Building a connected insights ecosystem

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan and I'm joined, as always, by Patricia Montesdeoca. Our head of customer transformation and my dear friend. Patricia, what up?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

What up dude? How's it going? I'm enjoying the fall weather. How about you?

Ryan:

Hell yeah. There's a tree outside my window that turns the most beautiful color of salmon. Not by design, because that's one of our branding colors, even though it's coral, but it hasn't changed yet. All the other leaves are, it's beautiful and we're having lovely fall weather here in New England. I've been riding my bike, doing stuff outside with my kids, doing a little jack-o-lantern dance, all the fall stuff. Maybe I'll even bust out some orange flannels this weekend and really get into the groove.

Patricia:

Damn.

Ryan:

It's a beautiful thing.

Patricia:

It is.

Ryan:

It's a beautiful thing. So, I'm excited about this interview because I've met James Sallows, today's guest, twice. We do a bit of business with GSK, across the world. And James was brought in, I want to say two and a half years ago, with a really cool job to overhaul their capabilities as a holistic function.

So, his official job title is global head of transformation and capabilities, consumer and business analytics and insights. So, he's trying to change a lot. And the truth is, I had a conversation with him and we geeked out about panel representativeness for about an hour. And I was like, "I really like this guy. He's really smart." And so, I was hell bent on getting him on season three. I think GSK is going through a massive evolution as a company, splitting their pharma and their consumer business, but also really trying to elevate their game as an insights function. And so, he's been in the job for about two years and I just wanted to hear him share his story. So, that's what we've got in store today. And I'm excited. Should we just get into this damn thing?

Patricia:

Let's do it.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry:

James, really happy to talk to you today. Thanks for making the time. So, James, we're going to talk a lot about transformation in this conversation, but I want to dive right in. I was saying this to you before we hit record. I don't usually like to do a big background story. But I'm compelled with your background because you've worked in, I think, every lens this industry's got to offer. Take our audience through a little bit, your background, because I think it's fascinating for your background to sit in a role of Head of Transformation and Capability at GSK.

James Sallows:

No worries. Way to go to make me feel old from the start of the interview, Ryan.

Ryan:

You look great, by the way. Nobody's going to see us on video, but you look young.

James:

Yeah. It's interesting. I started out in research, actually building the first online panels that were being built in Europe back in kind of... It must have been '99, 2000. I was on a work placement at a startup who was copying essentially the Greenfield model from the US in Paris. So I spent quite a while there building up their business for a company that was Novartis that's now Harris Interactive. Then I was actually headhunted by WPP Kantar at the time because we were their panel supplier because they didn't have anything. 

So I then moved to Lightspeed Research within Kantar where I spent nine or 10 years building up the external business, so the beyond Kantar business there, and, even at that time, pushing for the ideas around quality recruitment, quality surveys, what it really means, and already pushing back against all those CATI surveys that we just threw online, right, back then.

Ryan:

We sure did.

James:

Yeah. But then I thought, "Hey, you can't really influence enough being a supplier," so I moved into the agency. So I went to Ipsos. I spent a few years at Ipsos working in ASI, looking at, again, sampling and looking at rebuilding some of the products to be faster to market and those kinds of things and really, again, tackling a lot of panel quality and sample problems. Again, I suppose I felt like you can't influence enough, and so I went agency-side, actually, and I joined a media agency. 

Then I went to a media agency where I was Chief Insight Officer for the IPG Group, so Universal McCann and Initiative. When you're what I call a non-research-y researcher, you get to break the rules, and what was really interesting there is that we could do stuff differently. We didn't have the legacy of history and all these trackers that we'd never touched and all these kinds of things. There was an opportunity to actually do things differently, which was really enjoyable, really fast-paced. When people talk now about Agile research, you go there and say what we were achieving there in weeks takes months in a research business. Then I actually took a break, and we went traveling with my baby daughter at the time. We did an around the world trip and chance to reflect, as you always do.

Ryan:

Amazing.

James:

Yeah. We took 18 months around the world. It was quite a challenge but a good one. Then when I came back, I had the opportunity to join GSK. GSK as a client, in my mind, was this very static, not very fast-moving pharma. What was really interesting when I started talking to them is that the business was preparing itself for another phase, which was the split into two, and so when I look back over my history, a lot of it was driving new products, new approaches, partnering with media agencies, building things differently, challenging. 

Actually working at GSK to map what that future looked like was something I thought was really exciting. So the opportunity to be a client, as you say, going around that loop, the experience you've got from the different areas, I find, allows you to be more pragmatic but also more innovative because you know what's feasible. So you're not shooting for the stars and missing. You know more or less what's doable with the different agencies and when you partner.

I think there's also more of a mutual respect that you've kind of been in each other's shoes and so you get it, right? So that's where I am at the moment, at GSK leading this kind of transformation to be a new insights function and also being a totally new business. I mean, how often do you get to map the future of a huge, massive consumer business that's going to be launched to the market, which is already starting off with all the brands that we have? It's a pretty unique opportunity. But we're seeing it as an opportunity to change ourselves but also to push out the industry as well and try and move everything forward because there's a real need, I think, for change in many areas.

Ryan:

Yeah. So before we talk business, what is the favorite place you visited on your around the world tour?

James:

You got to give me a topic. If it was culture shock and food, it was Japan.

Ryan:

Okay.

James:

If it was natural beauty, New Zealand. For living in minus 17 degrees, Toronto.

Ryan:

Toronto.

James:

Honestly, this is what I find amazing, and I think it's... You can find amazing things in different places. So if ever I get asked those questions, it's like, "Well, tell me through what lens?"

Ryan:

Through what lens, yeah.

James:

Yeah, and I think that's the important thing. And, actually, it's the same working different streams of work, which is that you can always find that piece of passion, that interesting bit, but it's not all the same, right? So, yeah, I think the overall trip was the experience. It's there in the pictures of my daughter now who doesn't really remember at the time but is now building up those memories with us. I think that's really the amazing bit.

Ryan:

Kudos to you for having the foresight to do that. I mean, what an incredible experience. Your job title, Head of Transformation and Capability. Everybody knows GSK as a pharma business and some big mainstay consumer brands with the intention to split them. Essentially, as you say, gives you this opportunity to become a major CPG player and operate with new rules than perhaps you used to. 

So what does the future of insights look like from your perspective? What's the outcome that you seek on the other side of this? You and I are having this call in five years. Hopefully, it's over a beer. But what does it look like? Tell me some of the bigger things that you think needs to systematically change?

James:

Yeah, I think it's strange. Because I think, again, if you'd asked the question two years ago, I'd have given you some different answers, which I think is a good sign. We've embarked on some pretty substantial projects to review exactly this question and decide where we want to head. 

One of the key things is when we started off, everyone was telling us we had to be data-driven, and we were sitting there going, "We get it, but really? Is that it?" The data-driven itself, just putting everything together and hoping, Field of Dreams, build it and hope you find something in it, didn't really resonate with our view of insights because our view of insights was if you want to be at the top table and you're going to be a partner, then you have to behave like a partner. What you can't do is just bring numbers or a dashboard or some observations or something to those discussions. You've got to come with a strong point of view. You've got to come with a recommendation for action as an insights partner.

So our focus in our transformation has been around building and linking those data sets when it's linked to a use case, so working really from business use cases back. In the last year, we've already built two bespoke products within GSK that were mapped during that phase. But then the other thing with the capability part of my role is really saying, "Well, how do we get our people ready to fill that gap," investing in your people and really pushing back to what insights professionals should be, which is those people who are able to give advice. The industry laments how much consultancies are taking away business from us, and the fact is we're very good at commoditizing ourselves. When you're commoditized, you're an easy target. So we have a real focus on bringing that insights layer back and empowering people to actually go into processes, into meetings, into discussions, our innovation process, and with insights being seen as the lead but also leading and having the skill sets to do so.

So, for me, it's that combination of yes to being... We say data-fueled but insights-driven. So, yes, the data is there. Yes, we are linking together our datasets. Yes, we've got huge tech projects to bring these things together but where we have an identified business case but then focusing on, "Well, what's the insights layer on top? Where is it that our people are adding that value to partners and to the business?" 

But we're very lucky because we are positioning ourselves as this new consumer business but we also have a CMO and a leadership team who fully support this because one of our key enablers of the new business is called out publicly as deeper human understanding. It's not deep human understanding because you can achieve that through data. It's deeper human understanding. There's always a forward action in there, which is to always look for more and always find the links. So I feel really reinforcing the human element of this on top of all the things we can bring in to be more efficient, have more data... I really think that's the way forward for us because that's what enables decision-making in the business.

Ryan:

I'm inspired by your answer because, as you know, I run a software company, and the amount of times I have people call and say, "We just had McKinsey come in, we need to do X, can we buy a subscription," and it's just like, "What are you hoping to achieve?" You can't throw tech at a problem and expect it to solve itself. 

So I think working from people makes a lot of sense. Let me ask you a question. The deeper human understanding or the C-suite buy-in, there's that constant from where I sit, which is if the C-suite and the board aren't bought-in and you're a customer-centric leader, you probably should go look somewhere else. But maybe that's too negative of a point of view.

How did that buy-in come about, and what were some of the steps that you needed to take, perhaps with other members of your team, to solidify, "No, no, it's not just data, it's the now what component?" The reason I ask you this question, first, is because I think, particularly in bigger companies, if the space is created by the executive team, then things happen differently than if it's not. So take me through a little bit of that. Was that just there inherent, or was that something that you really had to push for?

James:

I think it's a combination of both. I think the desire for the business to be consumer-led was always there from the outset of the new business. But the difference, I think, is that we as a collective team, so the CBIA, the Insights and Analytics team, saw the opportunity. In my view, personally, if you don't wait for someone else to define what that means. You go out and you define it. Because whilst the words and the titles and the intention is there, the reality of what it means on the ground, it's up to us. So we moved very, very quickly to actually go out and establish what this means. We actually went out and did a whole lot of work around what a future insights organization looks like from product, people, capabilities? It was an 18-week project that honestly would normally be something like two years of work in corporate. 

I think using more agile approaches to working, which we absolutely did, we managed to just rack through this stuff really quickly and come out with very much soliciting views from across the business, consolidating them, and coming back with a point of view. If you come back with a strong point of view that's evidence-based, especially, as I said, we're lucky enough to have a C-suite that's really receptive, of course, but you then get traction. 

Our CMO, Tamara Rogers, I always joke that she's actually a researcher disguised as a CMO because she's so passionate about the work we do and so passionate about this human understanding piece. But you've got to step into that space, and you've got to own it, and you've got to define it. If we'd spent the last year continuing to behave in the way that we had in the past, then I don't think we'd have had the legitimacy to continue moving up as we are to being a more strategic partner.

I think the work we've done around helping revisit the innovation process, up-scaling our own skill sets within our teams, so really building that capability, not waiting for the new business to be launched, but in that interim, the last 18 months, really focusing on it, I think that's where you set yourselves up. Because what people really want is confidence. They want to know that when you say, "Hey, insights, we want to be strategic partners," so in two years, it's just going to magically happen? No. We've got groundwork that we're doing between now and then to get us there. So receptive, yes, the C-suite, you need that to be there, you need that buy-in, you need that support. 

But, also, I think you need to be brave enough and strong enough as an insight function to step into the void and not just stay in the comfy space maybe where you have been in the past.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's really refreshing, right? So nobody's in their right mind not having some vernacular on their brand values about being consumer-obsessed. I think what I'm hearing from you is that you folks saw an opportunity to define those words and to assert what they meant and lead from the front. We'll talk about people in a minute because, obviously, that is not necessarily the trait you'd articulate as the typical insights persona. You said something a few minutes ago of not being an insights person's insights person or something to that effect..

James:

Not being a research-y researcher.

Ryan:

Oh, yeah. So what is it, not being a research-y researcher? I'll be honest with you. That resonates with me because I would identify in that and I never had an issue calling on sacred cows because of that. It's a really, I guess, good place to be in. But I think the most important thing of what you said here is you did the discovery, you were proactive, and then you're actually doing stuff to provide confidence.

So the C-suite's bought in, you folks go and do a bunch of discovery...Having that space created by Tamara is incredible, but on the ground, in the teams, in the categories, what are some of the bigger shifts that you see in terms of ways of working between a proactive, now what focused insights team and a brand team who's trying to quickly move and drive their P&L? I guess, what are some of the behavior changes that you see needed within the ways of working between marketing and insights or innovation and insights?

James:

Yeah. I think the first one is that it's got to be joined up. So the aspiration and the goals of the marketeers have to be joined up with the insights functions, and I think that drive towards brand building as well as short-term results, you have to get that balance right because, otherwise, as much as you might want to do all these wonderful, deeper ethnography, human understanding projects, if the only criteria of success is the sales this month, then, ultimately, you get dragged back into that kind of... reporting abyss, right? 

So, for me, that balance already between the marketeers being asked to plan for the future as well as the immediate is one of the things that gives you that space. So when we looked at, for example, our innovation process, without going into too much detail, we basically rebuilt it to give it space. That space meant that the marketeers and the insights people stepped in together to spend an extended period together on consumer discovery. It wasn't the insights' function to bring it all to the table and say, "Here you go. Off you go now and work your magic." That leaning in on partnership is really key. I think when we look at where it works, it's where those teams have similar outcomes.

The other thing I think is really important is to encourage innovation. So we have a few brand or category teams in our business who you can count on the fact that they're going to be ones out there doing some kind of... They're all special projects or just a cool idea they've had, and it's brilliant, and you've got to reward that and you've got to make it visible. Instead of it being a naughty behavior, it's actually an encouraged behavior to innovate on the margins, to actually play around, see what you find, and bring it back to the team. 

I think, as an organization, as we start to become more global as insights, the fact that we're sharing those best practices, we're encouraging discovery, we're making it easier to work with new and more innovative suppliers, which was always a challenge for our business because it's wrapped up so much in the pharma, and all of those things already just create an environment. I always used to call it permission to play. It creates an environment where you know you're okay.

If you want to go out and try something a bit different, we're okay with that, and we encourage teams to do it and encourage them to step out. So we've seen much more work around Agile methods. We've seen different ways of looking at copy testing. We see loads more work around behavioral science really starting to come into the business and influence us, and that's just great. It's great to see people stepping forwards and just going to different areas but knowing in a way... It's almost like you get to the stage where they know they have the support across the team for just pushing into different areas, but you've got to live it, right? 

So the way that you talk as a leadership team, the way that you communicate out to the broader community, you have to be seen to be encouraging those things but also to invite the marketeers in. So in some of our capability building that we do as a CBIA team, we're actually training marketeers at the same time. So it's not us and them. It's things that we do collectively as well in certain areas, and I think that's also key.

Ryan:

Yeah, that is really key. I think one of the things that inspires me most about your answer is the permission to play component because I think one of the one of the things that I have always stressed about as a business person myself but also as somebody who serves the big businesses of the world is the short-term linear thinking that plagues us quarter to quarter, month to month. It is so easy to just get back into Q4 earnings. 

To your point, the words you say and then the behaviors exhibited will actually define people's actions on the ground, and so giving them space to fail, to step in it, I think, is such an important cultural trait for businesses in the future because we don't know what we don't know about today's world and tomorrow's world and how exponentially different it's going to be. So I give you a lot of credit for that. 

James:

Just one thing to add to that. Sorry, Ryan.

Ryan:

Yeah, go ahead.

James:

I think the fact that the leadership team also created the function that I manage, the transformation capability, and actually invest in it and fund it also shows that clear intention, which is transformation of function isn't something that just happens by osmosis, right? It's something that we actually invest in. Capability building isn't us telling you that you need to be a strategic advisor in a year. It's actually us helping you get there. I think that also sends a clear message that if you're ready to actually invest and prioritize these things, again, you're creating an environment where people realize, "Actually, that's not a hobby. It's not something that's just going to happen the day before we launch the new business. It's something we're actually committed to investing in." 

So I think it goes a lot deeper about that, creating that comfort and that environment and showing that clear intention that you have.

So I know, for example, our CMO has gone to conferences and she's been asked to talk about a handful of topics, and she's regularly selected topics that have come from our team as demonstrating transformation. I think, for us, that's really powerful because it shows, again, that we have that support and that environment even beyond our team where it's encouraged. So, yeah, there's many layers to it to build. There's not an easy answer, but you can start with small things.

Ryan:

Yeah, you're right. There isn't an easy answer. But I think what you're doing from the outside's working because I've had a couple of random interactions with people in your organization who work closer to P&Ls, and they're consistent in the alignment of what you're doing, which, with all the love in the world to a lot of centers of excellence and transformation teams, is unique. 

A lot of times, it's an ivory tower pushing things out and then the business people aren't feeling heard. So I think what you're saying here is early and often, listening, showing, setting intentions, and then delivering, actually delivering on these things, is key. So let's talk a little bit about people. So we talked about how insights people need to behave like a partner, to bring the now what into meetings. What are you seeing in that space? What are some of the bigger behavior changes you feel we need to drive, up-skills we need to drive, or things we need to unlearn as an industry?

James:

We need to, I suppose, get more comfortable with the fact that we shouldn't be bringing data and dashboards to these conversations and that we've got to have a point of view. I think that's how we're getting respected and getting into partnership with the other functions. 

We started out by actually defining what is an insight for GSK, coming up with a GSK-specific definition of what's an insight and how is that strength-tested, and then having an expectation across all of our teams, anything that we bring that we say is an insight has to pass the test because, otherwise, it's not an insight. It's an observation, it's a data point, it's interesting, but it's not an insight. Also, asking our vendors and our partners whenever they deliver something to us that they also deliver with that format to give us some consistency. The one thing that I spoke to you about, bringing the marketeers in with the insights folks, is that it's a shared definition that everyone works on.

 So we have marketeers at the moment creating insights. We have hundreds of insights now in our insights bank that have been created over those intervening months. Nearly every one, every single one of them, probably has had some kind of marketeer's hand on it at some point, and some of them would have been created entirely by marketeers and not insight folks.

The words democratization of insight are regularly used but actually only becomes true if anyone in the business is capable of creating an insight and identifying an insight and stress-testing whether what they've been told is an insight is an insight. So that's what we've really focused at the base level because if you don't get the fundamentals right, then where do you go from there? We could focus on loads of other things that we've now moved onto. We've moved on from there to now look at storytelling, to look at leveraging the rational and the irrational, the creative and the logical sides of your brain, all these kinds of things, but you can't build into those areas unless you have a solid base.

So we really started with that and then moved up, and I think that's how we're getting that relationship set from the beginning with marketeers. Also, it's starting to deliver a KPI around insights because you can also start to look at how often an insight's being used and also how insights travel across the business. So from being a brand-first business, we are now an entire portfolio business. The shared learnings and the things that we need to do across that are very different, and so we have to enable that through the creation of libraries and cards and that kind of common approach that we build within our team but also between our team and the marketeers.

Ryan:

Wow, okay. I'm fascinated by this. How many words do we say in business and we all nod our heads and we agree with each other but we actually have completely different understandings? I'm blown away by this baseline. Are you willing to share with this audience what the GSK definition of an insight is?

James:

I'm not sure I can share it.

Ryan:

Man, that's all right. We don't want to get in trouble. So everybody's bought into this definition?

James:

No, I mean, there is a definition of insights. So we basically use a construct to actually build out the description of the insight. So what's the behavior? Then it has to have attention or an aspiration and a deeper human truth. So all of those things, and that sounds like a lot, Ryan, but all of that goes into a single one-page expression of an insight.

Ryan:

Wow. Okay. So what I like about this... And, obviously, you can only share what you can share, and I appreciate you sharing what you have. My hypothesis is that a very small percentage of the data you buy gets on a one-pager. Am I right?

James:

Well, yeah, because data is not an insight.

Ryan:

Exactly. I'm plagued by the word insights because I get data in front of me every day and the amount of aha moments I have, they're few and far between, right? You look at data and trend lines…

James:

The insight is the space in between. It's not the thing, right, it's the empty spaces. So when we push it and we say what's truly an insight, it makes us think further. It doesn't mean, by the way, that a single number can't be an insight because it can, as long as you've got the context that goes around it to explain it to someone else. But the number in itself, saying 18% means nothing, and I think that's the real challenge. So you spoke about these words. 

There's loads of these words around the business where you've got to be able to put your finger on it and say, "Okay, it can mean whatever it means to you. But, for us, we want to be clear, and this is what it means." You can't have a whole function built around insights without having a common understanding of it.

So that was our baseline, and it's something I really would have my heart set on doing. Again, it was just over a year ago, and we've done that, and we've now... I think we've rolled that out to something like... I'm going to say something like 600 people in our business have already been through that in-depth training…

Ryan:

Wow.

James:

... to do that, and we've run tens of brand events in terms of running through the innovation process. This is where also making that link between insights having impact on business... Because one of our biggest challenges is the more we commoditize ourselves, the more we are low-hanging fruit for cost reductions…

Ryan:

True.

James:

... and the more we only provide a data point and not an observation or not an insight, the further away we are from business impact. So if we start to own those spaces and drive those definition insight to redesign part of that innovation process, then we start to have legitimacy and taking responsibility for the number of new concepts that get to our first stage gate because we're now an integral part of that process whereas maybe, in the past and in some businesses, we'd hand over the insights to the marketeers who would make the magic happen in inverted commas. 

It's about taking ownership and responsibility for those processes and therefore making yourself measurable, which I think we find very difficult for insights as an industry, is how do you make your insights measurable? You have an extra set of products that are being sold. How can you ever track that back to the work you did? So we're starting to try and join those dots where we can by building these libraries, by building these cards, by joining datasets where we can, but also taking ownership for recommendations.

Ryan:

So is there a world, James, where insights models... So clear, ubiquitous definition of the word. It's some variant of an attention and aspiration that drives a deeper human truth, right? So however that manifests itself, is there a world where KPIs are centered around insights created or insights utilized as a more attributable metric for an insights person?

James:

Well, we already have that.

Ryan:

Fantastic.

James:

When we talk about the number of new insight cards, but, also, in the new version of our system, we'll be measuring how frequently they get used, so how much they travel across the business by other people when we don't even know. If you work on a project and upload it, it could be someone in a totally different market. A totally different category leans on that insight because health and wellness is, in many areas, ubiquitous. Whether you're working on pain relief, whether you're working on multivitamins, or whether you're working on sensitive teeth, there are some human insights that will be the same for all of them. It gives us the ability to make those things and enable those things to travel across the business.

Ryan:

Huh. So how do you get that sharing? We've made it this far without talking about technology. Maybe this is what gets us in there. Is this a knowledge management issue? The reason I ask you the question is everybody's trying to figure out, "Why did I learn something in China that actually translates to Germany, but I haven't brought it to Germany?" So a bit of advice. How do you get that key one-pager disseminated into someone's work stream 3000 miles away from where it was created?

James:

I don't think we've got the total answer yet to that. What we do have is, well, we're building the platforms that enable it. So we already have in place our own knowledge management system. We've built specific bespoke libraries to house these things that are entirely searchable. So one of the interesting things, Ryan, I've found, for example, is you upload all your concepts into a library that you can share with all your colleagues but they're in PDFs where you can't search by keywords. 

So unless you unpick some of those very basic things and say, "It's all well and good saying we want this to travel, but if you're making me work to delve into documents to find it versus allowing me to type keywords into a search bar and you give it to me," the former, it's never going to happen. The former, you can pat yourself on the back and say, "We've put everything into a central repository, it's there." But our key has been to make it searchable, so we've actually managed to switch all the formats into being searchable formats, we've standardized those formats. This is the non-glamorous part of it, right, when you talk about things like transformation. Some of it is about basic building blocks.

Ryan:

Yeah, and it's hard.

James:

Yeah, it's hard, and you've got to do it at the right time when a business is ready to do it. We are lucky in a way that our processes mean that everything we do has to be logged and noted and recorded in the central system because of things like adverse events. So that system has lent itself to us saying, "How do we use that to actually enable knowledge sharing and knowledge management?" We're not there yet. We have a new version of our system that we'll be launching next year for this. But we've managed to shoehorn, twist, turn, and tweak the current system enough to make it work for now. But if we know we have an event going on in a certain market, one of the first actions is to say, "Go see what we know already."

Actually, that's the key behavior change in the insights. You mentioned that before, but I didn't bring it up. It's that whole idea of insight in plain sight. What do we already know? How do we spend our time and our budgets increasing what we know rather than repeating something that we may have already done? So that's also part of why that exists, is to allow you to say, "Ah." I always give an example, which I think is a great example, but it's not actually used in the business, which is the morning routine. So if I was to talk about your morning routine, Ryan, what do you do when you wake up? The fact is if you're brushing your teeth, taking regular pain relief, taking multivitamins, all of those things you're likely to be doing as part of your morning routine. So any research that we may do, you may find in any of those categories research about that morning routine, which is relevant for the others. Rather than sitting in a silo, how do you make it searchable?

Ryan:

And morning routine would be the search, not daily vitamin routine or whatever it is?

James:

Exactly. It's got nothing to do with it. You may find that one of our toothpaste brands has done an amazing piece of work about how people get their kids and their family ready in the morning, and that would become just as relevant for Centrum.

Ryan:

100%. I hope everybody really picked that up from James. I mean, it particularly troubles me in portfolio companies that operate in multiple categories how little we pay attention to the fact that we still sell all those products to James. He's just living his life, and we're trying to get into it. That's really quite cool…

James:

As I said, in transparency, we're not fully there yet, but that's the path we're on. I think we have enough in place that what we're doing today is already miles better and we are enabling that mode of transfer. But, yeah, there's certainly more to do and more in the works.

Ryan:

If you have clarity of what you know and the humility to say what you don't know, we won't be seeing Nielsen put 90% of new products fail in the first year if the world starts to behave this way. Yeah, that's really inspiring. I want to go into one more ditch word, and then we might have time for our special bonus topic, which you and I have geeked out about twice already. We'll see. If not, we'll have you back.

You spoke about democratization. I think another word that is big and misunderstood... Our meeting today has been mostly about elevating insights to be the now what, really focused on driving the business outcome. But there is BAU copy testing, tracking, concept test, whatever those things are, that are sort of, "We got to do it, we want to see how to make the ad better if it's going to be good," or whatever those things are. 

Where do you draw the line in terms of where insights people stop doing and the doing becomes something a marketeer does so that an insights person can zoom out from the stat testing results? I guess, where does that line exist in your brain?

James:

For me, we are going down the road of saying that all of these things are a partnership because I think we've seen where you might be looking at analytics or campaign performance as a marketeer and there's no visibility of that to the insights team. The challenge with that is we never close the loop. 

So we've really been on a mission to say, "Actually, all of that work needs to come into a single environment so that you can close the loop on some of these things and so you don't have very distinct silos." So, for me, I think it's a question of both joining in the middle, both leaning in. So marketeers will be looking at campaign performance, but, certainly, when we're running copy testing and we work with that, that'll be run entirely by our team. So I don't think there is a clean cut.

But the one thing that we are doing on things like copy testing is pushing for it actually to happen much further upstream because then you get into the world of actually learning, deriving insights, and taking actions as opposed to just looking at copy that's nearly ready to go and tweaking it. With a lot of businesses, that's going to be one of the biggest errors, is that you test it but you test it too late in the day to actually make a difference.

Ryan:

100%.

James:

So we have a focus on moving that upstream. The one other thing I just want to touch on, though, before we talk about, you say, for the bonus topic, when I speak about capability building, one of the big things that we are doing and I mentioned at the beginning is focusing on the people and the team, right? 

So how are we actually, I suppose, giving different opportunities to insights folks? Because one of the challenges we have is that we're a very flat industry and there's a lot of relentless work that happens at a certain level without necessarily... Not everyone can become a manager in this world.

Ryan:

Right. Right. Yep.

James:

So we've been working a lot on saying, "if you're going to build an insights function that's going to be a business partner, how do you keep your best people, and how do you offer development paths that might be subject matter experts as well as managers?" 

We've got a whole academy that we've built that is committed to helping that growth across the whole organization, which is about 150. But, also, we have a cohort who have been nominated of 15 as our high performers, high potentials who we've put into an accelerated development program where we're actually working with them to understand their own personal goals and aims and providing them with coaching and mentorship.

The real, I suppose, desire we have here is to prove that, actually, there are different roles, there are different paths and different futures in insights, and that as we go down this road, you're saying, "What does the future look like," and I say, "It's not just data, it's value that we add on top of it." You're going to need these guys, but you're going to need them as specialists, not specialists who are sitting in a manager role because that was the only perspective of their career evolving. So we're really committed to showing that there's those different paths that exist in insights and investing in that overall capability but also in this specific group that we have, which we called Ignite. 

You can't be that layer on top of data, you can't be that strategic partner, you can't increase that role of insights without ensuring that you're keeping the best people in the business.

Ryan:

Really glad you shared this because somewhere in the world, society decided that in order to be intellectually stimulated, grow your career, and make an impact, you have to be the boss of people. What you just articulated is, no, this is more than a linear path to being a director of insights. 

There's other ways to advance your skill set, make a bigger impact. Ironically, a person at Zappi who works on your business, Will Cooper, was a manager and I realized he hated it. I said, "What if you could just work with big customers all day," and he's like, "Oh, that would be brilliant." You have to invert it, but people have societal norms built up where they're like, "This is what I have to do. I'll leave if I can't become a senior manager in two years." It's like, "Well, actually, there's a lot more opportunity for you." Kudos to you for that. That's huge.

James:

And let's see how many buzzwords we can throw in, Ryan. So I'm going to throw the word purpose in here, not for a brand but one of the things that we've done is actually work with those 15 to help them to define what is their purpose, what do you what do they enjoy, what brings them joy, what do they love, and then try to match that to them, so, therefore, "Where would you like to go?" It's kind of what you just said about Will. It's that idea of it doesn't have to be X. If it could be anything, what would it be? We've had some really revealing conversations where people have come back to us and actually said, "Right, I've been away. I've just come back off holiday. I've been thinking about that purpose, and I know what I want to do. Can we have a chat?"

Ryan:

Love it.

James:

And it's like, "Bring it on," because if we can have a conversation outside of those normal cycles and you get an idea about where people want to go, then you can plan with them if there's space in the business. 

Giving people some of that power back, I think, is really key because, as you said, you end up with people in management positions who don't want to be managers. You're losing some of your best subject matter expertise because they will move somewhere else just for a bit more pay or for a... You've got to find a way that you can keep that evolution going and keep people getting that enjoyment from what they do. So we've had a really big focus on that, and, again, it's something that we've had the support from the business to bring that group to the fore and help develop them. So, hopefully, we're going to continue this, definitely, at least, for next year. But it's something I'd like to see continue because if we're not growing good people in our industry, then what are we here for?

Ryan:

Yeah, it's all about people. I think if we were listening to these last 10 minutes 10 years from now, my hope is that every company works this way because I think we're seeing this. You see all the resignation data, job switching, people not going back to work. 

Taking the old manufacturing principles of management and expecting them to thrive in a hyper-connected, consumer-driven world is just not going to work. So the fact that you are working for a massive enterprise are doing this, I'm leaving this conversation inspired right now because these are the same things a small company like mine focuses on. Hell, yes. Kudos to you, man.

James:

But it's funny you mention that because we're doing a presentation next week at a conference and our opening sequence is the opening sequence of Metropolis…Because we've been commoditizing our own people…

Ryan:

For years.

James:

And, actually, there was a really good quote in a report that I read last week… said, "If you're not at the top table, you're probably on the menu." The problem with commoditizing insights is that that just leaves you hanging. That's a cost center and not a value. 

So the more we commoditize ourselves... And that's not just from a client point of view, but that's all through the chain, and, again, having been in different areas, I've seen that manifest itself in different ways. If you commoditize yourself, then you could be putting yourself in trouble. We can complain as much as we want about how the market's being nibbled away by other areas, whether it's big data or consultancies, but the more we step into commoditization, the more we're driving it. I don't believe it's outside forces necessarily driving that as much as it is ourselves.

Ryan:

No. I mean, it's funny you say that. When I left Kantar to join Zappi, my motivation was to free insights people from doing low-value, commoditized shit so they could do bigger things. It's taken till just recently for people to actually wake up to that because I remember in the first three, four years, I would be very frustrated because it's like, "Oh my God, all I've done is perpetuated the problem. 

Now, they can test copy the night before it goes on TV and not think at all." So I think the time now is different. People are starting to realize, "Oh, gosh, technology, if we deploy it correctly, helps us be smarter and more impactful," which is the point. It isn't to be a commodity, right? I think that's really key. 

James:

That's where it's a use case back to my point, which is it's not technology, it's not platforms to replace people. It's about what is it you're trying to answer, what's the value you're trying to bring to the business, and what's the best-placed solution for that? Sometimes, that best-placed solution is in-house. Sometimes, it's a combination of in-house and an agency. Sometimes, you're better off throwing it over the wall and letting someone else do it. But unless you've done that evaluation via the use cases, you're spending your time in the wrong places, and you don't even know it because you haven't stepped back and done that review. So I think that's the challenge.

Ryan:

Absolutely. All right. So I wanted to get our bonus topic. James is on a committee with the MRS doing some incredible and, dare I say, provocative work, which I'm sure none of you are going to be surprised to hear, on the problems plaguing the sampling industry. James, can I invite you back to tell us where you got to in about six months so we can talk about this properly? It deserves more air time than we have time for today.

James:

Yeah. The only paraphrasing I'd say is I wouldn't paraphrase it as the problems in the sampling industry. I'd say it's more about how do we as a collective make sure that we are bringing inclusivity, diversity, and true representation into what we do. The reason that I just pick you up on that, Ryan, is having been on all sides of the fences, I've been a sample provider who's been blamed for everything. 

Now, I'm a client who's being told it's my surveys that are the problem. So somewhere in between us and working together is where the solution is, right, because there's no point in me asking people to go and recruit better and then the agency working for me or ourselves, we're not doing a better job. So I think the aim is that through this initiative and a few other initiatives that I'm involved in, is how do we put ourselves on the hook as an industry to ensure the research we're bringing is by nature inclusive? I think we all know that today, unless you have a specific ask when you're scoping your survey, it's most likely that that doesn't happen.

Ryan:

Yeah, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. And the answer does lie in between the entire supply chain or continuum, as you said.

James:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan:

The way we recruit, the way we retain, the way we engage, there's opportunities everywhere. All right. So we'll have part two of our interview on season four. James, thank you, man. This is honestly... I'm leaving pumped up, so thank you. For everybody in my audience, I'm sure you left with three pages of notes just like I did. But I can't thank you enough for your willingness to share so much with us, James. We really appreciate it.

James:

No problem. Thanks a lot, Ryan. It's always great to talk to you. Cheers.

Ryan: Yeah, cheers.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan:

We ran out of time in that interview. It was very sad because I wanted to go to our special topic, which was all about representativeness with respondents. We'll probably have to have him back to talk about this.

Patricia:

Bring him back. I want to hear more from him.

Ryan:

We got to bring him back. It's funny, when you do these interviews, you book an hour and sometimes you don't even need a half hour, but the good ones, the real good ones, you run out of time. But, that was awesome. As always, you do an incredible job of synthesizing. What were your takeaways?

Patricia:

There was so much here, but I've got like about eight really important points that I want to talk about. Things that kind of blew me away. 

Ryan:

I'm in. I'm looking forward to it.

Patricia:

Let's go for it. So, other than the fact that he's an amazing person and incredibly interesting, I'd love to hear more stories about his 18 month trip around the world. I want to start... Everything that I think is important for an insights person, which is who we're hoping listens. First one, you asked him, "What's the future of insights look like?" That's like crystal ball time, but he did not shy away from your question. And he said, "Going from being data driven, to being more than that." He just blew me away from the very beginning.

He says, "Data itself doesn't actually answer anything. It doesn't resonate. It doesn't do anything." It doesn't resonate with how he believes it. He says, "You have to come with a strong point of view that is backed by the data." He used the sentence a few times during the interview where he talked about being data fueled, but insight driven. That's a beautiful sentence. Something that I'm going to keep, always focusing on myself, data fueled, but insights driven. So he talked about that. He said that the future looks like building, linking the data sets, when they're linked to a use case, not just having data sets, having linked data sets. So, that you work from the business use case, back. Now, that takes me to point number two, that's completely, completely attached to that, which is what he talks about, joining data sets. I admit that when he said join data sets, I thought, "I wonder what he means by that."

And he says, "It's also about taking responsibility for what people are going to be doing, what that does." It's not just a recommendation, because of course, you have the data, you have your insight, you have the recommendation, take responsibility for that. And how do we do that? We enable knowledge sharing and knowledge management, by joining data sets in a smart way. It's not just about creating a file folder and making sure everything's there, make sure it's searchable and joined. So, what does that mean? He says, "When you are having your conversation about the morning routine, it's not about breakfast. It's not about vitamins. It's not about pain relief and toothpaste. It's about the morning routine, because something that is happening in toothpaste or in breakfast might be useful to them at GSK for pain relief or for vitamins." So he said, the only way we're going to know that is if there's osmosis, if it all blends in together and we're able to search for it.

So, it's talking about key behavior, being able to access the data so that we can get insights, because sometimes insights are in plain sight. So, the question that he said, the first action that should always be done is, have a joined data set so that you can have your first question, be, "Go see what we know already. What do we know already?" And that totally resonated with me. Totally resonated with me. Starting with the business case. Number three, defining an insight, oh my God, did I love that? It's not just about what the word insight means, it's about what the word insights means to the company he's at now, he couldn't give us the exact formula, of course. 

Ryan:

I know, I was bummed. I thought I was going to get it out of him.

Patricia:

He gave us more than I expected, but we got so much learning just from what he shared. What is an insight? Everybody goes to the definition, but no, he says, "No. What does an insight mean to us?" So, when somebody comes and says, "That's an insight." How are we going to be able to say to them, "No, that's an observation." Or, "That's a data point." Or, "That's really interesting, but it's not an insight." So, he'd said, about having a common description for insights, marketing, the vendors, the partners, senior management, the managers, the C-suite, everybody, we'll talk about the C-suite in the next point. But, he talked about defining and structuring what insights mean for the company, so that everybody who comes with a piece of paper, a one pager, love that, says exactly what the idea is, the insight. 

So, it's been pressure tested, how it's been pressure tested, who's going to share, and who's interested in it. So, that it all is, not bulletproof, because insight shouldn't be bulletproof, but it's robust.

And it's something that's going to be exactly what everybody expects an insight to be presented. So, I'm sure that he's not allowed to tell us what his definition of GSK is, but every company can define what that means for them, so that they can all have the same definition. They can all look at how the insights are being used. It's all apples to apples. The insights will travel. Remember that knowledge management that I talked about in the previous point, it's going to be easier for insights to be able to catalog and look at in the same exact way, because they're going to be able to travel easier across the business. They're going to be doing that. And he talked about quantifying taking ownership and responsibility for those insights I said earlier, how many new insight cards are there? How frequently are other people looking at it?

This is not about likes and dislikes. This is about use cases. How many times has somebody read your insight? How many times has another business gone there? All of this is testing the partnership with insights. So, I thought that was amazing. Now I talked about C-suite. You asked him a very pointed question and I read more into the question and I'm glad he took it at face value, but you said, "All this stuff that you're doing, is it because the C-suite supports you?" And I love that question, because many of our listeners might be saying, "Well, yeah. He had all the support from his CML." But he said, "Yeah, that's true. I did have support from the CML." "How did the C-suite buy-in come about?" You asked him.

"Well, there are many ways I'm successful." He understood. "Because, I have a C-suite supporting me, because I got hired to do this." But, it's also from the bottom up, the bottom is himself and his CBIA team. Then he said, "We have to take ownership." So yes, we have the support, but we have to come in with the desire to be consumer lending, putting consumers first, like everybody says, but doing it really. They call themselves a collective team, everybody together. So, they work in the same direction, pushing different levers. But then he says, "We didn't wait for somebody else to define what that meant. We went out and defined it for ourselves. We went out and said what the reality of ground up means to us. We took on an 18 week project. We went and we analyzed the world. And we went to define what a future insights organization looks like. And we took this 18 week journey together."

They even invited the marketing team, which I thought was fantastic. So they were able to earn the trust that was already given to them by the C-suite. And they stepped into the space and they owned it and they helped to revisit the innovation process for the company. They upskilled their own skill sets. They built those capabilities and they didn't wait for anybody to hand them the answer or to give them permission. They were brave enough and strong enough to step forward together as an insights function and not be the research-y researcher, but be the proactive discovery, confident researcher that they think that the future needs. So that was amazing. 

Ryan:

And the proactivity of that is like... I find it super inspiring, particularly for an industry that gets branded as introverted, librarian ties. Like, "No, you guys are going to say this is important and we're going to help you define it and set the tone." That's what the business needs, is that partnership. But, if we don't take it, they're going to find somebody who will.

Patricia:

Yes. And I think it's amazing. He talked a lot about commoditizing ourselves and that's something that's scary, because we all who are insights, worry about being commoditized ourselves. And we want to make sure that that doesn't happen. So, the next thing he talked about, is how he's not going to make that happen. 

He talked about capability building and it was amazing, because everybody says they have a training program, they have an academy. They talk about answering the question, how do we get our people ready to fill the gap that we're creating, that we want them to step into to push forward? So, they created an academy to help create the insights professional, their immediate future. And it's all about those people who are ready and able to give advice. Because he says, "Consultancies are taking business away from insights, and we don't want that to happen."

So, the insights team at GSK doesn't want GSK to hire consultants to answer questions that they can answer. So, he's actually empowering his team to go into processes, to go into meetings and to discussions, innovation, with the insights, the card ready, and being ready to lead and be seen as a leader, which is amazing. So, he's making them. In the training, he enables deep human understanding with always having, not only just the understanding, but the forward action after the understanding, looking forward and finding links. He says that in the training, they help you reinforce the human element on top of the data. So, it's the data and what the human brings. He offers them, the whole entire company, about 150 everybody's, who attend things that help them decision-making and learn the organization and insights for the organization.

But then, they take 15 high performers, high potentials, and they've developed an accelerated program for them. That's all about, of course, with coaching and mentorship, but not training them to be specialists, to be people with a purpose, to help them define what their purpose is, what they enjoy in life, what brings them joy, to do what they love and try to make it the perfect match. They do that for those 15 people. So, they can keep them and they can keep using them throughout the whole company and keep them evolving and getting that joy and bringing the joy to the company. Because of one quotes, he borrowed it from somebody else. So I'll repeat it here. "If you're not at the top table, you're probably on the menu." Which is scary.

Ryan:

I've never heard that phrase. It is a scary phrase, but it resonated with me.

Patricia:

Well, it reminded me of, you know how, when you're clickbait and you say, "This is a report and it's free. Here, put your email here." It's not free. You're the price, you're giving away all yourself for the price. And that's similar to what this is. This is all about being at the top table. This is more than just leaning in. This is acting. So, I really liked that. And then I'm going to leave you with the second last. I have the last one, but there's a couple more that I think are important.

He talked about democratization. Now, you and I at work, talk about democratization and we all know that's inviting the marketeers and the marketers in, he takes it a step further. He talks about, not only inviting the marketers to understand and to be able to do the insights, he talks about insights and marketing, joining and driving together. So that the insights knows about marketing and marketing knows about insights and encourages innovation in that way, encouraging both groups to look around and play and look for new things to share. 

It talks about marketing learning, what insights and what research means and research learning, where their insights go and how they're going to be used. So that the balance of marketing and insights, people stepping together, is what's going to take the company farther. It makes that partnership even better.

That was amazing. And that's, what's going to, the next point, create the transformation of the function. He talked about the transformation of the function, not happening by osmosis. It's something that needs to be invested in and all the previous points, I just told you, those were all the investments that he's doing, that they're actually truly investing time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears. They're doing it early. They're doing it often. They're listening. They're showing intentions. They're setting KPIs, because the insights people have to have KPIs as well. They have to be accountable for everything.

And he says, "You have to start with fundamentals when you're doing a transformation of a function." You have the capabilities and you have all of that. And we have the democratization, but both for the insights people, learning insights and marketing, and marketing doing the other way around, you have to start with fundamentals. What are the cores of your business? What are the cores of your insights? What are the cores of how you're getting the insights, the tools? Focus on that. Once you've got that right, you can move on to something else like storytelling, but first start with the fundamentals on both sides. So, I thought that was amazing.

Ryan:

Yeah, for sure. The definitions, the intentions, but it's all basic stuff. But, so often we talk over each other and think we understand each other or something. The thing for me that I think was most inspiring, was the commitment to elderly people as the central theme. I think people think about transformation equal in technology. 

I know I went on this tangent during the interview, but I remember early in our trajectory as a business being somewhat disappointed, because my hope when joining this business, when Steve started it was to say, we're going to give you more time to be creative and think, and in some ways I think the Penny is dropping and businesses are moving, but I remember those early years being like, "Oh shit, we just perpetuated bad behavior." And it was like... Because, technology alone, isn't the answer. It's what we do with it.

Patricia:

And that leads me to the last point, what you just said, I couldn't have paid you for a better segue. He said, and I leave this for all of us and the listeners to ponder, "It's not just the technology. It can't just be technology." It's not that the platform has replaced people. It's that they enable people, it's that they help people. It's that all that organization and knowledge management that he talked about, helps us reach the data so that we generate an insight. 

All of that alignment of the insights, is what gives us innovation. It gives us creativity and it gives us the time, because it does the heavy lifting to organize things, all those democratization and the blended data sets, helps us get ideas. It's all about finding out what it is you're truly trying to answer. And what's the value you're going to bring to the table, because it's not technology replacing you, it's technology empowering you, enabling you, making you stronger, making you a better leader.

Ryan:

So as always, excellent summary. This interview was incredible. Our dear listeners, number one, appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. We have a lot of fun doing this podcast. It's a creative outlet for me. So, I appreciate you taking the time to listen. 

I wanted to say, we're about halfway through the season, but my friends, we're bringing some heat for the rest of the season. We've got Jen Picard from Pernod Ricard, Steph Gans from Pepsi-Co, a glimpse into me, which is going to be crazy. Because, we're going to have my executive coach on, which is... She's wonderful. Her name's Nora. And there's a bunch of other interviews planned. So, we're quickly booking season three. It's almost done. Believe it or not. And we're going to start to think about next year and season four. I want to hear it from you.

What would be interesting for you? What do you want to learn? Who do you want us to talk about? What are concepts that would be useful for you? 

Please hit me up, hit Patricia up. We want to make sure that this podcast is delivering value to you. That you can bring to work the very next day. We're not hard to find. So, I won't give you 50 different ways, but if you could do me a favor, if the podcast is giving you any value, please engage in the ratings in either the app store or Spotify. You guys all know how algorithms work. It helps us spread the word to more people. 

So, I would very much appreciate it if we've given you any value, if you could just do me that small favor. 

Patricia, my friend, I'll talk to you soon. Kelsey, Judith, Katie, Arielle, Emma, all y'all behind the scenes helping make inside insights great, thank you as always. Have a good day, everybody.

Patricia:

Yeah, Ciao!