It was 5 pm on a Wednesday. Vegas was doing what Vegas does best – entertaining millions. The Mirage Hotel, host to this year’s TMRE conference, was trying its best to keep up with insights professionals and their myriad of questions; like why did no one think of bicycles with ice-cream carts before? Or would a collage of attendee pictures actually add up to an insightful graphic? Meanwhile, in the sessions, my fellow speakers at TMRE were doing a good job addressing larger, more pressing topics like predictive analytics, CX, and the use and value of biometrics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality in research.
In the conference room at the event, as I stared into the faces of talented and experienced insights professionals, I had my own questions: first, what good old-fashioned dedication to skip what Vegas has to offer in lieu of learning about monetizing insights? Second, why would all these experienced folks want to listen to someone trained to build businesses and run P&L’s and not insights talk about using insights to drive business?
We kicked off the discussion asking how we got here – why has a kitchen test become synonymous with real research? Why do some business executives prefer insights nuggets to insights reports? Further, why do we even need researchers when self-help tools like Survey Monkey exist?
Then it was time for a confession. As a business leader, I was probably one of those people who had at one time asked for a one-page summary or a few bullets for my client or business presentation vs. wanting to spend time on the details of a full report. My experienced audience did not seem to mind. As we talked together, I shared the journey that Cathy Wray, Alan Patel, Christine Keller, Terri Catlett, Michael Shewmon, Jesse Taylor, Nina Stanley and I had been on to find the “whys” in behavioral finance issues, build “what ifs” through a test, and learn capability. This capability allows us to innovate, adapt and measure the same metrics 3X faster than before. The result: adaptive and iterative innovation and expressed consumer behavior that corroborates with actual performance data.
We concluded that in a world inundated with data, the value that insights professionals can offer to business executives aka insights imposters like myself is indispensable as long as these executives can find ways to monetize the same.
So over some karaoke courtesy of the legendary Freddie Mercury we decided that if insights professionals and imposters come together in this way, they can be unstoppable!
If you missed the live action at TMRE Vegas, tune in on Dec 12 to watch the webinar! You might just end up with some new ideas on how to monetize your insights over karaoke!
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