Scaling Consumer Centricity for Business Impact

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, we speak with Ashley Hopkins, Head of Brand Strategy and Product Marketing at Wayfair.

How do you turn consumer-centric vision into impact? 

And more importantly, how do you build a consumer-centric culture for the whole organization, especially when you’re working with limited resources?

The right priorities, an open mind, a clear road map, and an appreciation for nuance can go a long way.

In this episode of The Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Ashley Hopkins, Head of Brand Strategy and Product Marketing at Wayfair. 

They cover:

• Why it’s important to embrace “the gray”
• The essential role of insight in marketing strategy
• Best practices for scaling your insights function 
• Why self-service access to insights should be a top priority 
• How “scrappy”, outside-the–box research can lead to major innovation
• What insights managers can do to better understand the business
• Why stakeholder buy-in is critical and how to build it
• The mindset and skills to look for when scaling an insights team
• How the 15-slide rule can facilitate more impactful storytelling
• Remote work challenges for insights teams to be aware of 

If you’re interested in elevating the role of consumer insights in your organization for increased business impact, 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, and welcome to the Consumer Insights podcast. Today, I'm excited to have a highly inspiring insights leader joining me for what I know will be an enlightening conversation. 

I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Ashley Hopkins, Head of Brand Strategy at Wayfair. Before joining Wayfair, Ashley worked at ASICS where she personally founded the consumer insights function, something I'm really looking forward to digging into today as I'm sure many of you listeners are too. 

She's also the Co-Founder of Four Progress, which creates impactful tools for mental health and wellness like their Worry for Nothing guided journal. Thank you so much for joining me today, Ashley.

Ashley Hopkins: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here!

Thor: Ashley, firstly, could you take a couple of minutes to tell us about yourself, your company, and how you got to where you are today, and where it all began?

Ashley: Sure, yes. It probably began back when I thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist because I was so amazed at how the human mind works and what motivated people and what stood in people's way. 

I actually got an internship at a hockey team in the marketing department and soon realized so much of what I was learning in school actually applied to how you think about marketing strategy. I soon decided that I would rather work in marketing than listen to people's problems, but I give a lot of credit to those who are therapists because I don't think I could actually do it.

From there, I ended up working my first seven or eight years on the agency side, which I think actually gave me a really good perspective of different industries, of different roles across business lines, from account management to research strategy, creative media, marketing, pretty much everything that an agency is made up of.

I was getting frustrated that I wasn't actually on the bottom line, like actually impacting that. I knew I wanted to move to the brand side at that time, and I was fortunate enough to have an introduction to Runkeeper, which was one of the first apps in the App Store. It was one of the oldest apps, and they had just been acquired by ASICS. 

They were looking for someone that could come in, form a relationship with the ASICS marketing team, and bridge the gap between the two teams, knowing that there was a lot of data and engineering done on the Runkeeper side and a lot of strong product marketers and leaders on the ASICS side.

From there, I joined in a marketing function, and you mentioned earlier, ended up scaling and growing a consumer insights function over four years, and then left in 2021 to join Wayfair, which is a global multibillion-dollar e-commerce company that sells home goods, and I'm currently leading brand strategy for them.

As you also mentioned, during the pandemic, I decided to go back to my roots in psychology and actually launched a cognitive behavioral therapy journal aimed to help those, especially during the pandemic, who were struggling with mental health. 

I personally found that there weren't many tools available that were discrete in nature, that were helpful, less academic, and that just felt like a confident friend in my pocket. That's where my sister and I launched the Worry for Nothing journal and have sold over 10,000 journals in the past year and a half. We're excited to continue to launch products in that line over the coming years.

How Ashley defines insight

Thor: Wow. Such an incredible journey you have made. Given the fact that you've started out on the agency side and then also felt that frustration not being able to make an impact and then transitioned over to the brand side, I always like to ask this question. As an insights leader, how do you actually define an insight?

Ashley: Such a good question. I think an insight is an observation that takes place in the gray, and by the gray, I mean we live in a very binary world where things are one way or the other and people tend to lose sense of the nuance that happens in the in-between. That's what I call the gray. 

I think insights really live there, and it's about observing those things, human behaviors that happen within the nuance, and applying them to a business strategy that my former manager at ASICS used to always say, "If it's not actionable, it's not insightful." I do think that there always has to be some action that can take place from the insight in order for it to be one.

Building an insights function from the ground up

Thor: Let's spend a bit more of your time at ASICS. You built the consumer insights function from the ground up after you developed and you pitched a new consumer-centric business strategy. Could you tell us a bit more about that journey? What compelled you to make that transition from marketing to insights?

Ashley: As I mentioned on the agency side, I was surrounded by really smart strategist researchers, and so I knew what a good marketing strategy looked like. I knew that it had to be based on an insight. 

When I got in at ASICS, I was receiving these briefs that were like, "Sell shoes to runners." Who are these runners? Where are they living? What are they reading? What motivates them? What obstacles get in their way? Why would they choose us over Nike?

I was getting really frustrated that I couldn't build a solid marketing strategy without any of these insights, but I knew being somewhat close to the data and analytics team that they had a wealth of data that just wasn't being applied in the way that it should be for us to create these business solutions. 

I actually moved my seat and started sitting with them, and I asked the Head of Analytics, "Can I come to your standups everyday?”, just to hear what they were working on, because I just felt like there needed to be a translator, someone who was taking what they were doing and actually applying it.

It got to a point where I just said, “That this is a gap we need to fill”. There's enough marketers that know what they're doing. No one here is doing insights. 

I was getting really frustrated that I couldn't build a solid marketing strategy without any of these insights, but I knew being somewhat close to the data and analytics team that they had a wealth of data that just wasn't being applied in the way that it should be for us to create these business solutions. 

I went to senior management and said, "I think that we need an insights function. Here's how I think it would apply. Here's how I would work." I put together about a 60-day roadmap of getting the program launched, and they said, "Okay, we're going to let you try this for 60 days."

Over 60 days, I went on a listening tour and talked to as many stakeholders as I could across the organization, from e-commerce to product to marketing, really trying to understand what they wish they knew about the consumer. If they could sit down with the consumer, what would they ask them? 

I found a lot of similarities across the organization. With that, I decided to do a couple tests and learn pilots to show how quickly we could actually gather insights and apply them to the problems that we were trying to solve.

At the time, I was a mid-level employee. There was a lot of, "Should we hire someone to actually do this who knows what they're doing?" Luckily enough, I had some folks in senior leadership who said, "No, let's give her a shot." 

I'm really fortunate that they did because I do think that I was successful in that, and leaned heavily on the insights network that I had built around me to help understand the right methodologies of getting the data I needed while I knew what I needed the outcome to be. I just didn't always know how to get there.

I quickly scaled the program, and through a lot of different tests and learns, ended up building Voice the Consumer Program, built out some consumer journey mapping, which is still being used today, and then built a team that is now in Canada, the US, Japan, and Amsterdam. The team is still around and still functioning without me, but I like to consider it one of my career highlights.

Tackling challenges on the journey

Thor: You're being very humble, Ashley. I think what you accomplished is pretty awesome. I think from their perspective, betting on you to actually build that function was a big thing. 

Could you spend a bit more time and tell us about the challenges you encountered and how you addressed them because you must have had a couple of really hairy ones?

Ashley: Yes. You can probably tell that the imposter syndrome is definitely one of them. I mean, I was thinking, "I've never done this. Why would they trust me?" But at the same time, trying to convince them that “I am the expert, they should trust me”. It was a little bit of a battle with myself, but I was really fortunate to have a manager who fully believed in me and gave me the runway to go.

I think another thing was prioritization. Once I went on this listening tour and people were coming to me saying, "Hey, I need to know this. I need to know that," the expectation was that I could just do it all in the next year. I was a one-person team with zero budget. Trying to do it all was very difficult. I didn't want to let people down so that they didn't believe in the function.

I was trying to give rich enough insights with what I had and have them apply to as many departments as I could, and then work on building a roadmap that would include other priorities that folks had come to me with. 

That, and just establishing my expertise, I think getting the trust and gaining credibility took some time at first, but after a few small wins, it just continued to snowball from there.

Leveraging insights for brand strategy

Thor: Fascinating to hear how you were able to actually build a roadmap that not only gave them clarity in what would come but also gave them value in the short term. 

Now that you're head of brand strategy at Wayfair, what strategies have you used to determine the most relevant customer insights for business opportunity, and particularly for brand strategy?

Ashley: It's a good question. To be honest, it's interesting because brand strategy is still a new function at Wayfair, even though we're a 20 year old company, and insights is still in the process of standing up a lot of the foundational pieces that we need in order to be successful. 

What we rely heavily on right now is brand health tracking to at least set some metrics and goal posts for ourselves to know if we're successful. 

We're also doing a lot of qualitative research for that rich information around how people shop. We are a mass market brand, so segmentation isn't as relevant as maybe, say, like for ASICS was. 

We're trying to figure out different ways that people shop for specific categories. People shop very differently for a refrigerator than they would a couch.

We're trying to figure out different ways that people shop for specific categories. People shop very differently for a refrigerator than they would a couch. Some of that qualitative research, while not necessarily as data-rich as we might like, can at least help us start to understand more of the consumer mindset when we create the marketing and brand strategies that go along with that.

I would say that's probably our number one priority along with self-service. We have so many stakeholders that are in a really small consumer insights team, so building the right data visualization platform so that people can actually go in and find the answers they need themselves so that our team isn't a roadblock for others who might be able to get the answers they need quicker.

Using insights to fuel innovation

Thor: Definitely. I think that's fascinating. It's a very practical and pragmatic view at how to actually bring that value to the end users. Could you also give us an example, and it can be either for ASICS or Wayfair, really up to you, when you integrated insights that then have fueled innovation? For instance, building a better campaign, a better project, a great project, or a better product.

Ashley: Absolutely. I've so many stories, especially from ASICS, over the four years that we scaled the team, and every time we've added a new resource or a new team member, there was always an even more innovative solution that came into play, but I'll tell you probably the most fun one, which is when I was proving at the insights team, like I said, I was a team of one with zero resources.

One of the questions I had was, “How do we innovate children's footwear?” We can't easily talk to kids without a focus group that involves parental consent and all sorts of stuff. That was going to be too challenging for me to try to figure out with zero budget. 

I knew I had to have a win, so I actually found a coloring page of an ASICS shoe. I reached out to teachers across the US. It was the end of the school year, so they were desperate to have fun activities for their kids. 

What we found was that a lot of the shoes came back with unicorns or wings or tails, and the stories that came along with it were like, "This is my unicorn shoe, it helps me fly. This is my shark shoe, it makes me feel strong." It wasn't about the color. It was about the story. 

I said, "Can you give these coloring pages to your students and have them color in if they could create a shoe for themselves, what that would look like, and maybe you could jot some notes around the side of what they said?" The teachers were thrilled to participate.

What I thought I was going to get back was like, okay, it was some pink shoes, some blue shoes, and we'd run them through. We have a team of really amazing data scientists to run it through some tech and figure out what colors were popping.

What we found was that a lot of the shoes came back with unicorns or wings or tails, and the stories that came along with it were like, "This is my unicorn shoe, it helps me fly. This is my shark shoe, it makes me feel strong." It wasn't about the color. It was about the story. 

I think that's really where kids can convince their parents to buy them these shoes because they believe these shoes are going to make them feel a certain way rather than just getting a shoe that looks like any other shoe. When we went back and we shared this with the product team, they were like, "This is great."

Now, we ended up building a product line off of that where the shoes have different features. My daughter, actually, this morning, was wearing a shoe that has a little rabbit tail and ears that come off the side of it. 

You can go on the site and see there's all sorts of, there's like the summer shoe with the popsicles and watermelon and all that came from the student coloring book. That was a very scrappy research, but a big win in terms of innovation for us very early on.

Thor: That's an amazing story. That's incredible. You were very resourceful, and again, you were a team of one, so it had to be in that matter, but that's fascinating.

Ashley: Thank you.

Ashley's advice on elevating the role of insights

Thor: Having founded the insights function at a multi-billion dollar company, what advice would you give to insights professionals who are looking to elevate the role of insights in their organizations?

Ashley: I do think that the listening tour was very important to being successful. I think it's easy to say we need insights and not necessarily know where to apply them or to think, "Oh, this just applies to marketing strategy." 

The more you can learn about how the business functions, the more successful you'll be. I think that there's so much of what we learn about human behavior that applies to parts of the business across organizations. 

Building trust with these stakeholders, learning about their problems, and then doing somewhat like a PR push every time you find out these insights so that people know what's available to them and how to apply it is really important to being successful.

The more you can learn about how the business functions, the more successful you'll be. I think that there's so much of what we learn about human behavior that applies to parts of the business across organizations. 

I'll say another thing too that I think was one of the challenges that I ended up facing. I didn't want to involve too many people, for example, when we launched a big consumer journey mapping study because I wanted to streamline the work and get to the point where the output was really impactful so people would just take it and then know how to apply it. 

Without bringing stakeholders along for the ride, it was harder to get a buy-in on the other side. While it may have slowed down the process a bit to have multiple check-ins with stakeholders and say, "Hey, here's what we're learning. Any concerns? How do you think that this is going to apply?" It just made it harder on the other side. 

I would definitely recommend bringing your stakeholders along, having the listening tour, learn as much about the business as you can even in parts that you don't think might be applicable to insights, and build trust.

Answering "So what?"

Thor: That's great. That's great advice. Maybe you could spend a few more moments on it, on this listening tour, because I do believe that something that a lot of people are curious to learn is, how can they become better at answering the question, "So what?" when you come up with an insight and the stakeholders look at it and say, "Hey, so what?" 

I think that you're onto this, and you maybe could spend how do you do this listening to in a good way? What advice would you give?

Ashley: I did approach it as I would a qualitative IDI with a consumer in that if you ask them specifically, "What can consumer insights do for you?" They're not going to know because they don't really know what you can provide. 

I always started with, "What problems are you trying to solve? What's on your roadmap this upcoming year? Are there gaps in the information that you currently have about the consumer?" Even freezing it in that way versus “What consumer insights can do for you helps me uncover more of where I could apply the insights”.

Being able to actively listen and think through, "Okay, how might a consumer actually impact this product or impact this business solution?" and then come back to them with that and show them why it might impact is really important.

I think a lot of times too, parts of the business don't think in a consumer-centric way. They might think product-centric, they might think business-centric, and so they'll never think that something that the consumer says is actually applicable. 

Being able to actively listen and think through, "Okay, how might a consumer actually impact this product or impact this business solution," and then come back to them with that and show them why it might impact is really important. 

It is a lot of teaching people about consumer centricity along the way, and I know that's a buzzword right now, but it is really important as a consumer insights leader to teach about the function, not just about the consumer.

Essential tools for insights professionals

Thor: I think that's fascinating advice, and it's very tangible and very actionable. If we stay within the domain of things we can do to become better, so if we think about our listeners and many of them are, of course, in insights, what tools do you believe are essential to support insights professionals and why?

Ashley: I had to scale very slowly at first, so I really thought a lot about, “Do we need a quantitative tool? Do we need a qualitative tool? What's more important at different times?” 

For us, standing up, a quantitative tool, was our number one priority. We went with Qualtrics. I know there are a lot of great tools we all see at the moment, and very early on, SurveyMonkey, so whatever you can do to get the job done.

We found Qualtrics was really great for the intercepts on site when we were doing some voice of the consumer work to try to understand why only a certain percentage of consumers that were coming to our site were converting. That was really successful and continues to be used. 

From a qualitative perspective, at first, we were really scrappy. We used Google Hangouts and recorded and had someone note-taking the whole time, but other tools like Voxpopme have been great, usertesting.com, anything that you can use for quick turnaround research. 

Then the last piece that we added to ASICS and also at Wayfair is ad testing and making sure that our ads are impactful before we spend the media dollars behind it. We've used tools like Zappi, Ipsos, Swayable, great self-service type tools.

Building and leading insights teams

Thor: Thank you for sharing. Switching gears for a second, as the Head of Global Consumer Insights at ASICS, you hired and led a team of top data and market research professionals to expand insights, to reach across new regions and departments. 

Could you tell us a bit more about building and leading that team? What skills did you look for? How did you think about building the team and the culture?

Ashley: Great questions. This is actually one of the things I leaned heavily on my network for. At first, I just didn't know, “Did I need a quantitative researcher or I need a qualitative researcher, can you have both?” I'll say that what I've been really successful at is finding people who are really hungry. They might not have all the skills, but they're willing to learn.

In fact, during the pandemic, when everyone was feeling really burnt out, we used to use Friday afternoons as our own personal education time. We had people learning Python, we had people learning how to do cluster analysis. I was going through my own program through the University of Georgia market research.

My family motto is “Strong opinions loosely held.” I think that works really well for insights professionals, especially when you have hypotheses that maybe feel more like the answer, but you want to actually be open to having your mind changed.

We tried to find ways to all improve our own knowledge even in the work day, but finding people who are really hungry and willing to learn, people who are able to change their minds, I think that's a really important type of person. 

My family motto is “Strong opinions loosely held.” I think that works really well for insights professionals, especially when you have hypotheses that maybe feel more like the answer, but you want to actually be open to having your mind changed.

Empathy is another really important, I don't know if it's skill or just like a personality trait, curiosity, and influence. I think when it comes to insights professionals, there's definitely two types. 

There are people who tend to be more analytical and introverted, and there tends to be people who are more influential and good at storytelling. I think you need a team of both because there's a good compliment that comes with that.

The team started with a co-op that I had hired. He was really hungry and was passionate about the industry and loved collecting his own data. 

Then we hired a qualitative researcher who had a good amount of experience. Then we hired another co-op who scaled, and we continued to bring on people who were just really hungry. I think that there's no better person to bring on than someone who's willing to learn and really dive in.

Insights storytelling

Thor: This seems like a very good person, having all those attributes. I fully understand that those are great people to hire. 

Actually, I want to build a bit on one of the aspects you highlighted, which was storytelling. I think to go back to what you said about the listening tour, and you gave us some really good advice on how to approach it and how to make sure that the people could give you the input you needed to do your job. 

Can you tell me a bit about the role of storytelling into that and maybe some advice on how to actually execute, how to do it?

Ashley: This is something that I think starts with a "So what?" A lot of times, I've seen it from partners, vendors. You get a deck full of "Here's the data, here's the data, here's the data, but what does that mean for me? How do I apply this?” That's where we’re going back to the question you asked earlier about how to be successful.

Understanding parts of the business that might not necessarily be applicable to consumer insights right away can help you in the storytelling aspect because a lot of this isn't just about the data itself. What does it mean for the consumer, but what does it mean for the business? It's a good combination of the two.

Understanding parts of the business that might not necessarily be applicable to consumer insights right away can help you in the storytelling aspect because a lot of this isn't just about the data itself. What does it mean for the consumer, but what does it mean for the business? It's a good combination of the two.

We want the consumer to be happy. We want the data to tell the story of how this is going to impact the consumer's life, but even more importantly, for our business stakeholders, how this is going to drive the business forward. 

The storytelling has to be a mix of both. In creating an insights deck for a stakeholder, I would have a rule of no more than 15 slides because people tend to tune out after that. Then every single slide has to have a “So what?”, that's applicable to the business. We knew that everything we were putting forth had an important piece to the ultimate stories that we were telling with the data.

Opportunities and challenges facing insights professionals

Thor: I love that. That's really great advice. If we zoom out for a second and we think about the insights professionals, what opportunities do you think that there are for those insights professionals to actually make a true business impact? What opportunities do you see for them to challenge the status quo?

Ashley: I do think it is fighting for a seat at the table so that you can actually have a say and be able to present data in a way that impacts the business as you say, but also, like I said, it's knowing the business so well that you can figure out how the data applies.

Thor: Crisp, great advice. If we take a look at it on the flip side, what challenges do you see that could face the insight professionals and the wider industry in the near future?

Ashley: I think it's twofold. I think Rob spoke to this on your previous podcast, but the lack of empathy we see and just a lot of division in our country. It's making it harder, I think, for insights professionals to break through and have people understand someone else's point of view. 

We want to apply the binary, like I said earlier, and there's so much of the gray that actually is really where good strategy and businesses can move forward.

I think the other challenge is the remote work aspect. I don't know that I would've been successful at standing up the insights team had I not overheard so much of the conversation that the data and analytics team were having in the office. 

We want to apply the binary, like I said earlier, and there's so much of the gray that actually is really where good strategy and businesses can move forward.

I think remote work can be really great, but I think it also has challenges for folks like insights professionals who need to hear what's going on inside other teams. Whether or not they're actually invited so that they know to invite themselves or they'd know how to take what other team's challenges are or what other team's insights are and apply them to other parts of the business.

I used to joke that my team was a lot of pollinators that would just take information from one team and bring it to another team and help figure out how to make sense of the whole thing. I think working from home presents a unique challenge for insights professionals just because that's somewhat taken away.

Thor: Definitely, it's harder to pollinate, if you will.

Ashley: Yes. 

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

Thor: No, I'm with you 100%. Now, Ashley, this really hurts because we're getting towards the end of the conversation and I've enjoyed this so much, but I do have one last question that I love to ask, which is, who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?

Ashley: Oh, gosh. I'm going to say Adam Alter, who is the author of Drunk Tank Pink, which was one of the first books that I read. Well, he's not a consumer insights professional. He studies human behavior, so I think we can call him one. 

It was one of the first books that I read where I thought, "Oh, wow, there's so much more that meets the eye of what impacts consumers and decision-making." He really started me down the path of wanting to know more about consumer behavior and consumer psychology, so I would love to talk to him.

Thor: I need to pick up that book and read it.

Ashley: It's very good.

Thor: Thank you so much for the advice. It sounds like a fascinating conversation. I'd love to eavesdrop on that. This has been such a wonderful and insightful conversation, Ashley.

Ashley: Thank you so much for having me.

Summary

Thor: It's been truly fantastic to hear your unique perspective on leading insights teams and learn of how you've successfully integrated insights throughout your career. 

I love how you highlighted and reminded us that an insight is an observation that takes play in the gray, yet we live in a very binary world, and the example you shared like ASICS, how you in a very pragmatic way, asked children to color ASICS shoes in a drawing. Fascinating. You didn't get colors. You got your unicorns and sharks, and of course, the sharks make them feel strong. I get it.

Thank you also for the advice you shared regarding the listening tour, because I think a lot of people struggle with actually getting the information they need from their stakeholders, but I think it's very concrete, very pragmatic, and very tangible. 

“What problems are you trying to solve? What's in your roadmap? What gaps exist in the understanding of the consumer on your end that we can help fill?” Now, I know I've learned a great deal from talking to you today, and I'm sure our audience has as well. 

Thank you so much for joining me today, and thanks, everyone, for listening in.