comer joins Sima Vasa. Patrick is the Founder and CEO of Lucid, a software company focused on delivering human answers on a massive scale. Today he shares his thoughts on competition and purpose, and the importance of understanding perspective on data collection. Patrick Comer - The Competitive Landscape for Lucid Everybody always talks about the landscape offered by different companies, along with the competition. But Patrick has always maintained that it doesn’t matter who the competition is or who isn’t. In the end, every peer will compete against them or partner with them in some way. The reality of the situation is that all the other companies are also the clients. Regardless of the niche or category they occupy, they will still work with Lucid in one way or another. “In our world, it's neither one nor zero. It's always gray.” - Patrick Comer on competition Purpose Over Competition It is impossible to get away with pointing out peers and branding them as the enemy. What is more important is to focus on purpose and the goals. Companies will thrive as long as they are narrowly focused on their mission, values, and what they are trying to deliver. This is regardless of whether another partner has similar products or capabilities. While those may seem competitive, they are not as important as focusing on clients and a defined mission. “Purpose is far more important than comparing ourselves to other people.” - Patrick Comer The Purpose of Lucid Lucid recognizes that every single day, there are questions being asked among various global platforms. Each of these questions need the right audiences to answer them, whether they come individually or in the form of surveys. Patrick and his team connect global questions to human answers. Their second purpose is to provide real impact on the communities around them. It is easy to talk about business in the context of competition, growth, and where they fit. But every day, the people at Lucid remind themselves that they are members of society. Quick links to connect with Patrick Comer: Twitter - Patrick Comer LinkedIn - Patrick Comer Website - Lucid Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ben Harden, partner and leader for Data and Analytics at CapTech Consulting sits with Sima Vasa today. They talk about the importance of data in bridging the gap between businesses and technology. They also discuss data governance and how agile frameworks are managed. Ben Harden - Full Service at CapTech CapTech Consulting is a national firm in the United States with nine offices across the country. In his area, Ben runs the data and analytics practice. Apart from this, the firm also offers their clients services on software engineering, management consulting for agile and object-oriented management, and customer experience. Essentially, CapTech is a full-service consulting firm. Their client projects often involve data engineers, architects and scientists, as well as persons of command and analysts. This is in response to the general shift in the market on the idea of customer experience and doing exciting designs from a digitization perspective. “A typical team is drawing from all of those different areas, putting that team together and trying to solve the problem for our clients.” - Ben Harden Bridging Businesses and Tech Ten years ago, CapTech spent a lot of time in the information technology department. Over time, however, thanks to working with business customers, they realized that businesses are the actual buyers in many cases. This doesn’t mean that IT has to be pushed to the back. In fact, the need to exert efforts in IT to leverage and work through available platforms remains. To sum it up, CapTech is a bridge between the business and tech sides of the trade, working to deliver the solutions to these businesses. Data Science: Coolest 21st Century Job Twenty years ago, data science is a back-burner kind of career. Suddenly, it’s the coolest job there is. But businesses have grown to need to understand data further in order to pull all aspects of research together. In this age, everyone needs to gain access to information that will help their business grow. And all these start with data. “I think data in general is a bridge.” - Ben Harden Quick links to connect with Ben Harden: Twitter - Ben Harden LinkedIn - Ben Harden Twitter - CapTech LinkedIn - CapTech Facebook - CapTech Website - CapTech Alfred - Your Data Butler Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Betty Adamou sits with Sima Vasa to talk about games as tools for market research. She is the CEO and Founder of Research Through Gaming Ltd and the author of Games and Gamification in Market Research. Betty Adamou - Market Research and Video Games Betty’s passion for Research Through Gaming came about when she started working in the market research industry. She was taken aback by the disparity between the massiveness of the sphere and the poor quality of communication, that is, surveys. By day, she finds herself working in her market research job, looking after clients or helping design these surveys. But at night, she is glued to her video games. She began asking questions that eventually gave rise to her passion project, “There’s something there. Why am I glued to this screen but not to that screen?” - Betty Adamou, on market research and video games Birth of Research Through Gaming Betty conducted a conference talk on the future of research through gaming while she was still working at Nebu. People clearly took an interest in her conference paper. She began receiving calls and questions, asking when she would start her project. She quit her job and eight years later, she feels validated. She hears of the results of her research games, her clients’ feedback, and what they do with the data they gather. And with the advent of different advancements in the industry, she knows she could further evolve. “It’s just a big passion of mine. As much as I've written the book, I design games and I run research trends every day. If anything, I get more excited about it.” - Betty Adamou The Process of Market Research Games For the companies she works with, she directly deals with the brand research managers. Betty offers different kinds of services for these companies. Among these is making sure that her clients don’t forget the kind of engagement and insights that they want from the traditional services they using. Her process involves coming up with an idea, designing the game, and actually working on it. They usually have a turnaround rate of 10-14 working days. Quick links to connect with Betty Adamou: Twitter - Betty Adamou LinkedIn - Betty Adamou Website - Research Through Gaming Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
For today’s episode, Senior Business Consultant at Southwest Airlines Isaac Muñoz sits with Sima Vasa. They talk about marrying research and insights and why research is not just an optional element but should be deeply integrated into the marketing process. Isaac Muñoz - Insights at Southwest Airlines Isaac is part of the Customer Insights of the Marketing Team at Southwest Airlines. His job involves doing primary research and then coming back to the company as a consultant. He and his team have been in this role for ten years. This innovative move evolved their function from not just being research but being more consultative as well. It helped raise understanding business issues and linking research results to driving actionable decisions. “One of our missions is to make sure that everything we do is representative of the customer, everything that we do is received well by the customer.” - Isaac Muñoz Realizing a Mission In order to be able to achieve their goals, they have taken the approach of doing research that involves reaching out to customers. They get to know what they have to say, what customers like and don't like. And then they evaluate the data they get. By doing all these, they are able to go back to the company with tactics that they can launch. As a result, they become better received by their customers. Challenges Along the Way Like other researchers, Isaac and his team encounter challenges related to understanding the consumers and customers. The need to spread different channels into different touch points is one of these. And while this is no news, the customer journey is unique to everyone and should therefore always be taken into account. “One of the challenges is trying to understand how each touch point plays a role and trying to see the influence that marketing and people play a role, especially in today's environment.” - Isaac Muñoz Quick links to connect with Isaac Muñoz: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today’s episode, Kris Hull and Chris Murphy of Kantar North America joins Sima Vasa. Together, they talk about marketing metric audit protocols, finding the balance between short-term and long-term tracking, and so much more. Kris Hull and Chris Murphy - MASB Accreditation In a recent press release, the market research agency announced its accreditation for the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB). Chris Murphy, Chief Client Officer, says that they perform the marketing metric audit protocols for third party audits. This accreditation certifies the offers they provide their clients’ methodology as the right metric to look to financial performance. Chris underscores the importance of performing rigorous third party audit as part of their core equity assessment tool. “We struggle industrially to gain alignment just on the principles of brand growth and measurement.” - Chris Murphy Short-term and Long-term Tracking Kris Hull, Senior Vice President, shares one of the things they found out in going through their internal process for research and development. When researchers stay at an aggregated level of looking at data on general equity and sales trends, a lot of noise gets in the way. This makes it difficult to find strong direct relationships about how people perceive and buy a brand. Finding the Balance Researchers need to look at sales as a combination of both long-term and short-term based trends to gain more insights. This practice enabled Kris and his team to see how short-term sales are often influenced by promotional and media activity. This activity then drives unaided awareness or some traditional funnel matrix giving good sense of what moves and how people respond to a strategy. Meanwhile, power of attraction along with other trends, have stronger relationships with long-term sales trends. “A brand can take a very balanced view of how to drive what they need to do now and what they need to do.” - Kris Hull Quick links to connect with Kris Hull and Chris Murphy: Kantar - Twitter Kantar Millward Brown - Twitter Marketing Accountability Standards Board - Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On today's episode, President of The Opinion Economy Ted Waz sits with Sima Vasa to talk about the rising distributed ledger and blockchain technology. They also touch on how it will affect the way we collect consumer data and the market research sphere as a whole. Ted Waz - On The Opinion Economy The Opinion Economy is a distributed ledger, blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) company. They focus on unifying conversations between consumers and those who would like to purchase these data. Consumers are the people who display behaviors and express opinions. The latter group can comprise of marketing companies, aggregations, or brands. Opportunities in Market Research Ted got exposed to consumer data and market research through his firsthand experience as part of and working with investors groups. During a convention, he met and got into discussions with incredible people. He promptly realized the energy and great technology in the sphere. People guided him around the space. Then he decided to spend a little more of his time and money to invest in it, stirring up a lot of good commotion in the sphere. He believes that market research is bound to do something phenomenal over the next couple of years. “The more I discovered, the more opportunity I saw.” - Ted Waz Distributed Ledger and BaaS Technology in MRx To some, the incredible pivot point around consumer data when coupled with new innovations from blockchain may seem to negatively affect data collection. But this is far from the truth. Distributed ledger and BaaS technology connects to all sorts of digital interfaces. For this sole reason, present methods of collecting online or mobile data won’t be going away. In fact, these new technologies will only leverage collection of consumer data. “We're the piping between the consumers and those who to purchase consumer data through a whole host of digital services.” - Ted Waz Quick links to connect with Ted Waz: The Opinion Economy Twitter LinkedIn Venture Nashville Connections - Article Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ben Smithee is the CEO of The Smithee Group, a digital marketing agency based in New York City. On this episode, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about what they do, how they do it, and how millennial research has affected the marketing sphere. “I think there’s a new shift… marketing in the moment and not for the moment.” - Ben Smithee Ben Smithee - The Smithee Group’s Pedigree His full-service digital marketing agency focuses a lot on small-medium businesses but still serve large enterprise companies with intelligence and insights work. They work with luxury brands—the jewelry industry—, which as Ben says, is every marketer’s dream. Their background is founded on research and analytics. With this history, they are able to take their learnings and understanding of how consumer behavior works and apply them in what they do. Research-based Execution Ben started his company with a big emphasis on execution and not just research. Of course, the two should go together. Effective decisions are made based on facts and figures instead of gut instinct and sometimes, politics. “I would suggest any marketer… start in research because the fundamentals in learning: consumer insights, consumer behavior, solid research skills… it makes you so much more effective and efficient as a marketer.” - Ben Smithee Assessments: Crux of Marketing All of The Smithee Group’s endeavors begin with digital brand assessment. Before they launch any marketing campaign, they must first look at where the brand is and where it could potentially be. This also comes with understanding audience segmentation. Back in the day, these assessments entail diving into and tweaking things targeting focus groups. But at present, marketers can run these tests and repeat and learn from them live on the field. This shift has come from knowing customer behavior and having the background necessary to make informed decisions. “That's what I'm thankful for some of the background in millennial research which obviously led us to digital… and being that trusted partner.” - Ben Smithee Quick links to connect with Ben Smithee: Website - The Smithee Group Twitter - The Smithee Group Website - Ben Smithee Twitter - Ben Smithee Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
On this episode, Anese Cavanaugh, CEO of Active Choices, Inc., joins Sima Vasa to talk culture and leadership. Devoted to helping people show up, Anese is an author and is the leading voice on intention, energy and presence. Today she brings to us the story behind her famous IEP Method. “I believe that we each create the culture that we are a part of.” - Anese Cavanaugh Anese Cavanaugh - Contagious Culture After doing work with business leaders and organizations for 15-16 years, Anese wrote the book Contagious Culture. She discovered two myths that every business leader and organization believe in. “One was that leadership was about what we do… The second myth was that culture was created by everybody around us.” - Anese Cavanaugh What people didn’t realize, however, is that leadership is about who we be, how we show up, our energy, intentions and presence. Culture, on the other hand, isn’t something created by everybody else but by each and everyone that is part of it. Leadership and Culture Combined When we add leadership and culture together, it gets easier to realize how we’re the ones creating and defining both and that we are actually contagious. This is the very foundation of the book that she wrote. Intentional Energetic Presence Anese authored her book to give people as many tools and resources around the IEP Method, which helps people show up better and also to lend that into leadership and cultural optimization. IEP is something that people bring to every single room, every single interaction that they have and everything that they do. It’s what happens when they show up for themselves and for others. “It’s a choice. So the more intentional I can be with that, the better able I am to create more of a pleasurable impact and more of my intended impact in leadership.” - Anese Cavanaugh Quick links to connect with Anese Cavanaugh: Website - Anese Cavanaugh IEP Live Two-Day Event Twitter - Anese Cavanaugh Twitter - IEP Method Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Steve Koenig is the Vice President of Research at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), a US trade association for all consumer tech. Today he joins Sima Vasa to talk about the future of society with the continued rise of consumer tech, automation and AI. “I think it’s safe to say, in 2018, that technology is a mainstay of our society, whether its for work, business, or personal use. That dynamic is only going to just intensify.” - Steve Koenig Steve Koenig - Working at CTA Today, consumer tech is everything from an iPhone to a Mercedes Benz. CTA’s membership constituency reflects this. They have members like software developers, retailers, and anybody making or selling consumer tech in the US market. They are best known for their trade show CES® - The Global Stage for Innovation, which is held in Las Vegas every January and in Shanghai every June. The show draws thousands of people eager to hear the latest and see the greatest technology coming into the market. In fact, this past January alone, over 180 thousand trade professionals from over 150 countries came to the world’s largest tech event. The Dominance of Smartphone The smartphone continues to gain dominance in our day-to-day lives along with the rise of other smart devices like personal fitness trackers. The smartphone itself is the anchor for a lot of endeavors like checking email, gaming and accessing various apps. And of course, there is the occasional phone call. “The smartphone—that remains to be the center of the consumer tech universe.” - Steve Koenig Internet of Things A robust connectivity rose the past couple of years. However, a sad reality has also become more obvious with the fast turnout of new technology. We’re not yet that far into the 21st century and the Internet hasn’t been around for that long. But as a culture and society, we already take for granted the connectivity in the Internet. Quick links to connect with Steve Koenig: Consumer Technology Association LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Tuomas Syrjänen is Chief AI Officer and Co-Founder of Futurice. Today, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about emerging data-driven business models. He also discusses the impact of data and AI on culture and practical blockers to data and AI adoption. "We are in the middle of this kind of digital innovation culture shift where we are talking more about agile organizations." - Tuomas Syrjänen Tuomas Syrjänen - A Primer on Futurice Futurice is a 500-employee digital consultation company. They help big corporations determine their direction and undergo digital transformations. Some of their big league clients include BMW, E.ON, and Nordea Bank. The company has been around for 18 years. Their consulting spans different levels. They build digital services and define how a business compares to other models and in relation to culture. Growing Digital Marketing Trend A trend in product creation is rising. From experimentation, people have started to take observation-driven approaches. "Instead of experimentation we actually observe what goes on in social media, how customers behave... and using data and AI, [we can] directly create products or services that fit customer needs." - Tuomas Syrjänen The traditional methods of data collection used to drive research no longer suffice. Customer feedback aids in creating dual value products for not only the use of clients and customers. They also use these products to gain insights on what customers want and how they're actually utilized. Double Cultural Changes Two cultural changes in the business sphere are happening at the same time. One is the shift from traditional, top-down corporate culture into a digital innovation culture. And then there's the shift to more data-driven business models. Together, these will impact a lot of future organizational cultures. And they will affect how decisions are made, how uncertainty is handled, and how individuals can take more initiatives. Quick links to connect with Tuomas Syrjänen: Futurice LinkedIn Twitter - Tuomas Syrjänen Twitter - Futurice Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ryan Barry is the Chief Revenue Officer at Zappi. In today's episode, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about Zappi's unique approach to innovation, how a culture of instant gratification is shaking up market research, and the exponential growth of the insights industry. “My worldview of research is it's an industry that should be growing exponentially.” - Ryan Barry Ryan Barry: A History of Zappi Zappi started four years ago when their founders realized the problem with research. People had to program surveys or wait a long time in order to gain access to potential insight. Zappi came up with a new platform that rebuilt methodologies designed to help answer specific business questions and took out all the manual process. Two and a half years ago, they merged with an analytics and data digitization company. They have since been doing research in 37 countries about the globe and some brands. Ahead of Their Time When Zappi first introduced their models, they had mixed reception. Some people thought they didn't need to move faster or had excess budget for the innovation. But the last four years has seen a massive evolution of a couple of key trends. Technology continued to disrupt everything. Mass media no longer controlled the world and people do. Marketing itself has become an extremely programmatic data-driven industry. Exponential Growth at the Present Ryan says that Zappi's growth rate would have been faster if they had started now. A new category rose in recent years. There's a bunch of other companies that are doing similar work, but there's also a need to have more advanced dialogues because the times are changing. Marketing and business are realizing that if they don't have live data in a programmatic world, there would be a problem. “We're really at an interesting crossroads as an industry. We're looking at data, people, culture, we're using all of the things to help companies grow.” - Ryan Barry Quick links to connect with Ryan Barry: Zappi LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Joel Rubinson, founder of Rubinson Partners, Inc., joins former colleague Sima Vasa today. They talk about how digital analytics can be intercepted with the theory of recency to create great strategies. Joel also discusses targeted advertising, and why surveys are important to improve marketing. “There’s a need for survey because you can’t learn everything you want from digital exhaust.” - Joel Rubinson Joel Rubinson - The Persuadables In order to address the struggle of figuring out fragmentation in advertising, Joel published a white paper titled The Persuadables. Viant and Nielsen Catalian Solutions (NCS) collaborated with Joel in this groundbreaking research. The study intercepted two analytic frameworks that weren't brought together yet. The consumer dynamics framework used reflected customer loyalty or buying rate towards a particular brand. When intercepted with the theory of recency, they were able to arrive at interesting results. Intercepting with Recency Joel had also worked with late Erwin Ephron, father of recency. One lunch, they were playing around with the idea of applications of the theory in the digital context. Suddenly, Joel found himself drawing curves. Soon, they were able to come up with an idea for media optimization. Erwin passed away before the research could take off, but Joel pursued it. He approached leading digital ad network Viant and got into a partnership with NCS, which had a massive frequent shopper database. Research to Target They classified shoppers on two dimensions. They retrieved data on how much customers are currently buying from the brand, and whether or not they're probabilistically close to an upcoming purchase of the category. Coupled with more techniques, they are able to generate insights helpful in targeting the right segment. This kind of evidence-based research is paramount to creating better advertising strategies. “Targeting the right segment seems to always pay off. It is a repeatable, winnable strategy. So this should really be a basis for media planning.” - Joel Rubinson Quick links to connect with Joel Rubinson: Website - Joel Rubinson LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Allie Bohm is the Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge, a non-profit advocacy organization based in Washington DC. Today, she and Sima Vasa discuss the existing privacy and consumer policies in the United States. Allie Bohm - Policy Work Expert Prior to Public Knowledge, Allie dedicated most of her time at law school. She also spent 7 years at CLU doing policy work. Now, she is working to help promote the freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to affordable communications tools and creative works. Privacy Policies in the USA In the absence of a privacy law, there are a few things in place. One is the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPP), which the Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare established in the 1960s. "We need a comprehensive privacy law and we don't have one." - Allie Bohm FIPP serves as the basis of many discussions on privacy in the industry and in the United States. But, it never became law. There are a number of sector-specific ones instead. Among which are the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, the Cable Privacy Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and the Video Privacy Protection Act. State laws also exist. Support from the Federal Trade Commission For anything which doesn't fall under these laws, according to Allie, there is Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. It penalizes unfair, deceptive practices. "It was not created for the Internet Age but the FTC has been created about using it here." - Allie Bohm An activity is considered deceptive when its recipient doesn't know about it. For unfairness, there has to be substantial harm and a legally recognizable harm. Also, harm must not be reasonably avoidable. Quick links to connect with Allie Bohm: Website - Public Knowledge LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ulli Appelbaum is the founder of First the Trousers Then The Shoes, Inc. The consulting firm has been grounded by execution rather than deliverables, resonating with Ulli’s beliefs on strategies and the creative process. Today, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about the power of extracting insights from data. Ulli Appelbaum - Advertising Ever Since Ulli’s US advertising career started 16 years ago. He has immense fascination and passion for the concept of positioning. Additionally, the knowledge of how people can influence perceptions others form fueled his drive to become successful in the field. His many experiences in advertising opened up opportunities in a vast array of fields. After a while, he switched to account planning, gaining exposure to planning and market research. He then received an offer in Minnesota, which trailblazed his expansive career that branched out to both traditional and digital platforms. Turning Data into Insights Ulli recently launched a set of method cards with exercises and questions that will help people generate insights from data. Anyone toils with looking into big data to gain these insights that are proven indispensable tools in furthering the market research industry. “Insight is such an important concept in the world of marketing. But it's often misunderstood or misused. Everything is an insight nowadays.“ - Ulli Appelbaum An Output and a Process According to Ulli, insight is a process and an output in a sense. There will be no insight without the process. The process then entails diving into available data in order to make sense of these data and make the connections that will eventually resolve into the aha! moment people struggle to arrive at. “Because there is so much more data out there, more and more people think that new data leads to new insights, which it can, but it doesn’t have to.” - Ulli Appelbaum Quick links to connect with Ulli Appelbaum: Website - First the Trousers The Shoes, Inc. Aha! The Indispensable Insight Generation Toolkit LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Rolfe Swinton is known as the blockchain expert. He joins Sima Vasa in this episode to talk about the potential and applications of this fundamental technology that can change the workings of the market industry. Rolfe Swinton - Promoting Blockchain Insights Rolfe has recently joined GfK where he's taken on a new role as Director of Data Assets. GfK is currently on a mission to reinvent its business and to refocus for the future of the insights industry. He is also the co-founder of IIeX's Accelerator, a new program that is helping bring new capital resources to help very early stage companies targeting the insights industry. Rolfe also co-founded a forum in an effort to promote the understanding and application of blockchain in business models. Blockchain: What's in a Word? In order to better understand blockchain, it must first be separated from cryptocurrencies. It's a very specific use and application of blockchain, but it is by no means the be all end all. “When we talk about blockchain, we want to think about not just things that have caught people's imagination now but direct consumer applications.” - Rolfe Swinton The blockchain is a fundamental technology, but there's very few people who have dug deep enough into it to fully grasp its significant applications and actual use. BitCoin, Granddaddy of Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that is unique and transferrable, BitCoin being the most famous example. BitCoin is an innovation that has gotten a lot of people excited and at the same time scared. Springing from an idea on paper, BitCoin became a global phenomenon a few years after somebody set up the first block in its blockchain. With a starting price at one-sixteenth of a cent, BitCoin blew up by the fact that it satisfies the many attributes of money to extremes. It’s hyper-portable, with an infinite value per unit of weight, and infinitely divisible. However, its built-in settlement layer, a function that does not exist in currencies today makes it all the more interesting. “Because of this, some people would refer to blockchain as essentially, the trust protocol.” - Rolfe Swinton Quick links to connect with Rolfe Swinton: LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Tia Maurer is a Group Scientist at the Procter & Gamble Company. She sits with Sima Vasa to discuss data integrity, statistical significance, surveys and automation, and the shift to behavioral-based research methods. "Your analysis and insights is only as good as your quality of data and rarely is your data file 100% error free." - Tia Maurer Tia Maurer - Seasoned Product Researcher For more than 20 years, Tia has worked closely with Beauty Care products researchers. She specializes in consumer research and product development. She has designed, developed and piloted many emerging consumer research methodologies to fuel innovation and guide product development. Among the brands she's worked on are Cascade, Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Olay, and Pantene. Developing a Brand Message At Procter & Gamble, they have two research groups. One focuses on consumer market knowledge, while the other focuses on products research. “Nowadays, reliable data is really critical to us and our product development… it's really imperative to confirm the accuracy of our data file before we’re really commencing analysis.” - Tia Maurer Part of Tia's job is to translate the needs of the consumers into the technical requirements of the brand. She helps ensure that the products reflect the kind of messaging they need to market. P & G Data Collection Their researchers primarily use two types of data, and one of which is consumer testing data. They conduct surveys on various global platforms as well as gather input from comments and testimonials. "I think there has been a shift in more behavioral research...The reason is really simple. We’re learning that what people say and what they do don’t always match." - Tia Maurer According to Tia, the length of time it takes to launch a brand depends on the product and the company's mission. One project they had, for example, took them five years to launch. Quick links to connect with Tia Maurer: LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Melissa Sauter and Duncan Lawrence join Sima Vasa to share a bit of history of Market Strategies International (MSI) and Morpace. The two leading market research companies are combining after the acquisition by a private equity firm, STG. In today's episode, they share the separate histories of their companies and the factors leading to the merger. "We're better together. The merger was meant to be." - Duncan Lawrence Duncan Lawrence - History of Morpace Morpace was founded about 40 years ago in 1975, with a focus on automotive. Some decade and so down the road, they realized the need to broaden their focus and do something different. In 1990, they merged with the company Market Opinion Research (MOR). This merger allowed them to venture into healthcare and financial services, among other other areas. Since then, Morpace has focused on growing organically. They have expanded globally and erected several offices in the United Kingdom, Los Angeles, and China. Melissa Sauter - Market Strategies: A History Almost 30 years ago, five former employees from MOR founded MSI. This history of the firm ties back to the Morpace's history of mergers. Since leaving MOR, the five founders of MSI grew and drove the evolution of their family. In 2006, a private equity firm acquired MSI. The company subsequently grew through a series of acquisitions of three companies. These developments opened the opportunity for new capabilities, industry focus, and talent. MSI has been in technology, telecommunications, consumer service, retail, and energy for the past three decades. The Merger's Driving Force Both companies have been looking for an exit strategy for the past few years. MSI and Morpace share a lot of similarities culturally and structurally. The fact that they both differentiate in the markets through deep history knowledge, operational excellence and truly superior client service makes the merger only natural. Most shareholders look into company size when considering mergers, but that is not the sole reason for this move. MSI and Morpace are big enough to offer talent but small enough to consistently deliver on the client service. Melissa Sauter and Duncan Lawrence say that this is their top priority. "We have no aspirations to be the biggest in the market... It's about optimizing the scale to best serve our clients." - Melissa Sauter Quick links to connect with Melissa Sauter and Duncan Lawrence: Market Strategies International Morpace Press Release on Merger Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Joe Catling is the Head of Analytics at Relish Research. Today he sits down with Sima Vasa to discuss marrying client or 'big' data to market research data, the challenges of doing so, and the future of advanced statistical or machine learning techniques. “What I think we're going to see is a democratization of a lot of machine learning, big data tools, which can make them more accessible for people.“ - Joe Catling on future perspectives Joe Catling - From Mathematics to Analytics Joe studied mathematics in university and eventually managed to transition into a standard research track. This enabled him to focus on advanced statistical techniques as they pertain to market research. He currently leads a team of thirty based in London. While there's a standard suite of research techniques available for those in his field, his role also entails finding new and creative ways of doing things. Marrying 'Big' Data and Research Data There's a rich data set that you can't get any other way apart from research, including psychographic data. Meanwhile, companies are collecting vast amounts of information on their customers and prospects. Marrying these two data sets should be a natural part of the process in market research, but it seems more people hit a dead-end and fall apart in the fusion. This is mostly due to a lack of awareness of its importance. “That’s when, I think, you end up with research and big data that kind of become more than the sum of their parts. That you get to insight that you really couldn’t have done in isolation, from one just data source or another.” - Joe Catling The Challenge: Client Teams Few clients would necessitate the need for combining data sets as if it's not an obvious part of the process in market research. A lot of it seems like a function of structure in the client teams. “This idea of coming up with something where both feed in and both are integral to the processes is something that I think not a lot of people are thinking and talking about it in that kind of way.” - Joe Catling Quick links to connect with Joe Catling: Relish Research - Website Relish Research - Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Brian Califano is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of AcceleratngCFO. Today he joins Sima Vasa in an episode dedicated to current trends of finance and the role of data in how we budget our financial results and plan for business future. Brian Califano - CFO: A Significant Service AcceleratingCFO offers Chief Financial Officer (CFO) services for small to medium size businesses, specializing in entertainment, media, and technology industries. They assess the needs of their clients and help them come up with effective marketing strategies to bolster their businesses. The mid-market region comprises 90% of American companies. While CFO's value is apparent when taken in the context of budgeting, performance, and even buying or selling, this portion of the market doesn't see this expertise. Trends in the World of Finance Brian's interactions with his clients has made him see symptoms of acceleration going on in the marketplace. A lot more people are getting into buying and selling. More companies are availing of CFO services to seek the expertise of people who have been into boardrooms and studied terms that are advantageous to owners. “Lots of companies are looking to either buy or sell their business… They’re starting to assess their business and see whether or not they’re going to be big enough to have an impact on the industry they're in.” – Brian Califano on finance and data trends with clients Starting Your New Business There are many financial considerations when planning to start a new business. Many people turn to lending, among other means. A plethora of references to guide anyone in this venture is available, but it's only one factor to consider. “At the end of the day, in terms of really believing in yourself and getting a business off the board, it's usually the best way to do it.” - Brian Califano On using friends and family to raise funds for a new business Quick links to connect with Brian Califano: LinkedIn AcceleratingCFO Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
In today's episode, Sima Vasa talks with Roddy Knowles. Roddy is the Director of Product and Innovation Research at Research Now SSI. His leadership runs the machinery that leverages technology to effectively support products. Technology underpins processes by which innovation comes to fruition. This is what Roddy and his team are working to achieve. Technology Behind the Process Today, tech advancements are coupled with ways to make more efficient various research processes. This is seen from data collection to generation of reports. There’s a constant goal to make work at the back end of everything easier and quicker. As Roddy says, there are lots of technologies working as the machines underneath all these other technologies that run research methodologies. Roddy Knowles Diving Deep into Automation Process automation is key to a streamlined user experience. It opens a lot more opportunities for the collection of data. In addition, it equips researchers with the means to deliver fast and efficiently. But there’s been a clamor to shift the conversation away from automation in a broad perspective. People have become more critical of what it actually brings to the table. “Let’s stop talking about automation itself, but what is it actually doing. Why are we using it? How is it improving data analysis?” - Roddy Knowles Not for Everyone and Everything It’s important to remember that respondents come from different marketing segments. This means that they have different needs. Naturally, they will desire different experiences from products. Engagement differs from one person to another. Research is just as specific. “It’s not necessarily a one size fits all… Which is the way that research is often designed.” - Roddy Knowles To hear more about Roddy Knowles' insights on research, technology, and brand experience, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Roddy Knowles: LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Simon Chadwick is the Founder and Managing Partner of Cambiar Consulting. He and Sima Vasa discuss the shifts in the research industry and the Gen Z potential in the workplace. How different are they from the Millennials? Tune in. "If we look in the news we are constantly reminded that this is a generation that thinks rather differently ... it's much more about authenticity, much more about show me the evidence." - Simon Chadwick on gen Z’s impact on the industry Market Reseach Industry - Simon Chadwick Simon is popularly known as the rockstar of the market research industry. According to him, the year 2013 saw the rise in investments in data and analytics. Billions of investments came since then. But the past two to three years showed a precipitous collapse in the industry. This year is focused on the stabilization of coming investments. Investments and Industry Shifts Venture capital firms now have to focus on returning investments to tons of investors. "They are just basically doubling down on their successes and not pouring new money in." - Simon Chadwick Shifts in the industry are also taking place. In data collection, for example, we're seeing a combination of big data and passive metering. Job roles also have to be clearly defined in order to make things easier. Generation Z in the Workplace Every generation has its own stereotype. There's a generation of heroes, another of conformists, and of rebels. What potential does Gen Z hold? "Gen Z is coming up as a hero generation." - Simon Chadwick The oldest Gen Z member is most probably around 22 years old today. Having evidence to understand people and make a difference is a unique attribute that they typically possess. In the near future, the research industry can become their go-to workplace. To hear what Simon Chadwick has to say about the market research industry and the potential of the Gen Z members in the workplace, download and listen to the entire episode! Links from the show and connect with Simon Chadwick: Cambiar Consulting Simon on LinkedIn Twitter @simonchadwick Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review! Simon Chadwick Bio: Simon Chadwick is the Founder and Managing Partner of Cambiar, a management consulting company dedicated to the market research industry. Prior to that, he was Global CEO of NOP World. He also ran six research companies within Kantar. He is also active in the leadership of the market research and analytics industries and is the immediate Past Chair of the new Insights Association, a result of the merger of CASRO and the MRA. He and his colleagues at Cambiar are prolific authors and commentators on the research profession and publish a series of studies on the state of the industry every year. In addition to his role, Simon is Editor-in-Chief of Research World, ESOMAR’s global magazine, and serves on the Board of Directors of a number of research-related companies. Simon is a Fellow of the Market Research Society. He holds an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, England.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Hermann Kudlich is a Denmark-based business development partner at LEGO Brand Group. Today, he touches base with Sima Vasa. They talk about how coming up with innovative ways to marry physical and digital experiences can be fun, albeit challenging. Physical Experience in the Digital Age For over nine years, Hermann has worked with product innovation and lean startup methods at LEGO, leading major digital initiatives and product launches. But the times have changed. In this age of advanced technology, he continues his mission to create products that will entice the traditional and tech-savvy audience. His working experience at LEGO has always been dosed with fun, down to the bricks scattered in boardrooms, inspiring creativity. This very nature of the workspace is what makes team members highly innovative, which is exactly what they need to be. Hermann Kudlich The Testing Process LEGO’s testing process ensures that they are up to date with a generation’s preferences. While it’s complex, Hermann admits that it’s one of the things that make his work enjoyable. “LEGO does a lot of testing…doing it the right way creates amazing output. To me this is the perfect innovation process.” - Hermann Kudlich on LEGO’s testing process By going through this rigorous testing process, they are able to come up with the perfect solutions to keep innovating. Its importance can’t be undermined, as it will determine the future of the brand. Driven By Research Research is key to LEGO's branding. The testing process involves co-creation sessions with children and their parents. The children’s reaction to and interaction with LEGO determine the whole testing, down to the design. “As a designer, everyone has an opinion on what you do… The basic rule in our process was no one should have an opinion outside of the test.” - Hermann Kudlich on LEGO being driven by research With these in mind, LEGO enables its teams to build a brand that is evidence-based and well-adapted to the changing times. To hear more about Hermann Kudlich’s LEGO escapades, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Hermann Kudlich: LinkedIn LEGO Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Annie Pettit has a masters in data quality and online surveys. She was a certified organizational psychologist with the Ontario government. Annie then moved into the private sector doing research on the research of data quality and it's analytics, social media analytics and now is a freelance researcher advising companies on best research practices and research reports. The Market Researcher - Annie Pettit Annie Pettit will argue that the market researcher has not changed one iota. She defines a market researcher as one who strives to understand consumers and markets. There's nothing to do with a questionnaire, big data, neuroscience or technique; it's the end purpose. In that sense, in traditional research, we've normally used focus groups and questionnaires. Just because researchers are not using these techniques does not mean they are not market researchers. We're all in this game together whether we call ourselves market researchers or we don't quite see ourselves as researchers. "I am a big fan of letter of the law over the actual law." Annie Pettit on the new GDPR guidelines As researchers, we already know the process of working with human data and can utilize the new technology at an advantage to do really great things with the new techniques. The New Data Sets Annie sees the biggest chunk of people willing to say they want to use the new data and try new stuff. But those same people are still clinging to tried and true, valid and reliable data. The actual application is much lower than what people say they want to do but gradually the new techniques are being used more. "It's sort of on the way to mind-reading...It would be amazing if this was a tool used with consent" - Annie Pettit on new MIT research Right now it appears to be mostly curiosity from the client side. They want to see what we can do with this stuff. Social Media Data Working in the social media industry, put Annie on the cutting edge of many things. Many of the conversations she had in the early days were how social media research is actually market research. She'd explain how it uses sampling and box scores how it's quantitative and even so far as privacy and ethics related to these types of data. For people in social media who hadn't considered sampling or privacy ramifications, all of these conversations were new. They were primarily focused on the technique and not on the people underlying the data. To hear what Annie Pettit says next about data quality, reading minds, social media and consent, download and listen to the entire episode! Links from the show and connect with Annie Pettit: Annie's Love Stats website Annie on LinkedIn Annie on Twitter The Listen Lady 7 Strategies and 10 Tactics to Become a Thought Leader People Aren't Robots: A practical guide to the psychology and technique of questionnaire design Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review! Annie Pettit Bio: Annie Pettit, Ph.D., FMRIA is a freelance research methodologist who specializes in survey design and analysis, data quality, and innovative methods. Starting out as a Certified Industrial Organizational Psychologist, her work has included psychometric test development within the Ontario government and bisthe Chief Research Officer of a social media research company. Annie is now an invited speaker at conferences around the world and frequent author of refereed and industry articles. She won a 2015 Ginny Valentine Award, 2014 ESOMAR Excellence Award for the Best Paper, 2014 MRIA Award of Outstanding Merit, 2013 ESOMAR Best Methodological Paper, and the 2011 AMA David K. Hardin Award. Annie blogs at LoveStats, tweets at @LoveStats and is the author of The Lis...…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Per Håkansson is the Managing Editor for Inside Blockchain and founder of Makerminds, Inc. On top of these, he’s a TEDx speaker and learning facilitator. He helps entrepreneurs shift their mindset and become more experimental and exploratory in their innovations. Transformation of humanity comes with emerging technologies. Knowing this, Per promotes looking at the change from the perspective of the individual, organization, and society. He’s an advocate of finding humanity in cloud living. Per Håkansson – Living in the Cloud Per began a radical experiment several years ago when he sold his house and got rid of his car, taking out from the picture his physical ownership. It all began with realizing that all these physical things can be replaced with applications and web sources. He acted on this epiphany when the iPhone came around and struck him that it’s all he needed to live, along with his passport. “Once I started to let go of things, my life became much simpler.” - Per Håkansson Per has wanderlust, and the simplicity of living minimalistically attracted him most to the prospect of letting go of his material acquisitions. On Privacy and Protection Despite his tech-driven living, he worries very little about other people having access to his information and privacy. To protect himself, he practices mindful sharing. Having very few things in his possession that require the collection of his data lowers the accessibility of the government and other entities to his private information. “My life is more private than most people’s.” - Per Håkansson Embracing Technology Without Losing One’s Humanity Most people find it difficult to fully embrace technology. Per acknowledges that it takes a lot of intention and effort for an individual to get to a point where they’re absolutely comfortable with exploring what technology has to offer. But trying to get to that point can open one’s eyes to a broader perspective of where we truly stand with technology and other past innovations. “This is not about technology at all. That’s just a new platform.” - Per Håkansson To hear more about Per Håkansson’s practices for living in the cloud, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Per Håkansson: Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Per's Website Inside Blockchain Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Laura Chaibi has enjoyed a twenty-year digital career that started when she moved from Canada to UK. She got into digital media measurements and research when the industry was cutting-edge, hence progressing and growing with it. Her career cuts across media, telco, and digital brands like Yahoo, BBC, Orange, AOL, and the Middle East Broadcast Center, which she now works for as the Head of Market Intelligence and Syndicate Digital Data. Laura is CIM qualified and was awarded women of tomorrow status as one to watch in media by the IPA. She is on several advisory boards in the US as well as international entities like WiRe and i-com, actively supporting policy making for digital media. Laura Chaibi - Career-Altering Frustration Laura’s international role opened her eyes to how difficult it is to conduct her job in the Middle East. Out of sheer frustration of working with some of the biggest brands in the world and failing to get any conclusive information in the region, she moved to the foreign land. “Someone’s gotta figure out why it’s impossible to do our job.” - Laura Chaibi She’s experienced Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for eight years now. She was coming back and forth for her previous job in Yahoo for five years before eventually settling in Dubai. Figuring Out the Root Cause With her research, Laura found out that most of the countries in the MENA have no establishment survey. The underpinning for information needed to effectively conduct sampling, market sizing, recruitment strategies, and a lot more data gathering tools is practically non-existent. This clearly jeopardizes the chances of meeting the need for accurate and representation in outputs to make decisions from. “If you haven’t got a framework to start with, how do you know who to speak to?” - Laura Chaibi Even if an area did have a source for these information, data can quickly become outdated. This is mostly due to the dynamic movement of people in the regions. In UAE alone, at least 80% of the residents are expats tied to working visas. Overcoming Endless Challenges When Laura moved in three years ago, the region is nearly at 80% mobile consumption. She hit a dead end—she did not have a recruitment strategy that will allow her to recruit off websites and through apps. From there, she faced a lot more struggles before she finally achieved the results she wanted. To hear more about Laura Chaibi’s escapades in digital research in MENA, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Laura Chaibi: Twitter LinkedIn US Patent & Trademark Office Application Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Kristin Luck is a serial entrepreneur turned growth strategist. She most recently served as a partner and President/CMO of Decipher until its acquisition in 2014. Currently, she works as a growth strategy consultant specializing in non-traditional sales and marketing strategies, for early and mid-stage companies preparing for global expansion, funding or acquisition. She is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 sales and marketing experts to follow on social media. Today, she talks about growth strategies and women in marketing research. Kristin Luck - Growth Strategies for Men and Women Alike Kristin has been running Luck Collective for three years now. The growth strategy firm that caters to clients in marketing research and startups looking for opportunities to supercharge their growth. She is also the founder of the eleven-year-old Women in Research (WIRe). The non-profit organization started off as a cocktail hour for women in marketing research that became a quarterly routine. It eventually branched out to New York and other places in the US. “I realized that this thing was not gonna grow. I held on to it so tightly. So we started working with folks in local markets to help expand our event rate.” - Kristin Luck Why She's Holding The WIRe Taut WIRe was founded on Kristin’s eye-opening realization of where women truly stand in the marketing research industry. She worked almost exclusively with women in the early stages of her career. But once she rose up the ranks, she saw more men than women, or no women at all. “Why is it that we have so many amazing women in this industry that are just not making it to the senior levels of their careers?” - Kristin Luck Realizing the Vision Kristin believes that WIRe is steadfastly making progress in creating more opportunities for women to earn their rightful place in the industry. They continually look into pay parity and gender differences in the executive positions to glimpse the degree of change that has come from their efforts. To hear more about Kristin Luck and her insights on women in marketing research and growth strategies, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Kristin Luck: Twitter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ray Poynter is the Founder of NewMR.org. He is also the author of several books and chapters about market research, a teacher, blogger, facilitator, presenter, coach, and consultant. Studies have listed him as one of the most influential leaders in the industry. In this episode, he gives an in-depth take on artificial intelligence, GDPR and so much more. Ray Poynter - Market Research Specialist Ray has spent more than 30 years in market research. At NewMR, they focus on innovative methods. They don't try to compete with others in the field. They help people to get started and to boost their presence. Difference of GDPR in Europe When it comes to General Data Protection Regulation, Ray believes that it all boils down to intent. There is nothing to worry about if you just want to do the right thing. "Anybody who is trying to do the right thing will not get into trouble." - Ray Poynter on GDPR An interesting news came that Verve, the ad tech company, is closing all of its offices in Europe. They do not believe that what they are currently doing can be made legal. In Europe, citizens own their data. Whereas in the United States, commercial organizations own the information of their consumers. Importance of Informed Consent Transparency makes things easier for both parties. To access their data, people need to give their consent to the mobile app. To prevent issues, they need to be fully aware of what they are signing up for. "Informed consent requires that the person completely understands what he is consenting to." - Ray Poynter There is a big difference in the European GDPR model and the U.S. model. Looking back in history, there were also problems caused by record keepers. This made Europe more sensitive to the issue at hand. To hear more about Ray Poynter and his insights on the challenges and trends in the industry, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Ray Poynter: NewMR.org Twitter @RayPoynter LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Philip Delvecchio is the Program Director at VentureOut, a business accelerator that works with companies from around the world. What are the market trends and what type of companies are they looking to help grow and scale? Tune in! Philip Delvecchio - VentureOut Global Business Accelerator VentureOut seeks to invest in post-seed companies who want to enter the ecosystem in New York. These companies may come from the United States or from countries abroad. "Maybe whatever you are building up until now can only get you this far. In order to take it to the next level, you have to bend yourself in a way that is very hard and very uncomfortable." - Philip Delvecchio As the Program Director, Philip helps run and manage VentureOut. At present, the foreign companies they are working mostly come from Europe. But, they are always open to opportunities from other countries. Opportunities for Partnerships Because of the robust ecosystem, VentureOut also wanted to focus on developing programs in China. And there are various ways to partner with them. Nobody knows exactly where these opportunities for partnerships may come from. It may come from a network of friends, colleagues, or from a mere acquaintance. VentureOut Criteria for Companies What are the qualifications that VentureOut is looking for from a company? First of all, they want to work with post-seed companies who already have traction. It could be in the form of user growth or revenue. "Blockchain is very hot right now ... down the road it's going to have some great impact on a lot of different sectors." - Phillip Delvecchio A good sector fit is another thing to consider. They use extensive research before starting the program. They interview everyone that they believe is a good fit. To hear more about Philip Delvecchio and their company VentureOut, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Philip Delvecchio: VentureOut LinkedIn Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review! Bio Philip Delvecchio Philip joined the VentureOut team in April 2017 as the Program Director. He is responsible for program operations, coordination, and logistics. Ancillary roles include process, project, and intern management. Prior to VentureOut, Philip lived and worked abroad for 2 years. He focused on education, international relations, and technology development. As a Fulbright scholar and a former Microsoft employee, his expertise uniquely combines international exchange and ICT management. He earned his Bachelor’s of Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he studied Computer Science and Chinese.…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Dr. Scott McDonald is the President and CEO of Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). Since 1936, they seek to advance the scientific understanding of advertising and marketing. Dr. Scott McDonald - The Science of Marketing For 81 years now, the Advertising Research Foundation serves as a platform for major power centers and functional groups in the advertising industry. Ad agencies, media companies, clients, as well as big social platforms are equally represented at ARF. All bring together and discuss scientific methods in marketing. "Digital continues to transform and disrupt all cultures. It continues to be something everyone is contending with both in positive and negative contexts." - Dr. Scott McDonald Job in the Advertising Industry According to Dr. McDonald, applicants are naturally attracted to companies where there is a sign of growth and money. There is also an intrinsic value on the future. He advises them to take a job that brings excitement. Also, consider filling a role that will give you the space to grow as a professional. Importance of Communication After graduation, his first job in business was at Time Magazine. He did research and analytics. The experience gave him the opportunity to understand the other functions, such as production, marketing, circulation, and editorial. "Even though you like to geek out and explain the language of your specialization, you should still be able to explain in plain English at the end of the day." - Dr. Scott McDonald on good communication He further emphasizes the need to understand other systems and functions. Marketing is not isolated on a single role. In order to learn what works, you need to reach out and connect with others in the industry. To hear about Dr. Scott McDonald and the advertiser's dilemma, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Dr. Scott McDonald: theARF.org Linkedin Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Vin Vashishta is a data science and machine learning expert and the founder of V-Squared Data Strategy Consulting. He's built the most trusted brand in data science and machine learning around the concepts of simplicity and profitability. Data science is a field that is up and coming. There seems to be a blending of market research, consumer insights and data science. Vin Vashishta - From Gaming to Machine Learning Vin has been in technology for the past twenty-two years and the last eight in data science specifically using the modern tools and architectures. He's done everything from gaming companies to third-party distribution. In the early days, Vin was moving access databases around. he's kind of 'been there-done that' when it comes to technology. He went to school specifically for machine learning but was about fifteen years too early. It's been a long road but he's happily ended up where he wanted to be in the first place. What is a Data Scientist? If you are someone trying to come into the field, then data science is an aggregate skill set between strong mathematic, scientific research, data modeling and technology background. Slammed all together and you sprinkle some business acumen and domain on top of it, you have a data scientist. What does Data Science Mean to Companies? If you are a company, data science is the bridge between all of this data you have been told for years that you needed to be kept because it was going to be worth something someday. Well, today is that day when you will be able to tease the value out of that data. Companies can realize cost savings for new product lines they have been hoping and opportunities to understand their business better. They can make better long-term strategic decisions. Exploring the Possibilities There are practical applications from preventative maintenance to optimizing traffic flow in cities like smart grid-type applications. The most well-known is the world of autonomous cars. Many companies are in the exploratory process where they are just beginning to learn the opportunities. They want to know what data scientists can do and what they can do for their company and what products they want to start building. Everyone is receptive to it[data science], it's such a huge buzzword and everyone wants in.- Vin Vashishta To hear more about Vin Vishista and the possible applications for data science, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Vin Vashishta: V-Squared Data Strategy Consulting Twitter Linkedin Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Today, Sima Vasa talks with Mark Kapczynski. Mark leads the retail and restaurant shopping insights at Yodlee. They provide connectivity between fintech companies - financial technology apps - and the data within financial institutions. Becuase of this connection, Yodlee gets to see consumer financial transactions and that translates into shopping behavior. Data Collection From this data, Yodlee can determine how many times do people go to McDonald's, how many times do they buy online or do they have a Pandora subscription. The transactions have date stamps but not timestamps. Potentially, Yodlee can get information online and offline depending on how the customer pays. For instance, if a customer buys something on an E-commerce site and they use their debit or credit card they can compare that to the purchases the customer makes at a brick and mortar department store. This data is used to look at the distribution of online and offline behaviors. Yodlee Taco Stand Case Study Two different Mexican fast food chains were compared, a big publicly traded one and a more local regional one. The local guys swore they had the same type of customers. When Yodlee analyzed the data, it showed the big company's customers shopped at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and chose organic foods while the smaller local company's customers shopped at the dollar store. "We help folks that take our data and the insights that come from it and then are able to advise the clients on what they should be doing." -Mark Kapczynski, Yodlee In the end, it helps the smaller guy understand who is their customer and stop wasting money on advertising that won't lead to foot traffic. A more likely solution is partnering with the dollar store and offering coupons for shoppers to visit their taco stand. Mark Kapczynski talks Competitive Benchmarks The benefit of Yodlee data is they have the whole suite of data consumers are spending on and all the businesses they are interacting with. They can compare how much a consumer spends at McDonald's vs. Wendy's vs. Burger King in a particular area and look at the market share between them. Big Guys Going Local Yodlee works with national or very large regional companies that want to execute on a local level. Smaller local guys are hard because they already know their area. The larger guys that are more data-driven want to know who to optimize their media spend in areas where they have a high market share and protect that. They also want exposure where they have a low market share and want to win that business. They can put their media to work around the specific strategies for the areas they want to work on. To hear more about what Yodlee is doing, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Mark Kapczynski and Yodlee: Yodlee Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
John R. Leeman is the co-founding and managing director of True Customer. They provide customer-centered marketing, media, analytics, content, and eCommerce consulting that drives scalable growth. John R. Leeman - From Advertising to CMO John started in the traditional brand and advertising business. He worked in the on major brands such as Campbell Soup and General Mills and Johnson and Johnson. John then moved on to work in digital CRM and media for companies such as Microsoft, Procter and Gamble and American Express. CMO to Entrepreneur John melded his two areas of expertise together to begin work in the CMO field. His stint at Fresh Direct as chief marketing officer was an invaluable and exciting experience for him. After his work with Fresh Direct, John took the leap to entrepreneur. He co-founded True Customer in November 2013. Why the C-Suite Changes are Scary The C-Suite is always interested in optimizing the business. There is a lot of money that goes into marketing and most respect that marketing is an investment and not a cost and there's a certain amount of return that is happening with the marketing today. When you talk about radical changes in how you do your marketing investment, it's scary. Companies wonder if it will be successful because you cannot go back and undo it. It's not visible or easy to figure out how this optimization, analyses and analytics will work. They want the benefits but are not sure which choice to make. Big Companies, Big Steps You have to have an attribution solution in place. For half of the Fortune 1000 companies, don't have anything, believe it or not. The first step for them is huge because they have to figure out something to do. The bigger the company is, the more conservative their practices are supposed to be. - John R. Leeman It's tough because they have a lot of choices. Everyone positions their product as the solution to all of this. Marketing Mix Modeling The other half of the companies are using marketing mix modeling. The big decision for those companies is what do they do with that data. Do they stop looking at it if the ROI for TV says a $4.00 ROI for one tool and a $6.00 ROI for another? Which is right? For these companies, it becomes a sort of paralysis. They've been telling finance and everyone else for years and years how supposedly how accurate or inaccurate this is so now what? To hear more about John R. Leeman and his company True Customer, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with John R. Leeman: TrueCustomer.com Linkedin Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Andrew Konya is a computational physicist currently working on his P.hD. in chemical physics at Kent State. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Remesh, Inc. Remesh is a platform that replaces polls and surveys with conversations to gather real-time and actionable data. They [market researchers] said what we had built lived at the interseciton of quantitative and qualitative. - Andrew Konya Andrew Konya - Natural Conversation Andrew wanted to know how to understand a country's worth of people in real-time, in a way that you can make the decisions based on what you learned from them in order to do what is best. Half of the problem is you must do it in a way that is engaging and people want to participate. The result is Remesh built a platform that lets a single moderator hold a real-time natural language conversation with 100's or 1000's of people simultaneously. The platform analyzes all the language coming in from people in real-time and then identify verbatims that represent entire groups. Quantitative Data from a Single Session The platform also incorporates things like demographic data and behavioral data into the system so that a moderator is able to have what they know how to do best, a natural conversation. The moderators are able to pivot just as they would during IDI's or during focus groups. This whole process is happening on a statically significant scale. If you allow the decision that based on market research to happen in...hours or days...they can now retool their entire organization. - Andrew Konya on the benefits of Ramesh for corporations All this means the data coming out of a session are potentially quantitative. Any research that can be done with a combination of focus groups and surveys, can be done in a single Remesh session through natural conversation. Businesses are discovering that the results are just as potent as research that takes weeks and months to complete. To hear more about Andrew and Remesh, including the participant's perspective, download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Andrew Konya: Remesh Linkedin Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Erik Qualman is a #1 Bestselling Author and Motivational Keynote Speaker. His book Digital Leader propelled him to be voted the 2nd Most Likeable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling. Qualman is a sitting professor at Harvard & MIT’s edX labs. It's those that live like the Flintstones and the Jetsons that will get the most out of life. - Erik Qualman Empowering the World What excites Erik is people. That gives him energy. His whole goal in life is to empower, educate and entertain 7 billion people in 10 years. When he started this journey, there were 7 billion people in the world and he wants to reach everyone. Erik Qualman Living in a Digital Age Erik is currently working on a new book. It's a marriage between the digital and the offline world. Let the digital tools work for you but don't work for the tools. Don't live on your phone. "Stop, breathe and ask yourself what is the one thing I should be doing?" - Erik Qualman Managing Digital Tools Erik is passionate about what he teaches and he lives by his words. He has some helpful tips to take control of your digital world. Take a digital detox day once a week. You might use maps but try to stay off the tools. Put parameters on email. You'll be more efficient just checking it twice a day. The biggest thing is to take a deep breath and understand it's ok if you don't get to every email. Erik does not read or respond to every email. He prioritizes and it's made him much more efficient. Perceived Importance of Email Most people believe they must respond to every email and don't sit back to think if the sender really needs or wants a response. Ask yourself, "do I need to send this and why is it so long?" To hear the rest of Erik Qualman download and listen to the episode! Quick links to connect with Erik Qualman: Equalman.com Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Instagram YouTube Socialnomics Book Email Erik Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com I’m passionate about data and I love to share, learn and help others that share my passion. If you love data as much as I do, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Jane Clarke works in a coalition for the research of all the cable and broadcast television networks and the media buying agencies. They started with a handful of large advertisers but ended up working with the ANA. They want to fully represent the buy side and the sell side to solve the current data challenges. TV Analytics Challenges - Jane Clarke The challenges are innovating in the area of cross-media management and the second is trying to push to bring more granular measurement to television. Granular measurement has traditionally been a handful of households that have a meter in front of the television and then the people have to push buttons. It's not ideal today. Accounting for Those Challenges Viewing is very fragmented and there are 100's and 100's of cable channels and it's very hard to actually get a large enough panel that can actually represent the long tail of viewing. Census type data like SAT top box data or smart TV data are coming into the market. Jane Clarke says that the problem with these is they are not fully representative because they have a weird footprint like a sample of convenience. There are biases in those types of data. The panels are still being used to help to calibrate all of these big data sets to make them more representative. Gradually as they become more representative we may be able to move away from panels. To hear the rest of Jane Clarke Television Analytics download and listen to the episode! Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com I’m passionate about data and I love to share, learn and help others that share my passion. If you love data as much as I do, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
Ravi Parmeswar is a VP at Johnson & Johnson. He's in charge of global strategic insights and analytics. He has significant experience in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods). "The Chinese proverb 'May you live in interesting times.' we certainly are." - Ravi Parmeswar The Changing Face of Analytics Ravi's responsibilities take global strategic insights and analytics to drive insights from any source. It's a global responsibility across all of the consumer business at J&J. In the last 3 years, things have changed drastically thinking about big data. It's becoming more real for CPG. When you get access to first body data the game changes significantly. Ravi Parmeswar Personalized Analytics Ravi thinks the way marketing is moving right now is the model of more data and more personalized data. It's better to look at the landscape of data we have right now and how to better connect and how best to use that for targeted marketing. The traditional way for brand positioning marketing was using attitudinal segments. It was about what people feel and need but that is going away. Behavioral segments are a lot more actionable. For instance, you'll have data of what a person bought, if he bought mine or a competitors product, what else he buys, what are his media habits and what his digital habits are. With this information, you can target your market more accurately. To hear what Ravi has to say about working in teams using the left and right side of the brain, download and listen to Ravi Parmeswar Winning the CPG Analytics Race! Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com I’m passionate about data and I love to share, learn and help others that share my passion. If you love data as much as I do, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection
The world around us is changing faster than ever before. From automation, artificial intelligence, big data, geolocation to every aspect of how we work and live. This includes DATA. Welcome to the Data Gurus Podcast with Sima Vasa...our mission is to bring you a real-life perspective on what’s happening in the industry and how successful companies and individuals in this niche navigate through the sea of change. “Encouraging you to Be Bold, Be Brave and Be Fearless - Let’s navigate the Data Ecosystem together.” - Purpose of the Data Gurus Podcast with Sima Vasa About The Data Gurus Podcast with Sima Vasa A little about me, I am not only the host of the Data Gurus Podcast with over 20 years of market research experience but I also bring a unique perspective from my experience as a market research supplier, client and an entrepreneur. Some of my positions include President, NPD Techworld and Senior Program Manager and International Business Machines (IBM). On the entrepreneurial front, I’m the co-founder of Paradigm Sample, a data collection company and Infinity Squared Ventures, an advisory accelerator. I’m a frequent speaker at national market research and insights conferences including Innovation Insights Exchange (IIEX), The Market Research Event (TMRE) and the former Market Research Association (MRA). I also contribute frequently to industry blogs and publications. Let’s Share this Journey Together! The excitement is building as I’m set to begin the Data Gurus Podcast with Sima Vasa journey! I love to hear from my listeners with input, questions and suggestions. You can find me at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter infinity-2.com I’m passionate about data and I love to share, learn and help others that share my passion. If you love data as much as I do, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!…
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