Zappi's Connected Insights Imperative Report

Nataly Kelly (00:00:00):

Steve, I am thrilled to partner with you for this next chapter of Inside Insights. Before we start, let's tell everyone what they can expect from the new podcast.

Steve Phillips (00:00:10):

Sure. Yeah. So we've got some interesting things coming along. I think what you talked about before about the connectivity between insights and marketing is really the focus of what we're trying to do. And I think there's always—typically in the past it's been marketing needs something, insight goes and gets it. And I think now what we found is that, particularly in the age of AI, you've got data and you've got insight driving action, rather than just being a facilitator for it. So I think what we're trying to do with the podcast is get people to talk across that divide, talk about how they connect, how they can connect better in the future, and hopefully give people tips and tricks for that—for thinking about them and their organizations and making sure insight and marketing become genuinely best friends. Work together incredibly well.

Nataly Kelly (00:01:03):

That's what we're hoping for. Yes, absolutely. Less of the frenemy situation, more of the BFF situation.

Steve Phillips (00:01:10):

Exactly. Which is marketing and insights.

Nataly Kelly (00:01:13):

That's great. So I am very excited about that and bridging the gap, but I do want to talk about something that relates to this topic of bridging that gap between consumer insights and marketing and insights and marketing professionals and strategy. The 2025 Connected Insights Imperative Report, which I happen to have a copy of here.

Steve Phillips (00:01:34):

I have one too, Nat. Don't you worry.

Nataly Kelly (00:01:36):

Yay. Great minds think alike, Steve. So Steve and I were just in Chicago a couple weeks ago for the launch of this report at our Connected Insights conference and I was very excited about some of the findings and we're going to recap some of those today. Um, but one of the things that we found was that companies with connected insights are 24 percentage points more satisfied with their insights function. I am curious to hear your take, Steve. Why do you think connectedness makes that type of impact?

Steve Phillips (00:02:07):

I think it's—you go back to some of the history of consumer insights and it has been naturally disconnected and it's been very project-based, it's been very siloed, and I think that creates some discontent on both sides, to be honest. So the insight people have always wished they were there at the beginning of the project, not the end, just to test something, you know. So that old adage about a lot of companies use insight like a drunk uses a lamppost—more for support than illumination. And the idea is that too often companies sort of had a stage-gate: "Oh, I have to get some insight at this point in time. Okay, I'll reluctantly go off and talk to the insight people," and the insight people would then do a project for them. And I think what's happening now, what we're seeing now in more organizations, and some of our customers—particularly our clients that are more connected—is that they're an integral part of that team.

So, if they're doing a piece of innovation, if they're doing a new communications campaign, instead of being brought in to test something, they're there at the beginning designing what that should be—thinking about the brief, thinking about the first stage of creative build, thinking about the execution of the whole campaign. And that interconnectedness means the whole project becomes more consumer-centered. It becomes more about making something—a great product, a great comms campaign—that is really what the consumer is looking for.

Nataly Kelly (00:03:33):

Yes, and having the insights professionals and insights leaders really integrated with the marketing team at every step enables those insights to come across in a more continuous and consecutive ongoing way, instead of being downstream in the process where there's minimal chance to make an impact on strategy. And that's where I really see so much hope for the future of insights teams to really help inform marketing strategies. And you, as a marketer now—obviously, I, you know, I've always been in insight from a marketing perspective. Surely you've always wanted data and insight to be at the heart of the decision-making processSteve Phillips (00:04:08):

Absolutely. And what's frustrating, I think, from the marketing perspective is that we have many, many sources of data and we look at data all the time. We look at data in our marketing automation tools and our social media listening tools and all these different sources. But the consumer insights data tends to be often a silo outside of all those other tools and not integrated. So. So what I love at Zappy—you know, we're obviously a different type of company than most of our customers—is I actually have the ability to use consumer insights to test things like even our swag at a trade show, even.

Nataly Kelly (00:04:43):

You know, and it's very good, it's got to be said.

Steve Phillips (00:04:46):

Yeah, it is very good. But that's because we tested it with consumers and we knew it would be good before we spent a penny on it. And so that is really, I think, enabling us to leverage insights in a way that is accessible and ongoing. And you know, I would also say accumulating—because we build on the knowledge that we're learning, just like we talk to our customers about.

Nataly Kelly (00:05:10):

And I am excited about more companies being able to do that. I think it's easier on a smaller team. When you're in a huge organization where you've got all these business units, each with separate siloed marketing teams in local markets and across business units, that's when it gets hard. Because it's not just the insights team that needs to be more integrated. Sometimes it's the different functions and geographies and all of those things that are separating them too.

Steve Phillips (00:05:34):

Absolutely. But that's also where technology can help. So, and as you think about the other types of data you were talking about that you would get as a CMO—and that might be social media data, Google Analytics, sales data, all of this clickstream data that would be streaming into you in your position as CMO, but also the brand manager, also, you know, any, any team member. And I think that's where consumer insight too often has gone wrong.

We haven't been using technology to stream consumer insight. Instead we've been delivering it in a presentation or a PowerPoint report. And I think increasingly, as technology advances and you have the ability to do things like meta analytics across your entire data set, you can genuinely stream insight. And that's really where we'd like to go.

Nataly Kelly (00:06:23):

Oh, absolutely. That is the future. And I'm excited about the organizational transformation that it will lead to. And that brings us to this data fragmentation issue, I think, that someone once told me about. I think it's Conway's law, where the systems that you design tend to be a reflection of the organizational structure. And I think it's very interesting because a lot of it, you can solve a technology, as you said, and it can be a force of alignment.

If you get people to align around the data, it helps them come together and break down those organizational silos as well. So it's really interesting to me how the two things kind of need to happen together.

Steve Phillips (00:07:01):

Yeah. And I think also, going back to the technology side, increasingly the technology can help with that data fragmentation. So when you, when you looked at align—and you come from a HubSpot background, right—so you, you think about the data alignment in large organizations and it's complicated. I mean, so it would be conversations we'd have with clients about, you know, streaming data in through an API into their data management platform or whatever. Three, four years ago, that was a 12-year project.

Nataly Kelly (00:07:31):

Right.

Steve Phillips (00:07:32):

I mean, it was a really difficult task to align that data. And so of course you had all this fragmentation, but increasingly now with AI, and particularly with agents, it is enabling that data to be aligned at least at a—not just a service level, but at a depth of insight. And you can do it in hours or days instead of months and years. So it's a really exciting time to be in insight and to be thinking about embedding insight into the organization. Because people always want to know what their consumers are likely to think about whatever it is they're developing.

I mean, you'd be crazy not to want to have their opinions involved. And now we can put the opinions—their ideas and their thoughts and their beliefs—right at the heart of the decision-making process.

Nataly Kelly (00:08:23):

Yes, and especially if the data is centralized, you know, all the—what we talk about is the why data. You know, you've got the what data. What are they clicking on? Like what are they, how are they reacting to some of these things? But the why data is the deeper level of human insight, which I believe is actually the most valuable of all, because you can take any of that data that's captured automatically—the what data—and apply AI on top of it to analyze the trends, which used to be the work of many, many data analysts. And now they can focus on other work too, that's higher, higher value for humans. But I think the real value of the consumer insights is it goes way beyond that and enables you to understand what, what's behind the what data so that you can actually change your strategy.

And that's, to me, the highest level of human intelligence will be unlocked thanks to artificial intelligence being able to do more with the what data and connect it to the why data. So it's, to me, a very exciting time to be in consumer insights and marketing.

Steve Phillips (00:09:25):

Yeah, I always go back to taxi story. I love taxi stories. So I was getting a taxi in San Francisco and it was a guy from Jordan. So a guy from the Middle East was driving me and we started chatting about his background. And of course he knows I'm English so he starts talking to me about football. Of course he does. I don't know that much about football, as you'll probably gather from this story, but I start, I. He asked who I supported and I asked him who he supported and he supported Real Madrid.

It was either Real Madrid or Barcelona, I can't remember which one. And, and I said, oh, that's interesting. You're from Jordan, why would you support Real Madrid? And he said, oh, well, it's because of Ronaldo. And I, I love Ronaldo. I had the same sort of life. I came from a single mother. I was really poor. But I've, you know, I see his grit, his work commitment, and I come out there and, and I've really made an effort to, to do something with my life just the way Ronaldo does. And I thought about that from a marketing perspective, because you can imagine a marketeer would know that that person supported Real Madrid.

So when you were doing an ad, you might put a Real Madrid sticker in the background, but that's not what really matters. That was—is not what would motivate him. If you had Ronaldo at a school in the Middle East, that's what would—the motivation was. And so without, without the understanding of, of the what, you you really miss out as marketers. And I think that's the beauty of consumer insight. You can really give you some creative leverage to make something that really, really, really touches the heart of your consumer.

Nataly Kelly (00:11:09):

Wow. That's such a great anecdote. And it reminds me of a topic that our listeners will hear about with the NFL interview that we just did with Marissa Solis, coming up soon on a future episode this season of the podcast. Sports marketers are capturing a lot of great data and I think are kind of at the forefront of some of these connections that you just described, because they're looking at, okay, why, you know, this person is a fan of this, but they also happen to date someone who is a fan of Taylor Swift, and they'll bring them to the American football game, in the case of Taylor Swift and her, you know, very famous fiancé. And then, you know, but what types of food do they eat and where do they shop? And all of this different data and what are the trends that they're following, who do they engage with on social media and who are the influencers that they like.

All of that data gives you such a clear picture together. But then the consumer insight studies and that data connecting, that is where the real power is, because you start to round up the picture, fill in the gaps. And it's just so exciting to think what we'll be able to do as marketers to reach people in ways that are relevant and that actually resonate versus blasting the same ad to the same, you know, audience without knowing if it's going to resonate. So the predictive value, I think, is going to be huge going forward.

Steve Phillips (00:12:30):

Yeah. And that reminds me of another of episodes with the global head of insight from Visa and to him talking about trends data, because obviously they have all of this wonderful transaction data so they can see what is happening—they can see whether, what types of cruises people are doing, where they're changing the type of cruise, when they're on the cruise. And so we talked about in the travel industry trying to understand those trends.

And obviously it's a, it's a fast-moving industry and so fascinating to see coming from that transactional data to start, start understanding the motivations and the beliefs and the behaviors of people when, when they're on, on holiday mode.

Nataly Kelly (00:13:13):

Wow, that's so fascinating. It makes me think they probably have a better picture of myself than I do. I sometimes don't realize—really I spent that much on it. You know, like they probably, you know, know more than I do about my own preferences. So, so that's so interesting. Wow. So I know there's lots of great data to dig into in this report and many, many other things that we might want to share with our listeners.

One of them is we, you know, mentioned at the start data fragmentation. And I know 41% of respondents said that that is the single biggest barrier to impact. But, you know, what do you think fragmentation really looks like on the ground? Um, do you have some thoughts to share on that, Steve?

Steve Phillips (00:13:57):

Yeah, it, it's very much because people are going about getting insight in a reactive way. So what happens is that you as a marketer would have a question. You know, I've, I've got a new, a new idea for an ad campaign. I want to find out whether people would like it. So you go and talk to someone about it. You get some, get them to get some data.

And that data answers that business question today. And then it gets thrown on a shelf or it gets thrown away and it's literally just tossed away once it's answered one business question. So it will sit in some data asset somewhere. It might be in an Excel spreadsheet or in a PowerPoint file, but no one is thinking proactively about combining all of this data, so defragmenting it or having a system where it wouldn't be fragmented. So instead of, you know, anyone can go out and say, say, okay, I've got a great new ad campaign.

Will this work for young men in Thailand? But if you have been collecting that data in a systematic, structured way for the last five years, you can instead ask the question, what type of advertising works for young men in Thailand? So then you can start, once it's not fragmented, once it's in one place, you can start proactively answering questions right up front. You can help inform the brief and inform the creative rather than test it at the end.

But until you sit down and say, right, I'm going to make an effort to properly structure and manage my insights rather than react and become an order taker—what we talk about with several of our clients, becoming a strategic partner. And to be a strategic partner, you have to have a strategic view of consumer insights and how you manage it and where you store the data and where you think about it and how you think about combining it.

Nataly Kelly (00:15:43):

Yeah. You know, it strikes me as you're describing that situation that we know is so common for so many of our customers. As a marketer, I have a lot of empathy for the marketers that the consumer insights teams are partnering with because they can't get the data fast enough. And I think the fragmentation blocker is what people are realizing is the next area that they need to focus on in order to leverage AI properly. Because they realize, oh, we would love to leverage this and build an agent around it, but the data's not even structured properly and it's not connecting to this data source. And like I, I can think of so many examples where marketers are being pressured by, you know, CEOs—no offense—and investors to like, you know, hit the numbers, get the campaigns out, support the pipeline, make sure sales are where they need to be. But there's no time to go and get the insights that you might need to make a campaign better because you've just got to get it out the door so fast.

And so where marketers are often was budget is in that they can't connect the dots internally at their organizations and capture that to weave it into a campaign fast enough. Because a lot of these campaigns take time to build, especially to develop like video assets and creative. You know, you have a storyboard, you have a script, you invest all this time and money, and then later you, you know, and, and the consumer can be very fickle. Like one minute they love something, the next day, don't. So like, if you're working on like a Super Bowl ad and you can't, it's not.

I think the point I'm trying to make is it's not just about the data being fragmented. It's about the access to the data being limited and not just in time when you need it. And the feed, like you were talking about, the streaming feed of that consumer insights data is what I feel is needed for marketers—because otherwise it doesn't matter, even if it's not fragmented, if they can't get it fast enough.

Steve Phillips (00:17:20):

Yeah, I know, but I think unfragmenting it is what's going to help. That's absolutely right. And you look at our Connected Insight framework and that's exactly the journey we're trying to help people on is moving from that pure fragmentation. And of course on a Tuesday morning there's a demand for insight. There just is. That's how business works. But you have to be able to spend some time thinking and structuring a system.

You have to proactively decide as an insights team and, or a marketing marketing team together that you're going to invest some time and effort and money in creating a system that will enable you, once it's set up and ready, to genuinely have streamed, democratic, full access to insight. So it is work, there's no question about it. And that's why—that's what we wrote the book really about, was Pet's journey on that process to digitizing their insight department. But the ROI at Vaulted—it is huge. I mean, you've seen our Forrester TEI report.

Nataly Kelly (00:18:22):

You know, it's something like a 243% ROI of investing in this type of system. And so it's really worthwhile if—people really should engage with them. Definitely, definitely. It has so much value. I was just thinking about the data fragmentation issue and I was reminded of something.

At HubSpot, I worked on a little project with our data and ops team and as I was hearing you speak, I remembered, oh yeah, I remember this one. We had like 20 different data sources all with a different version of one field. And it was—

Steve Phillips (00:18:52):

Welcome to my nightmare.

Nataly Kelly (00:18:53):

It was UK, because it said United States Kingdom, capital U United, capital Kingdom, lowercase United Kingdom, The United Kingdom, United Kingdom comma The, Great Britain, U K, Great Britain, GB. There were all these variations of it, and I was like, oh my God, how do we homogenize this data in—because that was just from marketing campaign sources alone. That was not even, like, that was just things that were feeding into my marketing automation platform. And, and so I had to pay engineers to write code that would say if it's called this, restamp it to say United Space Kingdom, both caps, like each in each case. So it would be consistent in my underlying database.

But I had to then run a script to do that every month to re, you know, basically update all of the wrong United Kingdoms, because I can't, you know, I can't get all these other third parties, you know, to do what I want. So we saw in the, in the Connected Insights report that we've just done, that I think it's 41% of companies are investing more in AI and data analytics. And I think this is one of the areas that's really interesting—that at the same time, so you have that on the one hand, and you have also seen the MIT report that came out last week that was suggesting that 95% of pilots of AI projects within organizations were failing. And I think there's two things to that. One is AI can answer the type of question you were talking about in terms of connecting that data.

It can work out all of those UK, Great Britain, UK, United Kingdom, etc. It's very good at some of that stuff, particularly when it's trained. But also we're at an early stage of this. So of course there are a lot of pilots, and that's okay. And pilots are supposed to fail, right?

Steve Phillips (00:20:34):

I mean, if, if all your pilots, all your pilots pass, you're probably not being experimental enough. You're probably not taking as many risks as you need. So I think we're at this stage where finally the promise of doing what you wanted as a marketer is available. We can genuinely solve the problems. We can genuinely get streaming insights into the hands of people.

And it is that combination of connected insights aligned with AI that really will take us to, effectively, the marketing promised land of understanding and being able to access what people are thinking at any time. So you can make smart decisions.

Nataly Kelly (00:21:10):

Yes. You know, I love that you mentioned that MIT study, because when I first heard about that, I had the same reaction as you. I was like, well, of course people are failing because they're learning, like, that's how you learn. And what—let's look at the 5% that succeeded. What can we learn from them too? And also, what do we learn from the 95% that failed?

It reminds me a lot of the things we're going through with AI adoption. It reminds me of the early days of the web where people are like, oh, we have a dot com now. Like, aren't we great? And everybody's like, oh, we use AI now. Aren't we great?

Okay, well, that's like the beginning of the process. And then 95% of websites probably didn't have a CTA back then to enable anybody to even get in contact with the right person. Did you know, was their Contact Us form even working? Like, a lot of that stuff was probably failing until they learned. And there's still, frankly, a lot of bad websites out there.

Steve Phillips (00:22:05):

There's still going to be a lot of failed AI projects in the future, but it's all about that learning and integrating. So I appreciate that you mentioned that, Steve. One of the other findings that came through, which I'd really like your opinion on, is that only 23% of companies have a dedicated insights department. And we, we see this all the time in our clients.

Sometimes they're doing the corporate reorganization. So sometimes there's a centralized team, sometimes decentralized, sometimes they're sitting in the individual team, individual marketing team. Sometimes they're, they're aligned as insight people. What, what do you see as the implications of that? Is there any best advice you have from a marketing perspective of would you prefer a separate Insight team or do you want them, the people as part of your team?

How do you feel about it?

Nataly Kelly (00:22:46):

Well, I think I would love for them to all be using the same technology so that I could have access to what I mean, and realistically so, if I were the CEO of a company and I had a new geo, a new geography or a new business unit, and my—I was thinking, okay, I have a marketer and they need an insights person, where am I going to put them? I'm going to put them close to the marketer. I want to put them in the market too, because I want them to be close to the customer and I want them to understand the nuance and I want them to understand the marketer. Am I going to say they need to have a dotted line into the Insights team?

For sure, but would I say they need to report into that insights team? That's another question that I'm not sure because I don't want to slow things down. I don't want to slow down progress and I certainly don't want to create more distance between the team that needs to work the most closely together. So it's an interesting question from an org structure perspective. And I'm sure everyone listening who's on an insights team feels it would be better in many ways to have centralization.

But I don't think you can always do that through org structure. I think the fastest way to do it is centralizing people around a common platform. It's just like in the days of the, you know, the early days of a CRM, which ironically is called a customer relationship management platform, and you don't actually really use it for that. You know, if anything, I think consumer insights platforms are probably more related to customer relationship management. But you know, for me, like if you go back to the early days of a CRM, a lot of salespeople would have their customer contacts, like, on their cell phone or on their hard drive, and they didn't want to put them in because they wanted control over them and they wanted to have them.

And they felt like, well, what's the value going to be? And it's the same thing with Insights. If we can get consumer insights into a central platform, then we can learn from everyone and everybody, and we have the ability to really do much more as marketers. Just like when CRM started to have more contacts. And then we can start to track, like, how many contacts on this account, how many and how are they moving, what are they doing? Same exact thing.

But you can't. Like today, I think most businesses would have a hard time imagining themselves without a CRM. I think in the future it will be the same. We still have that problem where, you know, sometimes salespeople will hoard their contacts and won't put them in a CRM, but it's progressed. And I think the same thing will be the case with consumer insights.

There will still be these little pockets and silos, and it will have to be somebody's job to continually push those into a central system of record where the CMO can see everything. And I think frankly, the CMO will need to lead the charge there to make sure that people understand the value of it. But the CEO will need to play a part there too. It can't just be the CMO. It'll probably be chief data officer, maybe the CFO, maybe—because the value is there, as you mentioned from our Forrester Total Economic Impact Study.

So, yeah, I think, I know it's a long answer to a short question, but I think that the value is definitely there of having insights centralized. I'm not sure org structure is always the, the easiest way to do it. I think centralizing around a platform is the easiest way.

Steve Phillips (00:25:17):

Yeah, I think that's right. And, and I mean, it's, it's an, it's been an eternal issue in the insights industry for years—centralized, decentralized. Obviously the advantage of decentralized is you're working within a brand, you have that brand in mind, you're absolutely focused on delivering results for that brand and improving that brand. But it means you're probably more reactive. Whereas if you're in a global team, a separate insight function, you can probably be more strategic and proactive about insights as a capability.

And so it's probably a combination of the two, because both of them are really valuable. Both of them are important, really important for success for companies. But yeah, so it's probably a combination with them, I guess.

Nataly Kelly (00:25:57):

I think so. And you know, in our Connected Insights framework we talk about how the more mature organizations move to that. But I can say that having worked in a function that had a similar challenge, if you're in one of these big companies, they're constantly acquiring new brands, acquiring new businesses. And so it's not enough to just centralize once; you constantly have to then pull those in, pull in the new. And so it's like an ongoing effort to continually centralize around the platform and around the same data, you know, data, you know, data sources, I think. But yeah, it is the best practice. Yeah.

Steve Phillips (00:26:34):

And actually one of the positions you didn't mention just now was the CTO or the technology teams, the IT. And increasingly I'm finding that to, to properly connect these insights and to, to connect the data streams, you need to include IT in that. IT is full of very smart people, a lot of them developers, like the people at Zappy. So we gel with them pretty well—of course, to get up the priority. They, they're sitting on a backlog like everyone else, you know, what, what are they going to prioritize?

So that's where I think people like the CEO, CMO come in to really say this is the vision: We have Connected Insights streaming insight to everyone within the organization. We want every decision to effectively have a customer or a customer insight at the heart of that decision. Maybe not at the heart sometimes, maybe, but always, always there, always being available to help make those decisions better. And I think it definitely plays a role. And I think the CEO, CMO play a role of making clear that that vision is really important. That you know, every CEO analyst report or you know, end of year report, the CEO will always get up and say, oh, you know, we're a consumer-focused business, we care really about our customers and that's what our focus is.

And this is one of the ways of genuinely proving that—is of genuinely taking customer input and making it in the heart of your decision-making system. So I think it's really important that we engage with and work with the IT department. But with the support and the belief and the vision coming from the CEO and the CMO.

Nataly Kelly (00:27:58):

Yeah, it's so interesting. You know, the CTO used to have, there was a time in the MarTech space, in marketing technology, where the CTO had the majority of budgetary authority over spend, and then it shifted to the CMO. And recently I saw a report saying it's shifting back to the CTO. But your point is so interesting because you know, who's in charge of making sure that the consumer is really at the center of decision-making? Who on the executive team, like, whose job is that? You know, some companies do have like a chief customer officer, like we do at Zappy. Some companies do have like, obviously a chief brand officer. But when you ask yourself what's most important, if the consumer really is the most important thing, where are they?

Where are they represented on the executive team? At most companies, they're not—and not in their titles, anyway. So it means it's a responsibility of the CEO and the entire executive team to rally. And at this point I don't think there's a single C-level role that we haven't mentioned of the most traditional ones. So yeah, it's like all of their jobs.

Steve Phillips (00:28:55):

And that's actually what we talk about in the report. So in our beautifully printed here reporting, if anyone wants a copy, please get in touch with us. I think, you know, it's interesting because we do have a lot of implications for C-level executives, CEOs. And last year we talked a little bit about getting the CMO involved and getting marketers more involved, but this year we're talking in the report a lot more about getting the P&L owners and the brand managers and the CEO and like the entire executive team involved and making this case together. Because it really will take that to get consumer insights more squarely on the radar to where it can be more strategic.

Nataly Kelly (00:29:29):

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm a fan of Jeff Bezos and his shareholder letters. And there was one of his great letters, and this is probably six or seven years ago, where he talked about having an empty chair in every Amazon meeting room. So if you go into an Amazon office, you go and there's always one chair that you're not allowed to sit in. And that chair is supposed to represent the customer so that whatever decision is being discussed in that meeting room, you know, are you going to put a, a new warehouse here or there?

Are you—what are you going to do with the price packaging? What are you going to do with, you know, add-on features, whatever it might be—that you at least glance over at the chair and think, oh, I wonder what the customer would think. And my view is that what the insight industry has to do is be that chair. So we should have a streaming insight so that they can say, oh, you know, where should we put the warehouse? Or about this feature?

And immediately we can give them advice about how consumers would feel about it, how they would react to it, whether they would want it, why they would want it so that they can design it—they make the smart decision, but also design that feature, function, delivery system, whatever it is, in a consumer-centered way.

Steve Phillips (00:30:35):

Yeah. And you know, I think that that's a great point. And the point is the chair doesn't have to be empty anymore.

Nataly Kelly (00:30:40):

No, exactly. And they can tell you what the consumer says. It's like all this speculation, wonder what the customer might think. We don't have to wonder, we can just ask. I can tell you right now. So let's fill the chair.

Steve Phillips (00:30:52):

And it's got a name—Consumer Insights.

Nataly Kelly (00:30:55):

Wow. So we've talked about a lot of the different topics in the report. I did want to mention one other topic, Steve. You know, we noticed last year that companies were just starting to do more with AI. And this year we saw that data fragmentation was the number one blocker. I suspect that's because people are trying to do more with AI in part, but also a lot of them are now hiring for dedicated roles, as we found in our study for AI. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was, you know, this finding that we, we got a sense of last year, but an even stronger sense of this year that the consumer insights teams are really the ones that pushing the envelope on AI. And it was reflected last year, it was reflected even more strongly this year.

The data says that they are more likely than marketers to already be leading the charge on AI. And so I wondered if you could share your thoughts on that, because I thought it was interesting—now two years in a row that we found the same thing. How can consumer insights leaders really use this data point to help the marketers understand, hey, we're over here, we're a great source of help. If your CEO is pressuring you to do more with AI, look at us, we know a lot about it now.

Steve Phillips (00:31:57):

Yeah, there's a lot of examples of this. The AMA did a study a couple of years ago which suggested exactly the same thing. And I think there's a reason behind it. So consumer insights people have always been good with data. We've always understood not just individual data stream, but multiple different data streams, whether it's qual or quantitative, qualitative or quantitative, whether it's focus groups, depth interviews, ethnography, or, you know, a UNA study or a brand tracking survey. We've always gone into a presentation and said, you know, I heard this over here and this over here and I've got this number to back up these things, these open-ended questions that people have responded to.

So we have the type of skill sets which naturally wants to combine data and naturally wants to elevate the meaning and the insight that you get from that data. And so I think we naturally will adopt, and have been adopting AI because it, it aligns with us, our—with our thinking, and we can use it really well because we have the data.

I think the, the great examples we've seen with clients like Tony at Heineken or Elaine at Reckitt are where they've gone a step further and they've said, right, now that we've started implementing AI, I'm going to help my organization lead the way in AI and make AI consumer insight that the AI is based on become a genuine competitive advantage—not for this one brand or one study, but for the entire organization. And I think it's such an exciting time to be in consumer insights because the AI revolution enables us to maximize all the brilliant things that we've always done and do them a so much quicker. So it's a really great enabler for us and a great opportunity for us as an industry to really lead the way with our businesses.

Consumer insights, as you know, has also suffered a little bit from a sort of, a bit of a lack of ambition. In some ways we can be a bit, you know, the geeks in the back room are not wanting to be front and center, and that's always been true about us and that's okay. But there are people within the industry who are leading and I really hope that we get the opportunity, as we have in this podcast, to champion some of those people and to make it clear that to the rest of the consumer insight industry, we can lead.

Nataly Kelly (00:33:51):

Yes, it's so important. And also I think a big part of this is building the right relationships internally and, you know, for coming from this as a marketer, but also having led a function that's similar to insights localization, where it's a lot of people who are looking at data, very nerdy, technical, you know, kind of introverted, you know, tend to be on that side of the spectrum and also, you know, more likely to be comfortable in front of a screen than in front of a room of people presenting. You know, what I always found was the more bridges we could build with our partners and the marketing team, the more successful we were. And it's a skill that I think is really important at this juncture for insights teams to have is reaching across the aisle, being proactive, going to lunch with that person, even if you don't really like the sound of their annoying laugh and finding friends and making friends with them. It's like we talked about at the start—turning from frenemies to BFFs. I really think that's a big part of it.

Because if they can only see the power that the insights team can unlock, marketers will be all over that. They just might not know.

Steve Phillips (00:34:54):

Yes.

Nataly Kelly (00:34:55):

Yeah, absolutely. And so how do we get the insights teams more on the radar? It's hopefully through our podcast and other things we do to lift up consumer insights professionals. Get them speaking engagements, get them time in the spotlight, but also it requires reaching across the aisle and one-to-one relationship building. And I really know that the people like Elaine and Tony that you mentioned and Stefan at PepsiCo and others, Kate, you know, they've done that, they've built those relationships. And that's a big part of the secret here. We won't get to a place where we have overcome data fragmentation unless we build the human relationships along the way.

Steve Phillips (00:35:33):

Very true, very true.

Nataly Kelly (00:35:35):

Yeah. Wow. Well, we've covered quite a bit. I do have a few more questions and things I'd love to discuss with you, Steve. So we have what we call a lightning round on the show.

So let's shift gears into our lightning round. These will be quicker questions and quicker answers. So now I'm ready to go.

Steve Phillips (00:35:53):

I'm answering some—I'm asking some of these as well, right, Nat?

Nataly Kelly (00:35:55):

I think. Oh, I think so, yeah. Okay, so I'll ask you one and then you can ask me one and we'll take parents. Okay, so first question, Steve. Where will AI play the biggest role for researchers in 2026?

Steve Phillips (00:36:09):

I think in 2026 in particularly synthetic is going to be probably the key area because it enables us to answer so many more questions. It's not replacement for what we do now, but it's an extension of what we do now. So instead of, you know, testing one of your pieces of communications, you can test all of them. So it's a really exciting area to enhance the capabilities that we have now and answer many more business questions.

Nataly Kelly (00:36:30):

What about in 2030?

Steve Phillips (00:36:32):

Yeah, there's no way of projecting out that far right now. People used to ask, you know, what's your five-year plan for the business? And I'd always say, oh, well, I thought about five years. Now two years is almost as far as you can go. I think even two months with AI.

Nataly Kelly (00:36:44):

So, Natalie, in one sentence, what separates order taker, insight teams and true strategic partners in your mind?

Nataly Kelly (00:36:51):

I think it's the strength of the relationships, the strength of the relationships between the insights team members and their marketing partners and other partners throughout the business. I think it's related to the trust and strength of those relationships.

Steve Phillips (00:37:05):

Can I ask you a quick follow-on to that? Again, having you been from a marketing perspective, what should insight teams do to strengthen that? What can they do to proactively become genuine business partners to marketing?

Nataly Kelly (00:37:19):

I think they should treat the marketers with the same curiosity they treat consumers.

Steve Phillips (00:37:23):

It's a great answer.

Nataly Kelly (00:37:24):

I really do. I think having some curiosity to understand the marketing world. It's interesting to me how many consumer insights professionals I speak with will quickly tell me, like, oh, well, I'm not from your world. I'm not from marketing. I'm from insights. I'm like, well, they're kind of connected, so you are my world. But I think just it's not such a foreign language that marketers are. It's not that you can't be bilingual. And in fact, a lot of great people who spoke Insights, you know, so to speak. I'm a language person, so I always use the analogy. Forgive me, but a lot of some of the greatest CMOs actually have a consumer insights background. I mean, you look at one of our board members, Marcy Schinder, who, you know, is a very renowned CMO and has been, you know, global CMO at WeWork and Nielsen, and, you know, she has insights in her background. And I know many CMOs who came from that world. So I would say for insights teams to be curious about what they can learn from their marketing teams, to really understand their world. Because the more empathy you have for any stakeholder, the faster that relationship will build. And that way you can orient it around the goal that they are trying to hit. Because keep in mind, marketers are under extreme pressure. They have business metrics to hit. It's important that their insights partners really understand their reality. Because I know there's this friction between marketers and insights teams where it's like the insights teams feel like, oh, they just want somebody to rubber stamp what they're doing. Well, there's a reason for that. It's because they've already paid money and they're accountable to their CEO to make that money worth something and to their investors. And so it's not that they just want to rubber stamp. They just need to get the campaign out the door to deliver some business value. And so anything that blocks them from that is viewed as a threat and a risk. So I do think having greater proximity to the marketers will help insights leaders really understand their partners and build a stronger partnership. So that is my long-winded answer, Steve.

Steve Phillips (00:39:29):

Yeah, it's great advice. That's great advice. Thank you. So I have a question for you now. If you could make one organizational change tomorrow to improve Connected Insights, what would it be?

Nataly Kelly (00:39:40):

I think you have to put a team on it. So I would say—and I don't really mind where it is, but I would ideally have a cross-functional team. So I would say to any organization, if you can put someone from marketing and a couple of people from insight, maybe one person from technology and give them the job of creating a Connected Insights framework and that team can kick off, can write the vision, can start looking at what technologies to use, look at how to create and so some form of cross-functional, a small cross-functional team to at least scope the project. And it's so much quicker and easier than it was three, four, five years ago to do this. So I would get on with it right now.

Steve Phillips (00:40:21):

It's great that you mentioned cross-functional because that's precisely what we're talking about with all the different leaders on the executive team being involved. I think the cross-functional aspect is key for sure. And Nat, so going back to our Connected Insights imperative report, what's one of the most surprising stats you had from this year's report?

Nataly Kelly (00:40:38):

So one of the things that surprised me the most was how big of an impact that Connected Insights actually makes on the relationship satisfaction between the marketing and the insights team. We're just talking about how to build that. I don't know why my answer wasn't to do Connected Insights. Like, that's the number one thing you can do, because—but it's not easy to just do Connected Insights. It takes time, it takes years, it takes intention. But I do think that's another value add. And I think if you think about organizationally, who faces the friction when the insights team doesn't get along with the marketing team, it usually bubbles up to someone above them. And so I would say any P&L owner or CEO, you know it's going to benefit them to have less friction in their organization if they don't have to constantly take time away from other strategic things to solve ridiculous problems between two teams not getting along. So the fact is connecting your data, connecting your consumer insights in a centralized platform, a system of record, is going to help drive harmony and make your work life more enjoyable. Like who doesn't want that? That was a surprising finding for me because we think about data all the time, we think about technology all the time in our line of work here at Zappi. But the harmony of the relationships internally is actually a big point of friction that slows businesses down and can actually tank a business if they're not careful. So reducing the infighting, enabling humans to get along better. Who would have thought that that is one of the findings? You know, I think it's a surprising finding to me. So, yeah.

Steve Phillips (00:41:57):

Very much so. Yeah.

Nataly Kelly (00:41:59):

Okay, so I have another one for you, Steve. So finish this sentence: In 2026, insights leaders will succeed if they...

Steve Phillips (00:42:08):

…play. So I think this is with my AI hat on. You just have to be experimenting. You have to be playing. And I think we're in such an amazing situation. We have such great insight and great data and understanding, and we can, you know, we can genuinely add to the competitive advantage our customers have, our companies have, but only if we really understand the power of these models. And the only way to do that is to go out and play. So just experiment. Just try these things. And I'm playing with them all the time, trying to build new agents, trying to experiment with what they know and what they can do and what advice they can give and how you can give them data and get feedback from them. So play is my piece of advice.

Nataly Kelly (00:42:49):

I love that. And I would also suggest, to build on that, which is if you're an insights professional and you are doing experiments and playing with AI, share what you've learned with your marketing counterparts, like, get them on their radar and encourage them to play with you.

Steve Phillips (00:43:02):

Back to frenemies, to BFFs. How do you get somebody to do—to build that relationship? Have a good experience with them, work on something together, play with something together with AI. I think it will help drive experimentation that's not just in one silo, but across, you know, across that divide.

Nataly Kelly (00:43:19):

So absolutely great. Okay, well, that wraps up this episode of the Inside Insights podcast. Steve, it has been great to kick off the season with you. I will say, though, I much prefer sitting next to you at dinner, because we both—and we always order, like, all the vegetarian dishes and then we get to try all of them.

But if you'd like to contact either Steve or myself, you can find links to our LinkedIn profiles in our show notes at insideinsightspod.com. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a regular stream of research and insights knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or follow us on YouTube. Okay, that's all for today, everyone. Thank you so much.

Steve Phillips (00:44:00):

Thanks.