Join us for this Quarterly Review episode as host Thor Olof Philogène revisits some of the highlights from recent episodes, exploring the varied and rich perspectives of the brilliant insights leaders who’ve joined the podcast this quarter.

Join us for this Quarterly Review episode as host Thor Olof Philogène revisits some of the highlights from recent episodes, exploring the varied and rich perspectives of the brilliant insights leaders who’ve joined the podcast this quarter.

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Spreaker. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor:

Hello everyone and welcome to our first-ever quarterly review episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast. After putting together the Year-in-Review episode for you back in December, I realized how much I enjoy revisiting the highlights from our episodes. So I thought I’d try out reviewing episodes on a more regular basis, so that we can also spend a bit more time on each one. And also because I think it’s incredibly valuable to find time for deeper reflection throughout the year, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to do a bit more of myself lately. So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

We kicked off 2024 speaking with Shivani Shah, National Category and Shopper Insights Senior Manager at Church & Dwight. One of the key themes of our conversation was the role that democratizing insights plays in driving innovation – and I think her take on it served as a really important reminder. Democratizing insights is something on the minds of a lot of insights leaders that I speak with, and it’s something that I personally think is really important – it’s an endeavor that we try to make easier with the software we build at Stravito. But I think sometimes when speaking about democratizing insights, the forest gets lost for the trees. And what I mean by that is – the underlying reason, “the why?”, as we so often come back to on this podcast, gets overlooked. And so in my conversation with Shivani, I think she did an excellent job of highlighting the role that insights democratization can play in an organization’s value chain. She explained it this way:

In a consumer-obsessed culture, if you work for an organization that is consumer-obsessed, democratizing insights is an absolute priority. This is because, as I mentioned, even throughout my journey, any of the business managers working in any of the different functions are ultimately working to drive success in the market. And they cannot do that. They cannot make those informed decisions without the insight or without visibility to what they are serving, which is the consumer, to who they are serving, that is the consumer.

So to be truly insights-driven, every decision should be made taking into consideration the voice of the consumer and the shopper and the category and market trends. So all business managers and teams must develop a common understanding of what those are. And to gain that, they need to see the same insights and have visibility to the same information. So here I would like to give you an example. I have attempted to ensure that all teams that I work with on any specific business, whether they're responsible for new product development or digital activation, or selling into retail, have a common understanding of the shopper and look for solutions with that understanding.

So this has enabled us to inform our product development with relevant shopper trends, which are in alignment with the retail environment. We are able to then turn to inform our strategy and execute it at retail with the same insight to meet the needs of the shopper competitively while we're driving growth.

Thor:

I love how she explains this, and I think the example she shared was a great illustration. Of course, I had to dig deeper – because I know that democratizing insights isn’t easy. So off the back of this, I asked Shivani to share what she believes are some of the common obstacles that get in the way of this, and also how she has overcome them in her career:

I have experienced that there are inadvertent silos that invariably are part of large organizations. And they're perhaps the main obstacle in achieving perfect democratization of insights. Because within any organization structure, there are multiple teams that collaborate towards the same goal. But they often have their own mini subculture, their own workflow, their own pace. Now you multiply that across different SBUs and brand teams, and it's a much larger scale. So usually the challenge for democratization of insights is scalability.

How do we bring everyone across the breadth of all the teams involved on the same page all of the time? So in addition to that, our business environment is very dynamic and it changes every moment. Teams are constantly in flux, and the skill set of individuals varies and not everyone is equally adept at leveraging insights. And with such complexity, it is nearly impossible to achieve perfect execution. And like most other initiatives, establishing primacy of insights in all decision-making is a daily enterprise for us. We have adopted several solutions like, for example, templating deep insights and automating them so business managers can self-serve them in real time.

To take it a step further, we then socialize this throughout the corporation with organization-wide training calls to walk them through the tools we have, to walk them through the capabilities. We're leveraging several tools. Some of them are deploying some AI capabilities to make it much more user-friendly and fast. And so that is how we are trying to approach this. And we have benefited also from a top-down prioritization, which in our case, our senior-most leadership has emphasized an expectation to be insights-driven. The basic understanding is that all decision-making is principled and insights-based. And so that's kind of part of our culture. And that's how we have been approaching the challenge of democratizing insights.

Thor:

I really appreciate how Shivani answered this question – I think she did an excellent job of highlighting how organizational complexity can create friction, and I think she also explained really well how tech, automation, and AI can all play a key role in solving these kinds of challenges, but that they aren’t the point. That really, it’s about building a culture where insights-driven decisions are the norm, and the consumer is at the core of those decisions. But of course, the world of insights is full of nuance right? And I think that’s why it was so much fun to explore when consumer-obsession can become too much of a good thing in my conversation with Lorin Drake, Consumer Insights Strategist at Publix Super Markets. Lorin reflected on the frustration he’s had, when in the role of consumer himself, with feedback overload. He also highlighted that from an insights perspective, it’s incredibly difficult to use this massive amount of information in a meaningful way:

I think what's concerning to me in general and that when I look at the industry is that every single transaction that I conduct, every single consumer transaction purchase, I guess purchase that I made, whether I buy a sandwich or stay in a hotel or fly on an airplane or buy a piece of luggage or buy an accessory or buy a gift, I get invited to give feedback. And it's just, it's exhausting. I mean, that's, that's the thing. Everybody, every company is out there collecting massive amounts of feedback. Where my skepticism comes in is a we're overwhelming our customers. So I bought, you know, I bought a briefcase, um, a few months ago and. They sent me an email asking me to not only answer a survey, but write a review on that particular briefcase that I bought for work. And so I don't know if companies realize, or perhaps they're not thinking about it enough, is multiply that by 50. And basically every single purchase I've made wants some form of feedback. And so I worry about this on two levels.

One is we are overloading the consumer with our need for data and metrics. Companies have a never ending insatiable appetite for metrics. I call it chasing the metrics monster because we keep wanting more and more data. So I worry about overwhelming the consumer. And on the flip side, I'm skeptical that companies, organizations are using the sheer amount of data that they collect in a meaningful way, it can't possibly have the staff or the bandwidth to collect this much information, either passively or directly. So there's all this passive data that's coming in as well, big data that's coming in, web traffic, click-throughs, consuming of media online, retargeting, cookies and all that data.

And then on top of it, you add survey data and you add ratings and review data, and you've got this avalanche or tsunami of data that companies are collecting. And I know from personal experience, there's only so, there's the data, and then there's the human capital, the staff that you need to be able to analyze that data, report it in a way that's meaningful, and then have stakeholders and business decision makers act on it. I'm skeptical that that's happening. 

Thor:

I think Lorin raised some excellent points here – that in a way, the pursuit of being consumer-centric or consumer-obsessed, when left unchecked or when not taken into the greater context that consumers find themselves in, can have the opposite effect of what is intended. And then of course, as he pointed out, I think the impact within the organization is another key dimension to consider – that feedback overload leads to information overload within the organization, right? But obviously, meaningful customer and consumer insights are essential – so I asked him if he had any tips on how to avoid falling into a pattern of feedback overload:

I think number one is prioritizing, right? So what's most important to the business? It can't just be every single transaction, every single thing that a customer purchases. You know, so for example, not all customers are created equal, right? So you've heard of the Pareto principle, you know, where 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. So it doesn't have to be every customer treated equal. You can you can look at segmentation. You can in the grocery business, you can look at people who's a vast hype, very high percentage of their share of wallet goes to our company, which would be Publix, our grocery store.

So prioritizing, segmentation, being more intentional and mindful about how we collect this information, not just go out and collect it. I believe that human attention span is finite. It's not something that is...that doesn't have a limit to it. Human attention span and their willingness to participate in giving feedback, they're only, they're doing it out of generosity. Most of the surveys that I get asked to take have zero incentive. I just take them because there's a goodwill there. I want to help my fellow mankind and that's the reason why people write Amazon reviews. 

Thor:

What I really took away here was one, how valuable goodwill is when working with consumers and two, how prioritization is crucial. And I think prioritization is crucial for any leader, regardless of industry, but I think the dimensions of prioritization required for insights professionals are a bit unique. Because as Lorin points out, it’s about balancing that relationship with consumers and customers, but also prioritizing resources within the organization to make meaningful use of research and insights. But there’s another dimension of prioritization that comes up frequently on this podcast – how to ensure that the insights function itself is seen as a priority for the organization. And that’s something I was fortunate enough to dig deeper into in my conversation with Deborah Walker, Director of Consumer Insights at the Michaels Companies. We spoke a lot about prioritization from additional angles – prioritization in the sense of what to focus on when you’re building an insights function from the ground up, but also in the sense that once that function is built, it is prioritized by the rest of the organization. Deborah explained her process this way: 

When you come into an organization, not everybody has a door open, and you have a desk and you have this beautiful budget that's so rich, and these awesome tools to use, right from the get go. When you're really building this from the ground up, you have to work for it. You have to work for it. And so there's a few things if somebody is walking into the role, and they are a little bit constrained on what they have available to them, or the funds that they have. But they know that they can get good insights.

The first thing I did walking into Michaels was schedule interviews with various stakeholders in the company. So people from the merchandise group, people from marketing, from store operations, or E commerce, really meet with each individual and dig in deep find out, you know, what to what do they know about the company? What are they think and the whole truth facts. And then you also just absorb, seek to understand where they are maybe where some pain points are for them some ways that you can, which is my number two of my five step program versus seeking to understand second would be identify some quick wins, where can you come to play him to do some DIY, agile insights that give some fast reads on situations?

Thor:

I really admire how she focuses on proactively building connections with stakeholders, but also delivering quick wins to help solidify those connections and prove the value of her and her team’s work. I think it was also great to get her perspective here because Deborah has actually built insights functions from the ground up 3 times now – so I knew she would have a lot of wisdom she could share. I think whether or not you’re building an insights function from the ground up, revisiting the foundations is always valuable. And when listening to Deborah, I felt like her advice on how to build an insights function tied really nicely into a bigger theme of our conversation – how to ensure that insights is seen as a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. That was something she shared as being really important to her, so I asked her to share more of her thoughts on this:

All those years that I've been working in various capacities, whether you know, working for a client or working at a corporate office, I have seen over the years where usually research follows up already a big strategic decision, we're gonna move forward with this, oh, wait. But we might want to get consumer insights around this to validate yes, we're doing the right thing. So it's already been decided we're going this path. Let's do this research to validate that, well, a good side, somebody would say, great, it validates what we're thinking this is awesome. And if it's counterintuitive to it, that gets either putting in a drawer of the trashcan, they just like kind of ignore it.

And so sometimes people are just looking for insights to be that follow up. And I think what you need to do is get in front of their strategic initiatives and be a large part of something that is coming up. Right. So getting in front, like I said, I always ask executives, what do you want to know? How are you going to use it? You know, and develop research plans around this? What are the big pain points coming up? Don't always chase, but put yourself in front of things. Right. And I think that's one of the biggest keys on that. 

Thor:

“Don’t always chase, but put yourself in front of things.” I love that.  I also really appreciated the two questions she shared: What do you want to know? How are you going to use it? And it’s that last question that I think was a core theme in my conversation with Matt Thell, Global Strategy & Innovation Leader at General Mills. When we were preparing for his episode, he made a wonderful comment along the lines of “Insights without action are just fun facts.” We discuss a lot on this podcast how the ability to take action is central to true insight, and I really loved hearing Matt’s way of formulating this, as well as the why and how of his approach: 

I think for me, it comes from, like originally I was an engineer, right? Like I was a chemical engineer for the very early part of my career. And the thing that I liked about engineering was that it's not a pure science, right? It is the practical application of a science. So Insights without action are fun facts. It kind of comes from that because to me, I'm always thinking about like, what is the practical application of this insight going to be, right? Like, I think something that kind of highlights this is like, kind of like how and why my group does what it does. So we have, we have the luxury of taking a bit of time, right? Where you are not bound to P and L. We don't have to like have specific business results on a quarterly basis. So we can, we can go deep, right? We can dig into a topic, uh, interesting aspects, things of a category. We can follow random leads down rabbit holes.

But in the end, I need to connect that back, whatever we've learned to something that's going to help pizza rolls or help gushers. Otherwise, it doesn't matter because we're not academics. I'm not about theoretical. I'm not publishing papers. Those are great. And they're super useful. And we use them. Don't get me wrong. Love my academic friends. But if I'm spending a bunch of time learning about a topic like joy, right? I need to create a framework. I need to do something that applies it to the business.

Thor:

I really loved where he was going with this, so I wanted to dig a bit deeper. I asked Matt if he could share some of the steps he takes to turn insights into action. What followed, I think, was a highly practical approach that can be useful for many different types of organizations:

The biggest thing I do is I make sure that no matter what kind of like stimulus you're exposing people to is that we always kind of follow a similar process. So you know, I told you about the interesting surprising affirming thing. Like that's one thing you had a form of stimulus that came in and now you are thinking about it in that in that structured way. The second thing that we do is afterwards we always. Talk directly with the team and have them talk together to get that communal knowledge right?

Like I want to know what's important to you, and then I want to know what's important to everyone else, and I want everyone to know that, right? So the idea of, you know, we bring people together, they can like leave their normal job, they can focus on a specific area, you gain that communal knowledge, everyone knows what everyone else knows. And then, and then that makes it easier for alignment. So that's kind of like step two.

Step three, I'd say is, and this is this is probably most important. We have this thing that we call the we should statement, right? So this is this is our capture device. Um, it's basically it's a sheet of paper or if we're doing online, you know, it's a, the template and it says we should do, and then you fill in whatever that thing is because for whatever that reason is. So it's like a hypothesis. It might not be right at the end, but in that moment, based on what you saw, it feels right to you and these we should start there. They're the DNA of our process, right? Like it is, it is the building blocks. It immediately forces people to take what they just heard and convert it into an action. 

Thor:

I think the “We should” statement is a tool we should all have in our toolboxes. I also really appreciated that what Matt is describing is a form of organizational learning – the sharing of knowledge between teams as a way to build common understanding and to fuel action. And in our last episode of Q1, Victoria Ng, Director of Consumer Insights at Sodexo, built on these themes elegantly. She highlighted how continuous learning is a key part of being an insights leader, whether it’s the learning you do yourself or the learning that you facilitate for others in the organization. One of the ways she illustrated this was by explaining the difference between a storyteller and “a data-teller”:

Across my career, I've come across many different types of clients and teams, some who really understand the value of insights, and some who look at it just as a data point to validate an idea that they have, for example. And so I like to think of us in our team, as storytellers because we again, we are the consumer advocates, right? It is our job to know what the consumers are looking for day in and day out. In our case, right now, the university student, for example. And so sometimes we get asked, you know, very specific questions such as, what are university students looking for when it comes to, you know, mobile ordering? You know, how many of them are using it today, for example, and that's still an important data point to have and to understand for the business.

But I think it's, you know, baking that into, okay, well, why is mobile ordering so important, for example? What does convenience actually mean to university students today? And how are their experiences outside of the campus impacting their definition of convenience when it comes to being on campus? Right? So, you know, knowing that story that okay, well, they can order DoorDash, for example, anytime they want to, because they grew up with this behavior already. And therefore, when they get to a college campus, they're gonna have that same expectation of being able to order food, whenever they want to get whatever type of food that they want, when they want it.

How do we solve for that need, and that expectation on a college campus, knowing that it's going to be a little bit different of experience than you know, then when the student was living at home with their parents, for example, but we still know that expectation exists today with them. So how do we create more convenient dining solutions on a campus to meet that need an expectation for them today. And so again, just telling that holistic story about, you know, this is where the student came from, this is why they have the expectation today, and this is why they're looking for certain things when it comes to campus dining, I think is a stronger story than just giving someone a data point on, you know, 70% of university students use DoorDash. 

Thor:

I really loved the example that Victoria gave here because I think it gives a rich perspective on how insights, both quant and qual, can create stories that help to deepen customer or consumer understanding. And when I asked Victoria if she had to choose one takeaway for you to have from her episode, it became apparent to me that continuous learning is a core philosophy of hers, as well as a major opportunity for insights professionals: 

I would say that we should all continue to learn, right? So whether that's going back for more education around a specific area that you feel like you want to just learn more about or to grow in, such as an MBA or maybe a data data analytics program. Or even learning how to leverage emerging tools like AI and ChatGPT and how to apply it to our business and our roles. I think we have such an important opportunity to again, position insights and research teams as strategic partners within organizations.

And I think the more that we can continue to be on top of these emerging trends, and again, new advances in technologies to make our jobs easier and more efficient. You know, my, I guess my takeaway at the end of the day is continued growing, right, no matter what area or aspect that you're interested in, whether that's more research, or even outside of research. I think we are such well rounded professionals when it comes to truly understanding someone's needs. And we are well positioned within companies today to help grow the business in more ways than just doing research. 

Thor:  

I was personally really inspired by Victoria’s answer there. It resonated a lot with me because this podcast is a way that I get to continuously learn from the incredible insights community. Every conversation, I walk away with new perspectives and learnings, and I hope that you, as a listener, have the same experience. Even in the limited sample of clips that we pulled for this episode (and believe me, it was quite challenging to limit it to just these), there is so much wisdom to be gained. I think it all goes to show that there is so much expertise in the insights community, and so much opportunity on the horizon. I’m really excited to see how the industry develops in these coming months, and I can’t wait to learn from more brilliant insights leaders alongside you. I also welcome you to share your learnings with me, as a listener or maybe even as a future guest. Either way, I’d love to hear from you – you can find the link to my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. We’ll be back in a couple weeks with a fresh episode for you, and as always, thank you so much for joining me today.