Making magic: Using insights to create great TV

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 my lovely co-host, Patricia Montesdeoca and Kelsey Sullivan. Hi ladies.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hello.

Ryan:

How you guys doing?

Patricia:

Good, how about you guys?

Ryan:

Well as you both know... so context shifting, let's talk about that for a second.

Patricia:

Oh my god.

Ryan:

It's one of the things I like and don't like about my job. So as president of a company, you basically change contexts every 35 to 40 minutes. So, so far today, I talked about our all company offsite, which is going to be exciting. It's in two weeks time in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria. I've talked about engineering, I've talked about product, I've talked about people, I've talked about customers. And now I'm talking to you guys and you know what I'm going to do after this?

Patricia:

Your favorite part.

Ryan:

It is my favorite part. You know what I'm going to do after this? I'm not going to talk to anybody. I'm going to go for a walk.

Patricia:

You're going to go play with the dogs.

Ryan:

Yeah, context shifting is fun but it's sometimes difficult. And Patricia, solo entrepreneur. Solo-preneur. How do you say that? Solo entrepreneur.

Patricia:

Well I'm not really solo cause I'm with Charna. I have a business partner.

Ryan:

You and Charna are so busy that you're almost about to turn away work, which is 

exciting. Congratulations.

Patricia:

Yes. Both of us are full as in full, full, full. Yes.

Ryan:

That makes me very happy for both you and Charna. It's good to see you both. And hello to our lovely listeners. 

So many people that listen, send us notes. And I just want to thank you guys for doing that. I had a woman who wrote a whole article that I had bookmarked. I'm going to send to you two about insights operations that she said we inspired, which is super cool. And so anyways, all of you listening, I really, really just appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our podcast. Today's episode was fun to record. It's with Bianca Pryor, who's the VP of insights at BET, which is now Paramount.

Patricia:

Badass. Absolutely badass. 

Ryan:

Bianca is incredible. Like I said, I've known her forever. She was a customer of mine. I've been her shepherd at events when she's been very popular, slow and steady you'll hear in this episode. But she's just a really wonderful woman. She's using her platform to do a lot of good and just really happy to have the chance to connect with her. So I think enough about me, let's go talk to Bianca. What do y'all think?

Patricia:

Yes. Let's do it.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry:

All right. I'm very excited for this conversation. I'm not going to lie to everybody listening. We've been talking for 15 minutes so we thought we should hit record. Bianca Pryor, what's up my friend? How you doing?

Bianca Pryor:

I'm doing good, Ryan. It's so good to connect. It's been too long.

Ryan:

Too long. We only seem to see each other in panels with 400 other people listening to us or at conferences and we're like passing ships in the night.

Bianca:

I know. And the last time I saw you, you had a complete entourage at Quirks New York.

Ryan:

Did I? Really?

Bianca:

You did.

Ryan:

You gave me a big hug. I appreciate that.

Bianca:

Literally seven people following you. I said, "Look at Ryan. He stepped up. He has a handler."

Ryan:

Oh God. The truth is with the conferences, I usually need a handler because I usually have some talk I'm giving. And I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm pretty buttoned up at work but I'm actually a disheveled disaster in my personal life. Context, I don't know where my keys are right now. That's a fact. I'm in my office today. I don't know where my keys are, but what are you going to do?

Bianca:

No judgment.

Ryan:

So yeah, I guess I need a handler.

Bianca:

No judgment. I don't make my bed up in the mornings.

Ryan:

You know what? There's all this rhetoric that that's a thing you have to do. I think you should do you. 

I want to tell a funny story about you that I'm going to tell. So, Bianca and I go way back. Bianca is somebody who I've known for what? Probably 13 years, 12 years, something like that?

Bianca:

Yeah, about that.

Ryan:

And I was her vendor, a term that if you listen to this podcast you know I don't like. And the reason I use the joke is Bianca always treated me like an extension of her team.

Bianca:

That's right.

Ryan:

And I appreciate you for that. And I was a young pup early in my career and you were gracious and you gave me context. And you know what that did for all of you corporate researchers or clients out there, whatever you want to call yourself? It made me want to run through brick walls for Bianca and her team. And so, that's how you should treat your partners because you'd give them that, they'd feel that.

Bianca:

That's right.

Ryan:

But that's not the story I want to tell you. So, we were together. You're going to laugh once you realize the story. We were together at SMR in Atlanta. You know where this is going.

Bianca:

Oh, boy.

Ryan:

We were at SMR in Atlanta. And so, it was wonderful. SMR was great. And shout out to SMR. SMR is actually, at the time of our recording, it's annual. I believe it's the 75th anniversary of SMR in Toronto. So, we're there. And they had this really cool event at the wild World of Coke. And I felt bad because there was a guy named Carl Persson. You know Carl?

Bianca:

I don't.

Ryan:

So, Carl works at Pepsi. Carl's a real good dude. He works at Pepsi in shopper insights or maybe it's like the IRI data side of things. Anyways, poor Carl walks into the World of Coke with a Pepsi badge on. And I mean, this dude was not welcomed. I felt very bad for him. But that isn't the story.

Bianca and I decide we're going to go and will cause a little trouble after the event. So, we walked into this bar. And have you ever seen the scene in the movie where the pretty lady walks in and the record stops playing and everybody turns to the door? So, that's what happened to Bianca. And all the market research geeks were trying a two-step with you that night. And I was your handler that evening.

Bianca:

You were. You looked out. You looked out for me, Ryan. That was a fun night. It was classic.

Ryan:

Oh, good times. All right. So, I'm excited to talk to Bianca for a lot of reasons. Not just because I've known her forever and she was a great partner to me. I think she's got a lot of wisdom. She's learned a lot. She's still very young in her career and is thriving. But I want to dive in with you. So, you started your career on the supplier side, correct?

Bianca:

Yeah. Yup.

Ryan:

And you made a shift that many people try to make but often fail, from a good researcher to a P&L owner.

Bianca:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Talk to me about that evolution. There's young researchers listening to this. Doing the work and leading the work to a commercial outcome are very different things. And I think a lot of times people think they have to linearly get promoted.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

What was that transformation like for you when you started to move from doer to leader?

Bianca:

Yeah, happy to. So just to put some numbers to it, I've been in the game for 15 years, 15 years. I know. I'm showing my age now. So, I actually started at a qualitative focus group facility in Chicago, Chicago Focus. This was January of 2007. And I also had a side gig. So, I was kind of moonlighting and doing this.

Ryan:

You had a side hustle before side hustles were cool?

Bianca:

Oh completely. I had to. I had to pay the bills.

Ryan:

I like that about you. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you, good point.

Bianca:

Yeah. But what I realized very quickly, I was like, "Okay, love qual. I appreciate it. This is an awesome foot in the door but I was still really hungry for quant because that's what I had learned in graduate school when I was at Purdue." So, I left there, got picked up, Ray Barrante. Ray, if you're listening, if you're out there, you changed my life. He was the recruiter back in the day for TNS. And he picked me up and said, "I have a job for you. It's a research analyst on the tracking team." I had no idea what that was.

Ryan:

Oh my God.

Bianca:

And I was like, "Sign me up, sign me up." And that was TNS Brand and Communications, snapped to financial services for the east but I was based in Chicago and that was June 2007, first kind of big girl job at the gate. Loved it. Really, really got to know data, understand research and play with it. Obviously, it was an interesting time because it was near the economic meltdown 2007, 2008.

Ryan:

Good point.

Bianca:

A crazy wild backdrop happening. And I was like, "I love this but I'm hungry for more." I want to talk to clients. I want to listen more to like, "What are their problems?" And that's something always about me. Folks know. It's like, "You give me a problem, I will find you a solution and we will figure it out together." And so, I knew I needed to figure out more like what would client work look like for me?

So, that's when I linked up with another outside recruiter and she says, "I have an opportunity for you at a perky startup." They have literally three or four employees in the Chicago office and they're looking for a number two. I said, "Oh, what's the name? Tell me more." BrainJuicer at the time, this was 2011, February 2011.

Bianca:

And Alex Hunt and Katie O'Connor and interviewed with them. And essentially, they're like, "Cool. You want to do client work?" I'm like, "Yup. I'm a very strong researcher. I know what I'm up to." And they said, "All right, well, there you go. Try and hit half a million in your first year." I was like, "What?"

Ryan:

Wow.

Bianca:

What does that mean? How do I do it? So I really, Brian, at that time came in, as you said, as a researcher but then really had to cultivate that mindset and shifted very quickly. So, what is pitching? How do I create capability stats? How do I deepen relationships with existing clients? How do I get prospective clients? It was a whole art that I really had to learn, but I learned from some of the best, Alex Hunt, Susan Griffin, John Kearon, Orlando Wood, true legends. But over time, I had to figure out what does Bianca's leadership look like?

Ryan:

Yeah. So, how did you get on that journey? And how would you define Bianca's leadership today?

Bianca:

Yeah. It was such, not to sound cliché, but it was really an iterative playful process. I had to ... You're learning from some of the best, modeling after them. But at the same time, when you are in your young 30s, you're trying to develop your own self-

Ryan:

Totally.

Bianca:

Yeah. You know what that's about. And figuring out what that looks like for you and how you show up in workspaces and places. So, I started looking to other spaces, meditation spaces, other business leaders like Brene Brown, did tons of reading. I'm a heavy reader. Loved the Harvard Business Review. They had this cute little ... I mean, this leadership book series. It was like eight little books in a set.

Ryan:

Oh and it was segments like one was about emotional intelligence?

Bianca:

Yeah.

Ryan:

I remember those. Those are great.

Bianca:

Yeah, love those, love those. So, an avid collector of those, tons of Fast Company and Inc. But I also looked to leaders in my everyday life. My mom, she was ex-military so there's just a certain persona that she has as a leader. And my siblings, friends, mentors, coaches. I really went out of my way to learn from others during that time period.

And I think what that did for me is it gave me a sense of what I wanted to adopt and what I wanted to leave behind. And I always like to say today I'm a leader from the front. So, you can guarantee. I will show you how to write a questionnaire. Not as close as jumping into confirm it or decipher programming, but pretty darn closed. I can check a mean whole count, a data map. All of that is very comfortable to me. Happy to story-tell, pitch something.

So, I think showing my team what I can do and how to do it as a model is how I like to approach things and not being afraid. Yes, there may be days that I'm scared to do something or try something but it's just finding that bravery and courage to do it because that models behavior for your team.

Ryan:

That makes a lot of sense. So, let me just go back for a minute here. So, the technical side of research, you know it, you still know it. You can lead with it. Let's go to that you have to hit that first half-a-mil and you don't need to disclose how much. But by the time you left ... By the way, I refuse to call BrainJuicer anything other than BrainJuicer out of principle. So, you can go to System1. I'll bring you back to BrainJuicer because I still have the squishy brain in my office.

Bianca:

I know.

Ryan:

You could write a book about branding mistakes that would probably go down in history, but that's not what you're going to talk about. You led a huge book of business before you left there.

Bianca:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

Probably the biggest in the company. The commercial skills, the negotiation skills, the sales skills, how did you learn those? So, you had Alex who's probably one of the best salespeople you meet, Brent Snyder, other people that were in that business. But that's where I see a lot of researchers struggle.

And the reason I want to double click on it is so much of what's being asked of corporate researchers is to drive strategy which is a sales job. So, talk to me a little bit about that because I imagine that was ... You're naturally charismatic but I imagine there was some learning and unlearning for you in that process.

Bianca:

Oh, completely. I think one was just some personal development that I had to do. I think that someone who's naturally a bit introverted, shocking, but having to figure out, "Okay, what is going to be my style? How am I going to hold space? It's okay to have nonverbal communication just as much as verbal communication. What will that look like for me?"

Doing some public speaking courses, I had to work on that to just make sure I was understanding how to hold space with large crowds, small crowds. So, I had to do some personal development there. Again, we talked about modeling and looking at different folks' styles. "Ooh, I like what they did there. I'm going to play with that and adopt it into my pitch or into my conversation."

I think a big one, Ryan, is just being open to feedback. I had to be so open to it and to get better because if I wasn't open to it, I wasn't going to ever improve. And I think not just feedback from my bosses but also for my team as well, too. So, what are things that I could do better as a leader?

Ryan:

Smart.

Bianca:

Yeah. And it's humbling. It's really humbling when you may hear something and you're like, "Oh, well." You have to apologize or you have to check that bias. Or you have to figure out how you might work with something a little bit differently the next time.

And I sought out mentorship. I think that's an important part of who I am and what people may see publicly. But behind the scenes, I have had some incredible mentors. One of my mentors, we have a seven-year ongoing relationship to this day. We meet the first Friday of every month and she is like an OG. She's tremendous. And we talk about everything, especially that historical context of the industry. And she keeps me connected to that and who did what in the past, how it was done and I bring the perspective of today and we riff off of each other and learn from that. So, it's wonderful. It's wonderful.

Ryan:

Wow. I hope everybody, particularly those of you younger in your career, picked up on how growth-minded and real Bianca is with herself. I mean, I think those are things that ... I mean, you did the work. You challenged yourself, you unlearned and I give you a ton of credit.

One of the things that I say a lot to people kind of younger in their career is, "Be authentically yourself." And so, the process of defining who you are authentically in a professional setting. You and I have something in common. We're both not naturally outgoing. Everybody thinks I am, everybody thinks you are, but you could find me on the weekends quiet. You could probably find you on the weekends quiet up at your house, right?

Bianca:

Yup.

Ryan:

So, that process of defining, I use Brene Brown's framework of what's going to define you. When I read that book Dear to Lead, it was like a penny drop for me. But I was ... I mean, that was five years ago, right?

Bianca:

Yeah.

Ryan:

I guess I was thinking until I made it till then. And so, I think it's really interesting for people young in their career because they don't know what they don't know yet and they don't know what their passion or their superpowers are. Do you have any advice for a younger version of you, maybe a shortcoming? Or do you think that journey's just something everybody has to go on?

Bianca:

Yeah. I think for me and this started in my 20s, it was just experimenting, just trying all the things, doing it right as long it aligns with your value set and how you set that up for your own self and your own life. But for me, it was really important to try so many different things. I remember when I'd never lived away from home.

So undergrad, Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, I decided to go there for college. And then I shot off to Purdue which was 12 hours away from home. And I just remember sitting in my dorm room the first night looking around like, "Oh, I don't have to go to bed at a certain time. Here's what it was like. Wow, I'm gonna stay up late."

And so, pushing the envelope, it's something as simple as that. But that goes to show how almost childlike I had been growing up in college that I was starting to step into adulthood in my own way and defining my own terms and trying different things, different classes, different friends circles, dressing different ways. And I have carried that spirit throughout my professional career as well.

So, I remember my first, it was one of the early couple months at TNS back in 2007, they sent us to Toledo, Ohio for TNS bootcamp.

Ryan:

How exciting.

Bianca:

Oh my God. That was my first official business trip. I rented a car and had business clothes. I was like so-

Ryan:

Business clothes.

Bianca:

Oh God, yes. All the New York & Company, all The Limited and Express, it was just fantastic. But for me, each day was set up as it was snapped to the research process. So, starting with kickoff all the way through debrief and going through that process. And we had a leader that curated a whole curriculum for us each of those five days.

And I just remember sitting like, "Wow, we could go really, really deep just on a sample alone or just on field work alone." And I remember being really excited by that, Ryan, because that inspired me to think about how I could try different things. So, once I got to my proper tracking day job back in Chicago, then I had the room to actually say, "Well, I could make connections to Margi Strickland in sample. And I could have mentorship or one-on-one chats with her and learn a little bit more." Or I could veer off and learn a little bit more about telephone call centers back in the day.

And that's how the process began for me was just staying super curious about the depth, but also the breadth of market research. So, not only staying in quant but what's up with qual, what's up with multiculturalism. There are so many different practice areas or areas of expertise and then you could go very deeply within.

So, I'd say advice to the listeners out there who are just beginning their journey is to absolutely stay curious, try all the things even if it feels hard, just allow yourself to see how it feels. And when you can assess how it feels, would you do it again? Would you not? Do you want more of it? What kind of path can you go down on that?

Ryan:

Yeah, it's good advice. And as you're talking, it strikes me that people like me need to do a better job of early stage career mapping… we need to do a better job of giving people that experience but then also coaching people on how to define them like what are the things that you're ... as you get the experiences.

Okay. That's your superpower. That's not. I'll share a story. Couple years ago, we were at an inflection point. I'm like, "Oh, I really need to get good at data analysis." So, I went and took an online Columbia course.

Bianca:

Nice.

Ryan:

I absolutely hated it but I tried, did the damn thing, whatever, and half the days. And talked to myself, "I'm going to hire somebody to do that," because I just want the data. I want the data to be able to tell a story with it, I don't want to ... So, it's a really interesting point.

But this message that you give isn't just for people young in their career. I have a story of a woman who's in her 50s who is at Zappy and she's in her first sales job because she wanted to try it. And I got a ton of love for that because let's be honest, most of these decisions we make, they're two-way doors. You can get right back out and, "I didn't like that. I want to do something else."

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

So, let's stay on your track. So, three years ago roughly, you made a big leap for running a big P&L at BrainJuicer. By that time, they were already called System1. I will give you no blame for that name change. So, you made a big leap. You went to what is now called Paramount but specifically BET. So, you're now moving from a business that is very grounded in behavioral sciences, testing ads, concepts, and predicting what's happening in the world to an entertainment company.

Talk to me about that. That's a big change, but you didn't really know it, I don't think, how big the change was going to be at the time. So, just say a little bit about it.

Bianca:

Yeah, happy to. So, I remember when I saw the job description, it was vice president, consumer insights, content optimization and marketing strategy. First thought was like, "Oh my gosh, what a long title." But move fast-

Ryan:

It's a lot of words but I like it.

Bianca:

It's a lot of words, a lot of words. But when I read through it and really sat with it, I was like, "Wow, this is so similar to what I do in terms of the advertising practice here that I was leading at System1 BrainJuicer." I was like, "It's similar." And I was like, "Okay."

I argued in my head. I made sense of it. I was like 15 seconds, 30-second promos, ads were very similar to scripts, pilots. It was a type of stimuli, all in the stimulus camp. And so, that was my angle. That was my positioning. And that's how I intuited that job description. And I went after it. I said, "I could do this job." I feel really confident I could do this job in my sleep. I had deep connections, vendor-side connections that I knew that could lift me up.

I did know that being a media entertainment would be a blind spot for me. I didn't know much about the vertical. And it was interesting because I had a couple I'd say media entertainment clients when I was at System1. But you go into those meetings with a lot of verbatim. You step into it. You know their vertical. You know their category. And you're dropping the little keywords and buzzwords that they sweet-

Ryan:

Totally.

Bianca:

To tailor the conversation. You know the tricks. And then I realized that that still wasn't enough for me to be believable in this role and that I had ... So, there were some just real fundamental things that I needed to get better at. One area absolutely was on ratings. The entire linear TV businesses built off of Nielsen ratings.

And we get these reports every single night. And when you see the reams and reams of data, there is an expectation that you should understand what a coverage rating is, how this breaks out by different audiences specifically for BET black audiences. How do we buy against ad revenue? So, there's all of these dynamics, Ryan, that I realize, "Oh wow, it's not just looking at cross-tabulation data and primary research, but this is a whole nother level of going into this system that often has a walled garden around it, pooling down all this streams of data, intuiting it but then connecting it back to your primary research."

And so, that's the learning that I've been up to in the past almost three years here at BET is like, "What does that mean?" So, if we are to test a show early on, once it drops and it doesn't rate well or it does rate well, the business wants to know why. So, that's in my agreement. So they come to my team because in theory, I would have tested that as early as a pilot episode in one of the early cuts of it, maybe T minus three months, T minus six months, T minus a year.

One show I'll speak to is an unscripted show. I tested that two years ago and we just dropped it this summer and it's doing pretty well. So, that's a really good example of how early and upstream my team could be testing things and creating that influence to impact them. So, you got to know it. You have to be able to connect the dots.

Ryan:

And your stakeholders are so different. I imagine if a show is, and I'm kind of riffing so I might be full of shit, but it strikes me that if a show goes live and the ratings are south of the projection, you've got an ad sales team fired up because they told P&G, "Look, you're going to get X amount of eyeballs on this thing."

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

And so, that's a different stakeholder map than when you're on the vendor side, it's head of insights to CMO or head of insights to director of innovation, the salespeople's incomes are tied to these things working, right?

Bianca:

Right.

Ryan:

And it's really interesting tension. So, let me ask you another ... It's a curiosity question. So, for a living, my company evaluates ads. So I'm curious, how do you evaluate a show at an early stage? What's that process like? I'm fascinated by that.

Bianca:

Oh, it is a really, really interesting and exciting process. And I love our team ... Specifically, I lead the content team, content excellence, content optimization. And it could be as soon as our CEO of BET says, "Hey, I'm in conversation. We might want to pick up a show." And maybe it's already cut. Maybe it's already fully produced and maybe we want to acquire it, but we want to just get a beat on it first.

So, it could be as early as that to us creating original content and saying, "Yes, we have aligned with this creator, this EP. We're going to work with BET'S production team and we're going to essentially from there, move it along to air." And where we'll come in sometimes is as soon as they produce it and get that cut, then my team will test it.

So, you could think about it as a little bit of a disaster check. So at that point, obviously, it's probably too late to change a whole lot but you still can create impact especially on the marketing elements. So then how we talk about this show, how would we position it? What do we need to think about? So, that's I'd say super upstream, almost kind of a middle point.

And then sometimes we've already aired it and it's like, "Oh boy, let's get some insight." We need a quick why behind this? Why didn't it rate well or why did it rate well? Again, so it could be that post-market, after-market read that sometimes we all need to better understand. And this is important for talent deals as well or re-ups or renewals for future seasons, future series or spinoffs.

So, research is incredibly important because we are a data-driven, data-centered business and we pride ourselves very much in that and trying to hit those kinds of three beats is what I would call it, so super upstream, midpoint and then aftermarket.

Ryan:

I imagine the two scenarios in the aftermarket email, "The ratings are way high," or, "Oh shit, what do we do now?"

Bianca:

Yeah.

Ryan:

So, let me ask you a question about the downstream. So, there's an idea, someone's passionate about it. You get invited early, which is creative development researchers' dream. Let's be honest. But you are not just talking about selling more seltzer. You're talking about a script, a character development plot, a creation.

Bianca:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

What are those creators looking for? I'd just love for you to talk about it from the context of the creator. What are the things that if you have the producer of the show or the person who screen writes plays, what's the type of research that they value and how do you catch them in strikes because I imagine that can be tense if done wrong?

Bianca:

Yeah. So, I'd say the big thing is just hearing it in consumers' own words. That always wins over. If consumers provide that insight in their own words, whether it's video steam, whether it's just qualitative comments or verbatim, that is still very powerful and highly impactful when we can story-tell that and weave that in.

I'd say that sometimes it depends. Some of the creators are looking for a comparison, a go, a no go or how would we recommend this. Creatives at the end of the day are still going to do what they want to do. And I love that about this business. We are a business of selling stories.

Ryan:

Me too.

Bianca:

So, sometimes research will say, "Hey, we would recommend this," or, "We might not recommend it." And the EPs on it will be like, "Well, we'll still," because there are other factors. You still have to look at talent deals. You still have to look at marketing potential. You have to look at distribution. There's a whole other little element that goes into this. So, it's not just the voice of the consumer or consumer insights.

So, it's bigger than us. But I'd say number one is definitely hearing it in their own words. And that is the impact, the power we can bring to the creative process. And the earlier we do it, obviously the better because then that gives people steers as well.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Bianca:

And one thing I didn't talk about earlier but is sometimes depending on, especially if it's original content, there will be something called a writer's room. So, you could think of it sometimes in our world, a board room or a strategy session. And the creators will hunker down and just write, write, write that next beautiful season, the rest of the series, that movie, whatever it might be.

And if research can plop into that moment, that is an incredible feeling. And the power and the awareness it can bring to maybe that storyline, to the beat, how they were thinking about that character, developing them is magic. It's really, really magic.

Ryan:

I love what you say. I mean, I'm fascinated with the creators of the world because I think they've been very underserved with data, frankly. The operations people, the finance people, the media people, they've all got all the data and the creators get link tests.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

And anytime I meet a really good creator, they want to make their idea better. They want to amplify it. They want to ... And I love what you say about the consumer's words. But I also love what you say they're going to do what they want. I don't know if you're going to agree with what I'm going to say. I think sometimes as insights people, we have too much intellectual pride to say what we say should be the only thing you do. And I'm of the view that it's a very important lens in a business decision, but it is a business decision. It is a creative decision.

And so, putting it in what the consumer's words are resonates probably more emotionally with a creator than a red score or whatever. And so, it's really wow. And by the way, I wanted to talk to Bianca about this topic because I do believe in the creators of the future of the world. And I think the more and more data becomes programmatic, the less and less wise in that matrix.

I have a colleague, Alison Scott. Alison, shout out, I'm stealing this line from you. I don't like to plagiarize. But she was saying to me, she's giving a talk at the Insights Association. And her point is as insights become more and more programmatic and sample stays non-representative, the matrix becomes this homogenous blob of what's available in sample. But the same metaphor plays true with just relying on data without the context of human emotion and why.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

And that motivates the shit out of me for good modern insights people. We can do a lot with that. So, I want to transition and we only have a few more minutes left, but time flies when you're having fun, Bianca.

Bianca:

I know.

Ryan:

So, all right, let's talk about this industry.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

Where is it going in your perspective? What does it need to evolve to?

Bianca:

Yes. So, I think the first thing and some of you, the listeners out there, may or may not know but I'm involved in the Insights Association IDEA Council. So, I am the chair for that which stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access. So, as you heard Ryan shared earlier, we have helped stand up a proper fellowship program called Ideator. And our insights industry needs it more than ever.

We need more representation in terms of race and ethnicity. I go as far as to say gender and sexual orientation. We need to be far more inclusive with persons with disabilities and be way more accessible. And not just who we're hiring but also who we're talking to, we need to have a better understanding of that.

So, we are on a very fierce mission to lead the charge in that work. And there are several other associations and organizations also in this movement with us as well. So, shout out to Kerry Edestein's Multicultural Insights Collective, Whitney Fowler, Insights In Color, Women in Research and Color. So, several organizations are coming together to do that, but it's an imperative. We need that more than ever. And so, thank you to Zappi for hosting a fellow Ideator and making Eddie's experience fantastic.

Ryan:

Well, what I love about the program that you're chairing is to me solves the problem at the root cause. The only way to get dozens and dozens of more diversity into C-suite chairs is to force it because there's just not enough people in the game. What I love about this program is you're giving people early in their career the opportunity to explore the industry, to get into the game.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

And I know that that's a long game to solve but I'm down to play both sides, the long game and the short game. But I believe you solved this problem once and for all at the root cause which is getting more people into the games.

Bianca:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

So, I was sold before Melanie could finish the sales pitch quite frankly.

Bianca:

Love it. I love it. Yeah. We're ready to get going with next year's class and starting to set that up. So, that's definitely number one I'd say. There's so much happening in info security, data governance, cyber security. I think that the regulation and the policy is changing rapidly.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Bianca:

I can't even keep up with all the different acronyms, COPPA, GDPR, ISO, all of that. And I think that ... Big shout out to Howard Fienberg at Insights Association for actively staying on top at the hill to protect, to keep us safe really. And I think that if we're not careful, that is going to be our biggest threat especially in dealing with the volumes of data that whether you're supply side, buy side, you have to educate and protect yourselves on what the laws, policy. It's again always changing. And we can't cut corners on consumer privacy and protection. We just can't.

Ryan:

Yeah. On a positive note, the less and less we rely on third-party cookies, the more and more first-party credible, safe, secure data becomes a very, very valuable resource which is good news for the primary insights business, right?

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

But absolutely. I mean, the amount of effort we have to spend in data privacy as a company and we don't even get PII. It's significant.

Bianca:

Yup. And then, just the last area would be related to that is just the move towards data science and business analytics and business intelligence. I think that as important as primary research is, I think that there are lots of folks out there, brilliant minds already pioneering the space in machine learning and AI.

And I think there's so much for us to learn because I actually went to a certification course at University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business Exec Ed. And the three-day course and just talking about that is interesting, one of the initial kinds of demarcations like how do we think about what small data versus big data. And someone in the group said that small data is essentially anything that can fit in Excel. And I think that typifies a lot of what we do in the insights industry.

Ryan:

Good point.

Bianca:

Right. It was fascinating. But then if you think about it, there are terabytes of data floating out there. That's the big data. That's not going to fit into Excel or Google Sheets. So, you have to have an entirely different data frame for that. And then if you think about Web3 and all of that kind of flying around, you're going to need bigger data frames, more powerful GPUs to really manage that.

So, we also as insights people have to understand what's happening there in that space and how does it connect back to my world. And I think for me, the way I see it is we have to help lead the charge in making all of that data, Rumpelstiltskin it into insight and make it explainable. That's still our job. And that's still where we can win is being able to take all of the terabytes of wherever it lives in Github, Paperspace, Pandas. And pull that down and say, "But at the end of the day, it's still telling you to greenlight this show, launch the same product or put this product on the shelf."

So, I think that ultimately, that's what it comes down to and what our superpowers insights people can be still is the explainability factor and holding space when it gets to big data.

Ryan:

I love that. And I think it's such an opportunity for people who understand culture, who understand people and develop some of those synthesis skills.

Bianca:

Yes.

Ryan:

Because data is ... A lot of people will say data is the new oil when oil wasn't a scarce resource. It was a commodity for many, many years. And so, it's those who understand what to do with data that wins. Even though there's a lot of political wars over who owns the data, who understands contextually how the data makes business decisions is who's going to be getting more budget and promotion and everything else.

Bianca, thank you. Everybody is a better person for having listened. It was fun to hang with you.

Bianca:

My pleasure.

Ryan:

Next time I come to New York, we got to get together for lunch. It's been too long.

Bianca:

That's right. That's right. Let's do it. I got some spots in mind. So, make it happen.

Ryan:

I like this. I like the confidence. Let's go. Everybody, thank you for listening. Bianca, thank you so much. Have a good day.

Bianca:

All right. You too, Ryan. Thanks.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan Barry: 

So I really enjoyed my conversation with Bianca, although I did it from our Boston office, which you would've seen. And because I'm the loudest person, I think in Boston, I was in a phone booth and I got to tell y'all, it's hot inside a phone booth. 

So next time I do a thing in a phone booth, I'm bringing a little fan so I don't get so hot. 

Those of you watching on YouTube might be wondering, "Why on earth does Ryan have a mustache? He looks ridiculous." This might be the last time anybody sees me with a mustache because my daughter thinks it's ugly and my wife's pretending she likes it. But the truth is, there's a story behind this mustache, which Patricia, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a minute to tell before we get into your takeaway.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Please do. Please do. It's a very important story.

Ryan:

Cancer sucks, right?

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah, fuck cancer. There's a wonderful young man who's on our team at Zappi named Connor Kirk. He is smart, kind, humble, growth minded, handsome, in great shape, has a wonderful girlfriend, has everything going for him. And he just found out about three months ago that he has stage four colon cancer, which is increasingly quite prominent in young men. And young men typically ignore symptoms and whatnot. So Connor is fighting and he's going to beat it because he's Connor and he's going to beat it. And he's also trying to raise awareness. And so couple of my colleagues, Danielle Marquis, Lisi Rowland and Elena Heffley organized a charity for Connor and our employees, our customers, our community raised over $35,000 for Conner in the last three weeks. Wow. That gives me quite a bit of emotion to say that and I know many of you listening are part of that community and donated a few bucks. So thank you.

And I'm rocking a mustache in solidarity with my guy. So I will get rid of the mustache Connor, because you're going to get rid of the cancer and I got to go back to being bearded. But seriously, if you ever question the power of community, this is evidence of how powerful it is. And those women, they went above and beyond in their own time to do that and it's just really special. So I want to thank them publicly and fuck cancer. Connor, you got this. 

So Patricia, with that said…The last minutes of mustache time. We just had a wonderful discussion with Bianca Pryor. You have a few takeaways as you usually do.

Patricia:

I do. I mean it was a pleasure to listen to. It was just one of those just listening and learning. So I've got three big takeaways and one bonus. And it could have been four takeaways, but the last one is so special and just knocked me off my... what is it? Knock me out of my socks? There's a saying in there somewhere.

Ryan:

There's a saying somewhere, yeah.

Patricia:

In some language, it's there. But anyway, it was so important, it had to have its own space. So the first one, career mapping. You know how near and dear to my heart this topic is. I've been on this soapbox so many times, Ryan's like... And Julio was like, Right? But career mapping, she calls it a learning journey, which I love it.

And so she had three main takeaways, three things that she wants people to understand about career mapping, because you were talking to her about all her changes. She said, investigate each role, determine your style. How are you going to hold your space? I love that saying, hold your space. What's that going to look like? And be growth minded. You called her growth minded, which has got to be one of the best compliments ever. Be real with yourself. Do the work. Challenge yourself. Unlearn to learn. Know your swat. That's my word, right? Fill in those blanks. Know what your strengths are and your weaknesses are. Make sure that you take all the learning you can get and take all the education you can get to fill those blanks in, because if you know them, then you shouldn't be making the mistakes.

But when you do make mistakes, notice I said when, not if because it's going to be a when, apologize. Be humble, right? Check your biases. Look for mentorship. So that's like so important because the only way to get this all to happen is to stay curious and try things, even if they feel hard or weird. You talked about some of the experiences yourself, things that just feel a lot, but just do the work. Because if you don't try it, then you won't know if you liked it or not. Same goes for exotic food, but you know what I mean, right? Now as leaders, what do we have to do? We've got to give our teams a space to do this, to do all the learning and then help them figure it out. Did they like it, did they not? And why?

All right, that was a good one. I love career pathing. It's something that I think all of us at this stage of the game look back and say, "I wish I had known and I wish I could tell." So I like being able to do that. The second one, I got all creative, got journalistic about burying the lede. Lede. L-E-D-E. I looked up, I investigated, right? Burying the lead is when the title doesn't say the whole story. I thought of this because she was so honest and open when she said the title looks similar, but many times the title, the job title doesn't say it all and we have to be aware of that.

So when she said VP, consumer insights, content optimization and marketing strategy, other than it being long and lengthy, she loved the title. It sounds like something I could do. Content optimization, I've done that. Marketing strategy, I've done that. Consumer insights, I've done that. She's like, "I can do that." But the only thing she said was this little thing, I didn't know much about the entertainment vertical. She talked about that job. Well that little thing, she's been in there for three years and she's still learning what it means, so it's okay. If you have the competencies to do the core job, go for it. Just make sure the moment you get in there, you understand their business objectives, their research objectives, who their consumers and their stakeholders are. Don't ever underestimate understanding the power of understanding your stakeholders.

Make sure you understand their process versus your process, and know their vocabulary. I still remember how many times I got tripped up when I first came to Zappi using the same word for different things. Their timing and their ways of working, but she said that understanding all these things on the go has made her successful and we know how successful she is. So there's two things, just because the title sounds familiar doesn't mean it will be. And just because it isn't familiar doesn't mean you can't do it, so just go for it. So I like that one, I really like that one.

In the end she said, it's going to be data driven and consumer, you'll figure it out. So I like that. The third one where you asked her a very big question that you like asking gurus. Where is the industry going in your perspective? What do we need to evolve to? And she was so clear. She just said right away, "We need more representation, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, physical capabilities and ways of thinking." All those things. So it's not just gender or age or whatever, all of it. But she said, "Don't forget, it's not just about who we're hiring, it's also who we're talking to." And as a researcher, I really feel that we have a large area of opportunity and being diverse, more diverse in who we're talking to.

Then she started talking about how we needed to go more into the area of information security and data governance and cybersecurity, right? Our biggest threat is this, because we deal with so much volume and she talked about understanding and protecting ourselves and educating ourselves on the laws and policies. We can't just be ignorant of it. We have to know, right? The other one she said that is where we should be going is understanding the coexistence of small data, everything that it's in an Excel and big data, everything else, because we have to how those two things connect with each other and how they come back to so that we can help lead the change in making all of that data coexist and tell a story. Because at the end of the day, the data is only good if it tells a story, right?

Ryan:

Yeah. You know, it's funny that you link those two points. A woman on our team, who's a good friend of yours, Allison Scott, just gave a talk recently at the Insights Association's New England conference. And it links those two points like it. The more data becomes programmatic, the less representative it is, the more you perpetuate homogenous marketing. And it's a really interesting way to think about it. And she's right. And it all links back to both the points Bianca made.

Patricia:

You know, that same trend is happening in the medical world. My daughter Isabella, shout out to Isabella, one of my favorite people in the world. She worked with the NIH in a program called All of Us, and they're doing the same thing in medicine. They're realizing that all of their research has been done on a certain segment. And so they're doing this study called All of Us that is for a million people. I've talked to people at the Boston office about this, where they're looking to get a million people for their database so that they can track the health and records and data of all these people. So we get proactive medicine that's going to be good for over 50, slightly overweight Latina females, right? Not just white Caucasian males ...

Ryan:

Gosh with the slightly overweight, you look great. Get out of here.

Patricia:

But this is a very different thing. I mean, there are very many different slices of the pie and that's what they're doing. They've already got half a million people. So that's the same thing that we need to do now in research. Now thinking of all those things put together, you know what my bonus is?

Ryan:

I can't wait to hear it.

Patricia:

Insights superpower. This comes straight from the mouth of Bianca. I had no idea she put a name to our insights superpower. You ready? You ready? You ready?

Ryan:

Yes. I'm ready. I'm so ready. I'm really excited.

Patricia:

We know how to Rumpelstiltskin it! Let me make sure I say that right. We are experts in Rumpelstiltskin-ing it. I can't even say the damn word.

Ryan:

If you guys aren't watching on YouTube, you got to check out Patricia. She's cute. That was cute.

Patricia:

Rumpelstiltskin. We take data and turn it into insight and make it explainable. The same way that Rumpelstiltskin turned straw into gold. Because at the end of the day, whatever the vertical, we're still telling you how and when to green light or launch or put something on a shelf, that's our superpower.

Ryan:

Bianca Pryor, ladies and gentlemen. Wow.

Patricia:

Yep, wow.

Ryan:

I'm very happy that she agreed to meet with me, even if I had to sit in a hot phone booth. And as always, wonderful takeaways.

Patricia:

Thank you.

Ryan:

So are we halfway through season five Kelsey?

Ryan:

Almost.

Kelsey:

Yeah.

Ryan:

So the next episode is with a gentleman named Clay Parker Jones. He works at Black Glass Consulting. If you don't know Clay Parker Jones, I'll tell you a little bit about him. He has spent the last several years, probably decade plus consulting with large enterprises to help them digitally transform and become customer centric. I have personally learned so much from Clay about how to be more inclusive, how to get all voices heard in a meeting, how to facilitate dialogue around complex problems, how to get teams to create novel solutions and innovate.

And so much of what we talk about on this podcast is the need to elevate, the need to change, the need to transform. But so little of the time, do we give ourselves the tooling of how do you do that? How do you bring people along a journey? How do you really understand the problem? And so Clay and I are going to talk about that with you. He's currently busy consulting with CMOs all across the globe trying to help them see the light on the other side of the expensive McKenzie reports they buy. So I'm really, really excited about this conversation. Seriously, I'd said this to Clay everything I know about meeting facilitation, I've learned from that guy. It's going to be a really, really fun meeting. So I'm looking forward to it. And I also won't have a mustache by then.

Patricia:

You won't. You will not have a mustache by then. Your daughter will be very happy.

Ryan:

I think she'll be very happy, yeah. Although I'm leaving for eight days to go to Bulgaria, she might not be that happy. She might not be that happy with me. She's only like-

Patricia:

Well maybe you tell her you're going to Bulgaria to grow back your beard.

Ryan:

Good point. That's the only place one can go to grow a beard is Sunny Beach, Bulgaria. It's something about the water in the Black Sea.

Patricia:

And it grows fast.

Ryan:

Really does it for you, yeah?

Patricia:

It grows fast. I promise you, promise you daughter of mine.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's right. Well Patricia, Kelsey, all of our dear listeners, thank you. We hope that the conversation with Bianca is awesome for you, as it was for us to do. And we'll be back soon. Bye everybody.

Patricia:

See you soon. Bye.