Ep. 10 – Inside the Mind of the Consumer, with Danielle Blugrind.

Transcript

 

Intro

Welcome to “The Elusive Consumer” podcast! Today, Ellie is joined by Daniel Bluegrind, Senior Consumer Insights Manager at Roku*. The podcast dives deep into the intersection of consumer insights, qualitative research, and data-driven innovation. Tune in as they explore the evolving landscape of consumer behaviour and discuss how Roku leverages these insights to stay ahead in the tech world. Prepare for an enlightening conversation on the art and science of understanding today’s elusive consumers.

*During the podcast recording, Danielle held the position of Senior Consumer Insights Manager at Roku Inc. She currently works as Senior Manager of Consumer Insights at Upstart.

00:05
Intro:
Welcome to the elusive consumer. Today, Ellie is joined by Daniel Bluegrind from Roku. Join us as they discuss consumer insights, qualitative explorations, and data-driven innovation. Let’s get started on the elusive consumer.

00:19
Ellie:
Okay, I know you’re a busy woman, so I’m gonna jump straight in and welcome you to the Elusive Consumer podcast. We’re so happy to have you here with us today. And I know that coming from a market research background, you’re going to be passionate and driven by data. So I’m very excited for this conversation.

00:43
Danielle:
You nailed it. I certainly will be. And I’m excited to talk to you as well.

00:46
Ellie:
Great. So could you start by telling us a little bit about your journey and how you came to specialise in consumer insights?

00:56
Danielle:
Sure. My interest in consumer insights actually started back in graduate school. I had a part time job working for one of our professors and he had been a dean at USC and taught market research. And I started working on some projects with him. I’d only taken one market research class because that’s all the MBA program had. But I loved the combination of psychology with maths. You’ve got. I’ve always liked math, I’ve always liked numbers, but I didn’t want to be an accountant. For instance, I like numbers with a story. So when you start putting psychology and human behavior together with that, and then that’s even before qualitative opened up my world.

01:45
Danielle:
Just the quantitative piece where those numbers meant something and they told a story and they had action to them and recommendations and you could, may affect what businesses do and what products they sell and all these things. I was hooked. So I decided straight out of my graduate program that I was going to go into market research.

02:07
Ellie:
That’s wonderful. It’s often many people who I speak to who have a role in consumer insights or analytics, et cetera, sort of have fallen into the role. But it’s always nice to speak to someone who instantly fell in love with it. So let’s talk a little bit about Roku. We all think we know what Roku does and is, but could you clarify a little bit for our listeners? Is it hardware? Is it software? Is it a bit of both?

02:38
Danielle:
Yes, it is a bit of both. First of all, I love to tell this story because all we’re going to ask me, what does Roku mean? Where did that name come from? So I’ll tell you that, because whenever I share it, people are like, oh, I had no idea. Anthony Wood, who started our company, had already started five other companies, and he had developed this streaming box, when he was working at Netflix and was going to. Going to be a Netflix box, I’ve seen the prototype of it. At the last minute, Netflix decided we don’t want to be in the hardware business, we’re just going to be in the content business. So he got permission to take the product he developed and go start his own company.

03:15
Danielle:
And he was sitting at a sushi restaurant with his wife trying to decide what to name this new company. So went with the japanese word for six, which is Roku.

03:24
Ellie:
That’s amazing. I love that story.

03:27
Danielle:
Here we are. Sushi. Sushi is wonderful in so many ways, right? So it guided the name of this company. And yes, it’s software and it’s hardware. So you have a device, right. We started as just a device company, something that you could attach to your television so they could, you could stream tv, you could stream content over the air, over the Internet. Anthony strongly believed that streaming was the future. I think he’s very visionary in that way. He sees what he thinks things are going to be like ten years down the road and when things are going to hit tipping points. And he really felt strongly about bringing streaming to people.

04:04
Danielle:
So he developed this box, which was not small at the time, that you attached to your device that allows you to access streaming content, what little of it there was at the time. But for cutting edge people who understood streaming, it was very much revolutionary. We were the first ones to bring this product to the market. But within that hardware is the guts, right? The software of what makes Roku what it is and how that people interact with it, the user experience, the interface. It was always very important to him that it be super easy and intuitive to use. So that’s been hallmarks of what we do ever since then.

04:43
Danielle:
In 2015, we entered the tv business where somebody else, like TCL or Hisense or on the Walmart brand, they’re providing the hardware and we’re providing the software that goes into those televisions so that you can get that user experience built into a television set.

05:03
Ellie:
Right.

05:05
Danielle:
Latest thing is we have our own, that we make everything. We make the tv hardware and the software. So that’s the latest thing that came out in March, is our own Roku tvs.

05:14
Ellie:
Right. That’s amazing. And I want touch upon that and how you gathered the insights to create the best hardware for it as well. But before that, let’s talk about your sort of responsibility and focus areas within your role. Sure.

05:34
Danielle:
So we have this player business that we talked about. We have the tv business and we also have smart home and that we have traditionally been a us based company, but we’ve certainly expanded. So we have business in South America, Europe, Australia, Canada. So I work on both streaming players and smart tvs everywhere. That’s my scope. It’s big.

06:00
Ellie:
And when you say big, are you talking about big in terms of the data available to you or the team available to you or the portion of the revenue for that particular department?

06:13
Danielle:
It’s a lot of those things. So smart tvs are really becoming the focus of our business because if you look at, if you have bought a tv recently and maybe your last tv was five plus years ago, you know that prices aren’t going up, they’ve come down. So purchasing a tv for you could purchase a tv for $150 versus a streaming stick, that’s maybe $50. Sometimes people go into the market looking to buy a streaming stick and end up just thinking, why not just get a tv with everything built in? So as all those prices come down and tvs become more and more accessible and smarter than ever, we see our focus shifting towards that part of the business.

06:57
Danielle:
And so that where that’s going and what our competitive set is internationally and in the US is a huge area to dive into research-wise. Plus, streaming players are still very relevant. We’re still selling, you know, great numbers of those sticks devices, the ultra, which is more of a box format. So looking at everything that we look at, which is, you know, what are we calling these products? What are we pricing them, how are we positioning them, which should be the form factor for this thing, and what should be the price point for this television? Which features are going to go into it? Which are the most important?

07:36
Danielle:
All of that.

07:37
Danielle:
Our team is working on 24/7 shopper research and tracking research. So when I say big, there’s just a whole lot of work to be done, which is great because it’s never, ever boring.

07:48
Ellie:
That’s wonderful. You mentioned several different methodologies and approaches there. I want to talk a little bit about that because I know at Roku you gather both active survey data as well as passive data, like behavioral data. Can you tell us a little bit about the difference that you’ve seen in having access to that behavioral data in your role at Roku?

08:12
Danielle:
Yeah, it’s great. We have an amazing analytics team who’s always mining what’s going on. What are people actually doing on their devices? Sometimes people, when we ask them what they’re doing, don’t recall as well. It’s human nature to recall the important stuff and maybe not every little detail of everything. And that’s okay. And that’s why it’s so great to supplement the survey work with the analytics. Recently I started a tracking study looking at smart TV buyers, and recent buyers, and I think the best presentation we had was one where we came together and shared our tracker data and the analytics team came in and shared their internal data so we could look at all those different places where things were dovetailing, where were telling the same story. And then we can tell people, okay, here’s the analytics.

09:04
Danielle:
It’s showing up when we ask consumers what they do, we’re seeing similar patterns, but then we can add texture to it that’s not in the logs. You don’t know what else they have in their home, what genres they like to watch, or why they wanted a TV to begin with. Why were they in the market for one, what features were most important, why did they choose our Roku tv over all the competition? So putting all that together is a really powerful way for people to understand what’s going on with the business.

09:36
Ellie:
I love how you mentioned that because it’s so important to give that holistic overview to really offer up a solution. And I want to touch a little bit about that as well in terms of the what versus the why, in terms of running more qualitative work, how much of that do you do at Roku, and what value do you think that adds?

09:58
Danielle:
But first of all, I love qualitative. I had breakfast this morning with another market researcher, and we got into great, passionate conversations about all the things we love. And one of them was qualitative because it gives you so much texture as to the whys. So I get the what out of my survey data, and I know what people are doing, and they can tell me a little bit about it. But unless I, you know, without knowing how people are going to answer it, you don’t know where to probe further and you can’t build that into a survey. So once you get your quantitative data back, if you have that opportunity to speak to people, whether it’s in focus groups or.

10:38
Danielle:
I’ve recently done quantitative, and now I’m shopping along with people in the store, so I have an opportunity to probe into some of those things I saw in the quantitative. That’s what brings it to life, that’s what makes it really real and about people. And I, that’s why I love to bring my product people along. My marketing team, when they are in a store with somebody or they’re even in the back room listening to people talk, that’s when things come to life. It’s not just numbers, and it’s not a consumer base. It’s individual people. And they will remember. They will say, remember that guy who was shopping and pulled out his phone and looked up every television on the consumer Reports app that his dad bought for him?

11:20
Danielle:
Or remember the guy who, you know, bought one Roku Ultra and loved him and put him on, you know, seven TVs in his new home? And here’s why. Those are the stories that supplement the quantitative, and those are the things people remember, the big picture. But the stories are what continually bring them to life. Those are the anecdotes that they retell over and over. So there’s such value in putting a human face in human words to those numbers.

11:48
Ellie:
And I love that you brought that up because some of the most interesting conversations we have on this show are about those anecdotes. Are there any interesting, funny, or surprising insights that you could share with us through your years at Roku or previous organisations that still sort of stick with you?

12:08
Danielle:
Oh, my gosh. There are so many. Sometimes it takes a prompt or something that’ll make me think, oh, yes, remember that person here who did this? But I can remember sitting in a Taco Bell, and there’s this amazing Taco Bell in Pacifica, California, which is on the beach. So it has a walk-up window for the surfers, and two of them were talking to two guys who just happened to be in the restaurant, and they’re in there, you know, board shorts and bare feet. And we got such a great conversation going with them that we offered them, we said, can we make you something to eat? And they’re like, yes. You know, there are 20-something guys. You offer them food, the answer is always yes. And were testing a product, which is now it’s been out for years and years.

12:56
Danielle:
It’s our crunch wrap that came out of an insight that we score really high on, like, flavor and taste and craveability and really low on portability. It’s hard to take tacos to go. It’s hard to eat a taco in the car. So we made these crunch wraps for them. And then once we’re chatting with them, we said, could you, do you think you could drive while you’re eating this? And we had one guy just sitting at a table who puts the crunch wrap in one hand, puts his other hand out like he’s driving, starts to move it back and forth, takes a bite, and goes, yeah, I could do that. This is fantastic. He’s mimicking driving inside the Taco Bell to test out our product.

13:36
Danielle:
But, you know, it was just those conversations you have with people, whether they’re planned or they’re spur of the moment, are just so amazing. I’m trying to think of some others. Gosh, late night. Okay, late night ethnographies at Taco Bell were a hoot, that’s for sure, because went out to people wherever they were going from either, let’s see, it was either nine to eleven or twelve to two. So, lots of fun stories because we accidentally, and I mean this, did not realise we were scheduling ourselves for a Saturday night in San Francisco, which was St. Patrick’s Day.

14:12
Ellie:
Oh, wow.

14:15
Danielle:
So we couldn’t have stayed with them till five in the morning if we wanted to. They were not quitting. We were done. So, of course, you know, lots of fun times running around the city and watching them drink, but eat, too. And there was, you know, still quality time there and lots of great anecdotes of shenanigans in the city, let’s put it that way.

14:35
Danielle:
But it’s just everything I’ve done, whether there’s a funny anecdote or not, I still remember, I remember sitting and running ethnographies when I was an independent and talking to this Gen X guy who had been out of work for a while, and he had three kids and a wife, and I asked him about aspirations, and he starts tearing up because all he wants to do is take his family on a wonderful vacation before his kids are out of the home. And he doesn’t know if he’s going to get to do that because he can’t find work. It’s just like the simple, oh, just one family vacation that’s memorable, right? I have goosebumps talking about him. And we’re still in touch.

15:16
Danielle:
I ended up Facebook friends with him and his wife online, and just to see them so happy and successful now brings me such joy. It’s, you know, it’s really cool to see where they’ve come. And they did get that family vacation, the exact one he wanted once he found work. But those moments that touch you when people are really vulnerable stay with you for a very long time.

15:41
Ellie:
That’s such a strong point because I think oftentimes a lot of corporations, in particular, get bad repair, and a lot of consumers and customers don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes and how important they actually are to the companies. And their thoughts and feedback, because without those genuine connections and authentic engagements, corporations and companies just cannot make better products and services. So it’s amazing to see that you’ve experienced so many of those instances. I’m going to move on a little bit in terms of Roku specifically and some challenges that you might have seen in gathering consumer insights for Roku.

16:30
Danielle:
I started with Roku. It’s almost exactly four years now. And what we have an incredible resource in that. I’ve got a database of people. Anyone who’s activated a device, I have their email address, and as long as they haven’t refused to be contacted, I have access to over 70 million email addresses. So I basically have my own proprietary panel that I can tap into at any time. And at the beginning of COVID oh my goodness, everyone was thrilled to take surveys. They were home, they had tongue on their hands. Our response rates were through the roof. Like, it was just a magical time to be a researcher, now, wasn’t it? Yes. Now I feel like we’re almost back to below pre-COVID levels.

17:23
Danielle:
People did so much of that during that time that I can’t even get the response rates I got four years ago. So it can be done. It just means instead of sending to 100,000 people, maybe I’m sending to 300,000 people or something like that’s okay. But I’ve seen that decline, and that also makes me worry, who are the people who aren’t responding anymore, and are they different from the people who are?

17:52
Ellie:
That’s a very interesting point. In terms of how to approach those elusive and diverse customers. It’s a struggle for every organisation. I believe in many different ways. In terms of ethical considerations, what sort of struggles do you have at Roku in gathering behavioural data? Specifically?

18:19
Danielle:
I don’t work on the behavioural side so much, but what is being collected is through the device. So I know things like how many hours in a month that device has been actively streaming. I know if they haven’t, how long it’s been since they haven’t used their TV or device or things like that. I don’t know who is using it. I don’t know how they’re using it, other than the fact that I know if they’re streaming versus if they have hours that maybe they’re watching a cable box on it or something like that. But I don’t know who they are. I don’t know if their children are watching or if it’s them watching.

19:00
Danielle:
So it’s very much numbers, not people on that side of it, which is as it should because they’re not filling out a survey and saying, here, you can have all of my information. I’m happy to share this with you. It’s just being passively collected. And so while there’s times where we look at it and say, oh, we wish we knew X, Y and Z and what they were watching and this and that, there’s also limits to what we should be privy to.

19:29
Ellie:
Right. And you mentioned supplementing that data with survey data. And one of the best ways to get the most out of in terms of feedback is to include a lot of open ends. So could you maybe tell us in your experience, how do open ended questions in survey provide that valuable feedback and help shape product development?

19:54
Danielle:
Open ends are fantastic. They’re a wonderful tool. And I have text analytics that I can then use to pull out because let’s say I survey and I get 3000 responses back, I will skim through those 3000 responses to each question, to be honest, because I need a human lens on it. But I also put in text analytics, I’m not going to code 3000 times, you know, four open ends. Right. Thank goodness. So putting it into there gives me overarching themes. It tells me how prevalent different responses were. But I think the, and I’ll share that with people. But I think the real magic comes in when you pull out those representative quotes where somebody just put something into words in a way that’s like, aha. Like that is just summing up exactly this top theme, whatever that theme may be.

20:48
Danielle:
The theme could be Roku is very easy to use. And then someone, you know, I remember someone said, I asked a question among new users, what drew you to Roku? Why did you start decide to purchase this brand? And I remember somebody’s quote, we know we’re easy to use, but somebody’s quote that brought it to life was the fact they said, well, I was talking to different friends, and then I talked to my brother-in-law about it, and he recommended Roku. And if he can use it, anybody can. Like that’s taking, it’s easy to use to a new human level. So when we get those little gems, we love to put those into reports and share those or just when we’re not even soliciting it.

21:32
Danielle:
And we tend, sometimes we put at the end of a survey, is there anything else you want to tell us? You can skip it, you can say no or you can just hit next and skip the question. But then we’ll get people who will just say, I love you guys. So much. I love Roku. This is the best thing I’ve ever come across in my life. And I love to share those with the internal team to remind them that you hear from people in customer service that might be unhappy with something, that have a frustration. But they’re quiet little people out there who are sending us love every day, and I love to share that with the teams.

22:06
Ellie:
That’s fantastic, because like you said, it’s often the ones who are the most unhappy who take the time to provide that lengthy feedback. But it’s always nice to see positive feedback in terms of customers who might struggle to express their needs or preferences, whether it’s for features, new products, et cetera. How do you address that challenge?

22:30
Danielle:
We try to design our surveys in such a way that we’re using as plain English as we can. First of all, you don’t have to be techie to give me feedback on why you wanted a new tv or what features you wanted in your new tv, for instance. So we’re trying to use very plain language. And another thing we try to do is use that combination of quantitative and qualitative in the surveys. So we already know most of the reasons people would need a new tv or most of the features they could want in a tv. So the best thing I find to do, instead of just asking them and having them try to express it, is first give them a list of things.

23:17
Danielle:
Well, which of these were important to you or which of these were motivations for why you wanted to do this behavior? And they can check those off. And then we might ask a follow up question that builds on that. That is, and again, trying to make some of those optional so that if people have something to say, they can. And if they don’t feel pressured to answer that question. Maybe they just said, I wanted a 4K tv done with question, move on. That’s fine. But for others where there’s a more complex situation, they have the opportunity to provide a little bit more feedback. And I think that combination of those pre lists and then an opportunity to speak if you want to say more, helps us get to what’s going on. But even so, you could miss somebody.

24:07
Danielle:
I was doing a survey on churned users, people who have any kind of Roku tv, whether it’s Hisense, it was all partner tvs at the time, but we’ve noticed that, say, for three months they haven’t streamed on that tv. And we want to understand why we found out different groups of people with different motivations for why they weren’t streaming anymore. But what we did was we found people within each of those representative groups, and I emailed them directly and said, hey, this is Danielle: from Roku. Thank you for taking our survey. And I just want to ask you a few more follow up questions, because I felt like there was something more to learn about. For instance, people who abandoned streaming and went back to cable, was it Roku they abandoned? Was it streaming in general, why go back to cable?

24:57
Danielle:
That’s just one example of a group. And I got such great information from them when they. Yeah, actually, we had well over 50% response rate to that because it was an individual. It wasn’t, you know, just a generic email. It was from me and had people, you know, one woman explained, she said, when I took the survey, I kept waiting for the place where I could tell you what’s going on. And there really wasn’t a place, but here’s what’s going on. I live in a rural area, and we get cable or we get satellite, and it works okay. And I really wanted to replace it by streaming, but we just don’t have good broadband. And my husband is a stick in the mud, and he won’t change his ways no matter what I do. And I was like, enough. Sid got it.

25:36
Danielle:
So, you know, she needed that place to tell her story and didn’t really get to tell it until we had that one one conversation. And using that technique has been amazing. It’s not about quantity. Again, you’re going back to quality interaction at small levels, but it helps understand why you’re seeing what you’re seeing in your data.

25:59
Ellie:
Yes. It’s so important to give the consumers a voice because you get so much out of that voice, and it could help tremendously with your bottom line.

26:08
Danielle:
Yes.

26:09
Ellie:
So do you have any examples of features or maybe some upcoming improvements that were driven by consumer feedback?

26:17
Danielle:
Oh, gosh, lots of things. So one of the things, when were doing shopper research a couple of years ago on smart tvs, we did not have a display in Best Buy, and Walmart doesn’t do that. They have the tv wall, and you can go through and you kind of organise by size. But at Best Buy, if you ever walk in, you can see how much money LG and Samsung and Sony, especially LG and Samsung are spending for these end caps and for their big wooden structures on the wall that have their name at the top and things like that. And we didn’t have that because were not a tv brand, were a tv software.

27:00
Danielle:
So one of the things that was really important to us when we launched our own Roku tvs this March, when we’d seen how people interact with those and how they look at that and say, well, if they have a big display, they must be a serious brand. They must be a brand. I should actually consider that just tells them that this is a brand that knows what they’re doing. They’re going to be around for a while. They must be a top brand because Best Buy put them up there even though they paid for it. That’s the impression that people get. And so we did those displays where we have Roku and lights at the top and we have this beautiful display and it’s interactive.

27:34
Danielle:
And I don’t know whether or not we would have made that decision to make that investment, because it is an investment if we didn’t know how strongly consumers would respond to that.

27:46
Ellie:
That’s fantastic. Another question related to a point that you made earlier. You talked about changes in research during the pandemic. How have you seen consumer behaviour change in terms of the last, say, five to ten years beyond the global pandemic that we all suffered through? And how are you and Roku preparing for upcoming trends?

28:17
Danielle:
Well, one, I don’t know if I should call it obvious, but one that we can’t deny is the shift to online that was absolutely accelerated during the pandemic. So people who, yeah, I could shop online, but I’m comfortable at my neighbourhood store. I don’t mind driving down the street. They couldn’t do that anymore, and so they were forced into online shopping. I mean, if you asked me to go get something from Target, I used to drive down the street from Target. I live in this weird space that’s 7 miles from four different targets. There’s nothing closer than second miles. So I know it’s going to be like a 20 minutes drive. I would still go to Target.

28:56
Danielle:
I don’t know the last time I’ve been to Target because I’m so hooked on the app, and if I buy a certain amount of stuff, there’s no shipping and it takes no effort from me. So I did it because I was forced, and now I continue it because I like the benefits and the lack of interruption in my day, and they’ve proven trustworthy. I get what I asked for. I get it on time. It’s not damaged. So I think a lot of people who are very hesitant about the idea of online shopping, once forced to try it, said, okay, this is not so bad. Or if you’re older and you’re worried about the technology and whether you could do it. You figured it out and you learned it, and now we’re comfortable with it.

29:33
Danielle:
So sure, some people are going back to in-store, but lots of us have said, let’s just stick with this online behaviour. It’s simpler, it’s easier, it’s faster. I was, I’m comfortable with it now. So that’s a big change we see even in how people are purchasing tvs. It used to be, oh no, I would not want to have a tv delivered. It’s going to get damaged. What if someone steals it off my porch? Those things can happen, but there’s recourse for them if they do. And they’ve had so much positive experience with the idea of purchasing online that we definitely see a shift now. People still want to go into a store to look at a tv because you have to love the screen, right? Love the picture.

30:16
Danielle:
But they’re so much more open to purchasing things online now than they would have been five years ago.

30:23
Ellie:
Yes, and the shift in over to online also reminds me of another shift, the era of AI that everyone loves to talk about at the moment. How is AI reshaping the way market research and consumer insights are conducted at Roku?

30:40
Danielle:
We are not doing research, I would say that is AI based. I’m not using AI to replace any of the human research that I do. It’s a great tool on the backend. In fact, that text analytics, that’s exactly what it’s using as its foundation. When I first started using this text analytics company, that was not the case. And then they let us know when it was being integrated. It basically uses a form of chat GPT, but it’s not open. So anything I’m not teaching the system. My data that I put in there is proprietary. They do not in turn have to, as a result, share it with the makers, the developers, so that they can improve their system. So my data is secure, protected, proprietary. But it’s leading to such better analysis of unstructured data.

31:40
Ellie:
Right.

31:40
Danielle:
So I’m all for that. Like if I can use that in a safe way that’s protected and not replacing human interaction, but replacing a technique for saying, what did we learn here that makes it faster, something great, right?

31:58
Ellie:
Absolutely. As we say, to remove the repetitive tasks and basically augment the human. So talking a little bit more about some of the smart home space that you mentioned earlier, because that’s also something that is fascinating. What are some of your predictions and thoughts on smart homes, smart cities of the future? How do you think these will benefit the consumer?

32:26
Danielle:
I think if we have the consumer in mind from the beginning and we are really trying to benefit the consumer, then it is going to make our lives easier, more connected, smarter. If I can pull out my phone and decide how my house is lit and what temperature it’s at and all those kind of things, or turn off my air conditioning when I’m gone and then set it up because I’m coming home in 15 minutes, I save money. It’s automated. I want to put one of those door locks in the front. That’s the automated door locks. I think why not if it’s making my life easier. And have you ever been locked out of your house?

33:05
Ellie:
I have. Oh yes.

33:07
Danielle:
Okay. Because you forget a key. I’m not going to forget my phone and I will be able to get back into that house. So it just makes sense for us to do this as long as the goal is truly to make consumers lives easier, to make them better. And it’s, you know, it’s not. I don’t know anything much about connected cities, but I would say that as long as the truly the consumer is at the forefront of what they’re designing and they’re really thinking about that and not like how do we get their data and how do we control people behaviours and make them do what we want them to do without them realising. But it’s really designed so that it improves quality of life, then I’m all for it.

33:49
Danielle:
It all comes down to who is doing the designing and what their motivations are in my mind. But I’m cautiously optimistic that we could see amazing things in the next 1020 years and I’m all for them.

33:59
Ellie:
Sounds great. I want to go back to the role of consumer insights and also researchers and what role we all will play in the future and in the space of smart city, smart homes, AI, what skill sets do you think are going to be critical for the future researcher to have?

34:21
Danielle:
I think it’s a lot of what we’ve got already and then plus, so what do we have now? We have to have innate curiosity. We have to care about what we learn. We have to engage in what we learn so that we ask more questions, so that we learn more, so that we go deeper. You have to really care about that and not just be in the business of fundamentally reporting some regurgitating data and calling that a day. You care. You get excited about insights, you get excited about your data portal being open and your tab is being delivered and you can’t wait to dig in and tell the stories on behalf of the consumer. All that curiosity and innate nature of being the little detective who goes through all the things and pulls the story out has to stay the same.

35:11
Danielle:
But I think we also have to be flexible and open to both. What’s new technology? You know what? What can I always look at things and say? If this can add value and make me more efficient at doing what I’m doing? Maybe it’s cheaper, maybe it’s faster, maybe it’s more in-depth, maybe it adds video that I didn’t have before. Whatever the step up could be where I’m not sacrificing inequality, then embrace it. Yes, we have tried and tool methodology tried and true methodologies that were great for us. But that doesn’t mean that new ones aren’t going to be just as great or even better. So don’t be afraid of them. Don’t be afraid of change. Don’t be afraid to meet people in new places. When you do research and explore new venues for talking to them, it doesn’t.

35:57
Danielle:
It used to be all on the phone or door to door. When would we ever do that now? So again, it has to evolve. Where do you meet them? Where do you talk to them? How do you interact with them? Embrace that change and look for opportunities. Don’t look at change as like, oh, I’m giving this up, but what do you get out of it? What is your opportunity? What is something you can do now that you could never do before?

36:22

Ellie:
That’s amazing. And for the new generation of graduates that are considering career in market research and consumer insights, what tips would you give to them?

36:38
Danielle:
You’re going to want to learn the fundamentals first. I know it sounds like they’re ready to go. And then you see all the new methodologies out there and shiny things and boom, how exciting. But you still need to know the basics. You still need to be able to write a screener and write a survey and write a report. Because if you can’t do those building blocks right, it doesn’t matter what amazing, cool technique you used or shiny new methodology you saw. You will not necessarily put the right questions in there, ask the right things of people, or be able to tell the story on the back end. So those things, methodologies, don’t replace people. Methodologies help people do more and do it better. But you still need to know why am I talking to this person.

37:27
Danielle:
What do I need to learn from them? What’s the best way to get at it. And then how do I tell that story on the back end and embrace that? For me, the reporting process is the most fun you can ever have in research.

37:39
Ellie:
And what about the corporations? What would you say to those organisations who, unlike Roku, might not be as data driven, or rather data informed? And how would you highlight the importance of research?

37:54
Danielle:
First of all, they’re missing out. They’re missing out on a key component. You don’t know what you don’t know. I always say that people say, what are we going into stores for? What are we going to learn? I can go into Best Buy by myself and learn things. I said, you don’t know what you don’t know. And once you get in there and you start to hear from consumers, whether it’s because you’re using a new methodology or you’re a company that’s not doing research, there is a whole void out there that you have no idea about that could unlock product ideas, promotional ideas, competitive advantage, and you just don’t know because you’re not spending time learning about it.

38:33
Danielle:
I could give a million stories about how consumer insights helps us with, like I said, with a product, with positioning, with competitive threats, and dealing with them, because you know you need knowledge for everything else you’re doing in your business. You didn’t go in there and find finance. People who know nothing about finance. They have knowledge in that area. You need that knowledge, and you need this consumer knowledge, too. It’s an integral piece that not everybody recognises.

39:00
Ellie:
And what would you say to companies that are actually making cuts in this area during uncertain times? Because I always find it shocking that during the times when you need to conduct research, the most companies start to shrink their budgets.

39:16
Danielle:
Yeah, I’m definitely seeing a lot of that in our industry. I am part of some networking groups, and the number of people who are looking for jobs right now is just gone through the roof. And what’s going to happen? You know, someone told me once, they said, networking, for instance, this is an example that’s kind of corollary. But he said, networking isn’t something you do just when things are tough. Networking is something you do all the time, and then you’re primed and ready to go when things are tough. Same with the research.

39:48
Danielle:
Don’t wait until you’re in a slump and then you realise you’ve cut your research department down to one person who can’t keep up with everything and then expect them to come up with the answers because there’s a new competitive threat out there or your products aren’t selling and you don’t know why they can’t go back in time and give you that research. And you’ve lost that opportunity for, again, that knowledge, that insight as to what was going on. Or maybe they would have seen it coming. Maybe there would have been red flags coming up and you’re missing that opportunity to gather that intelligence on an ongoing basis. And if you wait until you’re in a crisis position, you’re in trouble.

40:24
Ellie:
Could be too late. On that note, Danielle:, is there something that you would like to tell our listeners that we haven’t had a chance to cover?

40:33
Danielle:
I just have to say I feel so fortunate to be in this business and in this industry of market researchers. And another benefit of COVID it brought us all closer. I started networking with people, with other researchers in other corporate environments, with suppliers, doing these podcasts, things like this. I’ve never felt so connected to us as a group. And I know part of that. It’s not just COVID, it’s technology, and it’s recognising us as not just individual people, but a whole group of people who care about the same thing. I think there’s such a connectedness among market researchers that you don’t find in all fields where when we get together, you just, our passions for what we do just come shining through and we get excited talking about the same things.

41:20
Danielle:
And I feel so fortunate to be part of a group that loves to do what I love to do and that we can continually learn from because I don’t care how many years I’ve been doing this, I can always learn. I can always be inspired by something that someone else is doing. So what an amazing group to be.

41:36
Ellie:
Part of and what a wonderful way to end this session. Thank you so much, Danielle:, for your time. We really appreciate it.

41:43
Danielle:
Thank you. It was lovely talking to you. I appreciate it, too. It.

About Our Guest