Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
IHG HOTELS AND RESORTS - Catherine Willis, Head of Guest Insights. Decoding consumer behavior like a detective; the importance of the 'love spark' in car purchase; lessons from Ford, Delta Airlines, and LG Electronics.
What a pleasure to welcome on Catherine Willis of IHG Hotels and Resorts onto the podcast. Catherine is a font of knowledge and brings to bear amazing perspective. In addition to our chat about the importance of beige food and darkened rooms (qual researchers, you’ll understand), some highlights from our conversation:
How to uncover true consumer motivations
- Identifying and addressing anxiety points
- Learning from police interrogation techniques
- The importance of the ‘love spark’ in car purchase
- Advice for young people entering the industry
- The impact of AI
- Lessons from Ford, Cox Communications and LG Electronics
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Suggestions, thoughts etc to futureviewpod@gmail.com
When you look at your main metric, you know obviously something like cleanliness is a big driver when someone's interacting with you know something like a plane or a hotel room must be clean. But what we found was, you know, cleanliness to your main metric is an anchor. It's not necessarily a builder. You don't get extra points for being extra clean. It's just if you're not clean it's going to drag your main metric down like a stone and doesn't matter what else you do. So you have to get that to a certain point. But again, you're not going to get extra points for being extra clean, so you don't need to keep investing when you've met the threshold. But things like service, obviously a flight attendant service, things like that.
Speaker 2:that almost has no bounds. Welcome to FutureView. Well, that is the delightful and very knowledgeable Catherine Willis of IHG Hotels and Resorts, who runs hugely well-known brands such as Intercontinental, hologram, kimpton and many others. In the clip I just shared, catherine touches on a critical, very tricky issue. No, that's not the importance of cleanliness, but how you dig behind obvious or headline responses and really get to the truth behind what consumers are saying and what truly motivates them.
Speaker 2:Catherine explains how she works with companies, drawing on techniques used by police investigators, the importance of the love spark in car purchase and a host of great advice from her experience with the likes of Ford, lg Electronics, delta Airlines and, of course, ihg. And on the subject of great advice, well, in my view anyway, do check out mx8labscom if you want to explore new means of connecting with consumers fast and using intuitive survey design. Catherine makes an interesting point about that too, especially around the need of the industry to upgrade how we gather information. Now on to the interview. So, catherine, first up, thanks so much for joining today. Really nice to see you and delighted to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Now I'd like to just get going with my usual first question, which is not necessarily a deepest, darkest secret, but just something that it could be a deepest, darkest secret if you want it to be, but just something that most people wouldn't know about you, that isn't on a LinkedIn search or an easy Google search or something along those lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think probably it would really be my love of travel, which I think, given the industries I've worked in, you'd say, catherine, that's fairly obvious. But I do love travel and I've been able to do a lot of travel. I lived in the UK for quite some time when I worked for Ford. When I was in school I spent quite a bit of time in Paris and Brussels doing internships and things like that, and then I've spent quite a lot of time in China, which I've just loved I mean, it's just a wonderful country and a fascinating country and doing research, you know, for various companies and just you know, just love that time as well as Thailand, and I won't go on.
Speaker 1:I've been very fortunate, been able to travel to many places and learn about many, many cultures and I just love that. That is an extremely exciting aspect that you can get at it in Consumer Insights. So that's been something that probably doesn't come through as you look at sort of the sterile stuff on LinkedIn, but that's a huge part for me of my career and why I went into Insights and why I've stayed in Insights. It's just that travel and learning cultures and working with people in different places, yeah it's really fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's one of the components I've always really liked about it as well. I mean so many countries in the world and heard people talk, but you do have to put up with a lot of beige food, I find.
Speaker 1:In those back rooms behind the mirror.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah. It's not very good for anybody's diet, I don't think doing a lot of kind of cold research, and so are you still doing that now, or has it diminished due to rise of online focus groups and all that type of thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it has changed. It has changed Exactly as you say we've got. We can do a lot more online. You know, yeah, with post-COVID and obviously COVID, all the travel stopped and it hasn't necessarily picked back up on our side. But we are starting to do more in person because one of the things I learned during that is you do lose a lot when you can't see the body language and you're trying to see facial. You know people's facial expressions on a camera. So we're trying to do a good mix. It's still reduced the travel quite a bit because now we can say, okay, I'm not going to take that 10 hour flight to X place, I'm going to save my company a whole lot of money and, you know, do something online. So that's creeping in, so that's, that's curtailing it. But by all means we're still trying to do in-person focus groups where we can because of the value.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very much agreed. It is a balance, isn't it? Cost, efficiencies, ease, but then also that relative depth and feel.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. Yeah, so more of a balance than we used to, where we could just jump on a plane and go, because that was the only option you had. So I slightly miss that, but you know what I don't miss? The jet lag and the beige food.
Speaker 2:Very true. Now you've had an amazing career. There'd be lots of very famous brands, so Ford Motor Company, delta Airlines, cox Communications, now IHG Hotels and Resorts so we probably don't have time to go through all of them. However, could you give maybe just a quick whistle-stop tour of some of the highlights in terms of what you did at those companies and even some of the key learnings along the way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah, whistle-stop, because yeah, I could go on forever, so cut me off. But because I've been just again, very fortunate, done a lot of fun things At Ford Motor Company, I did spend a lot of time in product development, which I just loved. I got to work with all these cross-functional teams because that's how you bring a car together and just had just a wonderful time being part of the team that delivered the car of the year, the Ford S-MAX. I'm dating myself. This was quite a long time ago and we followed it up with the Mondeo and so just really seeing how the research was the input into that Not the sole reason that became Car of the Year, but just one of those inputs and seeing that come to life. And the same with the Fiesta. That one we really focused on a target customer and just seeing everyone focus on the customer in that way and then resulting in a great car that became the best-selling car in Europe at his time. So that was just fun, just watching people really dig in with the customer and being just a part of that.
Speaker 1:And then just quickly I went from there to LG Electronics and that company was interesting because it was really building the business in the US and so my boss used to call it hey, we're a startup with resources, because obviously LG is a great big company, so we had a lot of fun building things and so there what was interesting was really trying to understand how to get shopper marketing right in an environment where we were a little bit of an underdog. There were much larger companies you know Whirlpool, you know Samsung's much larger, bigger budgets. How can we punch above our weight? So that was great fun doing that, really trying to understand how we could do things differently. And in that instance one of the big things I learned was working with the fabulous Dave VanderWaal. He was doing all the shopper stuff. He ended up running the company there in the US.
Speaker 1:But the power of having someone on the other side of you you can do all these great insights, but to have this creative force who's collaborative and just takes them and takes the insights to places I couldn't even have imagined in this creative, innovative way, was just fascinating. It was wonderful to be part of that process and just again realize the power of the person on the other side of the table that you're handing the insights to, that you're working with, when they can really really take it to the next level. So that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And Catherine. So, dave, was that on the agency side or was that somebody within LG who was one of the creative execs?
Speaker 1:Within LG.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, setting up the full shopper marketing sort of discipline and all the things that we were going to do, yeah, and so I imagine I mean that made it much more immediately actionable If you've got a partner like that who's going, okay, let's try this, let's do this. It was that iterative, was it as a process?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly Exactly. Someone willing to take we didn't take big risks, of course. You know we were, you know professional and all that, but you know, but willing to, yeah, stretch out there, try some things, adjust all that kind of stuff. Exactly as you say an iterative, collaborative, really. One team, as opposed to the insights person, that sort of sits on the insights team and then you hand something over and sometimes you see what happens to it, sometimes you don't. But at LG at the time it was a small team. We were all there together, so it was we're all going to pitch in together and we're all going to make this happen and we aren't going to be worried about boundaries and whose job is what and all that kind of thing. Just, you know we're in this together.
Speaker 2:And do you feel that sometimes can be a feeling of not necessarily the bigger corporations or bigger agencies or whatever, but where the process almost becomes a little stilted? And I think sometimes consumer insight departments and agencies from a very well-meaning place are so terrified about getting anything wrong that it becomes very slow and very cautious and not really that innovative? Is that a fair comment?
Speaker 1:I think that's a very fair comment because, you know, because I've seen it, I've been, you know I've done that, you know, been in that atmosphere and really the flip side. And you know, at Ford we were more just a cohesive team LG, because you have the conversation, because that's the thing about insights, because you have the conversation, because that's the thing about insights, and this is one of the things I learned, particularly at Delta. You know, when I would learn sort of I would see surveys come through from you know, somebody would say, oh, I got a survey for Southwest. We'd look at it and we'd go, oh, wow, that's kind of the same survey we just fielded. They're asking the same questions. You know, because we were, because of course we know what's happening in the industry. We, we know what's happening in the industry. We know a topic has come up. We need to learn about it.
Speaker 1:You know, I learned that you and your competitors are all doing the same surveys.
Speaker 1:It's what you do with that information, it's how you turn it upside down, it's how you connect it with other things and look under the rocks and stand on your head.
Speaker 1:You know it's how you look at it differently, it's how you get the competitive advantage. And that happens much more easily, much more readily, when you're working as a cohesive team and you're bouncing things off Because I'll say, well, here's an insight and someone else will have a different perspective of, well, should we look at it this way, does this make sense to look at it in this different way? And you go, oh yeah, it does. Or they might challenge, because qualitative is subjective at the end of the day. And so you know, you, you can really noodle on things and actually dig deeper. We've got a partner to bounce those things off of and they're bringing some business knowledge and they're just bringing a different perspective and and that's how we've really unlocked unlocked things that other people haven't, because they are doing more of the straight line and more of the you know. We're just know we're not going to think about this in a different way.
Speaker 2:I think there's also a commonality in a couple of the examples you've given us. Well, in that it's research that's very much focused on needing to do stuff, like you know, we've got to make the car. You know we've got to launch LG in the US. It's much less around the measurement type of research, which is also very important. Have you generally been mainly focused on that direction? How can you put it? The doing stuff type of research as opposed to the measuring stuff type of research?
Speaker 1:You know, and I've done both for sure. I mean, I will say I'm probably more biased on the doing stuff. I love the, you know, the product development area or sort of that building stuff area, but I have done measurement and even within that I've run customer satisfaction programs and things like that. But even using that, as I say, connecting the dots in different ways. So it's okay, we've gotten the measurement of this and we've gotten drivers of our key metric and all that kind of stuff. But that in itself can be very dry. And so how do you bring in all your other learnings? You can look at the data, say the data is going this way and we did research over here that explains why it's going this way. This is what they're thinking and feeling. This is why this is increasing or decreasing, or why we need to focus on it, because we did these five other things. That, when we put it all together, shows us the impact, because the measurement can show you things. I'll use this example. We've seen this, you know. We saw this in airlines, we can see this in hotels.
Speaker 1:When you look at your main metric, you know obviously something like cleanliness is a big driver. When someone's interacting with you know something like a plane or a hotel room has to be clean. But what we found was, you know, cleanliness to your main metric is an anchor. It's not necessarily a builder. You don't get extra points for being extra clean.
Speaker 1:It's just, if you're not clean, it's going to drag your main metric down like a stone and doesn't matter what else you do. So you just you have to get that to a certain point. But again, you're not if you you're not going to get extra points for being extra clean, so you don't need to keep investing when you, when you've met the threshold. But things like service, obviously, flight attendant service, things like that, that almost has no bounds. You know there's so much you can do there and that is all additive, that's all going to, you know, add value to that metric. You're trying to move that sort of thing. So it's bringing all those dots together and putting everything in context so that you're making the right investment decisions.
Speaker 2:What type of techniques would you be using to try to understand those factors which, as you say, are important, but you reach a certain threshold and then there's no incremental benefit?
Speaker 1:The way we did it.
Speaker 1:It was more organic, it was years of it was kind of years of research and, you know, really going out understanding the consumer, understanding how they're interacting with different aspects. So it wasn't just one research, it wasn't one survey, it was multiple research trying to answer different questions actually in the business. But you still learn something else that can be applied to this, you know, might be applied to this other thing. So it was part of that, was a big part of it. The other part was using our measurement which measures the past of it. The other part was using our measurement which measures the past frankly, at the end of the day, and then combining extra research on innovation with that, so we would learn what should we do next and through those things you kind of learn more descriptive things around the importance.
Speaker 1:And the other is having a wonderful advanced analytics partner. Anthony Cannitano has been my partner in crime for a while. We worked at Delta and we work at IHG now, and so he and his big brains would help me take the data and kind of prove some of that out in a data-dripping way as well. So we would sort of land on our hypotheses and then he would help me from that real advanced analytics portion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really fascinating. You describe it, catherine, because it's almost like a I don't know quasi-journalistic type of perspective, where you're looking at multiple sources, multiple points of evidence, rather than just relying on the advanced analytics or just relying on the qual or just relying on other forms of insight. Again, has that been a characteristic in terms of what you would see as being a defining element of successful departments?
Speaker 1:I think so. I mean, at least in my career. I think it's led to what I think has been great work and I've seen it play out through, you know, through the companies I've worked for and of course I always bear in mind insights is one piece of the puzzle. You know you don't, you don't get there, you don't get to success without all the other pieces of the puzzle that's brought to the table by by my coworkers and call you know my colleagues and that kind of thing. But but yes, it's, it's. I think that is, that is the biggest thing, is to say, because I think that is the biggest thing, is to say, because everybody's out there getting the same information, it's how you put it together, how do you put that puzzle together to give a different picture that I found can lead to the competitive advantage.
Speaker 2:Yes, it makes a lot of sense. And now, what's your role at IHG Hotels and Resorts? So what does it encompass and what type of areas are you addressing?
Speaker 1:satisfaction function, our survey, that we get post-stay, and it's very similar to what we've been talking about. It's helping the brands. We do a lot of measurement as well. We do brand equity tracking so we can measure how our brands are growing with the marketing, communication dollars and the efforts we're making on the product. And it's even digital. How are people booking? How can we make that booking experience better? So it really spans everything. Which is one of the things I love about Consumer Insights and I know many people say this, so I'm saying the same thing is the variety is fantastic. I love working with all different kinds of people doing different things across the company, and that variety obviously keeps every day different and fun, and it's no different at IHG. We're plugging in anywhere people need us, anywhere. They need some consumer insight.
Speaker 2:And so, obviously without giving away anything proprietary about IHG, what's broadly the decision-making process that consumers go through in terms of if they're choosing a hotel that they want to go on vacation to as opposed to a business hotel? Are you able to just run through how that broadly works from your experience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can run through. As I say broadly, we're still working through some things. That's new work that we've been. Of course, the company has understood that process for a long time. We're learning new things about it, particularly in the post-COVID environment. But a couple of things that we've learned is obviously is that it can be very different depending upon what you're planning to book. So if you're planning to book something like a Holiday Inn Express or a Holiday Inn, we have learned there can be some slight different way you would approach that versus something like an intercontinental, one of our more higher-end properties.
Speaker 1:And what we've learned recently is some of the actions and some of the information that they're looking for is similar. Of course, you know, is it in a good location, you know? Has it gotten good reviews? Is it, you know? Is it going to do what I need it to do, what I'm trying to do with my vacation, whether it's I'm trying to be close to a, you know, a holiday park with my kids, or I'm trying to actually be somewhere that has a lovely spa and I can spend time in the spa and the hotel. But it's the mindset. It's back to the mindset. What is the mindset and the parameters they're dealing with, and those can be very different depending upon the hotel, and so that's kind of some of the things we're working through is how can we set this up to deliver exactly what each person needs, knowing they're approaching it with a different mindset, you know, depending upon, again, you know which hotel they're staying at and the reason for the stay.
Speaker 2:Now, when we were chatting before, we touched on some of the approaches that you've used over the years to really understand what motivates consumers. So, for instance, if they were buying a car, they may say certain things are important to them, but actually you know sometimes what's the phrase people aren't reliable witnesses to. You know their own behavior and their own motivations and you began to describe some really interesting techniques to sort of get under the skin and understand what's really going on. And would you be able to talk about some of those under the skin and understand what's really going on.
Speaker 1:And would you be able to talk about some of those? Yeah, absolutely yeah. It's a technique that I've used working with Charlie Richards with the distance insight. So I have to give full credit to him and his expertise and basically every company I've gone to, I've brought him in because I know, hey, these are foundational insights, we're going to need them, let's do this. And because I've worked in services and durables because that's another piece of it, particularly, I'll say, durables, using as an example long purchase cycles.
Speaker 1:It's not a spontaneous purchase. Normally A car would not be. Typically, if it's some income levels, it might be spontaneous, but for most people it's not a spontaneous purchase and it can be quite a long one and it's very emotional. Even if you say, oh, I just need a car for A to B, you're spending enough money. It's emotional. And it's similar, actually, with hotels, and it doesn't matter where you're staying or how you know. That's still a chunk of change for you. That's still not something you do every day. So there's still importance to that, there's still emotion in that. And so, working with Charlie, we use something called an ethnographic path to purchase and it's like a police interrogation because people, as you said, people are not great at remembering kind of what they did post-purchase because there's a lot of post-rationalization and obviously you forget a lot of the details. So basically it's an interview technique that captures the main points of a path to purchase but then goes back to each one and drills down, and then drills down some more to really uncover emotions that were happening as they might have encountered barriers in the path to purchase or facilitators. You know what's happening there, what are you thinking, so you can really again understand that emotion. And with cars it's very I'll just give a brief example, because it's quite old, so it's not proprietary at this point.
Speaker 1:Cars are interesting because if you ask someone post-purchase and you just have them say, do a survey or just do what did you do, that person will say, oh, I went to six different dealerships and I drove all these different cars and I spent. You know, I had a spreadsheet, I did all this analysis and of course some people may have done that. Most people would do that because they had already chosen the car they wanted to buy quite a while ago. And all of this is just they're just putting the pieces together to say I did my due diligence and of course it's all pointing to the car I wanted to buy. They're just kind of going through the motions, but the car they wanted to buy they decided two years ago and that's obviously important as an automotive company to know that.
Speaker 1:The other thing we found that I just I love telling the story because I think it's funny. We were doing the Fiesta. Our target consumer was a younger person. This would often be her first new car purchase and what we did find that there tended to be a love spark sometime in their past. It even could have been when they were 12 years old. They saw a commercial for a car and just fell in love with it and was like when I get old enough, that's the car I'm buying. And so again, it wasn't in the moment. You had to sort of get there 12 years ago before they were ready to buy their first car. And then the actual buying of it was funny because they would say well, you know, I already knew what I wanted. I saw this out a long time ago and I'm just so happy, I'm so excited to get this new car. I don't really want to go to the dealership, so I'm going to send my dad.
Speaker 2:What to do to help with the negotiating.
Speaker 1:Or even just well, no, it was more. I'm going to throw my dad a bone. He's going to really enjoy this.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see. Okay, yeah, I'll make my dad still feel useful.
Speaker 1:Kind of and obviously have a nice moment with dad and spend some time with dad. But it was just funny, it was, you know it was like all right, well, we obviously can't interrupt this process right now and you know what Dad's going to be involved when it actually comes to the purchase. And so, as an automotive manufacturer, we have to think about all these different pieces and the emotions that are at play and the length of time it takes and was that factor then into the dealer experience or the marketing.
Speaker 2:That's kind of insight that actually, when it came down to, I guess you've decided you want the Fiesta, you're going to the dealership but there's still some decisions to be made, that when you're there, I guess what type of warranties are you going to get and all that type of thing. And so did you take that insight in terms of going this might be a younger person with their dad and try to sort of tailor the proposition to make it, you know, more amenable for them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and actually where it manifested was really in the launch marketing campaign, because it really did help us convince the business. Hey, this really needs to be a motive, this really needs to be whereas hey, this really needs to be emotive.
Speaker 1:This really needs to be, whereas because a lot of automotive I mean if automotive advertising not just, you know, not for kind of everybody sometimes falls to the more rational oh, we have these features, you know, it's sort of you know it's sort of falling into highlighting features and things like that.
Speaker 1:And it really helped us to say you know, we're relaunching this car, let's go the emotive route. And we did. We did come out with an ad campaign that was very, that was very different at the time, and so that that is what helped. And then actually this told us we didn't necessarily needed to do a whole line at the dealership level because dad's walking in doing his process that he's been doing for years. So what is it? You know, if the person had said, oh, I've got to go in the dealership and I, you know, and I'm concerned about that and I'm going to be going in alone, and that kind of thing, then we might have said, okay, well, you know we should, we should maybe look at this. But it was like, oh no, we're, you know, we're going to have an old hand at this, and so we were less concerned about that portion of the journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, catherine, in terms of these types of high value, durable, type processes, I know there are going to be differences between some brands and the different product propositions, but how important is the image in terms of what it says about the person as in I'm driving this type of car, I'm staying in this type of hotel as opposed to the product benefits or features?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. Well, it has to be both. Effectively. That's what I've learned, Avi, you know, and it does have to be both you do have to have a strong brand because, since it's such a long purchase cycle and, granted, we didn't have this issue at Ford Everybody knows Ford, Ford's a very strong brand and beloved by many, so we didn't necessarily have to sort of worry about that issue.
Speaker 1:But what we did learn is, yes, there has to be the strong brand, has to be there so that you even get on the consideration list which, again, as I mentioned before, could be two years before you make the purchase. So you have to be invited to the party. So there has to be some brand strength there that's enduring and sort of evergreen, if you will. So that has to be attended to. But you do have to back it up, obviously, with a product that is tailored to a target consumer so that it has some differentiated benefits, it has a voice, it says something about itself, whether it's through features or the design. It has to have a unique proposition. So both have to come together for all of that to work. Again, given long purchase cycles, given it's a lot of money, all those things, there's just a lot of complications around those, so you have to be firing on all cylinders really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I imagine it kind of becomes circular as well, doesn't it? So you may have certain features, which is whatever it is greater horsepower in a car, or it's the most technically advanced something or other in the car. You can tell I'm not really that into cars by the way I'm describing it. I guess you take those features, but then those are important partially because of what they do, but also the features themselves say something about the person. Like I'm the type of person who wants to drive the most technically advanced car or the most environmentally friendly car. So it all kind of wraps up, I guess, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:it does. And that's really where the target customer comes in. Because obviously, particularly, you know if you're not a Ferrari, you know if you're wanting to sell quite a few of them, you're going to sell to all kinds of people and they're going to buy it for all kinds of reasons. But obviously, as I think many brands know, you know if you try and cater to the many, you're going to cater to no one. So you have to pick a target, you have to really focus and do the features and design to that target, and then it attracts the many Because, again, you've got a unique proposition, you haven't watered it down so much, trying to please everybody. And we found great success with that. And so, for example, again with the Fiesta this is quite a long time ago.
Speaker 1:So with the Fiesta we focused on this younger person knowing, again, people of all ages buy the Fiesta. But if you're, say, older, you don't want to buy a boring car. Of course not, you want to buy the fun-looking car, an exciting car, and so does the young person. And we did learn, for example, the design was more important than, say, space. And it was really funny because they said, well, no, I need to look cool driving the car. So the outside of the car needs to look really cool. I need to look cool driving the car. I don't care if my friends are uncomfortable in the back seat. The main point is I look cool and that helped us really kind of refine things. It's like okay, no, we don't need to accommodate a six foot five you know footballer in the back seat. You know the driver needs to look cool. The driver needs to be comfortable. The driver needs to have the features.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fascinating. I also just wanted to go back to that interview type technique that you were describing as well. So it's the principle behind that that you take respondents through their path to process sorry, their path to purchase process and you get it sort of all out on the table, but then you go back and you interrogate sort of each point again. And so is that how it's kind of derived from police questioning techniques, where it's almost like they get a whole story and then in some ways then they kind of maybe in a nice way or not such a nice way they sort of push holes in the story is. Is that a good way to think about it?
Speaker 1:well, and it's more because I get it is more about maybe not pushing holes, it's about peeling it back. Okay, so you talked about this. You know what else was happening. What were you thinking you did this so else was happening. What were you thinking you did this, so what was happening there? What came out of that?
Speaker 1:And through that sort of getting back into those details, people remember things. Couldn't you say, oh well, you know, I went online, I looked at some options, I booked the hotel, everything was fine, like that's what you, if you just ask somebody and then you go back and say, well, what did you do first? Oh well, you know, I need to figure out where the location was. Okay, what's important about the location? Well, you know, I'm doing a beach vacation. I need to make sure it's by the beach or I'm going to this place. I don't know. I want to understand. You know, is this a good neighborhood? Is this safe? Is there a restaurant nearby? Is there a place to go for a run nearby?
Speaker 1:So we started to learn all of those details, all these questions that people were asking themselves, that they forgot, they were asking themselves after they made the booking, because it just sort of fades in the background, and so that's how the technique works. Is oh OK. So and what are you looking for? Oh, you're looking for a restaurant. So, and why is that important? And you sort of learn, you know what's what's important to them, and then what barriers are there for them finding that information?
Speaker 2:I see. So it's really more of a recall and understanding technique and the theory being that if you run through the full experience end to end and you've kind of laid out the skeleton of what that was, then I imagine you've created some form of mental priming in a positive way, so an interviewer could then go back and start to go okay, how about this and all the questions that you were asking? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess it's related to the way in which humans often process information, isn't it? You get deeper as you start to revisit it and you start to dig in behind the headlines of each section.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we. Often. It doesn't always happen, depends on what you're investigating, but and then we often get where are the anxiety points or what's an anxiety curve. So we did this at LG as well, and you know we learned that the peak anxiety was what was happening was they would go in store and there'd be one set of information, and then they'd go back online and there would be a totally different set of information.
Speaker 1:And again, these are big purchases. You're going to go buy a refrigerator. That's not a cheap purchase. You don't do it often, you know, maybe even you know if you're lucky every 10 years, or something like that. So you come into it cold. I think that's the other part from purchases like this. You're kind of coming to a cold.
Speaker 1:This isn't something you do often, and so what we found was people go online. They get information. All right, I got information, I'm going to go in the store. Oh my God, it's all different. Oh my, I have to go home. I have to go back online. I have to look at more stuff. Okay, I'm going back and forth trying to find some consistent information that would help them make their decision. And so we were able to say, okay, that's peak anxiety and obviously it was okay. We need to align our information from in-store to the website and we'll save people a lot of anxiety and then we might get the purchase over another company that didn't do that, and that's an interesting thing that I find fascinating. It's like where can I find the anxiety points and take them away and I'll get the purchase over somebody else?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, really, really interesting. Now, catherine, I wanted to switch gears now because we've been talking about a very qualitative, human-based approach to consumer insight. So this thing, ai, that everybody's always banging on about at the moment the machines how do you think that's going to affect the consumer insight industry?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I know it's already impacting and I've talked to people. I know it's saving people time. I talked with one of the vendors who said we're using it just to have, instead of staring at a blank sheet of paper, if I'm doing a survey or a discussion, I can use AI and I can at least get started and then I can refine from there, so saving a lot of time. Because in research, the day-to-day project management, the day-to-things that you have to do to do a great research project Some of it's pretty detail-oriented, pretty tedious, and any help is good, is wanted, so I think it is helping in that way. So it'll allow us to just focus on the insights and thinking, connecting dots and that kind of thing and less on. Okay, I actually physically have to type this questionnaire out, so I think it's helping that way. Obviously, in surveys, when we capture all the text, clearly it's going to help find trends better and all those things. So that's really exciting to be able to do that. So those are the things I can see.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I'm conscious of is, since a lot of what I like to do is understand how to do things in the future, I'm not sure yet that AI really helps with that because it's all based upon past information, so it's not really good at telling you what people are going to want in the future. Maybe it'll develop and it can we get into scary territory and I wonder if the machines are going to take over. But I'm kidding on that, so I'm just cognizant of what it can do and then maybe where it can't yet do and we shouldn't be over-reliant on it, we could fall into some pitfalls. So those are some of the things. I think they're probably pretty normal and standard. I can't say I've got a real creative lens on AI yet, but continuing to learn.
Speaker 2:So within all this context so we've got the AI stuff going on, we've got all this in-depth human understanding, we've got trying to pull together multiple strands of research and building cumulative knowledge over time so what would your advice be, then, to young people who are making their way into insights? Quite a confusing world, but also quite an exciting world. So what should they be thinking about?
Speaker 1:Well, you know and this might be a slight different answer because when I thought about that question and actually when I went back to it, I thought actually what was most helpful when I was starting out and I was extremely lucky starting out. I mean, ford Motor Company is a wonderful company. I had a blast there, but one of the biggest things it gave me was I was in an environment with massively experienced people, experienced researchers, experienced automotive professionals, and so the advice would really be, as you're starting out, find someone who's been around, learn from people. Learn from people who've been doing it for a while, from people. Learn from people who've been doing it for a while. Whether that's a mentor, could be, you know, if you're on the client side could be a vendor partner. You know, there's these wonderful vendors. I mean, they've run successful businesses for decades. They know some stuff.
Speaker 1:I was very lucky that I had again just this great you know multiple people who've been doing it for decades. So because what it does is obviously I learned a ton about research and they, you know, and they they were great at starting with the basics, like so that I really learned it from the ground up. You know, once you learn how to do certain certain things. You can obviously move on to other things, so, but if you don't have the basics, you're always going to have a gap in there. There's always going to be a vulnerability there. So I was able to learn it from the.
Speaker 1:I would say, oh well, why don't we do this? Somebody would say, yup, that you could, but this is what's going to happen over here in the business. If you do that, this is how it's going to. You know, you think you're saying A they're going to understand why. And so I very quickly learned those things that what you're doing could have very strange implications in the business, because it's not a straight line, it's not logical. Something weird can happen over here and you won't know that either until you do it and you make a mistake, or if you're listening to people who have been around and are guiding you. So that was actually probably the biggest thing that helped me, and so I thought I would. I realized it's probably everyone probably does this like. Well, of course, catherine, we're going to do that. But I just remembered. I said I wouldn't be anywhere where I am today without the fact that I had such knowledgeable support when I started.
Speaker 2:I think it's really good advice and I'm not sure everybody does follow that necessarily. I think sometimes there can be a tendency in the drive for efficiency that you can start in any company whether it's consumer insight or data analytics or marketing and you're a little bit of a cog in the machine and you're just told just do this one function, do it as well as possible, then we'll look at promoting you. And actually organizations don't encourage more holistic learning in some cases.
Speaker 1:Right, and I just again, the power of it I found was just amazing, and it doesn't necessarily need to be in your organization. Again, this might be a factor of the industry I was in. We had vendor partners that had been doing. They were just as knowledgeable, and my boss actually said to me he says well, I'm not going to be here for this project. Listen to so-and-so. He's been doing this forever, he's great, he's very smart. Yes, exactly. And so just you know, even learned a lot from that perspective. So it can also be some unexpected places that you can gain that learning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting you say that as well. I mean, I did an interview with Owen Miles. It's interesting you say that as well. I mean, I did an interview with Owen Miles, who's at Universal Pictures, a few interviews ago, and I asked this question that I quite often give about what makes a good agency or a bad agency, and Owen switched it around and said actually, the agencies are as good or as bad as we make them. Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm conscious of time, so I should probably move on to a quick fire round, if that's all right.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:Now a slightly cheeky question, I'm afraid, but what would your partner say? Are your best and worst characteristics?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think my worst one is pretty easy. I'm not very patient, it's just not, you know, and I have to. You know, and I really have to think about that, because when you are working cross-functionally, you know you work with different types of people and you know, and I absolutely appreciate the person that takes a little longer to think about things and really thinks about things deeply, because I'm pretty American I try and just jump to the action. I've learned working across the world that you know that's not great. Lean on the strengths of the person that's over there in the corner really thinking deeply about things. So you know, so I really try and try and balance that out, probably the best thing.
Speaker 1:You know what I was I like, I do like to have fun and so you know, as we think about the consumer insights area, it's fun, it should be fun, you should be having a good time, you should be laughing and you know, and just you know, reveling in all the fun insights that you're getting. And if you're not making it fun, you're not doing it right. So I do think I try to bring that element of fun because it unlocks the creativity that's how you get creative. So I try and bring that element in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really true, isn't it? If people are relaxed and then enjoying themselves, it doesn't mean they're not doing a good job and they're not being professional, but they're just in a different mindset and, yeah, the creative juices start flowing and all that type of thing. Now on the subject of having fun or maybe it's not fun, maybe it's more about education or stimulation or something.
Speaker 1:If you could have two guests for dinner, who would they be and why? Well, I'm a bit of a history nerd, so I would probably have Elizabeth the first to dinner, because she's absolutely awesome and sounds like she was quite the character anyway that anyone would want to have dinner with. So she would definitely be there. And then, you know and I'm trying to think about a second one without spending too much time I guess that I'm going to. I'm not sure A second one is not coming to mind, but Elizabeth, I would be the one learning from a spunky lady who broke a lot of ground.
Speaker 2:I like that one. I'm trying to also imagine who would be a good person to pair with Elizabeth. I feel like she might want to hold court, so I'm going to go with that.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to stick with the one, because that'll be best for her exactly now.
Speaker 2:What do you think will be some of the biggest changes in the consumer insight sector in the next I don't know five to five to 10 years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know and it's kind of something I say it keeps me up at night. It does and it doesn't, but it's the fact of falling response rates. You know, sending these long surveys out to people has never been great, but people have stuck with us and given us great data. But we're going to have to figure out how we innovate. We're going to have to figure out how we get insights differently. I don't know what that is, I just know we got to do it. I don't know, will people let us implant chips in them? Maybe not.
Speaker 1:But where can we go from here knowing that, again, we're just going to struggle to get responses and we're going to struggle to be able to really go deep in that data-driven way. You can do it qualitatively still People will be happy to sit down and talk with you, but when you're really trying to get data, which is hugely important for big decisions, how do you do that? How do you do that in a different way? And so I'm starting to think about I've been thinking about it for a long time. This is not a new problem in our industry, but it's coming to a head and we're going to have to innovate against that. Again, I haven't landed on the answer yet, but it's something that I know we have to think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I guess we were touching on something similar before we started recording. But there's also an irony. I think that a lot of times consumer insights can be giving brands recommendations about. You've got to go meet your consumers where they are. Their lives have changed so you should be changing your product or your marketing, whatever it is. But then as an industry, we don't treat respondents like that. We keep on doing what we've always done because we'll say it's best practice, and inverted commas. But is it really best practice if that's not how your consumers live anymore? I'm not sure it is.
Speaker 1:Well, exactly, exactly. And so you know, are we going to have to do more observation techniques? Are we going to do more things like trying to follow people, obviously in obtrusive ways? And you know, yeah, as I say, I haven't come on the answer yet, but, exactly, we're still using the techniques of many decades ago, not that they're wrong, not that they don't produce good insights, but, yeah, how do we evolve?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly agree. Final question what's your favorite book or recent book? The things that happen around them shaped their attitudes and the way they look at things.
Speaker 1:And so there's a book Generations that is by the author and really her name has escaped me because I'm, you know, on the spot but the book is called Generations. She's a professor who has been studying this for decades and she goes through each of the generations. This is obviously from an American perspective, the American generations, and I just love the parallels she draws. I love the way all different kinds of data to come to some very interesting conclusions, and I just found it fascinating and it's something I can, even if I'm interacting with people personally or in my work with consumers. It's this great background information to kind of understand the way people think and why they're doing what they're doing that sounds really good, is it Jean Twinger?
Speaker 2:Is that the?
Speaker 1:name. Yes, thank you, twingy.
Speaker 2:That's how you say it, I just looked it up. I didn't recall that out of my memory or anything. But, catherine, thank you so much. It's been really great A pleasure talking to you. I really really appreciate the time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no thanks so much, I had fun, thank you.
Speaker 2:It was so great to talk with Catherine. It was really enjoyable and insightful, with so much flavor and passion about people and different forms of data and how they really work. Apologies, I've been a little bit slower on episodes recently, but there are some great new ones coming up, so please do stay posted. Thank you to Insight Platforms for their support, to MX8 Labs for sponsoring, to Catherine for the interview and to you for listening.
Speaker 1:See you next time.
