MESH - Fiona Blades, Founder & CEO. Navigating business with purpose and values; empowering marketers through experience measurement; the transformative role of retail media.

A real pleasure to have Fiona Blades, Founder and Chief Experience Officer of Mesh  Experience on the podcast.  It’s a great conversation, incorporating: 

• What you can learn from the indie music scene in Manchester
• Lessons for founders 
• The importance of experience metrics and correlation with market share
• The (hitherto hidden) impact of retail media on brand equity and advocacy
• Setting up a ‘data as a service’ proposition
• The role of the Market Research Council
• What makes a good client
• And why teenage boys really wear deodorant (yes, really). 

With call outs for SMG, the Path to Purchase Institute, the Market Research Council. And thanks to Insight Platforms for their support and to MX8 Labs for sponsoring. 

All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/

Suggestions, thoughts etc to futureviewpod@gmail.com

Chapters

• 1:19 Guest intro
• 2:57 Learning from the Manchester Indy music scene
• 8:33 How Mesh's methodology works
• 18:09 Setting up a Data as a Service business
• 24:19 How retail media can deliver upper funnel brand equity and advocacy
• 32:12 Advice for founders
• 36:35 The role of the Market Research Council
• 43:13 Why teenage boys really use deodorant
• 44:40 What makes a good client

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

I would say make sure you know what your purpose is, because it is going to get tough, it's going to be very, very difficult at times and you need to know why you're getting out of bed in the morning.

Speaker 2: 0:20

So for me, that idea that I can really help marketers by measuring experiences is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And then we have a mission, which is to help create and measure experiences that grow brands, people and society. So when everything was kind of falling apart with the pandemic, we're thinking, well, what can we do? And we happen to be running some banking data at the time and we thought right, the decisions that banks will take are going to be really important to people's lives, to society. So let's get the team that you know don't have as much work, because the client work has dried up focusing on this, so that they can feel like they're doing their bit, that they're helping. So I think that's the other thing that I would say Really understand your purpose, really understand your values, because when the going gets tough, you'll need to lean on them.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Welcome to FutureView. This episode is sponsored by mx8labscom, the first research platform built with AI from the ground up to speed up your back office research processes. Now you just heard an extract from Fiona Blades, the founder and chief experience officer of Mesh. As you can probably tell from that clip, fiona is wise and funny. She's very knowledgeable about how brands work and what really matters to their consumers and what they actually notice about your communications. Mesh has worked with a host of major companies, from Latin Airlines, fidelis International, lg to Boots the chemist.

Speaker 1: 1:52

But let's go on and on. Fiona explains here her tips in terms of founding and guiding a company through the ups and the inevitable downs, mesh's unique methodology and why retail media ie advertising in shops to you and me, may be a lot more effective than you thought. And we find out so much more, including what you don't know about, diona, why teenage boys really wear deodorant. Now, I bet you can't wait for that one. But before we find out more, just a little bit about MXA labs. I really like this platform. It's made by researchers for researchers, and you can massively speed up your backend processes turning a Word doc automatically into a questionnaire, using AI to link and quality check, getting awesome massive data tables. So much cool stuff. You can even run queries on the final data just by asking questions. I'd recommend you check it out. But now onto the episode. So, fiona, firstly thanks for joining today in foggy London. It's a delight to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Thank you so much, Henry, and I'm really looking forward to speaking with you today.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Now me too. Now I'm going to start where I always start, because I like this question. Is there something about you I'm sure there is that people might find surprising, that they wouldn't generally know not easily findable within the public domain?

Speaker 2: 3:10

There is and this is something that I actually love now, but I used to kind of hide myself when I was younger and that is that my mother owned and ran a nightclub in Manchester for over 20 years an indie club.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Cool. So were you working there, or how did that work?

Speaker 2: 3:30

No, I was not working there, I was already at London University and I'd actually left, I think, London University before my mother even set up the club. So she was in her 50s when she set the club up. So I was like ab fab, like what is my mother doing out at night till five in the morning, you know when that was kind of supposed to be something that I did, when.

Speaker 1: 3:55

I was younger. That is cool, I like that. So do you still? Do you now sort of follow in your mother's footsteps? You know, I'm still no idea how old you are, but we wouldn't be so indelicate as to ask.

Speaker 2: 4:11

But are you now out till 5am? I'm not out till 5am, but I'll tell you one thing that I did absolutely love about going to my mother's club and this is my husband. He was very good. He said, fiona, you really need to go to your mum's club. And I thought, yes, I would really like to, but I don't want to just intrude on her business. So I said, mummy, how about a job swap? You can come and see what it's like at my business in London and I'll come and see what it's like at your business.

Speaker 2: 4:34

And so she came down to London and she came with all the flyers and posters and then all the team could ask her questions you know, interesting questions about what do you do when this happens at the club and stuff like that. And I went to her club and it was an absolutely eye-opening experience. It was five hours that were completely frenetic. There was cash just flying all over the place and I realized that the people that were working there most of them, of course, were not full-time employees. She had a manager, but most of them were not full-time employees felt so loyal to that club. It was their club, and I just thought, if there's any of that that I could have in our business, where people feel that loyal and that proud and that able to turn up and represent that club, I would be very happy.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Well, that's interesting, and so, as I said, let's just chuck the scheduler questions out the window. So what were the factors that made them so loyal to that club? And then, how have you been able to embed that within what you're doing at MASH?

Speaker 2: 5:49

Well, first of all, I suppose they shared a love of indie music, particularly the Manchester, you know, oasis kind of factory records type music. So they shared that and they felt passionate about that. But I think there was also something about my mother being a bit older. She was very much behind the scenes actually, so the people coming in had no idea that it was her club. And I remember her telling me somebody's just said to me oh, isn't it good that they still keep you on, you know because you're there at the door taking the money on. You know because you were there at the door taking the money. But I think there was something about her being older and these were very young people starting their lives. Some of them had difficult backgrounds. You know she told me that some of them didn't even survive and that was a bit of a safe haven for them.

Speaker 2: 6:41

And she was pretty strict with them. So if there was more than 10 pounds discrepancy behind the bar then she kept them all back to wait and, you know, check out where there'd been an error. So she was very strict with them.

Speaker 2: 6:55

But I think that there was something about that that they I think maybe she was kind of like a mother figure- in some ways for some of these people and at times you know, if they couldn't pay the rent or something, she might have to give them a little bit to help them out until they came next time. So there was a lot of that that I think was happening, because she wasn't really into the music, she was into letting people have a good time. That was what she wanted to do and I suppose what I took from that is you need to try and align your own team's values with what you're trying to do. So I mean, for my mother it was about celebrating the amazing indie Mancunian music. I mean, that's what they were doing and everyone could go there and enjoy themselves.

Speaker 2: 7:50

Many people actually got married afterwards and a whole load of brick house babies. And when my mother died and I was trying to find her manager and I was looking online, I noticed that they were still running a club, but it was after she'd sold. But they were doing their own thing and I turned up and so many people came up to me and they showed me photos and told me stories and this was my mother's other family, complete, different family.

Speaker 1: 8:17

I guess there's an argument you can express yourself more freely in some ways if there are clear rules around it, but then that's possibly another conversation, not one for this podcast, and so let's get on to Mesh then. So why did you found Mesh? What were you trying to do and what were the types of values that you were trying to inculcate that would bind everybody together?

Speaker 2: 8:40

Well, I actually founded Mesh because there was a bit of a gap in the market that I felt I wanted. So I was the planning director at Clayton Healy, which was an Omnicom agency, and I had the data planners reporting in and I had the strategic planners reporting in. And I was working on Mercedes-Benz and I knew that it wasn't just the TV ad that was making somebody buy a Mercedes-Benz. I knew that it was walking into a dealership or looking online or seeing Jeremy Clarkson talk about the latest Mercedes, or it could be even seeing your neighbor's new car.

Speaker 2: 9:18

All of these different experiences were bound to be having an impact on why somebody had the impression that they did of a Mercedes-Benz. And maybe because I hadn't been working in research and I had been working in a below-the-line agency or it was integrated anyway. I thought, well, why don't we just use a mobile phone? Because we could just ask people to text us whenever they see, hear or experience anything to do with Mercedes-Benz or Audi or Jaguar. And then, if we know all these experiences and we know where they're coming from and we know how positive they are, we should be able to work out which experiences you should do more of, which you should do less of how you create new experiences.

Speaker 1: 10:06

I see. And so just to back up a little in terms of taking a project, for instance, a hypothetical project so if you did have that say, somebody's come to you as a pet food manufacturer, let's say Whiskers for the sake of argument, and they're saying, okay, I'd really like to understand how my current consumer base and prospective customer base interacts with all our touch points in the market and how that interrelates with our competitive set. So how do you go about doing that type of project?

Speaker 2: 10:38

So the first thing we'd want to do is just look at the basics. So we'd want to have a look at what share of experience does that brand have? So, is it 10%, is it 20%? How does that relate to the market share? Because we tend to find that there's a very, very strong correlation between share of experience and market share.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Sorry to interrupt, but I was scared for people who are maybe less familiar. But how does it actually sort of work almost from the ground up? So do you recruit, for instance, like a thousand people and you'd go, and they've got to be, I imagine, pet owners of some type, and what happens in terms of the data gathering bit of it before you move on to the analytics?

Speaker 2: 11:24

Okay, great Data gathering. So the first thing we do is we normally go and recruit through an online panel like Dynator, belendi, etc. But we can recruit through a client's own customer database. So we've done this, for example, with Boots and their Advantage Card customers and then we would ask people to do a short survey. The number of people relates on the objective of the project. So if we've got continuous data going through every single month on subscription, then we'd be looking to achieve 200 people every single month that have completed three stages that we would ask them to do within one week. So stage one is a 10 to 15 minute questionnaire and we would be asking people about their demographics, about their awareness, consideration, trust, those kinds of metrics a little bit like a little mini brand health study. But at the end of that we would then say now we'd like you to become researchers as you go about your everyday life and for the next week, please tell us whenever you see, hear or experience anything to do with pet care brands and when you do, can you record those in your mobile diary? Here's the link to your mobile diary in your mobile diary. Here's the link to your mobile diary.

Speaker 2: 12:47

So if somebody walks into Tesco and they see Felix. They would then get their mobile phone out and they just go right, okay, it's Felix, it is in store. Which store? It's Tesco. It was on the shelf. I saw the brand on the shelf. I felt very positive about it. I felt it was fairly relevant and much more likely to buy next time, and here's my comment about it. So I was thinking I should be getting some Felix anyway, and this is a new variety I hadn't seen before and I think my cat's really going to like it. So I'm looking forward to buying it, so I can take it home to my cat and maybe they'll take a photo.

Speaker 2: 13:22

So we'll get around three to five of those experiences in a week from the participants. Some will do 10, some will do one, but on average we'll get about three to five At the end of the week. We then ask people the same questions we've asked them at the beginning of the week which brands are you aware of? Which ones did you consider? Which ones do you trust? And then we can start to say okay. So people who have had an in-store experience of Felix are twice as likely to consider Felix as those who did not have that experience. So then we can start to unpick exactly which experiences are driving which brand metrics. So it's not a correlation.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Yeah, I see, and so I warned I might be a bit picky on the methodology, because I do like a bit of a geek out on some of these things, and so I totally get it. In terms of that type of methodology, you'll probably be able to pick up on things like in-store and it's in the moment, and there's probably an argument that it's more accurate from that perspective. So are there certain environments, for instance, where you're in-store but you'll go, oh, I'll do this now, whereas you're watching TV and actually you can't really be bothered to do it during the TV ad break. Or you're surfing online, for instance, and you're on Instagram and you saw something for whiskers, but you scroll past it fairly quickly and again it's on your phone rather than a separate device, so you don't necessarily record that. How do you address all those types of questions and issues?

Speaker 2: 15:02

Well, first of all, of course, all those questions and issues exist, but the data is still more accurate than if you ask people to recall something. First of all, you can't actually recall emotion. Imagine you've seen the poster the first time and then you've seen the poster the 10th time. There's no way you can separate out how you felt at that moment in those two different instances, unless you've actually recorded it in the moment. And so I think the way that we see the data set is that it just reflects people's very messy lives, because everything is a bit messy. It is real world, and we'll often get experiences that people will say oh, I was just making the dinner and I heard the music of the ad on TV. You know, that's what's really happening.

Speaker 2: 15:56

So I think we have to just really understand that this is what people think is their best effort. This is what they believe the touch points that came through the most that they want to report on. And then after that, I think it's actually the correlation with all the other data, like the 0.9% correlation with market share and all those other things where that can give you a sense of truth. But if I was to take something like out of home. People report when they see the ad the first day they're going to work and then maybe on the way back and then by day three they're not reporting it. They think they've told you about that ad. Those are just the kinds of things that will happen.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Yeah, and obviously every methodology has its strengths and it has some flaws to it. I guess one of the advantages of this methodology is that it is apples to apples and it is giving you a holistic picture as a whole. How do clients use the data about that?

Speaker 2: 17:01

Well, we've been using it primarily for marketing effectiveness, and we've done that with campaign evaluation. So if a client's got a big campaign that's launching, it's through the line and they want to know who is noticing the campaign, through which channels they're noticing it. If somebody has a campaign experience, what impact is that having on the brand metrics that they want to impact? That's one way. Path to purchase is another way. So, understanding that shopper journey which of the touch points should you be activating at different stages in the journey? Should you be activating at different stages in the journey? How does online work with offline? So there's an enormous amount that we can do there in terms of unpicking exactly which are the most powerful touch points to activate in order to increase a brand's share through path to purchase. And then there's customer experience.

Speaker 2: 18:01

So many brands are looking at their own channels, they're looking at emails, they're looking at websites and apps and things like that. They've got loads of data on that, but they don't on the competitor. So then, if they want to benchmark themselves against a competitor to understand well, how is their app working versus somebody else's app, they're often missing that kind of data. So those are three areas that we've worked in consistently in the past, but we are now pivoting a little bit to be able to provide data as a service and therefore we're providing metrics, and so this is meaning that we're actually getting a wider audience. Before we'd be looking at insight and marketing that tended to be our audience, but now we're finding that we're moving from insight to the data and analytics team, so we're part of the data set that a client is building for their ecosystem, and then that data starts to get used in terms of helping with their modeling and helping with their media allocation and the optimization of that media. It gets talked with the CFOs.

Speaker 1: 19:17

You know it's opening up different areas than where we've been in the past. Yeah, I can very much see that and I guess in relation to the media allocation and the campaign effectiveness piece of it, the proof is in the pudding to some extent. In that I was questioning the methodology a little bit, but I suppose if you're getting lots of people as part of the mesh methodology going I saw this on TV and they didn't run a TV or it was a TV ad as opposed to TV publicity for sake of argument and they weren't running a TV campaign then I guess people aren't going to use you anymore. I know it'll happen a little bit. You'll get probably a little bit of misattribution, but generally do you see a pretty good interrelationship between what they've actually been doing in market and what your sample base picks up on?

Speaker 2: 20:05

Yes, we do, and so immediately you see a campaign launching, immediately you see the number of experiences increasing.

Speaker 1: 20:13

It's kind of reassuring for a CFO, I guess. Oh, so it works. We did this, we spent the money, or the CMO? We did this, we spent the money, and people are actually noticing it.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Exactly, so you can see things immediately. But there are areas which we have picked up, which we get challenged on but which we actually think it's worth pushing back on. So, for example, out of home is one where sometimes there's overshow. So people are clearly seeing these posters and they're taking photos of them, but maybe they've been up for a little while and they haven't been changed. And when you look at the media plan, well, they were on the month before, you know. So there are those kinds of things that come through. Or if the deals that are being done by the media agencies mean that they just slightly changed what it is that was forecast with the media versus actually what is being delivered. So sometimes you see that.

Speaker 2: 21:11

And then, of course, we're picking up not just live experiences but recorded experiences. So we know if somebody's you know, we ask was it live, was it streaming, was it recording, you know? So there are those kinds of things that come up and I think once you look at that, you kind of see the messiness of what is really happening. And another area of course that clients often forget about is sponsorship. So they, oh well, we're not on TV, there shouldn't be any experiences. Oh, yes, but there are all these TV experiences which people are seeing your brand on sponsorship. Oh, we forgot about that.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Yes, I can see that being actually a really good way to help evaluate sponsorship as well, yes, and we've just been working on the Olympics actually for that very reason. Yeah, it's funny and I suppose there's an occasion that you run into. It almost becomes something of a compliance tool, where you start to see things that shouldn't be happening or people reporting things back that shouldn't be happening and someone's going bloody hell. Why does it look like that on the shelf? And we weren't meant to be doing that.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Exactly yes.

Speaker 1: 22:15

And so just dipping into the data as a service bit of it. So how does that work in terms of? Is that kind of category specific?

Speaker 2: 22:31

Yes, that's pretty much it. We will launch in a category with a founding client. So if it was cars, we would go in and we would be recruiting people in exactly the same way, but we would be asking them to please tell us whenever you see, hear experience, anything to do with car brands. Now we might. If it was specifically automotive, we might need to think about did we want to divide that into different types? You know, is it just luxury or how do we want to do that specifically? For example, when we've done laundry, we've also looked at the laundry for more sensitive skin. So you know, we might think about what the category is and then we would be collecting that data.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Clients would then be able to access that data through a dashboard, and that dashboard doesn't just have the pure metrics, but you can click on data points and you can see all the underlying photos and comments and those kinds of things, which really brings the study to life. And then, of course, mesh is around to help. We provide what we call our experience maximizer analysis twice a year. So we take all the data and we have a look at exactly which experiences are driving which brand metrics. So if it was cars, you know which of those experiences? Is it the dealership that's driving it? Is it TV? What is it? And then clients can also do bespoke studies themselves and they can then take that data. So some of our clients are now taking that data and they're feeding it into their scorecards along with other data sources.

Speaker 1: 24:06

I see Got it. And one of the other areas I wanted to ask about is the whole retail world and, as I mentioned, I can very much see how this methodology is very applicable to physical experiences and gives proper kind of credence and weight to physical experiences that may otherwise be kind of unnoticed in some of the other methodologies. And so I know you've just been speaking at the Retail Media Summit and you did a very good job of teasing it sort of online, of going. I've got some really interesting stuff to tell you, but I can't tell you yet. But I see you can now reveal some of the findings from the summit. You said they were kind of slightly surprising and counter to conventional wisdom.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yes, they were. So we were absolutely delighted to be invited by SMG and Path to Purchase Institute to take a data set, a data set. So we were able to pull together data sets across the US and the UK and then to analyze the contribution of retail media and we'd not done that in quite this way before. So we had always been seeing retail media coming through. So we'd been having our data. In the Journal of Retailing article back in 2015, which showed that retailer advertising had an impact on brand consideration for a partner brand, so we kind of thought, well, it'll probably do brand consideration, so we expected that. But what we didn't expect was the depth of impact that retail media had on brand equity.

Speaker 1: 25:46

And so, fiona, sorry to butt in, but could you back up a little bit? So how did the study work? And even for people who are less aware, actually, what is retail media?

Speaker 2: 25:55

Okay, so let me answer that first question. So how did the study work? We took some of our existing studies like pet care, beer and cider. We'd also got different brands in terms of laundry or TVs or different categories. So we went across the categories and we added together studies across those categories. We had over 36,000 experiences from over 10,000 people, so it was a really robust data set. And then over 10,000 of those experiences of the 36,000, so it's 28% of the experiences were in some way retail related. Now they could be retail media related. Now they could be retail media or they could be retail related in another way. So we would divide that into if you just saw the brand on the shelf, you saw Coca-Cola on the shelf, then that would be an owned channel experience of Coca-Cola, but it was in retail. An owned channel experience of Coca-Cola, but it was in retail. If you saw a big poster for Coca-Cola in the store, or you saw an email from Waitrose kind of promoting Coca-Cola.

Speaker 2: 27:16

that would be retail media, so it would be kind of where the brands are paying for that promotion. Okay.

Speaker 1: 27:24

And is retail media? So I'm jumping ahead again. Is retail media particularly powerful for certain categories? Because actually you can purchase, you're exposed to the media. But I guess you are in an environment there where you're prompted by, say, some advertising for Coca-Cola and you can actually buy it because you're in Tesco, whatever, as opposed to more upper funnel brand stuff whereby TV commerce is kind of a thing but also not really a thing. So is that one of the unique merits?

Speaker 2: 27:55

It's definitely a unique merit, absolutely the fact that people are seeing the experience and they can immediately purchase, or they're online and they can very quickly get to an online purchase. Of course, that is a benefit. But what we were surprised about was the upper funnel, because that was the bit that you would traditionally think is nothing to do necessarily with retail media, because retail media is all about lower funnel, it's all about conversion. But no, what we found not only did it increase consideration, but the thing that I found most astounding was the impact that it had on NPS and Affinity. So, basically, on advocacy, on recommendation to a friend, and somebody who had had a brand experience through retail media was three times more likely to recommend that brand or to say they would recommend it to a friend.

Speaker 2: 28:54

As somebody who did not have that experience, the improvement was threefold. And then we kind of started to dig into it a bit more. We'd seen this. Last year we did a piece of work for Boots Media Group. Last year we did a piece of work for Boots Media Group and we actually coined the phrase the 175-year-old influencer Because we thought, oh, this is interesting that actually retail media is acting as an influencer.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Oh, I see so this isn't the average Boots customer, that's 175 years old.

Speaker 1: 29:26

This is Boots itself.

Speaker 2: 29:27

This is Boots itself and you know it's acting as an influencer when it comes to beauty. But we thought about it and we thought well, if your trusted retailer like Boots or, in the States, best Buy, or it was Tesco if they are recommending to some extent, if they're showcasing your brand, that's going to have a bigger impact than if you're saying this is a great brand, buy us.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Yeah, I suppose you get the brand halo type effect, don't you? You go. I trust Boots and if it's in Boots it must be a certain level of quality much more likely to do what it actually claims that it's doing. Otherwise they wouldn't stop it. I hadn't really thought about it like that, but it makes total sense.

Speaker 2: 30:12

Exactly and that's what we found. We found that last year and we found it again with this bigger data set this year. So for me that was really surprising. And then we were specifically looking at things like awareness, and if somebody did have a partner brand experience within retail, that was impacting by 3.6 times as well. So you know, it was impacting on awareness. So I think the implications for me are that you can't just think that more traditional media channels are doing the brand bit and that retail media is doing the conversion bit. You need to look at them both together and they've both got unique benefits.

Speaker 1: 30:53

um, but you, it's a slightly more nuanced and sophisticated world than we might have thought yeah, that, yeah, it's one of those great bits of research, isn't it, whereby it is a little bit surprising, but it makes total sense when you, when you actually when you, when you actually describe it. And then what's the implication here, though? Now are a whole bunch of retailers going to turn around to their commercial partners and go our space is far more valuable than we thought. You should be paying more, or is that not really how it works?

Speaker 2: 31:22

Well, I'm sure they will be putting that argument forward, but equally, I don't think that they would be knocking the traditional media. You know, things like TV are still very, very good at going out there getting awareness quickly and effectively. So I think it's more that manufacturers and partner brands should really start to think about how they work together as an organization, as opposed to having silos, one that's doing one thing, one that's doing the other. You need to look at all of these. They're just experiences. They are just experiences for people and you need to understand that totality of the customer experience.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Got. It Makes total sense. Now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and pick your brain up to some extent in terms of just your experiences of building up a business and your involvement with the industry as a whole, the insights industry as a whole. So, as a founder of an agency, what have the biggest challenges or learnings been along the way?

Speaker 2: 32:35

I think one of the first learnings was not to set up in a new country unless you've got a founding client. I made that mistake fairly early on. So I set up a branch in Singapore because at the time lots of big clients were saying we need to do work in China and I thought, well, we can operate across Europe and we can operate in the States out of the UK, but really we can't do Asia very easily. And, of course, as soon as we'd actually got the people in place, then it was taking ages to get the meetings in with the clients, at which point we then had the recession. So after that I always said, no, we'll go into a new market once we've got a founding client with a contract. So I think that was one thing. The other learning, I suppose, is to value other people's views and to get them share the problem with them and see how they can help you.

Speaker 2: 33:31

So at this time when we were over in Singapore and it was the recession, it's 2008, 2009. So, by the way, it's 18 years we've been in business. So that's the number. We couldn't send out any more money because everybody in the UK was cancelling their advertising and therefore they were cancelling working with us. So we phoned up the managing director and said I'm so sorry, we can't send any more money out. Can you tell us how you can reduce costs? And the next day he came back and he said okay, we can halve our costs. I thought how are they going to do that? I haven't got a clue how they're going to do that. So I was there listening and if you remember the the days when you had the phone in the middle of the room, you know it was just kind of a voice coming out oh, yeah, the days before zoom, you know, and so I was listening and he said we're going to move to thailand temporarily, we'll get rid of the office well, how about?

Speaker 2: 34:26

malory. Well, I was like I would never have thought of that. Yeah, Go do. That's what they did. So I think that's something else yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Yeah, I mean that's a great point actually in in that, you know, I mean I I've been part of businesses where, yeah, this had to be downsizing or what's the horrible US phrase Riff? Have you heard that Reduction in force? We have to go through a riff process. But I very rarely come across businesses that have actually approached it like that, that have said, listen, we've got a problem here, how do you think we can fix it and actually really involve your employees in doing that? Yeah, it's against one of those things where it's very obvious in retrospect but actually not a lot of people do it.

Speaker 2: 35:11

No, and people have great ideas. That's the thing, and if you don't engage them and you don't trust them, then you won't benefit from those ideas.

Speaker 1: 35:21

So now I'm really picking brain. Was there anything else as well?

Speaker 2: 35:24

I think maybe going back to right at the beginning, when we were talking about culture, I would say make sure you know what your purpose is, because it is going to get tough, it's going to be very, very difficult at times and you need to know why you're getting out of bed in the morning.

Speaker 2: 35:41

So for me, that idea that I can really help marketers by measuring experiences is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And then we have a mission, which is to help create and measure experiences that grow brands, people and society. So when everything was kind of falling apart with the pandemic, we're thinking, well, what can we do? And we happen to be running some banking data at the time and we thought, right, the decisions that banks will take are going to be really important to people's lives, to society. So let's get the team that you know don't have as much work, because the client work has dried up focusing on this, so that they can feel like they're doing their bit, that they're helping. So I think that's the other thing that I would say Really understand your purpose, really understand your values, because when the going gets tough, you'll need to lean on them.

Speaker 1: 36:39

Yes, again, sage advice, and then, in terms of purpose, as a takeaway into some of your other roles. So for quite a long period of time you were the chair of the Market Research Council in the US. I think so what you stood down earlier this year, I think so. What does the Market Research Council do and what are the goals of the organization?

Speaker 2: 36:59

Well, I had never heard of the Market Research Council until I went to New York and then I discovered it was like a little hidden gem, the Market Research Council, and it was the oldest market research organization in the world. It was founded in 1927 in the Harvard Club and it was basically it was the entrepreneurs of the day in market research that came together and were sharing knowledge between each other, and the anecdote that I really love, which actually happened, I think, in the early 1930s, was that one of the events. It was very much a networking event to share knowledge and at one of these events a very young AC Nielsen turned up.

Speaker 1: 37:46

Arthur Nielsen. Is that right? Is it? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 37:47

I used to work for them. I think it was Arthur I used to work for.

Speaker 1: 37:49

Nielsen. Is that right, Is it? I don't know. I used to work for them. I think it was Arthur. I used to work for Nielsen.

Speaker 2: 37:52

Yes, so maybe you even know the anecdote. So it was a very young Arthur Nielsen that turned up and there was an MIT engineer there talking and this was how radio ratings came to be created, because they met there and sparks blue and creativity. So it's a tiny organization, less than 100 people, and it's very much for achievers in their field. So it is. You know, some of that same entrepreneurial spirit is there. We also like to have clients. We like real diversity. So we've brought an emerging leaders group in, because there are some amazing younger people in the industry whose voice needs to be heard.

Speaker 2: 38:40

And I was actually lucky enough to be the president for it was actually a couple of years and I believe that's the only I'm the only president that's been for a couple of years in the history of the Market Research Council, and that was because it was the pandemic and at that time we needed to do a lot and it was felt that we should keep the team in place because it had been very much meeting in New York.

Speaker 2: 39:05

Can you imagine, at the Yale Club actually by then it was a Friday lunchtime They'd have excellent speakers and everyone would get together and have lunch once a month. That had to stop. As soon as the pandemic came, it had to stop and there was a real sense of crisis and I said, well, first of all, we'll have to go virtually, but secondly, there are amazing people in our industry that are not based in New York, and so now we've got loads of new members in Europe, which I'm really proud about. So we've got some fantastic members and actually some that I think you've interviewed on your podcast as well, so some that I think you've interviewed on your podcast as well. So you know that's really good to see the Market Research Council broadening, but keeping true to its spirit.

Speaker 1: 39:56

Yeah, that sounds really good. I was slightly chuckling to myself at the. You know the idea. This bunch of people based in New York had to be persuaded that anybody outside New York had any value to add into this. But then that's probably the case. Actually. It's not really fair on New York. It's probably the case of lots of cities. Have that viewpoint, fiona, I'm slightly conscious of time, so I should probably start to do a wrap-up and a little bit of a quickfire round, if that's all right with you.

Speaker 2: 40:24

Yes, that's fine with me.

Speaker 1: 40:26

So first question If you could be the CEO of any organisation apart from Mesh, because you are the CEO of that which one would it be?

Speaker 2: 40:35

Well, you see, that's a question because you asked me before and I have been racking my brains on that and I would come back to Mesh because it is the one that I feel most authentic about that. I feel that I can do the most good in. So I'm completely not answering your question actually.

Speaker 1: 40:55

What was your second choice then?

Speaker 2: 40:58

I went around I thought about all kind of big companies. I thought about kind of ethical companies. I'm vegan, so would there be something there that I'd really love to do, so I suppose it would be anything that I've got a passion for would be really important. But I just thought I probably wouldn't be half as good as other people at actually being the CEO, and if it's something I feel passionate about, I want whoever's the best at the job to be that CEO.

Speaker 1: 41:25

That's a good answer, fiona, because I was going to push you further on it. But I like that angle on it of, yes, you're passionate about it and want to go elsewhere. You want the best possible CEO, and that might not be you. Okay, fair enough. Now a bit more controversial, or maybe not controversial. Unfortunately, I think your husband has just left. You said yes, so he won't be here. What would your partner say are your best and worst characteristics?

Speaker 2: 41:50

I think you'd say that my my best characteristics are that I'm kind and honest. So I think that kind of area we've been together since we were 19 actually, we had a little anniversary earlier this week because that was the first time that we've been to the cinema together many, many years ago. And then, in terms of the worst, I think he thinks that sometimes I can be a bit naive and a little bit overly trusting of people. And I will tell you something, actually, which I don't have on my LinkedIn, but I went to Cheltenham Ladies' College and I think he's still trying to get out what he felt was a very conformist view that I had of the world and that I would obey rules and I would do you know exactly what I was told. And he likes to encourage creativity and thinking in a different way, and so I think that's an area that I think he thinks I've improved.

Speaker 1: 42:53

It's interesting what your husband was saying as well around being more creative. In that Mesh is obviously focusing on the media effectiveness and campaign effectiveness world and it's data driven, but do you still feel there's a role for creativity in interpretation and analysis?

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yes, I do actually, and one of the things that I think about is that we've got different layers of analysis that we look at. So there's the implicit, what we call experience maximizer did it impact on something? But we go right down to reading comments and I remember, many years ago, we were doing work for Lynx, lynxx, and people, of course, were using LynxX. If you'd asked young guys why they used LynxX, they'd probably say oh well, you know, when I go out with my girlfriend and I'm going to the club, and things like that, when you actually got these comments coming through, people would spray on the links and they'd go. I sprayed it on because auntie was coming for tea, I was going out with my mates.

Speaker 2: 44:04

Well, actually, the insight there is that this was about a rite of passage. You know, I'm old enough to do these things interesting yeah, so those are just anecdotal comments, but you it doesn't mean that you can't be creative in how you think about things. So that's why I think it's important to analyze data in many different ways, not just in one.

Speaker 1: 44:31

Okay, so final couple of questions. So I tend to ask people on the brand side what makes a good agency or a bad agency? The flip side, how about clients? What makes a really good client?

Speaker 2: 44:46

I think it all comes down to understanding and a real wish to do something together and to respect the agency, and this comes through in lots of different ways, so it can come through in terms of just being respectful, of an understanding that your time is valuable. You know that if you've got to put more time in, then you've actually allocated that. That is that that's important. I think the other thing is for me I see payment, so I get companies that are talking about D&I and we'll support small businesses and we'll do all these kinds of things, and then, oh no, no, it's, you know, 90 days, 120 days payment, and those things are just. On the other side, there are clients that have fair payment terms for smaller and diverse businesses. They understand the business, they understand what you're trying to do, and those are just fundamentals that I think you know really show the difference between, uh, a good client and a bad client that maybe doesn't understand the business of the partner that they're working with great point.

Speaker 1: 46:00

Final question any favorite books, pieces of media don't have to be books, and anything you'd recommend. That's top of mind.

Speaker 2: 46:08

Well, I have been reading, I've just. There are two books actually that I've just finished. One is the Kamala Harris autobiography, which I really enjoyed because actually what I could see was the way she had insight. So she realized when she was in California that most prisoners had actually been truant as children, and so she actually decided to deal with the truancy issue and that wasn't a kind of a hot topic, it wasn't a vote winner, it wasn't going to do anything like that, but she put those two pieces of data together and she reduced truancy, I think in California, by about 27%.

Speaker 1: 46:51

I really loved her insight.

Speaker 2: 46:54

That was good. And then the other one that I just finished, because I was reading something entirely different, was Moll Flanders' Daniel Defoe. So going right back to the well, it's supposed to be in the 1600s, written in the 1700s, and I was just fascinated by the perspectives there. I was fascinated by the fact that there was such a mind-body connection. If somebody was upset they became ill. There was just the whole time that would happen, and I thought that was very interesting. The concept of marriage was a fairly lax and loose one More Flanders marriage, I don't know how many people. And then the idea of morality and how that kind of fitted in. You find that she becomes very good at stealing and whilst you know that that's not a good thing, there is a bit of you that thinks, oh well, she's done a good job there. So that was a completely utterly different book, but I've really enjoyed both of those in the last month.

Speaker 1: 47:58

Well, thank you, I think. Two really good recommendations and good to not have conventional business books which quite often people come up with. Thank you so much, fiona. As always, it's been a pleasure Really, really insightful and yet great to have you on.

Speaker 2: 48:11

Thank you very much, Henry.

Speaker 1: 48:18

An absolute pleasure to do that interview with Fiona. I think there's so much from her to learn from and absorb and cogitate on, and she also takes a really realistic perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of measured methodology. I'd actually use something very similar myself, absorb and cogitate on, and she also takes a really realistic perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of measured methodology. I'd actually use something very similar myself to evaluate effectiveness of film campaigns across several waves and multiple markets, but that's another story for another time. Thank you again to Fiona for doing the interview, to Insight Platforms for their support, to MX8 Labs for supporting and sponsoring and, of course, to you for listening. See you next time.