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

Data Gurus

Thanks Mom, Education, Education, Education! | Ep. 151

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

Life After CINT | Ep. 150

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 buyer exec 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

The Journey to CEO | Ep. 149

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 consum...

Sample Lemon Markets? | Ep. 148

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.

Investing in Research | Ep. 147

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.

Talk with Ted | Ep. 146

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!

Encore Episode: Multiculturalism: Understanding the Future Majority | Ep. 145

Sima is excited to share an encore episode she did with Menage 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 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. Email me your thoughts! Sima@Infinity-2.com LinkedIn Twitter

Encore Episode: Unpacking Social Intelligence | Ep.144

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.

Encore Episode: Bootstrapping QuestionPro with Vivek Bhaskaran | Ep.143

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.

SampleCon – Future Proofing the Industry Part 2 | Ep. 142

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.

SampleCon – Future Proofing the Industry Part 1

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,

Insight Platforms | Ep. 140

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.

The Future of Work Part Two | Ep. 139

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 comment...

The Future of Work Part One | Ep. 138

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.

Empathy and Innovation in Measuring Advertising Spend | Ep. 137

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