Shazia Ginai - BUILDING CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING IN ORGANISATIONS

Our guest on this episode is Vijay Chand, who is Director of Global Reporting on the Global Insights, Analytics and Commercial Excellence Team at AstraZeneca. Vijay joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry he’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Vijay describes are: the notion of an infinite number of KPIs, short-term working relationships, and the false thinking that AI is not going to disrupt the future. Vijay provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “In this age, global truly means global. Because you're talking to people across the world. You have to be able to handle different cultures, different work styles, deal with people and communicate things where you're never going to meet in person, or the chance is going to be quite low. So you have to be able to facilitate working together in an online manner, looking at Teams or something like that. So that can have its own challenges, but it also can expose you to things you wouldn't otherwise be exposed to just working in an office environment” (06:01)
• “By having this notion that we have to be able to track everything across every single data type, I think is a false fallacy which just creates more churn than it's worth.” (11:38)
• “So those are your fundamentals that you would want to track, whereas sometimes we seem to get lost in trying to link things and correlate things that may not necessarily have a correlation there, but we have the data, so let's try to engineer something and see if it sticks.” (12:56)
• “What also tends to happen is that you'll have a foundation, and then the person that's built the foundation moves on and you have someone new coming into the role, and they don't look back. They just add on and over time, you'll end up with this case where you've got this behemoth of KPIs that you need to track and then half of them may be redundant and make your strategies change, or that data is no longer available, or you have stopped purchasing it due to budget constraints.” (15:44)
• “This notion of just getting short-term wins or trying to save a little bit of money, or trying to push really hard on some discount or some additional provision within a contract, or having a ridiculous expectation in terms of a project deliverable or reporting deliverable, wherever it may be. It doesn't do much to foster long-term relationships and can be a resentment over time if you're the person that develops their reputation for being like that.” (19:05)
• “So I think that people may think they get more out of people by being, as you said, quite hard on them, but actually I don't think that necessarily is the case. And I think, certainly for us, we're only as good as our team and we're a people industry. In the end, really, we'll buy and sell people. So you have to be good to your people and your talent because they're the ones that are really making your company what it is.” (23:05)
• “And this is probably one of those first times, other than the release of computers, that you're in a situation where if you don't evolve, you may be left behind. So having that false fallacy that “actually it's not going to disrupt things to that degree”, I would really want to banish. So it wakens people up, so that they start leavening up their skills” (24:53)
• “We're in an industry where companies tend to be a little bit more risk-averse and a little bit more conservative about adopting technology on a mass scale. So I think it's going to be quite slow and steady. We're going to be looking at it from an ethical standpoint, from a compliant standpoint, making sure that you're not able to identify patients. So there's a whole privacy aspect as well. So I think it's going to be slow and steady, but I do think it's going to start to disrupt in certain key areas.” (28:50)

Key Topics: 

• Vijay describes how he found his way into this niche sector (1:46)
• Advice for someone coming in to the pharma research sector (03:47)
• The importance of a diverse team in market research (05:16)
• Vijay shares two funny stories from their career (07:10)
• The first nomination for Room 101 is revealed (10:50)
• Is there a right number of KPIs to track? (12:11)
• How do we know what to track? (14:31)
• Vijay shares his second choice for Room 101 (17:20)
• Net worth versus networking in a small, niche industry (17:38)
• Maintaining  working relationships versus pushing hard for results (21:50)
• Vijay’s third topic for Room 101 is shared (23:56)
• How to prepare for AI disruption to your career (26:20)
• The future of AI in pharma research (28:45)
• Day One’s paper comparing real patient responses to ChatGPT (31:10)
• Different ways of adopting AI in the industry (32:40)
• Vijay and Hannah decide what to banish to Room 101 forever (33:23)

About – Vijay Chand:

Vijay Chand is Director of Global Reporting on the Global Insights, Analytics and Commercial Excellence Team at AstraZeneca. Vijay is an ambitious and versatile leader with a proven track record in commercial data strategy, contracting and platform program management. His visionary approach has driven the creation of impactful performance KPIs and the seamless integration of multi-channel reporting across primary market research, secondary data and internal assets. He thrives on turning challenges into opportunities and excels in transforming complex data landscapes into informed decisions.

Relevant Links:

• Vijay Chand – LinkedIn
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Lisa Courtade, who is currently Executive Director of Commercial Insights and Analytics at Organon. Lisa joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Lisa describes are: the idea that there is only one right way to do things, the language around buyer and vendor, and archaic definitions in market research for primary and secondary. Lisa provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “Some of that gets to some of the things that I think about in terms of how we speak about our industry and what we do. We have an opportunity to make it fascinating and sexy, or we can talk about it in kind of a boring old, traditional kind of way. Because my experience, and one of the reasons I've been a mentor with multiple universities, is for that opportunity to give them a peek into the world and the work that we do and the value of the work that we do.” (05:09)
• “What I often tell the young people on my team is “I do want to hear from you. Your perspective is different, your thoughts are different, and that's going to make all of us better.” So, keeping in mind that what you have to offer is a value and holding on to that, even when you're challenged” (09:35)
• The best answer is absolutely useless if it's not within the timeframe that decision has to be made, and I see this a lot. There's only one right way to do it. And again, the minute we do that we, one, limit our thinking and our ability to use different tools and solve new problems, because there's always new problems. But we also close out our opportunities with our internal teams because they'll say “well, we'll only go to that research team if we need something old and slow and expensive or when I need that rigorous answer”. So I find that really rate limiting on a lot of levels. I'd rather they came to us and said “how can you help me solve this within the level of the decision I have to make, the time frame I have in the budget that I have.” (14:15)
• “Why is it that no matter what I send as a business challenge, I get the same proposal back, the same method, the same approach over and over again, when clearly it's not a fit? He looked at me and he says “Lisa, if your business is selling hammers, every problem is a nail”. That limits the agency as well, because what I learn is I'm not going to call Company A or Company B unless that is specifically what I need.” (19:00)
• “I've never had that disillusion to believe that I'm that popular. I said I'm just a bag of money. They think I have a bag of money and I'm walking through the exhibit area with it. And that idea that I'm a “Buyer” and they're a “Seller” is why a lot of client-side individuals are afraid to even enter an exhibit area because they feel like they're in shark-infested waters and they've got a cut and they're bleeding because folks are after them. “ (23:57)
• “Because you really need to understand what people are doing and then ask the questions on the primary side around “why?”. And I think if we keep these two things isolated and in conflict with each other, then we miss a real opportunity as an industry to be able to describe both what's happening in the world and why it's happening.”(29:39)
• “Being comfortable enough to know where there might be a gap. I think it's really easy to go do a couple of interviews with experts and say “wow, the market's really shaping up” and everybody's really super excited about this and it's going to keep growing. And you look at the data and say “hmm, the data's not showing that, so why are we hearing something different than we're seeing, and what does that tell us and what do we need to know?” So you don't necessarily have to be 100% well-versed and comfortable in being able to write your own code and analyse it, but I think you have to be data savvy enough to know where the gaps are and what you need to be asking.” (32:46)

Key Topics:

• Lisa describes how she came to be in Research and Insight (2:14)
• The impact of pharmaceutical research (04:17)
• Inspiring more young people to join pharma research (05:09)
• Lisa’s advice to young women coming into the sector (08:56)
• Lisa reveals her first nomination for Room 101 (11:20)
• Challenging limited mindset in Agencies and Clients (13:00)
• The second topic for Room 101 is shared (21:47)
• Industry perceptions of client-supplier dynamics (23:13)
• What language should we be using for client and agency staff? (26:08)
• Lisa gives us her third pick for Room 101 (27:39)
• Why primary and secondary research needs to work together (29:31)
• Lisa, Hannah and Abigail decide what to banish to Room 101 forever (34:10)

About – Lisa Courtade:

Lisa Courtade is currently Executive Director of Commercial Insights and Analytics at Organon. Lisajoined Organon for the opportunity to build a new team with the power to leverage the full suite of insight capabilities to understand and deliver on unmet needs in women's health. Lisa has been called an innovative disruptor and a change agent for challenging the status quo and harnessing emerging technologies and data. Along with the behavioural sciences, Lisa has a lifelong passion for improving the lives of patients, leading teams for Merck, Sanofi-Aventis and Pharmacia/Pfizer. Lisa is Ex-Officio Director and Past Chairof the Insights Association and serves on the Marketing Research Institute International and University of Georgia's Masters in Marketing Research and a long-time member of the Healthcare Business Woman's Association, having served many years as a National Board Director, lead for career development and as the first global research director.

Relevant Links:

• Lisa Courtade – LinkedIn
• Organon - https://www.organon.com/
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Jit Mitra, who is market research and analytics lead at Merck, in the US. Jit is currently working on the launch of their fantastic new brand in PAH, Sotatercep. Jit joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry he’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Jit describes are: the perception that the respondent can solve your problem, the attitude of “it’s always been done this way”, and the idea that “research needs to be grand”. Jit provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Anything Jit says reflects his personal beliefs and in no way represent his employer.

Key Quotes:

• “One of the marketers that I worked with told me a very, very interesting comment. He said that, for a marketer, market research is insurance. It is something that I buy to support my decisions and to stand by on my decisions. Unfortunately, innovation doesn't really make for very good insurance. So, when you, when you give me, innovation, please try to package it with something that has a little bit more of a heritage per se.” (06:53)
• “We put a lot of onus during the design, when we take the business objectives and convert them to a market research project. I have often seen we are brutal when it comes to asking consumers questions.” (10:49)
• “Some of these decisions are marketing decisions. Correct. So, let marketing give you the business objectives, but you convert them into research objectives. It's a bit that we need to make a very important distinction. (18:11)
• “What I'm seeing is a lot of cross-pollination happening. Especially that's what analytics has helped us with. A lot of analytics folks are coming into market research because they want to do analytics. So, they don't come in with that “learned helplessness”. (23:45)
• “These new trends, like you were talking about, like AI, machine learning, a lot of the new analytical methods are drawing a lot of diverse talents into the field of market research, who are beginning to question and at least push against that “have always done it” kind of approach. So, it's a problem, but I also see us reaching a solution” (24:15)
• “How quickly we were able to transition everything online during COVID. It kind of taught us how you can, when you need to, you can kind of disrupt some of these existing practices. I remember we had in the olden days; we did nine days of central location where you went from one city to another, sat in the back room and saw interviews. We don't do that anymore. So, one of the good practices is how qualitative research has emerged to be like a lot more efficiently done.” (25:26)
• “We tend to make our research very grand. It's almost always like a big show kind of deal which, which I'm pretty sure like is not required or relevant. Why can't we break it into smaller, smaller chunks?” (29:04)
• “I think that that's why in research it's important to try and reflect on that sort of real environment that they're working in, because it is probably down to things like that at the end of the day, and unless you're asking the right questions or giving them the freedom to kind of tell you what it is that drives their decisions and make them feel comfortable to admit that that is a driver of their decision making, you're never going to get to it” (35:30)

Key Topics:

• How Jit “fell into” the world of market research and analytics (02:05)
• What keeps Jit in the market research industry (04:11)
• Jit shares what he thinks the future will look like for market research (05:45)
• The first nomination for Room 101 is revealed (10:35)
• Keeping business objectives and research objectives separate (18:44)
• Jit shares his second choice for Room 101 (20:21)
• Balancing innovation with proven methodologies (20:58)
• Diverse talent coming into market research without “learned helplessness” (24:00)
• Jit’s third proposal for Room 101 (29:05)
• Unique approaches to collecting emotional and practical insights (31:08)
• The importance of humanising research and decision-making (33:40) 
• Tips to make research more human (36:30)
• Sympathising too much with the respondents (39:46)
• Which nomination was selected for Room 101? (43:05)

About – Jit Mitra:

Jit is a seasoned consultant & market researcher with 20+ years of market research/consulting experience having led projects that range in scope from US domestic to multi-country global projects for the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. 

Jit is currently market research and analytics lead at Merck in the US. He collaborates closely with the global brand team leads and other key stakeholders to define market entry scenarios from a global perspective including, but not limited to, global market segmentation, patient journey, LCM valuation, positioning and messaging. He also works closely with other support functions as necessary to ensure efforts are coordinated to address business questions with all relevant information and support related strategic efforts (e.g., forecasting, performance reporting, and competitive intelligence).

Relevant Links:

• Indrajit Mitra - LinkedIn
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Danny Gardner. Danny is head of social media insights and analytics at Haleon, formerly GSK Consumer Health. He specialises in applied analytics, advanced social listening, and data science.

Danny joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry he’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Danny describes are: the ‘sample size matters’ debate, the fear that AI will take our market research jobs, and the idea that social listening can replace traditional market research. Danny provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “I think if you were just entering a career right now in this industry, any part of data analytics and insights, you could become an expert in something, because all of the different areas are evolving so rapidly. Nobody knows really, nobody's an expert right now, and actually, you don't have to have been in the industry decades to take that leadership position. You just need to be curious, you need to learn, you need to decide where the destiny is, and go for it. So it's definitely an exciting time.” (09:32)
• “The fundamental difference between social media and your traditional kind of survey research is that you have no control. Social media is all unsolicited. It's really revolutionary when you think about it from a market research lens” (11:05)
• “There's a difference between big data and small data. Big data is kind of large overarching themes or drivers, but it's interesting that a lot of companies, including us, are starting to make more decisions based on the small data, small insights, and we're not looking at the end size. We're looking at nuggets of information or insights that are unique, something we've never seen before.” (13:15)
• “I think there are processes and systems you can create depending on the type of company you are, type of brand you are, the size of your team. So a lot of different considerations, but I definitely look at everything from both the top-down and bottom-up approach for things that we know are important and then things that we didn't realize were there and could be important.” (20:35)
• “AI does an incredible job of unlocking scale, which again is a really big deal for Advil, which generates about 10,000 mentions a month. But that's just one brand and I've got 30. And so that's where I think you see real scale economies to AI” (22:55)
• “You would think ChatGPT handles the math better than the logic. I found in my data, its better handing the qualitative element than the quantitative element, which I couldn't believe” (24:54)
• “That it's the next industrial revolution. I read this from some other thought leaders and I completely agree with this too: this is the kind of dawn of a new age of how we live and how we work” (30:00)
• “I'm willing to meet them halfway because I don't think you can replace traditional market research. They’re complementary, but people don't believe that. People think one can replace the other, and some people think that self-listening can replace the other. I don't think that's the case, and I say that as a die-hard social listener: there's no way. there's unsolicited data and solicited data. You can't replace that. One can never replace the other, and so you have to think about ways that they complement each other.”(36:52)

Key Topics:

• How Danny got into his role in social data (2:10)
• Bringing economics skills into social listening (4:50) 
• Collaboration in the social data industry (09:20)
• Danny reveals his first nomination for Room 101 (10:27)
• Social Media data from a market research lens (11:15)
• Big Data vs Small Data (13:15)
• How to decide what’s ‘good to know’ or actionable? (16:00)
• Can AI be complementary to social media data? (22:00)
• Scale of economics to AI (23:11)
• The shortcomings of ChatGPT in market research (26:35)
• Looking at how AI can improve our lives and work (30:11)
• Danny’s third proposal for Room 101 (33:35)
• How can social listening and traditional market research complement each other? (37:00)

About – Danny Gardner:

Danny is currently head of social media insights and analytics at Haleon, formerly GSK Consumer Health. He specialises in applied analytics, advanced social listening, and data science. He loves data so much his friends call him Data Danny. Beyond his friends, Danny is also recognised as one of the world's leading experts in social listening, insights, analytics and as one of the most influential leaders in this space. In fact, in 2022 and 2023, he was recognised by Social Intelligence Insider 50 and also named by the Drum Future 50 as one of the marketing industry's Rising Stars Under 30. He is also a very experienced speaker at industry conferences on data analytics, social media, marketing and former healthcare topics.

Relevant Links:

• Danny Gardner – LinkedIn
• Haleon - https://www.haleon.com
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Su Sandhu. Su is the founder of Sky Blue Healthcare Associates, providing business insights and analytics support to healthcare clients by embedding client-side experienced consultants into internal BI teams. 

Su joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Su describes are: the underutilization of existing data, market research for the sake of ‘ticking a box’ and fear of the next shiny thing. Su provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “What happens is that there's so much information that when something, a business question, arises or a business issue and something needs to be addressed, it's much easier to conduct another piece of market research than to go back and do a gap analysis and have a look. What do we really already have and what really are the gaps that we need to address?” (10:35)
• “It's for us to also think about how can we use data visualization tools to help us to really interrogate the data in a much easier way. So not just for Quan, but what about Qual? I don't think we've changed how we debrief Qual’s that much for a long time, and not just for each individual study, but actually bringing all of those studies together.” (12:57)
• “I think also internally it's really treating insights as a specialism, because having the experts there that know how to pull out those insights and can actually then import into that business planning process, I think is also key as well. Quite easy wins I think, that could be done.” (13:38)
• “I think it's really partnering with the internal insights people to enable them, because there's certain things that I think as an external agency, it's more difficult to do, and it's more about enabling the internal insights team to even be aware that it's good practice to start looking at some of the previous data and if they don't have that repository, that can be quite a big project” (15:33)
• “I wonder if, over time, as you say, this technology will just help to naturally resolve this problem, as we put our data into a central place which we can then have that kind of conversational interface, like you would with ChatGPT, for example. And you can just ask queries of your data and it gives you the answer. It looks at everything that you've done. So you know the data safe, you know where it's come from.” (17:22)
• There may be insights that we've already got that we're not going to get with another study necessarily, so there might be nuggets there that we're going to lose if we don't really use that data to the best of our ability. So I think it's being more impactful and bringing up time for the insights or for the commercial team to be able to focus on something else. (19:37)
• “What is it that I really need and what are we going to do as a result of this? Because if there's no time, or say, if there's no budget to implement any actions, then is there really value in conducting that piece of market research, or could that time and resource… be better utilized? Doing something different that's really going to help with that launch, rather than just trying to tick the box? (23:22)
• “Instead of AI, why don't we turn it on its head to IA – “Intelligence Accelerator”? And that really made me think because I thought that is so appropriate for our industry, for us as insights people as a community, that we're trying to accelerate taking insight from all of the data that we've got.” (36:18)

Key Topics:

• How Su got into the insights and analytics industry (2:10)
• Bringing her expertise in healthcare together with insights and analytics (3:30)
• What triggered Su to set up her own company? (4:25)
• Su shares a hilarious story from her time working in consumer testing (5:55)
• Su reveals her first proposal for Room 101 (10:00)
• The importance of a market research plan (11:08)
• Using data visualisation tools to interrogate data (12:57)
• Opportunity for agencies to move away from just one source of data (14:24)
• Will technology advancements help with a market research repository? (16:25)
• Su shares her second choice for Room 101 (20:52)
• Are we always using our resources in the best way, or are we just ticking a box? (21:55)
• The importance of having Insight people in campaign meetings (29:33)
• Su gives us her third nomination to banish forever (32:28)
• Will AI replace Insights teams? (33:37)
• What is Su’s advice for getting started with AI technology in the industry? (38:22)
• It is agreed that “the underutilization of existing data” should be banished to Room 101 (44:03)

About – Su Sandhu:

Su founded Sky Blue Healthcare Associates to provide business insights and analytics support to healthcare clients by embedding client-side experienced consultants into internal BI teams. Su spent over 20 years working client-side before transitioning into consultancy and throughout this time, has championed the use of data insights to help drive strategy and to make informed business decisions. She believes that having the confidence to challenge the status quo and influence decision making is critical in our roles within BI and, as such, we should have the ability to deliver insight-driven recommendations with impact. She recently delivered a workshop on this topic at the 2023 BHBIA annual conference and was awarded the John Wheeler Award for Best Workshop. Su was also a finalist in the 2022 Every Woman Entrepreneur Awards.

Relevant Links:

• Su Sandhu – LinkedIn
• Sky Blue Healthcare Associates - https://www.skybluehealthcare.com/
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

Our guest on this episode is Hannah Marcus. Hannah is a cultural researcher and strategist with a deep expertise in the taboo sector and the ways embarrassing and the unspoken impact both individuals and society. 

Hannah joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Hannah describes are: Sanitised Taboos, “Hard to Reach” demographics, the phrase “Divide and Conquer” and using social listening as a full solution. Hannah provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it. 

Key Quotes:

• “Should anything really be taboo? We should be comfortable talking about anything, and I think that's the first principle that you start with. I think as I've worked in the space more, we've been finding that actually, it's never quite as simple as that. You never just sort of go ‘let's talk about something’, and then make it not taboo, and then that's it, it's solved forever.” (7:54)
• “The difference between research that's done into taboo topics where your goal is to look at something that's not been looked at in a lot of detail before, and actually go ‘here are the nuances, here are the things that we haven't heard. This is the lived experience. This is human-centered research'. And then research that's looking into taboo topics where the goal is advocacy and where what you're trying to find is that like soundbite that makes people go ‘hey, I didn't know about that and now I do and I'm shocked and I'm thinking about it and we're sort of calling it out.’ (13:15)
• “[Essity] are using their adverts to showcase these deep emotional stories and experiences that no one else is talking about in a way that's really creative and really accessible. But then for people who want to look into more detail, you can then go and they've got a whole research report on painful conditions or painful sex that's sort of illustrated with different language and emotions of how to talk about pain. So they're using that adverts to put stuff into the public eye, but then they're also backing up with here's the depth that comes underneath it.” (14:57)
• “I think that's something that I'm not seeing yet. As more diverse groups get involved, how do you get that really bespoke knowledge for your particular community or your particular needs?” (20:30)
• “We shouldn't be saying that certain groups are hard to reach because that's almost making it their fault, they live in an inaccessible area, they aren't engaging with the right sort of protocols, and things like that, and therefore that's why we can't provide for them properly. And it's sort of being used as a bit of an excuse and a crutch.” (22:42)
• “The actual problem that we have is that resources are distributed unequally, that the research and data is not including all of the people that it needs to, and when it does, it's not necessarily putting a lens on it in a way that is necessarily fair to the experiences of the people that are being researched.” (24:45)
• “If you're talking about those kind of stressful or intimate experiences, people are talking about it online and in really interesting ways. There are some topics that people are not talking about online, or not necessarily more meaningfully than they're talking about it in other ways. And I think we've got a shift from going social for the sake of social, and instead go to ‘is this a conversation that people are having online and where are they having it online and how can we harness that?’” (34:10)

Key Topics: 

• Hannah Marcus describes how her career in research and cultural insight started (2:46)
• She discusses her interest in how is culture affecting society (4:05)
• Hannah raises the question “Should anything really be taboo?” (7:54)
• She finds as you make something less taboo, something else becomes more taboo to replace it (8:25)
• Hannah’s first nomination for Room 101 is “Sanitised Taboos” (9:27)
• When is something considered a taboo, and when is it just not talked about enough? (12:05)
• Hannah explores the difference between how taboo something is, and how big the impact of that thing being taboo is (12:25)
• She discusses navigating nuances in taboo topics (13:15)
• Hannah shares which companies and brands are doing a great job of breaking taboos and facilitating understanding and shared experience (14:30)
• She discusses the connection between taboo topics and women’s health and the possible impacts that increased awareness will have for females in the future (16:50)
• Is technology helping us facilitate conversations about taboo topics? (18:05)
• Hannah’s second choice for Room 101 is the idea of “Hard to Reach” demographics (22:10)
• Hannah challenges the terminology around “Hard to Reach” or “Easy to Ignore” and if researchers use it as an excuse (24:00)
• Discussion around how inclusivity in research can impact results (27:56)
• Hannah decides her third item for Room 101 is her bugbear, the phrase “Divide and Conquer” (30:40)
• Hannah challenges how social data is seen as either “everything or nothing” (33:30)
• Hannah explores the research value in social data, particularly around health-related questions (35:50)
• It is agreed that “Taboo Topics” should be banished to Room 101 (40:25)

About – Hannah Marcus:

Hannah is a cultural researcher and strategist with a deep expertise in the taboo sector and the ways embarrassing and the unspoken impact both individuals and society. Her work includes explorations and investigations into global health taboos, foundational narratives of incontinence, erectile dysfunction, menopausal experiences, and the language of vaginal pain conditions. Her work on unmet needs in women's health won her the MRS Health Award in 2020, and she continues to explore taboo and hard-to-discuss topics in her role as a trustee at Talking Taboos, which is a charity designed to highlight the impact and solutions of taboos that affect mental and physical health.

Relevant Links:

• Hannah Marcus – LinkedIn
• Talking Taboos - https://talkingtaboos.com/
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn
• Abigail Stuart – LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Deepa Shah, founder of Lab Eight and a senior leader with extensive experience working for high growth global businesses within technology, healthcare comms, market research/insights, and creative services. Deepa joins us on The Day One podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Deepa describes are: a lack of representation and the term “BAME”, the term “back office” to describe everyone who is not working in the front of the house, and the term “growth strategy”. Deepa provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “I wasn’t really learning anything new or feeling challenged enough, and I’m quite ambitious. I think that’s what I’m most proud of when I look back is being able to take that risk and taking the leap. I feel if I didn’t do it, I’d be regretting it.” (6:30)
• “And talking to people in your existing network, as well. Say, ‘Hey, you know, here’s what I’m doing now’ because they also have connections and networks, as well, who they might talk to and say, ‘Deepa’s doing so and so.’” (8:31)
• “Anyone who is not white is an underrepresented group in the industry, and what we should be focusing on is not ‘Oh, they’re black. They’re Asian.’ It’s about why is this such a problem. How are we tackling it? What are we doing different?” (15:42)
• “It’s still being run by white men who have been in the industry for many, many years. And until they start retiring and leaving, it’s going to take time to change, but the issue we’ve got is there’s no real succession for change.” (18:42)
• “It doesn’t make us feel valued. We’re really not that important because we’re not out there getting client work or client revenue or anything: ‘Oh, I’m just the cost of the business.’ Actually, you need to spin it on its head. Without finance, like finance operations, their business would not be running very well.” (24:00)
• “You’re just planning for the next phase of growth in your business and what does that look like, right? Obviously, there will be some aspects that do end up shrinking, but as a business and as a business owner and as a founder and as a CEO, why would you not be growing your business or planning to grow it?” (30:27)
• “Can we throw covid into Room 101?” (33:00)
• “Because people will not put us in boxes – people like me. We won’t be put in this box. You know that’s the ones who decided to call us this term. And people would just see us as normal human beings who need some support in getting into the industry and staying in the industry and actually treat us like everyone else is being treated. The opportunities around getting promoted, getting to the top, career progression should be the same for every single person irrespective of what they look like and who they are.” (35:00)

Key Topics: 

• Deepa reflects on her accomplishments and what she would have thought of her success if someone shared her career successes with her younger self (3:09)
• It worked in her favor that she never pursued investment banking (4:22)
• Most proud of her risk taking in January, 2020 when she left holding co (5:09)
• Advice for people who are too nervous to take the risk is to do planning, talking to people, doing research (7:09)
• Deepa advises to take the risk on trying something new (11:59)
• Shares the meta approach to funny stories (12:57)
• Her first pick for Room 101 is the lack of representation term BAME “Black, Asian, Minority, or Ethnic” (14:07)
• Further expands on underrepresented groups (15:36)
• Reflects on why this issue is so severe in the insights industry (18:30)
• Deepa speaks to the trend of women leaving as a result of covid, as well as leaving to start their own thing (20:32)
• Doesn’t think things will change in the industry in her lifetime (21:55)
• Deepa’s second choice for Room 101 is the term “back office” (23:04)
• She describes how it makes her and her team feel when people use the term “back office” (24:00)
• Expands on the value of the finance team to a business (25:03)
• Talks about finance teams keeping things going (26:20)
• Deepa’s third pick for Room 101 is the term “growth strategy” (27:58)
• She discusses the ulterior motive behind using “growth strategy” (29:39)
• Speaks to how the “growth strategy” is being labeled (30:22)
• Adds a few other ideas for Room 101 (32:53)
• Deepa decides to throw BAME into Room 101 (34:51)
• She describes how life will be better without the term (35:00)

About – Deepa Shah:

Deepa Shah is a senior leader with extensive experience working for high growth global businesses within technology, healthcare comms, market research/insights, and creative services. Spending much of her career working as a CFO in agencies in the major holding groups, including Omnicom Group Inc., and Publicis Groupe, Deepa now works as a CFO consultant for ambitious independent agencies from start-ups to £10M+ turnover.

Relevant Links:

• Deepa Shah - LinkedIn.
• Lab Eight - https://www.lab-eight.com/
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Elina Halonen, a behavioural insights strategist. Elina joins us on the Room 101 podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Elina describes are: the shiny, shiny syndrome, proprietary methods, and a lack of knowledge of the history of market research. Elina provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “After having worked in market research for 15 years, and I’ve been to dozens of industry conferences, presented at them, I’ve probably seen maybe 100 talks on the topics. I’m aware of the breadth of innovation in the industry. Yet, a couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast about data science and data science practitioners…They talked about surveys with a perception that it was 20 years ago.” (4:35)
• “Having been through a couple of downturns through working in the industry, I know that the first thing that goes every time is research. Every single time, it will be research that gets cut first. Advertising doesn’t. Research does. And that tells you that that’s really the lowest appreciation - that information feels like it’s not as necessary. It’s not as sexy as advertising.” (9:33)
• “Behavioral science and behavioral economics was a trending thing for a few years in conferences. And for a while, it seemed every conference had talks on that. Around that time…but the problem is every time you do a talk, you start from scratch. You’re doing the basics talk. The audience is always slightly different. And you can never get beyond groundhog day or actually talking about something more sophisticated.” (14:48)
• “The focus on proprietary and secrecy stops true innovation in our industry. I think that’s a cumulative problem. It is very difficult to, for example, to train yourself and develop your professional skills as a market researcher without spending a lot of money.” (23:21)
• “Imagine you’re a small agency, and a big agency copy what you do – a big agency with tens of millions in revenue – they have very different resources to put behind it and to market it and take it to a lot more clients faster than you can. So it’s not a fair game in that sense.” (26:07)
• “Some years ago, I did a talk at the Austrian Market Research Society Conference, and the theme was ‘Dangerous’ like dangerous ideas. I did a talk about WEIRD. It refers to 95% of the psychology research is based on WEIRD sciences samples – people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries.” (30:15)

Key Topics: 

• Elina tells her story of entering the insights industry (1:44)
• She discusses how market research has a bad reputation (4:17)
• Then talks about the vicious cycle as a result of not being properly compensated (8:52)
• Elina’s first pick for Room 101 is the shiny, shiny syndrome, especially at conferences (13:52)
• She expands on her first pick and talks about why the industry does this (16:52)
• Continues on whether clients really know the new innovations or they’ve only heard about it (20:19)
• Proprietary methods are her second pick for Room 101 (24:46)
• Elina acknowledges that some will copy ideas (25:48)
• Her last pick for Room 101 is a lack of understanding of insights history (29:54)
• Elina discusses what can be done to address the old methods and the outdated samples (33:08)
• She points out that because most people fall into market research accidentally, they are not aware of this history (36:38)
• Elina explains NFTs (39:32)
• Elina agrees with Hannah to banish the shiny, shiny syndrome to Room 101 (42:00)

About - Elina Halonen:

A Behavioural Insights Strategist, Elina helps companies use insights about human behaviour to design their strategy. She’s worked in consumer insights for 15 years, and 10 years of that as a behavioural science specialist. Her academic expertise is in consumer behaviour, linguistics and cultural psychology. Before becoming an independent consultant, she spent eight years as the co-founder of a London-based insights consultancy working with global brands on branding, communications, and product/service development projects. 

Relevant Links:

• Elina’s  LinkedIn.
• Square Peg Insight - Website
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Jane Bloomfield, CMO at Landor & Fitch. Jane joins us on the Room 101 podcast to share what things in the industry she’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. Jane's main pet peeves are: interviewers who ask “What’s it like to be a female board member?” and the like; the race to the bottom in research; and click-bait research and surveys. Jane provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it. 

Key Quotes:

• “I have no context for what it feels like to not be those things. I can’t say, ‘Oh, compared to being a male CMO or a senior male, it’s like this, right?’ They’re ridiculous questions.” (14:20)
• “It’s partly about calling out and saying, ‘I don’t know any different, so I can’t answer that.’ I think we just have to sort of remind people gently sometimes that’s not the best question to be asking – or what it is they are really trying to understand.“ (17:22)
• “The idea that research should constantly be cheaper, should be faster. Good research should cost money.” (22:00)
• “I don’t think they’re particularly harsh on research. I think it is happening everywhere, and partly, that is driven by undoubtedly what has been one of the biggest trends that we’ve all seen in our lifetime around digital and technology. But those are enablers in and of themselves. They don’t change the fundamentals.” (26:13)
• “It’s not always about being the cheapest. It’s about providing the best value for money. And I think this is why procurement asks you to split out your costs… If you can prove you have saved as much cost as you can in the areas where it’s possible, then you’re in a better position to say, ‘I don’t negotiate on that side of it because that’s the thinking, that’s the people.’” (28:30)
• “I get really furious when stats taken out of context just get chucked out there. You can see the headline ‘50% of People Think This’. Well, then, yes, but that means 50% don’t.”

Key Topics: 

• Jane tells a funny story about her early career and her passport. (9:10)
• Her first pick for Room 101: questions like “What does it feel like to be a female board member?” (14:14)
• She thinks the media asks questions such as these out of laziness. The questions are old-fashioned at this stage. (15:46)
• Jane advises others who are asked the same kind of question to call out the journalist asking. (17:18)
• A brief discussion about “relaxed wear” being here to stay. (20:42)
• The second pick for Room 101 is the race to the bottom for research: the quickest, cheapest route. (21:53)
• Expands on paying researchers for their expertise. (25:53)
• Discusses that this race to the bottom is not unique to research, but research is labour-intensive. (26:13)
• Recognizes that procurement is valuable. (28:06)
• Jane says insights teams tend to talk about technology with clients versus quality (30:40)
• Insights teams need to have better conversations with clients regarding aspects that genuinely matter to them. (32:23)
• Jane’s third pick for Room 101 is click-bait surveys and research. (35:52)
• It’s feasible to stop click-bait with the help of the media. (37:30)
• Jane agrees with Hannah that the race to the bottom should be banished to Room 101. (41:03)

About – Jane Bloomfield:

Jane Bloomfield is the Chief Marketing Officer at Landor & Fitch. Experienced marketing, business development, and insight executive with a proven track record of delivering profitable growth. Jane has experience working across FMCG, Financial Services, Charity, Retail, Travel, Entertainment, Tech and Alcohol sectors and is currently responsible for driving marketing, growth and commercial excellence at Landor & Fitch globally.

Relevant Links:

• Jane’s  LinkedIn.
• Landor & Fitch - Website
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.

Our guest on this episode is Jamie Unwin, Commercial Insight Officer at Nanoform. Jamie joins us on the Room 101 podcast to share what things in the industry he’d like to see banished to Room 101 forever. The main pet peeves Jamie describes are: one-way glass in central facilities, insights professionals who push back on assigning an ROI, and “intent to prescribe” as a metric. Jamie provides meaningful criticism during our conversation, and we hope you enjoy it.

Key Quotes:

• “I guess I went from researching at the bench in petri dishes to actually researching by calling people within the industry and people in the environment to understand how they react to the medicine.” (4:30)
• “The entire concept of having a uni-directional piece of glass to separate a sponsoring industry professional from a respondent is bonkers because it’s the ultimate elephant in the room. And I fundamentally think it constrains the quality of the insights we can get from in depths.” (8:16)
• “All of the reasons why we do central facilities is around the destressing and enabling people to focus. I’m a massive fan of observational research because you get that stress, you get the bias, you get the things you’re actually desiring out of the experiment when you bring people into a central facility. And that’s the good stuff.” (11:20)
• “Increasingly, all of us have to assign an ROI; otherwise, I don’t think that we’ll exist in 10 years. We have to show the value that we’re adding in line with the organization’s KPIs. “ (16:15)
• “That’s when you can go in and say, ‘You’ve been at this level for the last five years. You’re not planning any additional investment. We can come in and re-energize this by identifying three or four insight-driven flexion points in the prescriber journey. Let’s share the upside.’” (24:54)
• “That prescription decision is probably the most complex one that he has to make based on environmental considerations within the hospital, affordability, or access considerations, which might even be at the national level, the payer mentality, patient objections, compliance charges that might be perceived, the local constraints, system delivery – the ability to get the medicine to the patient and into the patient.” (25:50)
• “The people who reap the benefits of a system to do so are looking at investing in AI systems and machine-learning based systems internally are really reaping the benefits because they’re spending less money on IDIs. They’re having greater forecasting accuracy, which means they have better inventory management levels. They’re able to serve their market demand more quickly. They’re able to right-size their organizations because their forecast model is more accurate based on the demand that they’re expecting, and the ROI on that thing is an easy one to assign.” (29:25)

Key Topics: 

• Jamie describes what he is most proud of in his career (1:48)
• Jamie remembers how he got involved with market research (3:10)
• Jamie recollects a funny story from his time in the industry (5:33)
• The first item for Room 101 is one-way glass in central facilities (7:60)
• Jamie agrees with me that some forget about the glass after a while, but he says more often than not they actually speak to the glass (10:16)
• Jamie expands on the use of virtual interviews (11:12)
• Thinks virtual type of research is close to dead (12:47)
• Jamie shares another funny story about insights research (13:59)
• The second item for Room 101 is insights professionals who push back on assigning a return on investment (15:22)
• Describes how to measure the ROI (17:47)
• Jamie explains the effect measuring ROI would have on current insights practices (22:20)
• Jamie expands on how many insights organizations offer to do free work in exchange for an agreed-upon price if successful (24:13)
• The third item for Room 101 is ‘intent to prescribe’ as a metric (25:15)
• Jamie thinks the ‘intent to prescribe’ metric is simply habit and easy (27:32)
• Recommender-based systems are finding their way into the field (30:29)
• Jamie describes nano-targeting (31:55)
• Jamie discusses the role of UX along with data security, as well as ethics and compliance (33:33)
• Hannah and Jamie agree to put the ‘intent to prescribe’ metric into Room 101 (35:43)

About – Jamie Unwin:

Dr Jamie Unwin is the Commercial Insight Officer at Nanoform, an innovative nanoparticle medicine-enabling company where he helps clients understand the value that his services and solutions bring to their individual drug candidates, as well as to portfolios as a whole.  When he is not serving as a passionate advocate for patient centricity in new drug development, he is a visiting lecturer at Imperial College Business School in London where he teaches classes on advanced analytics in healthcare.

Relevant Links:

• Jamie’s LinkedIn.
• Nanoform - Website
• Day One - https://www.dayonestrategy.com/
• Hannah Mann - LinkedIn

The Day One podcast is published by the Day One Strategy and produced by Zorbiant.

All rights reserved.