Nuggets of Truth: Making More Human-Centric Decisions

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, we speak with Nikki Lavoie, EVP Global Experience Strategy at Savanta.

Not all data leads to insights, and not all insights make an impact.

The deciding factor is the human element.

Uncovering the nuggets of truth that lead to deeper understanding and better decisions requires human expertise, empathy, thoughtful questions, and a willingness to listen.

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Nikki Lavoie, EVP of Global Experience Strategy at Savanta.

They cover: 

• Why insight is more than just learning something you didn’t know before

• How ethnographic research can provide rich insights

• Why failing to prove a hypothesis can still offer valuable learnings

• The benefits of co-creation in global research projects

• Why it’s just as important to pay attention to what people don’t say

• Common mistakes to avoid when conducting cross-cultural studies

• Why all users need to have a voice at the table

• Why methodology isn’t one-size-fits-all

• The importance of industry events for boosting your insights career

• How “vision field size” can help you build a well-rounded insights team

• Why value can be more important than profit

• How to identify and tackle barriers to challenging the status quo 

• What the intertwined future of market research and UX research means for businesses  

If you’re interested in exploring ways to source insights that lead to more human-centric decisions, tune in to this episode of The Consumer Insights Podcast.

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or use the RSS feed with your favorite player. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor Olof Philogène: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Consumer Insights Podcast. Today I'm excited to have a brilliant leader in the insights industry joining me for what I know will be a fantastic conversation.

Nikki Lavoie is the EVP of Global Experience Strategy at Savanta, a fast-growing data market research and advisory company. She's also the Founder of MindSpark Research International, as well as the Vice President of the Esomar Council. Thank you so much for joining me today, Nikki.

Nikki Lavoie: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Thor: Nikki, firstly, could we take a couple minutes to learn about you? Tell us about yourself, your journey, and how you came to work in your role today. How did it start?

Nikki: If we only had more time, I could tell the full story, because it's quite a good one. I've been told a couple of times I might want to consider even writing a book or something, about the story, how I got here. 

Like many of us, I fell into market research, initially. I was working in another field. I was getting burnt out. I will say that I'm one of the few people that I've come across, that has actually taken courses in university, that were really relevant to consumer insights work.

I was a communications undergrad with a specialization in advertising. I actually took courses on consumer psychology, consumer behavior. I took courses on media tracking and brand tracking. 

Then I graduated and I worked at my first job, which was for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is an excellent nonprofit, for anybody who's looking to support some nonprofits, they're a really great one. As an events coordinator, it's a very demanding job.

I lasted about a year in that role and then I was looking for something, anything, that I could take. I was just sending resumes to anyone that would have me. 

My first ever market research job was at a small consulting firm based out of New Hampshire. Skip ahead a couple of years, I went to my first Esomar Congress, which is why I have such a passion in my heart for Esomar. That's where I ended up meeting colleagues, who eventually moved me over to Paris, and started my own agency, as you mentioned, MindSpark.

That company got sold to Savanta earlier this year. Here I am, still in Paris, after 11 and a half years, and now working for Savanta.

How Nikki defines an insight

Thor: Nikki, such a fascinating journey. As someone who has founded their own research agency and been very involved in organizations, like you mentioned, Esomar. How do you define an insight and how has that definition changed over time? If it has changed, what made it change?

Nikki: That's one of my favorite questions, actually. I define an insight as a nugget of truth that illuminates something, that allows you to make a decision, keeping it simple. 

It has changed for me over time. When I first started in research, I just thought insight was learning something that you hadn't already known. Actually, so much of the work that we do is verifying hypotheses. Actually, you do already know something, but you need confirmation of that knowledge to be able to make a decision. 

I define an insight as a nugget of truth that illuminates something, that allows you to make a decision, keeping it simple. 

It's the great Ray Poynter. I'm sure you've come across Ray, over the course of your career, as well. He and I were having a conversation, when we were both members of Esomar Council, a few years ago, where he said to me, "If you cannot make a decision off the back of the research, it probably wasn't good research." 

It really left a mark on me, and I thought, "Wow, it's true," because research for the sake of research is something else, but if you're producing insights, it should allow decisions to be made. I credit Ray with my new definition of insights.

The benefits of integrating market and consumer insights

Thor: Wow, that's a really powerful quote. If we talk a bit more about that and drill a bit deeper into the role of market and consumer insights, what does the analysis and the integration of market and consumer insights allow businesses to do? Do you have any stories that could help illustrate this?

Nikki: Sure. I think integrating analysis, data, consumer understanding, and getting to the point where you have insights, because not all data leads to insights. It really does take the human kneading of the data, as it were, to get to these nuggets of truth that allow you to make decisions. 

You should be able to make better decisions because you can always make a decision. Should we launch this product? Should we include these features? Should the price be X or Y?

You can make a decision but if you are integrating data and consumer understanding, then you should be able to make better decisions. Your ROI, for anything that you are investing into, the product, brand, or service, should be multiplied, should be bigger and stronger. 

In terms of a story that illustrates that for me, one of my favorite stories of some of the research that I've done over the course of my career, is a project that I did, while still with MindSpark.

You can make a decision but if you are integrating data and consumer understanding, then you should be able to make better decisions. Your ROI, for anything that you are investing into, the product, brand, or service, should be multiplied, should be bigger and stronger. 

It's for a very big, very well-known global company in the social media space. They actually had a hypothesis. They came to me and they said, "Look, Nikki, we've noticed that a lot of users are not necessarily using our app. They're using the mobile web version of our app. 

We hypothesized that there is a certain set of users that have accessibility barriers. Folks with visual or physical impairments, they're probably not having a great time using our app. We'd like to understand what are the barriers for them to use our app so that we can encourage greater adoption of the app and move away from the mobile website, which is less optimized." 

I went and I did ethnographic research. In this particular case, it was actually for the UK market. I did ethnographic research all around the UK. I have to say, not only was it a great piece of work for the learning that I'm about to share with you and what it taught me about the power of insights.

It was also a great piece of work because I got to go into the homes of people with physical and visual impairments and sit shoulder-to-shoulder with them, and have them walk me through what their experience was like, using this particular social media outlet. 

It's just incredibly moving. Even for me, I'm a very big proponent of qualitative research, so really big on empathy and human connection, human-centered design, human-led design, and all of that stuff.

When you're finally in the field and you're actually sitting down next to real human beings, who are showing you things–I would have no idea where to even find some of the accessibility features that they were using. Not just in this particular social media app, but on their phones, or sometimes on their computers. They were showing me the workarounds they had to use to be able to access this. It was just really impressive. I just gained a huge amount of respect and understanding for folks who do have accessibility barriers in the tech space, and what they're trying to do. 

The conclusion that I came to of all of this research, was actually that it wasn't the physical and visual impairments that were causing the shift in behavior away from the app, towards the mobile website. It was the fact that people's mobile phones were full, and they could not download the app.

They had to delete apps, their storage was full. What ended up being the output off the back of this research was I, of course, then had to put together a report and you can't simply say, "Nope, your hypothesis was wrong. The hypothesis was wrong. This is not why they're using the mobile website rather than the app." 

However, there was still a huge amount of learning to be unearthed, and there were several insights. One insight was about the fact that a big element that was pushing behavior towards the mobile website was out of the brand's control. Unless you wanted to lighten the load of the download for the app, which I think eventually was one of the outcomes that they went for. 

I thought I knew what I was going to be investigating when I went in there, but it turned out to be something completely different. Still got really impactful and insightful data out of it, that allowed the brand to make changes, which helped increase the mobile app adoption, which is what they were looking for, in the end.

Another insight was– While you have me here, and while I was investigating this, actually there are several accessibility features that these folks would love to have integrated into the app, or the mobile website, which were not.

I was able to list, "Here are some of the things you can do for people with visual impairments, around color, font size, making it easier to activate alternate texts, reading through pictures as people are scrolling through a stream of media content, et cetera." 

In the end, that, to me, is always one of the stories that I go to when people ask for stories that have defined or really inspired me during the course of my career.

I thought I knew what I was going to be investigating when I went in there, but it turned out to be something completely different. Still got really impactful and insightful data out of it, that allowed the brand to make changes, which helped increase the mobile app adoption, which is what they were looking for, in the end.

Leveraging co-creation in global research

Thor: That's a fascinating story, Nikki. I think that it's interesting how you really were able to not only uncover an insight, but also uncover new opportunities and new paths that your client could take. I think that's a fascinating example. You've recently written a great and in-depth article on leveraging co-creation in global research. Can you share a bit more about that?

Nikki: Absolutely. One of the things that happens a lot in global research is that people come to the table with an idea, and more often than not, they have already done the first step of this research in their home market, where they are the most familiar, where they know their consumers the most, where they speak the language, where they understand everything and have all of the resources at their disposal to get the research done.

Then they'll go to a partner like MindSpark, or like Savanta, and say, "Okay, well, we've already done this first step of research. Now, can you help us explore all these other markets that we want to understand?" 

That's definitely something that can be done, but it takes a specific set of skills, and knowledge, and expertise. Why co-creation is so valuable here, for me, is twofold. One, between the client brand and any partners, any research partners, co-creation is invaluable.

One of the reasons why that is, let's say that you have developed a methodology that's really going to answer all of your questions in Sweden. Do you know that that exact same methodology is going to be as effective in Kenya? You probably don't know that. 

Sometimes you don't know in advance how many markets you're going to involve or how far the research is going to go, but in the case where you do have an idea, "Okay, first we're going to do this in Sweden, then we're going to roll it out in several other key markets of ours," consider co-creating that methodology with local partners on the ground elsewhere.

You can co-create the methodology at the beginning and then have stability, quality control, and consistency across all markets. That's one side of it. The other side is also with the consumers or the users that are important to the product, brand, or service. 

Realistically, what you need to do is design the method for the lowest common denominator. Whatever works in the least technologically advanced market or the most logistically challenging market is going to probably also work in the most advanced markets.

You can co-create the methodology at the beginning and then have stability, quality control, and consistency across all markets. That's one side of it. The other side is also with the consumers or the users that are important to the product, brand, or service. 

Again, thinking about the example of Sweden and Kenya: if you have a product that is already successful in Sweden and you've identified that Kenya is another big market where your product could have success, have you actually allowed Kenyan users to have a voice at the table?

Can they talk to you directly about what are the solutions that your product is solving for them, or what are the problems that it's not addressing, so that you, as the brand manager, or the product developer, can influence how the product is being shaped and crafted for any key markets that you've identified as being interesting to you? I think, for me, co-creation is important in those two key ways.

Common mistakes when conducting cross-cultural research

Thor: I think that's such good advice from your end here. To some degree, you've specialized in the multicultural, multi-country aspect of research. What do you think that some of the common mistakes people make are, when trying to conduct cross-cultural research?

Nikki: I alluded to it in the previous example, but I would say the biggest mistake that I see is folks designing a methodology for whatever their pilot market is, then expecting that that market can be rolled out without any change or any adjustment to the spec, to the method, to the approach, across several other markets. 

This happens so often, and I will say this was problem-solving at its finest, that we had to work on, particularly at MindSpark. Let's say a very sophisticated tech company would say, "Okay, we're going to roll out this research in the US first, then we want to cover emerging markets. We're going to go directly from the United States to rural India, and we'd like to do the research in the exact same way." 

I would say that maybe one of the biggest hurdles and challenges to trying to execute global research successfully, is when folks think that they can roll out one methodology across several different markets.

I would say another thing to keep in mind, or another "problem area" that happens a lot is translation. I don't necessarily mean verbal translation of stimuli, it's actually about the cultural translation and the nuance between things. 

I would say that maybe one of the biggest hurdles and challenges to trying to execute global research successfully, is when folks think that they can roll out one methodology across several different markets.

Anyone who's done work across several Latin American countries will tell you that you need to pay particular attention to the way people are describing things, the words they're using, but also the words they are not using.

Be able to have a mindset, a partner, or the knowledge that allows you to dig into those cross-cultural comparisons, because we very often think, "Oh, we're hearing the same word over and over and over again. It must mean that everyone is in agreement." 

When in actuality, the way a French person uses this word and the way a Swiss person uses that word might actually have slightly different connotations. I think that cultural lens and appreciation is an important piece.

Essential tools for insights professionals

Thor: So interesting. Staying within the realm of learnings that you could share with our audience, what tools do you believe or see as essential to support insights professionals, and why?

Nikki: Oh, this is a really tricky question. I find this to be a very hard one to answer because I very often think of the work we do almost as like gardening. 

We are going through, we're helping things blossom, we're having to dig into the soil to find things, to find the richness of the soil, and that's where we plant the seed, and that's where it grows. You wouldn't tell a gardener like, "Here are the two tools that you should be using, to have a successful garden."

A gardener's going to have a huge array of tools. Without giving too generic of an answer that leaves people unsatisfied, I would say that the key isn't having one or two tools that are essential, although I will name some after this.

The key, for me, is having an awareness of all the tools that are available to you and having the knowledge to choose the tool that is the right one for the right moment, or the right method, or the right objective, depending on what that is.

I very often think of the work we do almost as like gardening. 

We are going through, we're helping things blossom, we're having to dig into the soil to find things, to find the richness of the soil, and that's where we plant the seed, and that's where it grows.

I would say that there are a huge number of qualitative tools that have come onto the scene. Even before COVID, I would say, there was a huge amount of qualitative tools that were emerging, but then COVID happened and they all leveled up in terms of sophistication because everybody was doing all of their qualitative work online. 

I think tools similar to Voxpopme are really useful and interesting, it allows for the collection of videos and qualitative verbatims, but it even goes further than that. You can then clip them together. It does some basic sentiment analysis. You've got a dashboard on the back end. 

That's really helpful because as we all know, qualitative analysis is one of the biggest undertakings, most challenging and time-consuming things that there is in our work. Outside of that, I think that there's a lot of tools that we all have access to, or most likely have access to, that are becoming more helpful, in ways that I couldn't have imagined previously.

For me, the biggest thing is sharing documents and sharing insights in real-time. We're doing a lot of things like taking notes live in a Google doc while an interview is happening, the client is able to put comments in that Google doc, like, "Oh, one of our internal stakeholders just mentioned this last week," then the moderator is able to see that that's an interesting point, can probe on that a little bit further.

Then we know, as we're building the report, we now have all these client questions, that we can look at throughout the course of the transcripts and the note-taking, to say, "Here are the key points we need to make sure we address in the output and ensure that our output is as effective and impactful as possible." 

It's simple things, like Google Docs, or online storage drives like Dropbox, or Google Drive, things like that. Communication tools, like Slack and Microsoft Teams, where we can be in touch with each other in real-time. Those types of things, I think, are also really essential.

Nikki's advice to insights industry newcomers

Thor: Such good advice, Nikki. I know you're also really passionate about engaging the next generation of insights professionals, whether that's new grads looking to land their first job, or people looking to change career paths. What advice would you give to someone who's looking to enter the research and insight space?

Nikki: First of all, if someone is looking to enter our space, we are already winning, because how many people do you know have said, "I really thought long and hard, and I decided I wanted to be a market researcher." 

If somebody decides that, we are winning. If somebody does land in our industry and they're at the beginning of the path and they're looking forward and they're saying "I have no idea what this path is going to be like for me, I have no idea what my career could possibly be like. How can I learn more about this industry? How can I really sink my teeth into it and get the most out of it?" 

I would definitely say, “Attend an industry event.” Obviously, in my story, as you heard earlier, it was life-changing for me, not just from a career perspective, but I literally moved to Paris and eventually met my partner, and now I have two kids.

If somebody does land in our industry and they're at the beginning of the path and they're looking forward and they're saying "I have no idea what this path is going to be like for me, I have no idea what my career could possibly be like. How can I learn more about this industry? How can I really sink my teeth into it and get the most out of it?" 

I would definitely say, “Attend an industry event.”

It can really change your life. I think it's a great opportunity to listen to presentations, and money papers, to hear a bit about “What are some of the challenges in the industry, what are some of the new trends that are coming up in the industry, what are some of the technologies being used in the industry, what are the problems the industry is facing?” 

Then of course, the obvious is, it allows you to connect with people. I think the most important thing that I want to try and enable for folks that are new to our industry is the connection with one another because it's getting to know other folks that have the same passion as you, that are like-minded to yourself. 

Those are the people that you're going to be able to work well with, and those people could end up being your future colleagues, or being your future bosses, or encouraging you to do something crazy, like run for Esomar president, whatever it might be. I would definitely say the biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone new to the space is attending an industry event.

The DNA of a successful insights team

Thor: Great advice. Now that this person has grown within the industry and has evolved, is now running, maybe, a team, and is, maybe, putting together his or her first team, what advice would you give those listeners, in terms of how to think about building the DNA for a successful insights team?

Nikki: That's a great question. Whenever I'm putting together a team, I always think of things in terms of size. I don't mean the size of human beings, and I don't mean the size of the team. 

I think of things in terms of the size of the vision field that you need to have. I think you need people who are able to focus on tiny details. I think you need people who are going to have the medium field of vision, and those are going to be your doers, your executors, your individual contributors.

Those are going to be the ones writing the questionnaires, moderating the interviews, writing reports. Then you need your very big, broad-vision folks, as well. Those are going to be the people who help actually pull the insights out of the research findings, and turn them into strategic deliverables that clients can actually make decisions of. 

Whenever I'm building a team, I try to find those project management and hyper-detail-oriented dots, across every team. You need those folks. Then the middle vision, who are the “Get-things-done” folks, then the broad vision, who are the, "Let's imagine the future off the back of this data," folks. That's the DNA I aim for.

How to elevate insights within an organization

Thor: I absolutely love that advice, Nikki. [chuckles] Some of the people in our audience are trying to push change, they're trying to drive results within the organization. What skills do you believe as essential to help and elevate insights within organizations? How do you see that?

Nikki: I think it's really important to have good communication skills. That sounds really generic, but I'll get a bit more specific into it. I think that, in order for us to influence change at organizations - by us, it could be a client-side researcher, who engages with folks like you and me. 

If you cannot get your stakeholders to listen to what you're saying and to buy into the recommendations you're making, they're going to go about doing things "the way they've always been done."

If you're trying to shake things up and make a difference, you really need to be able to demonstrate that the change you're trying to make, first of all, is important, second of all, is valuable. 

If you cannot get your stakeholders to listen to what you're saying and to buy into the recommendations you're making, they're going to go about doing things "the way they've always been done."

If you're trying to shake things up and make a difference, you really need to be able to demonstrate that the change you're trying to make, first of all, is important, second of all, is valuable. 

Note that I say valuable, and not necessarily profitable, because while businesses are always going to be paying attention to profits, I think we're going to see, especially in the next few years, when businesses are focused on things like ESG, sustainability, human centricity - we are going to probably have to make some compromises around giving people a better experience in exchange for not necessarily the biggest push on profit we could have.

That will potentially result in greater longevity of the relationship with the user, or the consumer. 

Going back to what people can do internally, it's definitely going to be communication. We know for a fact that 55 PowerPoint decks do almost nothing, for pretty much anyone. We're all still producing them, right? You need to be able to show the data that backs up what you're trying to do. 

You do need those 50-slide PowerPoint decks, but then, if you want to make change, you need to take that and turn it into something else. Is it a video montage? Is it an immersive, interactive workshop where you actually get busy stakeholders into a room, virtually or physically, for half a day? 

You mail them some artifacts in advance, you say, "Listen, I'm going to walk you through what it's like to be Thor, I'm going to tell you what his life is like so that you can really understand why we need to make this change." It has to be demonstrable proof that is valuable for the business.

Opportunities for insights professionals to challenge the status quo

Thor: Such great advice. Staying within that realm, staying within the realm of advice that can serve our listeners. How do you think about opportunities that exist for insights professionals, to make more impact, to challenge the status quo? So far, you've talked about how to get the message through, but how can you actually challenge the status quo?

Nikki: That is a good question. I think we have to be prepared to have tough conversations. I think that the research that is being done, that will challenge this status quo, probably needs to be a little bit more multifaceted than what, at least I, have been seeing for the last few years. 

We've done a couple of focus groups, we've done a couple of IDIs in several key markets, and everyone agrees that we should do this. Well, add a layer of desk research.

Why are you holding so fast to the status quo? Is it because of your own job? Is it because of the objectives that you have been given from your higher up, or from the shareholders who are running the company? You really need to come at this from a 360 approach and figure out what are all the barriers to blocking change, and address every single one of them.

What is the solution that you are going to propose off the back of this? Then do some desk research, figure out how much does that solution cost? How much can that solution potentially net you, in terms of ROI? 

Maybe that will spur some other pieces of research you may have to do. Then maybe you go out and you have additional stakeholder interviews, maybe do internal stakeholder interviews, to find out what are the barriers to you. Why are you pushing back so much on this?

Why are you holding so fast to the status quo? Is it because of your own job? Is it because of the objectives that you have been given from your higher up, or from the shareholders who are running the company? You really need to come at this from a 360 approach and figure out what are all the barriers to blocking change, and address every single one of them.

Thor: Sounds so simple when you put it that way, Nikki. 

Nikki: Right? Just figure it all out, lay your cards on the table, easy peasy.

Challenges on the horizon for insights professionals

Thor: A lot of people that I speak to, and that try to make this happen, see a lot of challenges. When you take a look at the future, what type of challenges do you see on the horizon that are going to affect the wider industry?

Nikki: In the consumer and insights industry, we are typically working with marketing professionals, right? It's people who are saying, "Okay, I need to do some market research, I need to do market sizing, or price optimization.", or, "I need to understand the language so that the communication around this could be as relevant as possible."

In light of everything that has happened in the last couple of years, digital touchpoints have grown in their significance, exponentially. It's not just digital touchpoints, but those are sort of the arrow tip, I think, the first liaison between a customer or a user, and a product, service, and brand. Then after that, there can also be in-person touchpoints, et cetera.

Because digital touchpoints have become so important in the entire journey of a relationship between a person and whatever product, service, or brand they're interacting with, a lot more budget attention and focus has been put on products and moved away from marketing. 

A lot of companies are starting to figure out that if you don't get the product right, you have nothing to market. There is no point in spending loads of money on price optimization if your product is wrong and people don't want to buy it in the first place.

You need to do things like feature optimization, usability tests, click-through tests, AB testing, to understand the UI. Is it interesting enough, and is it sticky enough? Does it keep people engaged with, whatever it is? 

I think one of the challenges coming down the road for us is going to be a breakdown of the silos that exist now, between user research and market research. I think that market research professionals have an enormous amount to offer to user research professionals because the depth, robustness, and rigor with which we conduct research is not something that is typically seen on the user research side of things. 

There's going to be this breakdown of silos. Budgets are going to be shifting. This is already happening, people are saying, "Oh, that's market research. I don't do market research, that has nothing to do with me," when in fact, they very much have a lot to do with each other. 

I think one of the challenges coming down the road for us is going to be a breakdown of the silos that exist now, between user research and market research. I think that market research professionals have an enormous amount to offer to user research professionals because the depth, robustness, and rigor with which we conduct research is not something that is typically seen on the user research side of things. 

One of the things we're going to need to figure out is how to do this dance with each other. How do we both teach a little bit around our in-depth, robust knowledge, methodologies, and executions? How do we also learn, from UX professionals, to be a little bit more iterative, agile, flexible, to look at deliverables in a different way? 

The deliverables on the UX side of things tend to be quick hit touchpoints. It's like “Make this tiny decision, make that tiny decision, make this tiny decision”, thinking about incremental improvements, that's a big philosophy that you see throughout user research, and market research tends to be these huge, big, heavy pieces of research. 

The quickest piece of quality research, unless you are absolutely playing miracles out of the air, is probably four to six weeks. You can go all the way, as long as thinking on the quantitative side, to multi-year trackers, where the insight doesn't even start to come out until year three. 

Then you're thinking, "Okay, if there's all this new emphasis on product, they're not going to be waiting until year three to figure out how people are feeling about their brand, the pricing, or whatever." 

I think that's going to be important for us to pay attention to, understanding how product development, product management works. Understanding how those decisions need to be made, and making sure that we're thinking strategically enough to play a role in impacting product, and not just impacting marketing and sales, because they go together.

Who in the world of insights Nikki would love to have lunch with

Thor: That's such good advice, Nikki. It really really hurts me to realize that we are getting to the end of our conversation. There's a last question I want to ask you, that I always ask, which is “Who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?”

Nikki: I've been thinking about this question for so long, and the thing is, I feel like I don't know. We all do work for these great brands that touch our lives. 

You probably have a favorite client and you're like, "Oh, I love doing work for this client," either because you get along with them really well, or the work is really fun, or because it's a brand you're using and you feel really good, like you're impacting a brand that actually impacts your life, so it's a reciprocal relationship.

I think all the time about the fact that there are these internal stakeholders, higher up, in companies like Apple.  You see I'm wearing the AirPod Pros right now, and I'm thinking, “Who internally at Apple was responsible for designing the case to look like this, with a little dot right here when it's charging?”

And I'm thinking, "Who is the person that made that key decision about bringing the AirPods Pro to life?" I don't know who that is, but that's the person I want to have lunch with. 

Thor: Oh, man. Not only did you give me a great answer, you also connected it to what you just talked about, which is tying consumer research with product research. Love that. I would really like to be eavesdropping on that conversation. Wow.

Nikki: If I ever get that lunch invite, I'll send an invite to you as well, so you can join us. 

Summary

Thor: Don't hesitate. Nikki, this has been such an amazing conversation. It's been truly inspiring to hear about your journey, but especially, about how you're working to inspire the next generation of research and insight talent. 

There's so many things I take with me from this conversation, starting out with a quote you shared in the beginning, which is, "If you cannot make a decision off the back of the research you just did, then it's probably not great research."

The advice you gave us in terms of how to think about conducting cross-cultural research, when looking into launching your product in a new market, co-create the methodology at the beginning. Never underestimate the local differences between markets, because doing this right is going to set you up for success.

The cultural translation – you need to pay particular attention to the way people are describing things in different local areas, and the words that people are not using.

If you're early into the insights industry, for those of our listeners who are, if you're early in your career, do attend the industry events, learn about challenges, trends, opportunities in this industry, connect with the people that can be part of your future. 

Lastly, if you don't get the product right, there's really nothing to market; I think that that really sets us up for a future where we will need to break down the silos between consumer insights and consumer research, and user research.

Budgets will shift between user research and market research. Fascinating. Now, Nikki, I know I've learned a lot from talking to you today, and I'm sure our audience has, as well. Thank you so much for joining me.

Nikki: Thanks for having me. It was a great conversation. I enjoyed it a lot.