Delighted to have on Rupesh Patel, Head of Consumer Insights for Samsung UK. Rupesh brings a wealth of perspective from foundations at Kantar/ TNS, to multiple roles at SKY, to his current position at Samsung.
The first part of our conversation dives deep into the relationship between consumer insights and media, where Rupesh gives a pragmatic guide to how consumer insight can help media planning and buying. Not least, he also offers potential solutions for two closely inter-related sectors that often haven't worked well together.
In the second part of our conversation, Rupesh makes some great points around the importance of innovating media channels at work, as well as communication with consumers. We also dive into key topics:
- What makes a good agency?
- What makes a bad agency?
- How should you gauge the impact of influencer marketing?
- Why market research as we used to know it is dead.
There's lots of tangible advice in here for agencies and internal departments alike, including a clarion call for the insights sector to be brave, be bold and break away from traditional norms....
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
Delighted to have on Rupesh Patel, Head of Consumer Insights for Samsung UK. Rupesh brings a wealth of perspective from foundations at Kantar/ TNS, to multiple roles at SKY, to his current position at Samsung.
The first part of our conversation dives deep into the relationship between consumer insights and media, where Rupesh gives a pragmatic guide to how consumer insight can help media planning and buying. Not least, he also offers potential solutions for two closely inter-related sectors that often haven't worked well together.
In the second part of our conversation, Rupesh makes some great points around the importance of innovating media channels at work, as well as communication with consumers. We also dive into key topics:
- What makes a good agency?
- What makes a bad agency?
- How should you gauge the impact of influencer marketing?
- Why market research as we used to know it is dead.
There's lots of tangible advice in here for agencies and internal departments alike, including a clarion call for the insights sector to be brave, be bold and break away from traditional norms....
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
This is where the mistake comes right. I sit there and I listen to media owners selling to my media team. They're going. We reach this many thousands of people and you know it's amazing. It's the best medium since I spread. No one's getting anything out of that conversation.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Futureview and one of the best interviewees I've been lucky enough to have on the series so far. Rupesh Patel has had a great career In fact I suspect he's only just getting started across Kantar, skye and now Samson. He's also an unusual researcher, both in that he doesn't like the word you'll find out why and also in the amount of thought he gives to the role of insights practitioners and agencies in the space that are really making an impact by breaking out of traditional roles. We went slightly off schedule no surprise there, I confess and then the first half of the interview. We discussed the role of insight in media planning and buying, perhaps more accurately, the lack of consistent role in that space, before digging into Rupesh's work at Samson and where he sees the industry going. You'll also be glad to know that we get through this interview with barely a mention of AI.
Speaker 1:I'd also like to take a moment to say thank you to Brighter for sponsoring this episode. Brighter is an international research and insights consultancy specializing in healthcare technology, telecommunications and gaming. You'll find out more at Brighter-globalcom. That's Brighter with a Y, so B-R-Y-T-E-R, then globalcom. Now on to the interview. So, rupesh, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome and I think we can have a great conversation. Yeah, thank you for having me. Not at all. Now, traditional opening. You probably know what's coming. What is something that most people wouldn't know about you, that they couldn't find in the public domain.
Speaker 2:I think when people meet me they kind of see this guy who really likes insight and really passionate about everything that he's working on.
Speaker 2:But actually as a child I was very shy, I wasn't the strongest academically, but I really got a passion for something called Model United Nations. So at school we had a debating society where we modeled the debating on the United Nations and for me that was a massive moment in my life. It changed everything for me because I was this shy kid who had lots of ideas and lots of thoughts. But by going into this debating society I unlocked my personality and I was able to suddenly, at the age of 13, 14, really experiment with my presentation styles and how I wanted to be and really understand what authentic presentations really meant. So yeah, being able to have that platform at school where I could play around with my personality on stage really unlocked everything for me. So I'm a massive fan of debating societies and getting kids involved in things like Model United Nations. So that's a little side passion of mine because it did so much for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really, really interesting. I can see how it works. So, in effect, you were shy but it was doing, I guess, a couple of things. It's making you talk about it, but it's also giving you a structure as well to operate in and experiment through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the interesting thing is like my parents didn't say, oh, he's a shy kid, let's get him into debating society, and I never had that in me to think of to do that. But I think it was the curiosity for me, which was what is this thing Like? Why do people want to get on stage and debate? Let me go and have a look, you know. So it was kind of something that I went to go and investigate and when I went there, you know I probably spent a good six months sitting there not observing, looking at these older, older kids and people, just you know, throwing ideas on how to solve world problems, and and it really fascinated me and you know, my one of my teachers then pulled me to a site and basically said why the hell are you here? You're not getting up? And he pushed me. He pushed me to do stuff, to try it, and I was truly inspired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic, and the subject of this podcast is not about politics. We're like no world events at the moment. We're not going to go anywhere near those at all. I guess, though, this subject is also really important in terms of digital media, and it's without getting into, you know, social analysis or anything like that, but you know there's been so much commentary about polarized opinions and your digital echo chambers and the inability of people to debate things and, you know, agree to disagree within a civilized environment.
Speaker 2:Well, look, we've been talking about curiosity, diversity and being bold, and those are things as we've been talking about. It comes from childhood. It's like you know, and what a great career and profession us inside people have when those childhood attributes are something we kind of do for a living.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lovely segue into it. I was just thinking that what do we go back to the beginning and see how you progress through the insights world? You've had a really, really interesting career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am. You know I'd say I was born at TNS office. I was born at now called Cantor and learned the trade. So I was on the grad scheme there and moved around accounts and learned a bit of qual, quant and you know, working at a and I call them a partner, an insight partner, agency, whatever you do was a great foundation for me. So they kind of I was in the nest there. I was educating myself. I grew a little bit of my wings, started to grow a little bit, but then as I moved over to sky, when I moved over when MPs the buzzword at the time they threw me in and said, right, you're running the MPs program for custom customer service. Oh, you know, they really did throw me off a cliff and give me the wings that I needed.
Speaker 2:And you know Skys are very I call it the Unilever and PNG of entertainment. You know it's a company that does things proper. You know it uses the strengths of understanding consumers, understanding competitors and making those decisions and they follow a very strong process. I'm hugely proud that I worked at Skye and learned the trade and learn how to support people, learn how to really ensure that all the decisions that people around the business were making were customer centric or human centric or whatever they might be. So, yeah, skye for me was also a place where they spent one or two years in different parts of the organization and as a business that's always launching different products in different categories.
Speaker 2:So being able to dot around as an insight professional and, you know, have a couple of years working in working with brand people who are thinking more long term or working with salespeople who are thinking about in-year sales or launching a new product was great and it was a headquarters. So when I moved over to Samsung and I took a role in the UK Samsung team, I moved from working as an insight person within a headquarters to someone working in a subsidiary arm and the speed at which things happen at Samsung and the launches that are just coming out of the business again and again and again. You know you're flying. You're flying through some heavy wind, you know, and the wind is not just coming at you, it's coming left and right. So being really agile as an insight person is kind of where Samsung needs insight people to be. So, yeah, the journey is pretty simple. It's kind of my birthplace at TLS, kanta, skye really gave me my wings, and Samsung really is making me be the agile, the insight person that I need to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great foundation. Now I'm taking the burden allergy. I'm imagining now you kind of gave you the skills so that you can be sort of buffeted while you're flying at high altitude and you kind of know where to. You know where to go, when to glide, when to land, how you navigate all that. One of the things I was also interested in is was looking through your career on LinkedIn at Skye. It seemed like you carved out a really sort of interesting areas you've described, moving from more generalist, you know, kind of market research into campaign effectiveness and forming media planning, which in my experience or maybe it's just limited nobody ever seems to have done very well of trying to link those two things together. There's often a disjunction. So what did you do in that field? How did you try to solve that disjunction?
Speaker 2:So I'm a big believer in studying the stakeholder, and having the opportunity to study the stakeholder meant that I had to deploy my ethnographic quoll skills. You know, it wasn't about being great at insight, being great at producing great market research or data analytics. That is kind of done right. We know how to do that. Now you've studied the consumer and you've found that you know how to best study the consumer. Learning to study the stakeholder is also just as valuable of a skill, and to do that you have to bed yourself in. You know, pure ethnographic researcher would go into someone's home and sit there and just observe.
Speaker 2:I was lucky enough to have that opportunity At Sky. There was always this and I think many other big brands do the same thing where they bring insight people together and create a central unit and then they explode them back out and throw them into the different departments and then they bring them together and bring them back out, and you know big, big brands breathe by doing such things. In one of the episodes during my time there and I worked within the marketing team and sat next to the media team. In fact, my boss at the time was the director of media. So for them, you know they're in level of understanding of how insight works, wasn't that? But I spent a good time, you know, going down to the media agency, sitting behind somebody and watching them write a proposal back. How do media people pitch to big brands what is going through their mind? And only then do you understand to what their language is, what they're actually doing, how much is truly insight-labeled?
Speaker 1:and not, I mean, it's a fascinating area in that you know I think we touched on this when we first chatted I've seen some really powerful segmentations, for instance, around product segmentations, which have been really, really, you know, well embedded within major organisations and they love the products that come out of them. And then part of the disjunction that I've seen is that then the media guys go, but I can't buy the segments that you produce these products for, or even creative testing. Sometimes They'll go yeah, you're telling me, this creator is great, but I can't find these people in the media buying world. So was that the type of thing that you were aiming to address?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. And look, I walked over into the media team with a segmentation in my hand. You know, I walked over with a segmentation that had been built by insight people and was supposed to meet multiple needs. And I walked over with that in my briefcase and walked into the media team and the job title was pretty much like right groups. You were talking the big talk with segmentation and telling me that I need to change everything.
Speaker 1:So how did you manage to do that? Did you have to change the segmentation? I mean without giving away Sky's secret source or anything like that. What type of principles did you have to have to introduce?
Speaker 2:I think the number one thing is being pragmatic, and by being pragmatic, you need to understand their language. So when you build it into any media buying tool, which everyone tries to do, that's not waste a lot of time trying to match it exactly. You're going to lose some sort of accuracy, but that's okay, right, but it's the actions that need to be different. So when you I literally sat at the media agency and worked with someone on their laptop and they're like what are the media runs that you're getting if you pull that segment versus that segment, versus that segment?
Speaker 1:And so it's kind of like almost like that sort of 80% type of rule. And then you're going to, you've got a segment which I don't know I'll make it up. They're called inquisitive loyalists or something or other, and they've got these characteristics. And then you're actually working out with the media guys, kind of going yeah, we can't match up some of this institutional stuff, but we've got some behavioral characteristics here that we can find on digital, different digital platforms, that type of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, neil, that's a hard. Some in some people's toes will curl and teeth will grind when they hear what do you mean? We're going to lose this much accuracy? For me it's like forget it. Look, have we changed something and have we allowed marketeers to give something a go? You know, and so long as, pragmatically, you've kind of applied it.
Speaker 2:Firstly, you've, by being pragmatic in applying this geeky segmentation into a media buying thing, you've pragmatically stuck it together. Have you changed something? Have you given them an idea that they never thought about before? That's number one, and you've done it super quickly because you've done it pragmatically. If you start getting geeky and start going no, it must apply exactly and fit perfectly with the way that they might buy it. You're never going to get there, you're going to waste time. By that time the business will have moved on. But what you want to get to is really, really quickly. You want to come up with recommendations where they say oh, you've never used this newspaper before or you've never used this radio before. But if you do, here's what you should say to them, because the segmentation tells you this is where so let's give it a go Now you might shift the marketer, might shift 5%, 10% of their budget here or there.
Speaker 2:But at least you've moved. As an insight professional, it's our job to inspire change and big brands and those people who work in big brands. You're not gonna the tank's not gonna move quickly, it's gonna shift slightly. So you then segmentation. That's where segmentation does, that's where it lives and breathes, because you're making small, small incremental movements in the brand by using the segmentation as your foundation, as your engine. So for me that's super important. It's how do we make these segmentations that live on and make small incremental changes, especially for marketers?
Speaker 1:That also raises another question of how did you go about measuring effectiveness? You've encouraged these media guys to make changes, and the way the media world works, they go okay. Well, show me some ROI. So how did you go about doing that?
Speaker 2:I think look, I was lucky at Sky that something like an econometrics program or a cross media analysis and brand tracking was abundant. We had layers and layers and layers of different ways of measuring the marketer's ROI. Piecing it together is a challenge because at the moment and the way the insight world sits, there are different skill sets to soak up information from different places. So let's take, let's say, for example, in digital media, you might do some A B testing or whatever it might be. There's a different type of person being employed for that type of job Econometricians, different brand tracking and cross media analysis and things like that different types of people. And then top all of that off if you've definitely got other things, like media owners doing their brand lifestyles.
Speaker 2:So you can start five, six different things and everyone's saying, yeah, this was amazing, that was amazing, this was amazing and not coming together, and I think that's the thing that someone needs to come in and do so for me, luckily enough, I worked in the media team and I was that guy trying to bring it all together and in some situations you have to represent ROI financially and on the short-term sales basis, and then sometimes those long-term KPIs. So yeah, it's filtering out all of those different things into one clear story and whether something was effective or not, and landing on a killer insight that says pretty much goes down to yes, it was, no, it wasn't. And if you can get to that, then amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess based on the balance of evidence, as you say, in some cases you're gonna have contradictory evidence. Rukesh, slightly cheeky question for you and we can cut it out if it's too cheeky. But the brand lift studies from media owners that you mentioned within one of the points of evidence that you'll be looking at. How much credence do you put by those?
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna say, firstly, don't cut this bit out, because I think it's a super important debate that our industry needs to have. So, if you think of it as a chain, I've got a research agency conducting some media owner research for a media owner. The media owner then has a salesperson there who takes the bits that make their medium look amazing. They sit in front of a brand to sell that media. The brand buys that piece of medium and then the brand also has an insight person sitting behind them. That's been me in the past and I turn around to my media person go Bullshit, what do you mean? That that is that piece of media isn't great. And I think what's missing in that, this part of this connection, is that the two media people, the two inside people that sit Bookend this process me and the person on the other side never me, never debate, never actually Sit in together without anybody being in the way. How, when can we sit down and Go right, this is what my brand needs and this is what my, what I need to sell as A media owner. Right, how can we meet in the middle, find the insights that allow the investment, but allow it in the best way so that my brand can you have the best creative, apply in the best way, use the best slots, and Then the revenue is still coming from my brand into that media owner. Everybody's happy, but we never meet, so we should. So that's step one, when, as an industry, we need to start meeting more and Finding ways to meet without middlemen.
Speaker 2:The second big thing is what understanding the objective of the brand? Right, so as a brand, we've got X amounts of money to spend on any medium, so I don't want to know whether your medium is good or not. I want to know whether your medium is better than the other mediums that are available to me. For every pound I spend on ITV, is it better that I spend it on evening standard or whatever it might be? Now, maybe I do have to do that independently and that isn't something media owners can help me with. Well, if that's the case, that's fine. But what media owners can help me with is A B testing. Potentially. You know it within your medium. I Put two think pizza marketing material in there, which one's better, which one's worse. Now, that's insightful, but by come and with, this is where the mistake comes right. I sit there and I listen to media owners Sell into my media team. They're going. We reach this many thousands of people and you know it's amazing. It's the best medium since I spread. No one's getting anything out of that conversation.
Speaker 1:So look, it's a debate that I think we need to have yeah, I think it's really interesting and it's a great point, but the impression I get is exactly what you described. If you've got sales guy or buyer on one side, it's a whole load of sales people and there's just a massive amount of noise, with everybody claiming that their Media is the best and not really looking at, not helping, the buyer or the planner. Look at things holistically and actually the research should be the common DNA, but too often it's been kind of cut out of the process in some ways.
Speaker 2:So it's a good kind of going back to my point around Me studying my stakeholder and the media person. I don't know how many people out there know that actually the set, the, the media owners, devalue the research. Because what happens is a media owner says look, if you spend X with us, great, but if you spend a little bit more will give you that extra media space. And guess what? We'll throw in this freebie of A brand lift study Into it. It's a freak, it's an add-on freebie, so the value of that is positioned as weak in the first place. Then the brand Says oh great, we're spending this much money with this media and we're getting a free Brand lift study.
Speaker 2:So we've lost the monetary value with devalued insight. And then, on top of it, we're now told to use it. We as an industry need to recognize that that's how we are being used and Therefore, if we're gonna do quality work, we can't let everybody, can't let people in other industries, whether that be marketeers or salespeople or whatever, devalue the work that we do, but to the point you were making me maybe behind that from just arguing the media owner side of things, it there is a rigorous methodology and there's a very rep-sale research agency running the brand lift study.
Speaker 1:However, they're so cut out of the final conversation that they can't help you reconcile it from the buying perspective.
Speaker 2:Exactly that, and you know we have some really, really intelligent people in our industry Who've got some really important things to say. So so for me, you know, I want one of the media owners out there to go hey, rupes, go and have a here's a meeting with the insight person. Let's do this properly and let's let's let them have the open space we position it, as this medium is always gonna be a good one, but you just have to use it right and the insight is going to show you how to use it in the best possible way. Then, suddenly, the conversation is different, that it's not a value. It's not a free value add to showcase the value of the medium. It becomes a. This is a piece of research that the media owner is investing in on your behalf. It's costing us a lot of money to do that, but we're gonna do it because we want our long-term relationship with you and we want to make sure every time you put them creative into our channel, it's always improving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like I love that idea. That it's that you're not trying to prove the effectiveness in an absolute sense, as in like it's a static thing and we're great. I just want to jump on to Samsung, though, for a moment as well. I mean, you touched already on some of the differences around Working in a head office, in a local office. Well, I probably should have asked right at the beginning what would you actually do at Samsung? What does your role entail? What type of research are you doing?
Speaker 2:So I look after the insights for mobile phones, tablets, watches, headphones and laptops In the UK, and the team that I Report to is is in charge of the UK In-year sales maybe stretch it out to 18 months. So that's an important part of the context in which I work, and Samsung is a hugely customer-centric team, a business, and you have other insight people who work at a European level and other insight people that work at global level and then have counterparts in all sorts of different territories around Europe, america and around the world. So I also look after the applications and the serve and the. You know Samsung health and the Samsung wallet and you know they are also important to have conversation with our existing consumer and making sure that that's an important part of the conversation. But the other thing is, you know, as a manufacturer, our customers are also our the retailers and the channels that reach the end of the consumer. You know so we're not only selling directly to the customer Consumer sorry, we're also selling to channels and we're also selling to the retail market Consumer sorry, we're also selling to channel partners who are selling our products on our behalf. So it's multifaceted in that way. You know it's not a simple. Here's what I've got as a product by it. It is. Here's a product that we've manufactured based on what consumers have fed back to us retailers.
Speaker 2:Do you want to? Do you want to support us End consumers? Do you want? Do you want to buy it? What do you love about it? Not love, right. If you do, how do you make your experience amazing as well? Because people's people move. People change technology regularly. You know, in the UK especially, phone phones stay in people's hands, you know, not very long. People like to have the latest technology and the innovation is just is. The innovation coming out of career is is endless and and the excitement that our engineers have to getting the best stuff out to consumers is electric.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds fantastic, really fascinating and, if you know my mind, just actually just probe on a couple of areas Because I've never worked in the mobile phone sector at all or public laptops and tablets, and it must be really interesting. I had a couple of questions, but it must be really interesting around the fact that you've got a device that's so, say, a phone we're even a tablet so personal to people and there's a sort of sociological component to it. The phone that you're using says something about you. You know it's an incredibly sort of intimate device, like in many ways, but then there's also feature component to it about what does the phone actually do? It's got a camera, black type of thing. So how does research inform and balance those two strands? There's almost like an emotive, social component to it as well as a very practical component. How do you look at those types of issues?
Speaker 2:I think the first thing to say is that inside, people hold a unique position in any business because they are the most independent, probably most likely don't really have a KPI. They are able to say the truth from what is happening out there in the market and consumers, whereas other people whether you work in sales or operations or customer service you have a hard number to hit that determines whether you are thinking long term or short term, whether you are thinking, and where the beauty of our role comes in is we can balance that conversation with everybody. For example, as you said, a phone or a piece of technology has an emotional and a rational reason for buying and has a price and has an offer. Some people will be pushing one agenda or another, but I often use off the shelf insights like Vinay and Field and say, okay, let's now bring these two conversations together. Vinay and Field have gone 60-40 on long term, brand building, rational, et cetera. Okay, well, let's break that down a little bit and explain to a salesperson that you are going to make your sales number if you talk about your proposition in that emotive way and show people the feeling people get when they buy a new phone.
Speaker 2:When I buy a new phone or a new thing. I open that box. You get that new car smell, feeling right, there is an emotion there. Then you pick it up and then you can tell your friends well, I've got a better camera than you, I've got my phones a different color or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:It's very repetitive in a good way, where you're continually telling our stakeholders, whichever KPI they're on, that they need to appreciate the other person, the people who are in charge of making rational messages out to market, who think those rational messages drive short term sales. You have to tell them no, that's not true. I've got academic research to prove. I can prove when you did, we've got work from internal that shows actually emotional benefits, help the short term sales as well. On the other side, when you talk to brand building teams and people involved in long term stuff, you say, well, it's great that you're doing this fluffy stuff. I'm talking about emotion. But you also need to layer in some layers of why now. Why now should they buy your handset? Working around with both sides of the business is a really important part of that conversation, especially in technology hardware.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fascinating. Thank you for putting it so well of the balance, particularly the why now. But if I really get into terms of the building on the long term brand equity you've established, but now you've got to create an imperative to purchase. The other quick question I had Rukesh as well, is, it struck me, around operating systems and that type of thing. This isn't an invitation to slag of apple, by the way, but obviously Samsung is very, very central to the Android world. Do you find, to this point, around partnership? Do you find yourself working with other partners Obviously, you said retailers to some extent, but with the other major players in the Android world pushing that proposition as an operating system?
Speaker 2:You know, it's great to work for a brand where freedom and flexibility is a core part of their belief. Therefore, that allows them to be customer centric as well, because what Samsung basically says is consumers are asking us to be that flexible, etc. For example, as a technology brand. If we want to work with Google and work together, we can. If we want to work with any other app provider like Strava or whatever, we can, and let the consumer choose. In the end, consumers will trust us for letting them have the freedom of choice. I don't see it as some people use the word frenemies or for me, it's not really that it's not really thinking about it as we can work with other Android partners or not. It's thinking straight down the middle and going what does the consumer want? Can we provide it? And because we came to market and gave them that freedom first, they will return the favor in bucket loads. So it's my job to make sure that I am continually advocating that process. The consumer wants this. Can you make it happen? Business?
Speaker 1:One of the things we've touched on in the past is how you can take consumer insights and make them kind of land internally, present them more effectively, and I think you've done some great things you've mentioned to me in the past. So could you give a sense of that, some of the ideas you've begun to implement about getting people to pay senior people to pay attention to insights?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and look, when we came out of COVID, this really bugged. This was being a big, big bugbear of mine. So, if you think about, we all work. We all started working on zoom and whatever it might be, and we are communicating to each other digitally, like, whether that be via a video conference or an email. So we have to understand again the end stakeholder. If you're sitting there as a, as someone in the C-suite, your emails have doubled, your meetings have doubled and you and if you think of Emails and zoom as a media channel, right, like marketeers do, then actually they become saturated.
Speaker 2:Since COVID, and so you're not going to cut through in that way, I found that we need to innovate the media channels that we're going to access these people through. So media channels, as we started thinking about, was well, actually we're doing a lot more on WhatsApp, so what's that seems to be a media channel. We are Starting to go into the office now and then everyone's got a set day Monday, tuesday, whatever it might be. Okay, that's now a media channel, face-to-face and back, and People are starting to go out and about. So what are the other channels? So I it's about innovating there. So some one of the things we've implemented is let's talk to people on WhatsApp. Let's send them a 30 second video of us going. Hi, everybody, we've done this research and we've found out this want to talk more? Message me, send, well. So we've innovated a media channel and we've disseminated insight there. What about when they come into the office that one day a week? Well, we'll print something out, put it on their desk. Yeah, and it's personalized, but little tricks like having personalized Invite or personalized memo of maybe.
Speaker 2:One of the other things we've done is launch a digital photo frame Sticker for digital photo frame next to someone's desk and keep updating it, and you don't have to. Another important thing is you don't have to throw everything into the piece of communications. You just have to agitate and excite people with one-liners here or there, and you want them to, and you know I suck a post-it note on the digital photo frame. Well, for someone that I've put a digital photo frame in the C-suite saying see, snap send, meaning, if you see something on this digital photo frame, send it to the relevant person you want, and then, and and we, we will start to have a conversation and then you can go down the real route, right. So I think it's super important at least especially post covid for us to rethink about our communications channels and Be bold and be innovative and try something out that no one's ever done before, and if there's anyone I know that can think of that, is people in our industry. Yeah, I love it. I mean, there's so much to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I mean, there's so much talk in the media world if we focus on that or use that as a parallel around the attention economy, but people don't necessarily think about it corporately. We pitch a couple of questions then and we might move on to a quick far round. Just rounding back in terms of media effectiveness, I saw you've been doing some recent work on the impact of influencers Uh, which has been a long-running topic in terms of trying to actually gauge to the point you were making earlier. How do they fit in, what benefit do they provide in relation to other media channels? So what, what type of work have you been doing there and what, what recommendations would you make around how to gauge their impact?
Speaker 2:So I think the actually stitches together quite a lot of the things that we've been talking about. So, firstly, it's a media channel that is in in its infancy. There is marketeers using the channel in a very, shall we say, innovative way. They're ready to just try things. Um, you know, there's also probably a lot of Spending in in under influences. That's a bit of vanity, shall we say, you know, people aren't putting science to the reason. You know some C sweet person and let's partner with this influencer, and they spend money. Um, so you know, that kind of stuff agitates people. Like people like it.
Speaker 2:So we, we as an industry, need to literally come to the races and and run because everyone's, everyone's well ahead in this media channel. So, first thing is back to the media owner thing. Our marketeers are being sold influences With data points that we're not aware of. Our influencer reaches this many people and blah, blah, blah. The influencer told you that and the agency told you that. When are we going to get involved? Until the true picture? So that's, that's one of the important change that we've made Asking our marketeers to trust us in understanding reach. Then understanding that influences.
Speaker 2:It is a special medium and and there it can be divided into different parts. You know, you've got celebrities and you've got smaller, micro influences and their, their audiences, etc. And suddenly this idea that the media channel and the content creator are one person, um, and there's a feedback loop that's unique to that medium and actually we are not involved or on the pitch in the picture, in that the media owners, as in the influences, are deciding what the content is and there's no research or insight. That's part of it. So what we've been trying to do is really get part, be part of that conversation, um, to make sure that the best content goes out by the best influences. So, lots of, lots of, lots of work going on in that space. But, um, my message is that treat it like a media channel, but we need we got a lot of catching up to do, a lot of convincing Marketeers of the value of what insight can do in this space. Um, and I think there's there's there's definitely headroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it, as you said, pulls together a lot of the strands we've been talking about, not least in assuring that you've got More comparativeness, if that's a word, between the different Channels and you're using some of the well-known techniques so you can show that People can see the incremental benefit, um and and how it, how it compares. If it's okay, I might just jump on to the quick far round Then. One of the characteristics of a good agency that you work with. One of the characteristics of a bad agency A good agency being bold.
Speaker 2:I want to like the the word, and they need to prove that they are willing to stick their neck on the line with their ideas when they get the insight. Tell me what your ideas are. You, as a brand, should do this or should do that. Tell, maybe even give me those ideas before the research is even done. Help keep the hypotheses. For me, that's number one. Can you do that?
Speaker 2:I do not want to sit in a presentation or pitch proposal where you're telling me that you've got this new methodology that you've branded and really it's just a Conjurent or a Max Thief. I don't want to hear that. I don't want you rolling out the big boys. I want you to bring in that grad who has these brilliant ideas and say, yeah, we're going to test that one along with the other five that you've come up with. Who do I not want to work with? Someone who brings a sales guy, business development guy or girl that has not got a clue what they're talking about and a senior, senior bod that definitely is not coming along the journey on the project with me. Don't roll them out. You're not selling to someone who knows nothing about insight. So know your audience. That is a reflection of you not knowing your audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great advice and unfortunately the former probably happens too little and the latter happens too often. Have you had any mentors and what did they teach you?
Speaker 2:I've been very lucky to have the right managers and mentors in the right order. In the beginning of my career I had some sticklers for methodology. I had some real attention to detail type people. Then I moved on and worked for management consultants ex-management consultants who gave me the kind of storytelling boldness Put your ideas out there before you even have the facts and type stuff. So I had some really good. Having them the wrong way around wouldn't have worked. And then I had some really strong managers who let me, empowered me to throw my ideas out there. So I wouldn't say one if I was to give one. If I'm not perfect and it's going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, my Model United Nations debating teacher was the guy who changed the game for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been so interesting how that really has been a theme throughout our conversation here, not directly but, I think, implicitly, referring to a lot of what you've learned there around bringing different strands together, looking at evidence, making arguments, all that type of thing. Final question, because I'm conscious we're at time was the biggest trend or macro trend in the insights or data industry everyone should be thinking about for the next five years or so?
Speaker 2:So I'm not going to give you the age-old AI response, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for not giving me that one.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say market research is dead. Ok, why is that then? Because we have this body of professionals that call themselves market researchers but actually, firstly, they're inside professionals. They've got a really good balance of analytical curiosity skills mixed with ideas and recommendations, and you've got this huge pool of people that can do both, and we need to showcase to everybody that we can do that. If you look at the marketing world right now Biniton Field, byron Sharp, erinberg, bass, mark Ritzen they're changing the game.
Speaker 2:Marketeers are all starting to sing off the same hymnshee and some of what they're doing is bleeding into what we do and there seems to be this narrative around that audience that they can learn what we do and they have every right to all the data and analysis and stuff that we do. But we need to come out of our shell and go actually we can do what you can do. What do you mean? We can't come up with creative ideas? Speak to creative agencies, work with your media teams, because we can, and actually we can do it from a really good place I'd like to think from a better place and a better foundation.
Speaker 2:So for me, when our insight partners let's not use the word market research agency dead insight partners. When they get bolder, braver, learn marketing creativity and come out of the shell, we will be insight partners with a flare. So I'm looking for that day when a CEO turns around to the lead head insight person and says all right, put your money where your mouth is. You run that campaign, you lead it, you buy the media, you go to the film studio and you put the creative out there. That's the day that I think we need to get to and I think I'm excited to see that happen.
Speaker 1:Rupesh, I agree so much. We're talking very much the same language. Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you and hopefully we can do it again some other time as well. Now there's a manifesto to finish on A call to arms for all you insights and data professionals around moving work to the next level.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that I have actually seen the type of integration that Rupesh is describing relatively commonly within the film world, For instance, insights people taking on senior marketing, strategy or production roles. So it does happen. That said, to put Frank, the historical legacy of a lot of research firms is really about measurements and reporting rather than actively turning consumer insights into tangible campaigns or content. So perhaps it's unsurprising that firms or internal departments struggle with that transition or thinking about it. Maybe it's not about transition. Maybe it's just about being clear who you want to be.
Speaker 1:Measurement and reporting is critical. I'm never going to argue with that. You can't change with what you don't measure and all that type of thing. But it seems to be really, really important to decide whether you want to be more consultancy or action based or whether you want to be more about measurement and not get stuck in the middle or a kind of nondescript hinterland. Anyway, enough pontificating from me. Thanks again to Rupesh for the interview, to insights platforms for their support, to Brighter for sponsoring and to you for listening. See you next time. Pick up watching some stuff on this, like this platform.