Ep. 14 – The Art and Science of Market Research with Noni McPherson.

Transcript

00:04
Ellie Tehrani
Right. Thank you, Noni, for joining The Elusive Consumer, the podcast that aims to better connect businesses with their target audiences and stay ahead of the rapidly changing market. We’re so excited to have you here today, a market research guru, and we’re very keen to hear all about your professional and personal journey. Could you maybe start by sharing a bit about what led you from studying Latin American studies to finding your passion in market research and consumer insights?

00:40
Noni MacPherson
Sure, I’d be happy to. And Ellie, thank you so much for having me. So I am a bit in the unusual story. I was a Latin American studies major at Mount Hoyo College, so I had a liberal arts education, and I love the fact that it was interdisciplinary. I ended up having an internship at the Organisation of American States, the Inter American Commission of Women, after my sophomore year, and my project for that summer was to identify and identify latin american women writers, artists and musicians and develop a survey that could be sent to them to really help promote their work. So that was really my first exposure to survey writing and the whole notion of market research. After college, I went back and I worked for a small translation company and was involved in marketing.

01:41
Noni MacPherson
So a lot of direct mail advertising and started to realise that marketing was a field I was interested in. Eventually, I worked for a marketing consulting firm in Connecticut where I worked with a consultant who came out of General Foods, got involved in ideation and new products, and realised, oh my gosh, I think my passion is really market research and went to school at UConn, has a program in Stanford where you can go in the evenings to get your MBA started doing that, took a market research course, saw an opening at Dun and Bradstreet and interviewed there, convinced them that they should hire me, even though I really didn’t have a background in market research. But I think they saw the passion and from there the rest is history. But that’s kind of how I fell into it, so to speak.

02:36
Noni MacPherson
It was really just a question of discovery, I think, and having the exposure to market research made a difference.

02:44
Ellie Tehrani
That’s amazing. And I love how you started on a path where you were already exposed to some of the more elusive audiences and supported with how to bring those diverse communities into the forefront. You talked a lot about passion and you know how that was evident in your first interview. What brought that passion about and what sort of experiences or mentors played a pivotal role in shaping your professional path?

03:19
Noni MacPherson
If you talk to people, what are the things that are important for a market researcher to be curious about? So I think by nature I am just a curious person. I want to understand things better, and not just at a surface level, I want to understand the depth. So I just think that’s part of who I am. And then I’ve been really lucky to work with talented people who could really cultivate and nurture that passion and guide me. And I’ve always thought that there is a creative side to market research. A lot of people think it’s very kind of quantitative and there are ways you do things. And I actually find there’s a lot of art to the science which appeals to my creative side.

04:06
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. I think people often forget about the qualitative of market research and the why behind the what and everything that is so truly nuanced to each individual. So I love that the art behind the science statement in some of your past roles at Twinings or in some of the healthcare roles that you’ve had, you must have been exposed to so many different types of global teams, as well as in terms of various different iconic brands. What lessons have you learned that you feel have been most valuable for your career path? So, Noni, having worked with some iconic brands and some global teams in your past, what lessons or insights have you gained that have been most valuable to your career?

05:03
Noni MacPherson
I think there are a number of lessons I’ve learned, especially working globally, so important to look across markets. I know when I worked on Doctor Scholz, I was responsible for the relaunch of Doctor Scholz in the US and then also for potentially launching a brand in emerging markets. So very different dynamics. But I learned so much looking at, for instance, China, where feet are considered the second heart of the body. And in the US, the attitude is people forget about their feet and they don’t realise that they’re even connected to the rest of the body. So we took the insights from China to help mold some of the thinking around Doctor Scholz in the US. So that’s a good example of taking something from another market and leveraging it in the US. And then I love working with global teams.

06:09
Noni MacPherson
I think there’s just diversity of thought and perspectives. At Twinings, we worked a lot with suppliers outside the US, which was refreshing because their way of doing things was different from what I was used to. But in the end, I learned so much from them. It works both ways, but I definitely think having a global perspective is really important.

06:38
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. And those examples are fantastic of why global is nothing without local and vice versa. I want to move a little bit toward the consumer. The importance of being consumer-centric as an organisation and how insights can play a pivotal role for most corporations. In your experience, what are the key elements of truly building and fostering a consumer-centric mindset within any organisation?

07:16
Noni MacPherson
You know, that’s a great question because I’ve worked in different companies at different levels where insights was highly integrated into the culture and I others where it was not. So, to me, the key aspects of building a consumer-centric organisation boil down to culture, structure and leadership. I was lucky enough to really grow up in a culture at Warner-Lambert, Pfizer J and J, where it was part of the culture. You know, insight was an integral part of the organisation. You were the right arm for marketing. They brought you into the conversations early, and you were just a part of everything that touched the consumer. And so you didn’t really have to prove anything.

08:15
Noni MacPherson
It was already kind of assumed, and I give credit to the leaders in those organisations, many who came out of marketing so they already knew the value in other organisations where it wasn’t as well accepted. For instance, at Twinings, I was in a newly creative role. So the VP of marketing, she and I had worked together years ago at Pfizer. We always said we wanted to work together again. And lo and behold, this opening came. And at that point I was ready for something new. And I said, you know what, let’s do this. But it was interesting because I had a tremendous amount of education to do. So I created a vision for the role and I must have showcased that to everyone I could in the organisation. There was just so much education that took place.

09:19
Noni MacPherson
We had virtual focus groups with the entire North American team. I would engage whoever I could to understand the value. So, the category management team created a category vision document with all kinds of insights for retailers. We made sure we had studies with their particular consumers. So it took a while—I have to admit, it really took a while—but it’s all about engaging people in what you’re doing and helping them see the value.

09:55
Ellie Tehrani
That’s a very great point. And coming to the value, can you talk to us about some examples maybe of how you’ve successfully translated insights into actionable strategies that help to build brand growth? Absolutely.

10:17
Noni MacPherson
So I’ll never forget when I was at Pfizer, working on a brand called role AIdS, and it’s fairly well known the brand was in double-digit decline. And were charged with, you know, growing the brand. So, the first thing I did was look at the equity of the brand versus key competitors in our consumer tracking. I mean, this is all kind of basic stuff, but. And we said okay, we have an advantage on efficacy, but where we’re weak is we’re weak on taste. So Tums has all these flavors, and people think they taste better. So we decided, okay, let’s do a taste test. So there are specific rules around how you do a blind taste test. So we did a taste test. We did get a superiority claim one of the flavors, and we created a whole campaign, and it drove sales.

11:13
Noni MacPherson
I mean, it was incredible just to look at the value of a claim. We also created a much more relevant, modern personality for the brand. But it was amazing. And from there, we built a new product pipeline, and we turned the brand around. When I left it was up double digits. Wow.

11:37
Ellie Tehrani
What do you think it was that made this particularly successful? And where do you think some companies go wrong in that piece of translating the insights into actionable solutions?

11:50
Noni MacPherson
I think we changed the consumer target. First of all, I think the previous consumer target, we called him Bubba. So he was kind of the type of guy who would go to a football game and eat a whole bunch of crazy food and stuff his mouth and then have issues with heartburn. And we shifted that towards, were targeting women primarily. We were going after the Tums consumer, basically to try and convince them that they could have great taste plus a more efficacious product where people go wrong, I would say, really make sure you have the right consumer target. Again, I think Twinix could be a case study in an MBA program someday. We, you know, part of what I did was when I came, I said, they asked, well, what kind of research should we do?

12:49
Noni MacPherson
And I said, well, do you have a segmentation study? Who’s your consumer target? And I got these strange responses around. Well, we kind of crafted something from this research and that research. And I said, no, no. You really need to know who your consumer target is. And so we did the segmentation study, and it was also a neat state study, which was great because we really had a sense of unmet needs in the category that we could go after. And lo and behold, the segmentation comes back. And there is a segment thats very loyal and very positive, great affinity towards Twinings. And they’re like, oh, that great. That’s our target. I’d say, wait a minute. There’s this other target over here, and it’s a younger target, and they’re not necessarily even aware of the brand, and they’re not familiar with the brand.

13:42
Noni MacPherson
We need to talk to them and help them realise who this brand is because they value a lot of things that Twinings can offer. It’s interesting because I had to convince them, wait a minute, you’d really need to look over here because that’s where the opportunity areas are.

14:01
Ellie Tehrani
I love that. I love how, also, as soon as there’s that insight, some companies like to run with it without pausing and thinking, what’s the best strategy here, and what are we missing? Because sometimes the best insights are in what isn’t there or what hasn’t been said. How do you navigate the balance between having data-driven insights and intuition and experience when you are developing growth strategies for your clients?

14:34
Noni MacPherson
That’s a good question. To me, the most effective strategies combine both to be holistic in their approach. So you can have a lot of data, but if you combine it with qualitative, with trends, with multiple sources, it’s much more powerful. And we actually did that at twiting’s. We called them how to win kind of where to play, how to win analyses. And it wasn’t just a situational analysis. There were also implications, and potential opportunities were identified. And those were really effective because everyone in the organisation could understand, because it touched many different aspects of the brand in some ways.

15:33
Noni MacPherson
And so I would say, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question exactly, but it’s really about how you leverage the data, how you integrate it, how you think about, well, what are the key questions I’m trying to answer and then build a story to help answer them.

15:51
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. And we’ll get to this when we talk about the future of our industry. But I’m keen to hear your thoughts on that human approach and that intuition versus now that we have all these tools with AI and synthetic data and so forth as well. But before that, I want to talk about the brand repositioning and digital campaigns. Sorry that you’ve been involved with. Can you talk us through some of your approaches to repositioning iconic brands like Twinings and Doctor Scholl’s, etc., and the role that consumer insights played in those efforts?

16:32
Noni MacPherson
Yeah, I think for Twinings in particular, there was a lot of insight that came from qualitative research. There was tremendous ambitions for the brand. And organisationally, there was a lot of focus on the US and the notion that there was untapped opportunity. So that was part of what sparked a lot of the work that we did. And I think we also realised that the brand had lost relevance and it was really perceived as a black hot tea brand. So weren’t necessarily riding the wave of wellness that we saw in beverages. So the question is, how can we reposition the brand so it is more relevant? So it is perceived as a brand that really enhances your well being. And so there was a tremendous amount of work that was done.

17:33
Noni MacPherson
And again, we worked with people in the UK, not just people in the US, but we had experts over there and we really reviewed all the research that we had done to come up with different positioning territories and we exposed those to consumers. We essentially did a huge qualitative project. And I’ll never forget writing maybe 20 different insight statements. So what’s the need? What’s the truth? What’s the tension? We really were incredibly disciplined about it and it paid off because I think we really kind of cracked the code for Twinings because we’re not a wellness brand and we never probably will be. You know, there are other tea brands out there that kind of own that space, but we do find that there is a space around enhancing your well being and we can play in that space with our equity.

18:31
Noni MacPherson
And kind of knowing the equity drivers for the future was also really important in the whole positioning effort.

18:40
Ellie Tehrani
And when you’re running these repositioning efforts, whether it’s at Twinings or Doctor Scholl’s, what are some of the biggest challenges that you faced and how do you typically overcome them and how do you get buy in to stay committed to the investment?

18:59
Noni MacPherson
Yeah, I think in the queso tidings, we had to prove that the brand was worth investing in. So we had a creative campaign that we knew had scored well. But the whole point was, how is it going to perform in Marketland? And we didn’t have a huge budget. I think budget’s always an issue, always a challenge. So we had a small budget, so it really didn’t warrant marketing mix at the time. So we ended up working with Kantar and using their cross media methodology, which allowed us to survey consumers who we knew or had a high probability of being exposed to the campaign versus those who had not. And were able to show that were meeting all the norms or exceeding the norms for the Kantar benchmarks. And then we had custom questions and imagery statements that we knew were important for the brand.

20:07
Noni MacPherson
And that really helped convince senior management. I think they had much more confidence in what were doing. And then were able to do a regional test with a marketing mix study that really proved the ROI from the campaign, but it very much test and learn methodology. Nothing happened overnight, of course.

20:32
Ellie Tehrani
Of course. And you talked about an important aspect there in terms of budgets. And in this day and age where budgets are shrinking and timelines are shrinking, the importance of showing the ROI is critical. How do you typically measure success of these campaigns?

20:52
Noni MacPherson
You know, it’s usually a combination of things. Certainly sales and return on investment is important. But I also grew up in a culture where insights really were the keepers of brand equity. So I’m very much focused on making sure that we’re measuring the equity of the brand and progressing the brand in that direction.

21:19
Ellie Tehrani
I love that statement. Keepers of the brand equity. Now, how do you ensure for any brand that the positioning and messaging resonates with diverse consumer segments? You talked a little bit about this earlier, but how should organisations do that generally?

21:42
Noni MacPherson
You know, some people don’t believe you can test a positioning. I actually did this at Doctor Scholl’s, so it was more of a concept format, but we were able to test the positioning in multiple markets and look at a new product pipeline. And so it was quite disciplined because again, there was a huge investment involved and people wanted to know upfront if this was going to work. In other organisations like Twinings, you don’t necessarily test a positioning, but you know the key elements that resonate with consumers. But it can be a challenge, you know, again, you always know who your consumer target is. There may be a secondary target that you also want to bring in, but it’s all about making sure that you take your segmentation study and you apply that algorithm to all the research that you do.

22:43
Ellie Tehrani
I want to move to the topic of innovation and trend analysis. How do you typically leverage consumer insights and trend analysis to drive innovation pipelines and identify those growth opportunities?

23:02
Noni MacPherson
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I can talk to Twining’s innovation. They just launched three new flavours, iced tea. So they’re teabags. You can look at the trends that we looked at from a variety of sources. It’s not as though there’s one source of. It’s really, again, the kind of integration of perhaps multiple touchpoints. In this case, we had the Kantar beverage panel and were looking at some trends there that showed a lot of usage for teabags, for cold, for iced tea, and we were kind of shocked that so much usage was actually for ice versus hot. Then you have Starbucks saying they sell more iced beverages than hot. And if you look at just trends in adjacent categories, you can see that cold beverages were growing much faster than hot.

24:07
Noni MacPherson
So again, you have sources from different places, but they’re all kind of pointing you in the same direction, which really helped. But then, of course, it’s always important to talk to consumers because they’ll tell you more about how they’re using products. Where are the gaps? Where are the needs? And then that’s where you really think about, okay, how can I meet this consumer need? What can my brand uniquely offer?

24:37
Ellie Tehrani
I like that example. Do you have other examples of sort of surprising or counterintuitive insights have led to a successful product development?

24:48
Noni MacPherson
When I was at Pfizer, we did a lot of work to understand consumer needs, and we found consumers kind of organized their symptoms by upper, middle and lower digestive health. And we created something called the Digestive health Authority, where went to retailers and we said, this is how consumers are organising their symptoms. What if you organised your shelf to reflect that? We had actually done some shelf tests before we went to the retail, just so we knew that this organisation was going to help them not only help the consumer find the products but also increase cross-selling so people would be able to buy more products than they would with the current shelf set.

25:43
Noni MacPherson
So that was an example where it was a very simple insight in some ways, and this came out of some ethnographic research that we had done with consumers, but were able to translate it into a strategy that was highly successful with retailers. And I think if you talk to people who are at j and j today, or I think it’s now Haley on, they’ll still say, oh yeah, digestive health authority. I think it’s still alive and well.

26:12
Ellie Tehrani
That’s great in terms of the consumer trends and analyzing them and keeping up to date with them. How do you prioritise which trends to actually act on?

26:27
Noni MacPherson
That’s a good question. So were able to work with a company out of the UK when I was at Twinings, and they specialised in trend information. So we had a custom study and they were able, what I loved about their studies, they combined mega trends with cultural trends, with beverage trends, with, you know, you had all these like, layers of trends, but all in one place, so it all made sense and you’d kind of say, okay, now as a brand, here’s where we think we have a right to play. So then you could focus in on, well, these are the key areas we want to focus in on, and then really drill down. And were able to look at flavour trends and ingredient trends. So that was incredibly helpful.

27:16
Noni MacPherson
And then for the how to win analyses, we looked at other kinds of trend information on claims. For instance, what kinds of claims are people making in this space? What are some of the adjacent categories and that was incredibly helpful.

27:34
Ellie Tehrani
Right. And in running consumer studies, there’s a lot of challenges that I think a lot of organisations don’t realise upfront. From your perspective, what makes consumer groups particularly challenging to understand and connect with?

27:55
Noni MacPherson
When you say consumer groups, are you talking about focus groups or.

28:01
Ellie Tehrani
Generally in terms of your target audiences for understanding them better and generally how to get businesses to connect with them?

28:11
Noni MacPherson
Obviously you have a segmentation study, you apply that algorithm to everything that you do and you really get to know these consumers quite well. You can identify them, especially when you do qualitative. I used to invite cross-functional partners to the in-person focus groups. Then we moved to online during COVID and we pretty much stayed online after that. I was very hesitant in the beginning because I’m very hands on in the back room. I love to shoot questions into the moderator. And so it was very hard to make that transition. But online was so effective and I felt like the quality of the respondents was better. I loved the fact that there was much more geographic representation. So that was huge for us. And were able to interview especially we could quota for people in the west. Right.

29:13
Noni MacPherson
So we would make sure we had that perspective. But a lot of it’s just really making sure that you give people in the organisation the opportunity to listen in directly to the consumers. Obviously, I would always share he highlights in a leadership meeting, but I don’t think there’s anything that replaces listening to the consumers. Or we’d have video clips that we put in presentations to the leadership team that help, you know, would just help to bring these consumers to life.

29:49
Ellie Tehrani
That’s true. There’s nothing like that firsthand sort of story from your target audience to make a true impact. You talked a little bit about this, but in terms of emerging trends and technologies that you think will shape the future of consumer insights and the research industry, what do you believe those are?

30:13
Noni MacPherson
I know there’s a lot of talk about AI, and when I was at Twinings, I had two opportunities. I worked with a company called Discover AI. I believe they’re out of the UK. And we worked with them to really try and get a sense of the wellness landscape. And we did it across three different markets, which was interesting as well because there were differences, as you can imagine, but there were also a lot of similarities. And what we learned was kind of a rough sense of here are different segments within wellness, and here some of the language around those territories, and here are some of the visuals. And we took that learning and applied it to our portfolio strategy, which was really helpful at the time, really helped to bring that strategy to life. My other example is in packaging.

31:12
Noni MacPherson
We were able to work with a company that cloud army. Again, I think they’re out of the UK and they do implicit, a lot of implicit testing, and they bolted on an AI piece which helped us understand potential standout for different packaging were looking at. And it was just fascinating. So I definitely believe in it. I think. I guess there are different levels of AI, so you have the efficiency piece, the optimisation piece, and then potential breakthrough. But the idea of human intelligence, I think, is so important to never lose sight of. So that would be my point of view that I think it’s fascinating. I look forward to hearing more about the possibilities, but I do want to make sure that the human intelligence piece is part of it as well.

32:14
Ellie Tehrani
That leads me to my next question. In terms of that traditional market research approach and methods, how do you see the role of that old school way changing in the future?

32:28
Noni MacPherson
I know there’s pressure always to go faster and more efficient, and now with AI, you can get things overnight. It’s just crazy. I think it’s the balance of the two. So how do you balance the need for efficiency and speed with making sure that you have quality insights, that you’re not veering off into a territory that maybe isn’t the right for the brand? Because there could be an opportunity, but it’s not right for your brand, if that makes any sense, or your brand hasn’t progressed enough on its innovation path to warrant that as a next step, if that makes any sense.

33:20
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. And in terms of some of the approaches that are fairly new to our industry, at least like neuromarketing or biometric data collection, do you see a role for them in the future of consumer insights, and particularly in some of the sectors that you’ve worked in?

33:43
Noni MacPherson
I think biometrics has a definite role. I’ve used it in multiple companies. And I guess my point of view is that it’s a great complement to research. I don’t know if I would totally rely on it by itself, if that makes any sense. Facial coding, for instance, is great because it shows you a level of engagement, say, with creative, and it gives you a sense of how people are reacting. But I think it helps to explain some of the other measures that you’re seeing, and it can help identify, well, this particular seeing is maybe not so effective and not so engaging, but I wouldn’t rely on it, is what I’m saying, without other information.

34:35
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. It’s like you were saying about the holistic view to research that you have to keep in mind with the supplementary tools, but keeping in mind the human part of it and the intuition and experience that researchers come with. I have a few final questions for you before we wrap up. And these are targeted towards some advice that you could give both to individuals who are looking for careers potentially in market research and the research industry overall, as well as corporations who are looking to make more of their research investments, starting with the corporations. If you had to leave our audience, which is one advice for them to look to maximise their consumer insights efforts.

35:22
Noni MacPherson
What would it be? I think it’s important to have the right structure for the role, and that may seem very basic. But if you’ve ever seen the Boston consulting chart where it shows different levels of influence for market research, you start with the basic order taker project management role siloed. I would be surprised if there are many companies out there like that, but you have companies who, I think the top range is more about insights having a seat at the table at the executive level, that the organisation embraces insights, not just the marketing team. That insights are well established, understood and seen as a competitive advantage. I would just encourage organisations to create that type of environment and make sure that they have insights.

36:26
Noni MacPherson
People who can think holistically and strategically, that data, there’s a lot of data out there, and there are a lot of people who can manipulate data, but you want the people who can really interpret it and add an additional layer of strategic thought.

36:46
Ellie Tehrani
That covers my second question, actually, in terms of professionals looking to move into this career path and with all these new changes that are coming, is there still a career in market research, do you think? And if so, what piece of that should people focus on?

37:04
Noni MacPherson
I definitely think there are opportunities in market research. I think companies are hungry for people who can take the data and translate it into insights and ultimately drive strategy. So you need people who are visionary, who are highly analytical, but I would say creative at the same time. So it’s an interesting mixed.

37:34
Ellie Tehrani
Absolutely. And for you, what’s next in your career chapter and what are you most looking forward to?

37:43
Noni MacPherson
So I just recently launched my own consulting company. So right now I’m focused on really planting the seeds and just networking with people and, you know, trying to figure out how I can make a difference now in a very different role. But it’s exciting to me to take all of this expertise and be able to share it with multiple types of companies and categories. So I’m pretty excited we’re excited for you.

38:19
Ellie Tehrani
Noni, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and expertise with us. And I’m sure all the advice you’ve given is going to be valuable to our listeners.

38:31
Noni MacPherson
Thank you so much. Pleasure.

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