Why insights teams need to break the wheel to make a bigger impact

Ryan Barry:

Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan, and I'm joined as ever by my lovely co-host, Patricia Montesdeoca and Kelsey Sullivan. And it's a big week for Patricia. We got a wedding in the family.

Patricia Montesdoeca: 

Oh yeah, it's coming up.

Ryan:

She's getting married, one of her daughters this week.

Patricia:

We're in single digits now. We're on day nine and counting. So it's like...

Ryan:

So is there such a thing as mother-in-law-zilla?

Patricia:

I'm sure there is, and I'm sure I was, or am.

Ryan:

I don't know, I'm just making this up.

Patricia:

I'm sure. I'm sure. I have no doubt.

Ryan:

You seem to be pretty calm about it.

Patricia:

I know the wedding planner doesn't love me, because you know my daughter and I play good cop, bad cop because, because my daughter calls me to complain.

Ryan:

You're the bad cop?

Patricia:

I'm the bad cop, because she can't be the bad cop.

Ryan:

You're the bad cop.

Patricia:

Right, right. And she doesn't want to be the bad cop because she doesn't want everybody to hate her.

Ryan:

Bride's supposed to be chilling this week. Yeah, exactly.

Patricia:

And I'm like, "I have no problem being the bad guy." So I had one of those, you know how in Spanish there's “tú” and there's “usted”, there's the formal and the informal. I had one of those “usted”conversations with her in capital letters. And so very... No bad words, but in the text I said, basically it was, "You're not doing your f*cking job," without the f*cking. And, "Do it or do it. Those are your two options. Because my daughter is not happy, and she's the one getting married, and you will make sure my daughter's happy. Thank you. Next."

Ryan:

We should send this recording to the wedding planners. Ustedes muy mal! This is not good. Okay. So we're all rooting for you, and we will expect a bunch of pictures, wherever you post them.

Patricia:

Of course.

Ryan:

I'm hoping to get some SMS, that's text messaging, pictures personally.

Patricia:

Yes, I am old fashioned. I am WhatsApp and SMS. Because I totally unlinked myself from all of social media except for LinkedIn.

Ryan:

There you go. There you go.

Patricia:

There you go.

Ryan:

So, let's get into this today. This is a fun interview.

Patricia:

Let's do it.

Ryan:

I think it's probably a fun interview for all of us. Today we're interviewing Julio Franco, Zappi's Chief Customer Officer, Patricia's former boss, and all of our friends. He's somebody who I've had the pleasure of working with and building Zappi basically from the ground up. He's somebody who in many ways I'm very different to, but in many ways I'm very alike with. And he's one of, I think, the most pure human beings that you'll meet in terms of his soul and his kindness and his ethics and his moral compass. And I say that because you'll get into this interview, and he's too humble for his own good, so I needed to say this about him behind his back. And I think, Patricia, you would agree, he is now out of Nappo's shadow.

Patricia:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

Rest in peace, Nappo. Your son's doing good, man.

Patricia:

He was never really in his shadow. He just didn't know it.

Ryan:

He just didn't know it.

Patricia:

I've worked with both of them, and his dad, an excellent man. He helped develop the research for Latin America. As in the industry, Latin America…

Ryan:

Yeah. So today you get to listen to a conversation that we just had anyway. This is a podcast recording of a rant we would have over a beer or over a coffee. This has nothing to do with what we sell, it's literally just the change management associated with what insights departments are going through. 

And I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. Julio works hand in hand with customers to help them transform insights departments. Not just using what we do, but other capabilities. So you're going to get a glimpse into some of the things we see work and some of the things we see don't work, as you're starting to think about making your insights function elevate, and your marketers, your innovators, your business stakeholders have the customer centricity they need at their fingertips. Let's get into this one.

Patricia:

Do it.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry: 

Julio Franco, it is so wonderful to finally have you on the podcast. Thank you for making the time.

Julio Franco:

Absolutely, Ryan. I got to tell you, I feel like a fanboy. I really enjoy the podcast, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, I get to be in it. It's wonderful.

Ryan:

Wow. And I will have you know, you have been on the list of coveted guests for about three seasons. The team has been asking me to get you on, and I just kept saying, we have to wait for the right time. I think that time is today. 

So I'm very happy to have you. And I didn't know you were a listener of the podcast. One of the frustrating things about podcasts is you don't actually know who listens, because you get aggregate level data of like, this episode or this topic did well, but it could be my grandmother and all her friends that are listening to it. So anyways, we're going to have a fun conversation today, folks. We're going to talk to you about where we see the insights industry going. We have quite a bit of passion about this topic, both of us.

I have to warn you in advance, when we get passionate we get loud. So you might adjust your volume settings at points in time during this. I'm just warning you. I work with Julio every single day, and when we both get going on something, the room gets loud and all of our British colleagues tend to cover back because we're shouting. But don't mistake our shouting for anger or anything other than excitement. Right, Julio?

Julio:

That's right. We get loud and we speak fast, so you may want to slow it down too.

Ryan:

So before we dive in, I want to tell everybody here a quick story. Everybody listening, Julio Franco is one of my favorite human beings on the planet, genuinely mean that, and somebody who I work with every day. The way we met was we were both giving a keynote at what is now the Insights Association. So it used to be called the Market Research Association, and then of course it merged with CASTRO, becoming the Insights Association. And I was giving a talk, what was that, about six years ago? Almost seven now?

Julio:

Almost seven, yeah.

Ryan:

So if you think about the time in this industry seven years ago, we were still grappling with the ego charge of can we use software to do our jobs? Is agile research a thing? And I was giving a talk about the fact that we need to stop and get out of our own way and think about agile learning as a mindset. And Julio was giving a talk about his current, or at the time his current job where he was a Global Insights Director at AIG. And as they often do at conferences, we were sitting down, they put the speakers together at a table. So we were at a table and we started chatting, and now Julio knows this story, but he can't take the sales guy out of me. So I go, sweet, this is a way to get in with AIG.

And so I very subtly, maybe it wasn't subtle, booked a lunch with Julio. And we went to lunch at Smith & Wollensky in Boston. And to this day, anytime I go to Smith & Wollensky, I think of this lunch with Julio. And we sat down and within three seconds, Julio goes, look, dude, you're never going to get in with AIG, they're too slow, but I'm here for a job. The truth is, the rest is history. I think we started working together three weeks after that and we've been doing it ever since. 

Julio:

That's exactly right. The funny thing about it is the reason why I was looking for a job was because I was frustrated by the slowness of AIG. I'll give you an example of that. I needed to do some mystery shopping research in Brazil. And that mystery shopping research had really new and innovative ways of doing it, where people could go with their phones and record and all that good stuff. That would've cost me $30,000 to get done with a new vendor, and I would've got really good insight, super, super solid insight. But they were not an approved vendor. I spent $350,000 going old school, being super late, and I just kept banging my head against the wall with AIG, being like, you don't understand.

You're asking me to spend 10 times more for a way less quality product. And they're like, well, it's our process. It's going to take you 18 months. If you can wait 18 months, go for it. And I was like, I can't do this. That's why I was like, this doesn't make any sense.

Ryan:

It doesn't. It's such a good example of black box thinking, we've always done it this way, so deal with it. Companies that are still gripping to that, they're f*cked. They lose talent like you. They're losing market share. It's going to be hard to grow. I'm glad that their bureaucracy allowed me to meet you. 

And it's worth everybody knowing we've only ever gotten into two total fights in our seven years of partnership. Both of them were my fault, as usually is the case in my life. But Julio, seriously I'm excited to dive into this with you. First and foremost, let's start personal. This industry and its success is actually personal for you. Can you tell everybody why for those people who don't know?

Julio:

Yeah. My dad was a market researcher. He was one of the first market researchers in Columbia. He started doing advertising research when he was working with a little brunette within the agency. And then in 1977 he opened the first market research company in the country. That was two years before I was born. So this is all I've known. 

After school or after daycare or whatever, I used to go and sit in focus groups. This is the industry that I really grew up in. I don't know if I had a choice or not, but I really like it. I really believe in the power of having the voice of consumers in a room, and I love people as well. So all of a sudden my job is to get paid to learn about people. It's just fantastic.

This is the industry I've been in my entire life. So after graduating from college I started in market research and I've seen a lot of it. I've done everything. I've done door-to-door in-person interviews, I've done research across the globe about all types of topics in all areas. And then when I was at AIG I just saw myself becoming irrelevant. The problem that I had was, I joined a really talented team to start the consumer insights department at AIG, which didn't exist at the time. And we started and we built it-

Ryan:

Was it the market research department before that? Was that what it was?

Julio:

It actually didn't exist. It didn't exist because there was a corporate market research, but consumer insights was not a thing. And then one of the first meetings that I had with some of the business leaders that I was supporting, the guy told me, Julio, insurance is sold, not bought. So why do we even need to listen to the consumer anyway? And I was just like, holy shit. Okay. I have my job cut out for me. And then at some point after a lot of trying to find value for the relationship, this same guy who shall we name anonymous-

Ryan:

We'll keep his irrelevant ass out of this.

Julio:

Finally at some point we were in a meeting, and this was the president of a business, which I think was a 4 billion business within AIG. He goes, all right, fine, do your research. 

He finally understood that getting that insight was valuable. Finally, do your research. When can I have the results? This was foundational stuff. And it was big research, right? Because he didn't know anything about his consumers at all. So I was like, let's call this person, John. John, it will probably take me about, I don't know, maybe four to six months. And his face was just like, you got to be f*cking kidding me. You want me to wait for you for six months for this thing? That was the life I was living in. Feeling irrelevant because of that, and I was really off about it.

And then that's when I met you and you were basically talking about Zappi and it was very early days, but at the end of the day, the point was you don't have to wait that long. And I was like, if I can tell John, it'll probably take me about a week. Let's set up time with you, Thursday of next week the whole thing would've been different, the whole thing would've been different. I would've met with him, given him strong insight, he would've made a better decision and ultimately the business would have benefited from it. 

That's really what sparked the need. I'm like, I need to jump on this train, which is why I was like, this is great. I'm going to try to find a job and try to change this industry.

It was problematic leaving AIG, the chief insights officer at the time, global insights officer, sat me in his office and basically said, what do we need to do? And I told him the following, I go, you're offering me a great position, a blockbuster, and I'm about to go and work at Netflix. I can have much more impact there than here. And with that response, I was like, you know what, that's fair. The rest is history as you say.

Ryan:

So folks, Julio, vibrant human being, a lot of personality, more love and time for people, but he's too humble for his own good. So let me toot his horn. His father pioneered the market research industry in Columbia, was the first major market research agency and was a legend. Julio has made hundreds of major brands adopt an agile platform and better ways of working. So we have two generations of Francos that have pioneered this industry. And I know when I met you you were living in dad's shadow, but I know that Napo is looking down, very proud of you and you're just getting going, my man. It's a pleasure to watch your work happen. You should toot your own horn sometime. I'll do it for you in the meantime.

It's funny because as you know, I was at Kantar before this and we were doing some cool shit in pockets. I remember we did this really, it's to this day one of my favorite things ever. There was a collaboration with marketing and planning systems, communa space, and my business at the time was called GMI. And we basically built an on-demand insights platform for Walmart. And it was a bit ahead of its time at the time. I was working with this guy who's a mentor of mine, Chris Petranto, and I think he's still a big shot at Kantar, a much better golfer than I am, so I don't play golf with him anymore. 

But anyways, I remember thinking to myself, wow, this is quite powerful. If you can give businesses data when they need it, well then the people who they pay to do insights can do strategic sh*t.

The reason why I'm still pissed off today, and I would love for you to comment on this, is I think in some ways we've perpetuated the problem. In other words if you test an ad overnight, that's great. Doesn't mean the ad is going to be any better. It doesn't mean creative effectiveness is going to improve. It just means that you can be more delayed in your processes. And so for me I think about it as it's halfway through the journey. 

So the digital error of market research is great. It gave us tools, it gave us insights on demand. But now that that's the case I still find this, what does the insights department of tomorrow question? But that was the reason I joined, was to free people up to be strategic. It's still the reason I'm excited, but I don't think we've really solved the problem yet. So why do you think that is? 

Julio:

No, I agree. And it's a mind shift. I'll tell you, so for years the market research/consumer insights department was the gatekeeper of the voice of consumers. We were the ones who were brought into the room and said, we have no idea what the market is thinking, tell us. 

So we were the gatekeepers of that. That changed with digitization and social media and stuff. Anybody could go in, do some trolling around social media sentiment or what have you. And that really, really changed. And then the technology has evolved to the point where there is no longer a barrier to do excellent research very quickly and very inexpensively and to connect that data. But the problem is the following, and I still think that we're thinking project first.

When I joined Zappi, the biggest shift in the way that I thought about things was moving away from answering a question to figuring out a system to answer 100 questions. And I still see too many of our customers coming in with that mindset where you basically put in technology to solve an old world problem and all you do is perpetuate it. I'll be specific, you can now run a piece of research in less than a day. That is something you can absolutely do.

Ryan:

And there's like 200 companies that can do that for you. Commodity at this point.

Julio:

100%. There's no barrier to that. Time is something that nobody has. So doing stuff quicker is really important. But the mistake that I've seen happen often is, an internal stakeholder comes in with a very rushed thing, and the insights person very eager to help says, I got it. I can give you this tomorrow. And they just go and they react and they do it and they give it tomorrow. And then they do that three times, five times, seven times. And now that becomes the stakeholder expectation, but they never actually changed the way they operate, which is talking to the stakeholder and be like, why are you coming to me in a rush? Take two steps back and let's figure out a way in which you don't have to come to me in a rush.

We identify which are the big questions that you're trying to solve. We set up a system to make sure that we can answer those questions and while we can still get our answers tomorrow, we're not just going on a hamster wheel cycle. And I think that that's the problem. So if we don't change the way that we think about it and we're still thinking of one answer to one business question, we're never going to get out of the cycle.

Ryan:

It's an interesting contrast. You know this about me, I think internally a lot when we have escalations. Sally and Tommy can't get on the same page and so they escalate to Julio because he's the boss. I view that as a failure of the system, of the culture, of the framework. And it's the same thing. If I'm an insights person and I'm getting thrown a brief on a Tuesday and I'm figuring out how I'm going to answer it, after we deal with the fire drill we should really understand why the hell did this exist in the first place? 

And it's too often. How many of the customers that we have, we are very, very fortunate we get to work with some of the best people and brands in this industry. But how many of them have started with a hair on fire person that got a brief from a marketer who has no clue what they're doing? They're going to air anyway on Friday, doesn't matter.

This whole moving to a place of system. So talk a little bit about this. How do you recommend it be set up best to avoid that framework? You have experience doing this with so many big brands and you've helped them not just with Zappi, but think through this holistically. So how do you get away from that? What steps do you need to take so that fire drill becomes a response versus a panic?

Julio:

We have now seen it so many times that whenever we're able to talk to an organization that may come with hair on fire, but then we can take a step back and help him breathe. We usually give him the following recommendation. 

Think of the business needs first and think big, don't think small. So if we're going to take, for example, advertising as an example, just think of your advertising, don't think about your ad. And figure out holistically, where can you improve your advertising, and think about your current process, definitely think about your stakeholders as well and figure out where you want to go probably 12 months from now, right? Then once you do that, you have to find the situations where you have the lowest risk and the highest opportunity.

Because if you're going to go and you're going to completely transform something that is absolutely political, staying with advertising…

Ryan:

How many ad agencies out there are getting paid bonuses based on link test results or Ipsos test results or Zappi test results? Too many. So you're dealing with a lot here.

Julio:

Unless that's already broken and it needs to be fixed, great. But if it's not, start smaller, figure it out and identify a situation where you have the right partnerships. 

And this is really important. You need internal partnerships, you need someone within your internal stakeholders that wants to change as well. And then you identify an external partner to help you with it and then partner with them. These guys have a very different perspective that will definitely help you. 

So once you partner, you can get moving. Then our recommendation is to focus on that instance. You need to make sure that you measure it. So set really specific goals, so at the end of the day you know if you won or you lost, and put all the focus there. And then once you get those wins, communicate it.

And say look at what this group is doing with those goals in place, for example, ad effectiveness, they've started using this new system, ad effectiveness has gone up by X amount or what have you. And then from there you go to two more and say, would you like to try this? Now, those three are the chasm where you actually flip it. And then once you have those wins with those two initial, three initial units, then everybody else wants to follow. Because all of a sudden it's not risky anymore. 

All of a sudden you have the proof points that those folks have done it and they have succeeded. So you're able to bring the masses along. So if you identify who are those people that want to break it, you break it with them and then you have everybody else come along, it works really well.

The one key thing when you're getting started is, you gotta think big, think of that unit, but think scale. You're going to solve the problem for that unit, but as other units come, how can they just adjust and make sure that they can utilize that system very easily? Because the problem is once you have a larger scale, transforming is very difficult. We've seen that with some of our customers that have missed out on thinking about that. And frankly that was a mistake that we made in the early stages as well. And then all of a sudden we had to retrofit all of these things when instead of starting from scratch, you had a thousand assets that you needed to reformat, things like naming conventions are like a stupid one. Everybody was naming things differently and then all of a sudden you're like, holy crap, we got to go back and do this. So starting small, but thinking big is probably the way to go.

Ryan:

There's a lot of gold in there, so let's unpack a little bit of it. And we'll stick with advertising folks, but I think that this example cascades across all the types of questions you're getting asked, whether that's understanding consumer trends or foresight or innovation or advertising or measuring your brand. We happen to help companies make better ads and make more money out of innovation for a living. 

So we obviously are pretty knowledgeable about that, but I think that these things cascade. The first thing that you said that is really quite profound is, the difference between is this ad effective and is our advertising effective? And you said it casually as a throwaway, but I think this is where we go wrong as an insights department, as a marketing department.

Businesses spend more on advertising and media than pretty much anything else, except for OpEx, right? There's very few line items that are going to go higher than A&M in a company's P&L. And there's the, I forget who said it, Wanamaker I think. "I know 50% of my advertising doesn't work, I just don't know which 50%." 

And so the purpose of research is not to do anything other than help the company improve creative effectiveness. But we test ads. You see the problem here folks, it's not about the ad, particularly if the ad is finished film and we're not going to do a thing differently. It's about are we learning enough to improve creative effectiveness over time? And that's really what you're talking about there. And I think that from two is the future of insights that we need to get to because if you're helping the company make better advertising, well then Julio, the advertising department can use the data to make a better ad and the insights person doesn't have to copy test all goddamn day.

There's a lot of benefit in what you're saying. But where do you think companies go wrong? I think of Lauren Stafford from SoFi, Chief Marketing Officer, unicorn business. When we met them they were small. And her KPI is, have my ads improved in the last quarter? And then her day-to-day use cases, how do we make the ad better? That to me makes me so happy. That's an example of somebody who's got it. Where do companies go wrong with that? Where are some of the breaks in this? Because I want everybody to make better ads, not test them. I want them to learn. Where do they fuck up I guess?

Julio:

The thing that Lauren has going for herself is she had no legacy. She didn't have to change anything.

Ryan:

Good point.

Julio:

So she started with I need to make better advertising, not a better ad. Right? If you come from a more traditional background, because she works in FinTech, that whole company was just destroying the industry that we're in. But if you work from a CPG organization or like a QSR or something like that where you do actually have legacy, you do need to break that wheel a little bit. 

But the good news is the wind is on your back, because I haven't heard of anyone that is not being asked to do more with less waste. Organizational waste is not something that companies or anyone for that matter is okay with anymore. I'll give you an example of waste. You take that business question of, is this ad good? And then you run a piece of research on that and then you throw it away. You don't learn from it at all. Many of the organizations we work with have a bunch of regions or brands. So you basically multiply this by different people. And then you have different people, four, seven people, what have you, asking one question for one answer and then throwing it away.

Not only that, they don't talk to each other and they never share these results. Not only that, they don't even know that the others are doing the same and asking the same question and getting the same answer. That's a contrast to the old world where I just need to test an ad. Contrast that to an organization like Lawrence for example, that test ads. Of course they test ads and they test ads really quickly and they make each one of those ads better. But not only are they doing that, the insights person because they've set up their system, will look on top and start learning from that both on the day today as in, hey, my colleague already tested this, let me see what they learned so I can make mine better without spending a dime at that point.

But then at the end of the day they're also looking at the macro and saying, all of the instances where we did A, we overperformed the instances where we did B. And then as an organization you can learn and move forward. So nowhere if you're just reinventing the wheel every day versus somebody that is actually learning and advancing, will you win.

Ryan:

No, you won't.

Julio:

If your competitors are doing it.

Ryan:

I was going to say, SoFi's a good example of a business without legacy, but we've been on this journey with businesses that are decentralized matrixes. We had Jane Wakely from PepsiCo on and they've saved hundreds of millions of dollars by turning ad testing into learning, and not saving on market research, making better fucking advertising. 

And your point is we're learning the same things and we're throwing away. Two data points. The fact that ChatGPT 3 can write a better concept and beat the norm of a concept testing platform. By the way folks, that's factual, is exactly the problem. Because businesses aren't leveraging what they know, they're testing the same mediocre stuff. And I think the tension there of, hey, we know when we do X and Y it sells more. That is something that insights people should be bringing to the table.

Not here's the stat tested results, and on question seven we had a brand affinity metric and we used this sample frame. We gotta stop with this sh*t. The other example is, let's not kid ourselves, we tested all the Super Bowl ads, they were okay. On balance, there were some great ads, don't get me wrong, but on balance they were okay. Now you could see why. Every P&L was under pressure, what happens when money's tight? We all get scared and we get tense. We're not going to bring bold new ideas. But if we were testing early and often, we could actually evaluate whether this big breakthrough idea or this big breakthrough product would actually help our business. But that's a systemic problem.

Let's take another example. Big decentralized matrix with legacy, step by step. How do they get out of the legacy to a place where they can move to a learning environment regardless of what they're doing? We're talking about advertising, but it's synonymous with any other question we have. What are the playbooks that you've seen work for brands across the hundreds that you've consulted with since you joined me on this crazy ride?

Julio:

So part of it is what I mentioned before around those five steps of thinking big, setting up the system, but I'll be a little bit more-

Ryan:

Let's get pretty granular for people so they can think about each step they have to get through.

Julio:

So if you're part of a smaller team, you don't actually have a lot of capacity. The first thing that I think you need to do is let go of your ego and empower others to do the day-to-day testing for you. I'm going to use Columbia as an example, because that's where I'm from. If I worked for a CPG organization in Columbia and my team was three people and I was just supporting that entire business within that country, the first thing that I would do is, okay, what are the things that I can actually get rid of that somebody else can do and then I can leverage? So let's continue on the advertising example, but it's basically anything. I can now set up a system where marketing, an intern, anyone can just go in and run the ad and no longer is it a problem where the quality will drop because either they're grading their own homework or they have no idea what they're doing.

That's not the case. You can just set it up and let that run, and then instead of running that stuff, spend the time looking at it once I have critical mass. So once I have 20 or 30 ads, and frankly I'm a researcher, that's when it gets really exciting. When you can actually look at 30 ads and say, okay, what are the big questions that my business is trying to solve? I'm going to go and drop that knowledge bomb on them and be like, hey, you guys know how we've always wondered if, I have the answer and I have 30 ads to prove it. That's where it becomes really, really important. So let go of the ego, you are no longer the sole guardian of the consumer voice. There's ways in which you can set yourself up.

Ryan:

It is an ego change, Julio, right? I've had 30 heads of insights on this podcast. Not a single one of them is saying, my department needs to cover your ass risk mitigation department. But I have empathy for people because that was what their job was 10 years ago. It's not your job to grade homework anymore folks. Listen, all of the bosses that are running departments, listen to him, it's not the job. But you could see why that change is hard because that was the job not too long ago.

Julio:

Well, and you've done it forever. So if you're not the person that actually tests the ad and goes into the meeting and says, this is why the ad performed well or it didn't perform well, it becomes a little uncomfortable. And if you don't actually drop those big insights bombs, you should be worried. 

If you're not actually understanding your business well enough to try to connect those dots and say this is what we should be doing moving forward, then, but at the end of the day insights professionals are curious, want to understand and want to give an answer. And now you have the opportunity of doing that with more data and being able to look at that data and analyze that data in an easier way than ever before. It's actually a really cool opportunity.

Ryan:

It is. It is. And this is why I'm so excited about this next frontier. If we can set up the collective we, a very intentional ecosystem where all of our data, all of our platforms are intentional, where we have outside consultants that are smart, that know our business and we pay them for their brains, where we leverage service bureaus for external capacity if we're lean, where we democratize tools, where insights brings empathy to data, I'm f*cking excited. 

But we got to stop the project mindset. You started this conversation with it. It's not the right way to think about it. And this is one issue, I'm not an insights person. I love the insights industry because I believe in customer-centric and employee-centric growth. That's why I love this industry. That's why I'm here. But I'm not a traditional research guy. I guess I should probably stop saying that because I'm almost on year 20.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is it's not about running the project, it's about having an ecosystem to run the projects. And I think sometimes, Julio, my friction with insights people is that we think of each brief as this mystical opportunity. But actually folks, if you codify the last 100 briefs that crossed your desk, you're going to find 10 themes and you'll know that's a thing I need thinking, that's just a thing I need a pulse in data, that's a thing I can democratize. That's a thing I already know the answer to, so I don't need to test it again or I don't need to do the research again. And so let's pick on centers of excellence departments a little bit.

This is where I think those people need to step their game up. Because in the current paradigm, if you're working as a brand insights manager for a telco or a QSR or a CPG, you're running around trying to keep up with promotions, new product launches, company strategy, the share press drops you're going to panic. What does the center of excellence department need to do better to help insights people get above this and be more intentional in your opinion?

Julio:

I think there's two things. We need to be closer to the business. The value of our jobs is not methodological experts. It's all been done, man. You can now off the shelf get really, really high quality methodologies that you don't need to go and tinker with question wordings or with sample size. That's all been done. That data is going to come… 

Ryan:

And by the way, on the methodology point, I know where you see methodology friction. It's when you haven't set up an ecosystem and enabled your stakeholders with how to interpret the data and the data goes against their knowledge. Let me tell you a story. I have an example recently of a customer who was going to put an ad in market that basically was using the rational drowning of the current economic times. 

You know and I know that consumers are sick and tired of hearing that sh*t. Don't tell me times are tough. Tell me how your beer's going to refresh me. Tell me how your product's going to make my dog happier, whatever the f*ck thing is. Because all of a sudden with modern systems, you get more data because you're trying to optimize versus green stamps. All of a sudden you start poking holes in methodology when the answer goes against the conventional wisdom of the legacy.

To me that's an enablement problem, because other than that no one cares about the methodology because they assume the data's of a high quality and the methods are built to be predictive. That's table stakes I guess is my point. And so let's stop putting them, sorry for this quick tangent because this topic set me off. We got to stop making that slide seven through 10 in goddamn decks. No one cares dude. And if we did a better job of being intentional about our system, we would've onboarded them to the methodology in a macro sense, enabled them day-to-day while they were getting used to it and then they'd do their own thing on a Tuesday. Thank you for listening to my TED talk about this. You got me fired up.

Julio:

And the truth is, I think that that comes from how we as an industry got started, where the research that we did was loosely, because the data was really hard to put together, it was really hard to validate the actual impact and the actual result.

Ryan:

That's right.

Julio:

So we only controlled what we could control, which was the questionnaire and the sampling frame and all of that stuff. So we just hyper-focused on that. And right now we've done a ton of research on research that says your question wording is not that relevant, really not that relevant. How much would you pay for it? Please consider. All of that stuff, the results are completely comparable with very few exceptions. So what we need to do is pick up our heads and stop thinking methodology…

Ryan:

And the easiest way to get around this if you're very methodologically centric or you have a company that is, be intentional about your new system, side by side test whatever you're going to use with whatever your success metrics are. I don't give a sh*t what they are. Market mix models, sales data, trend data, Nielsen data, doesn't matter. Because then once and for all, we can say, a good result in whatever I'm doing results in more pizza sold, more beer sold, more cheeseburger sold, whatever the hell thing is. And that's the way you should think about methodology COE departments, not for every single test. Carry on. Sorry. I will let you leave methodology bullet now.

Julio:

Going back to the COE, you set up the system and the key thing about the system, it doesn't have to be a perfect system, it just needs to be a system that is consistent. As you're driving that system and you're letting the regions and stuff do the research, your job is to get really, really connected to the business, so you can utilize that database to answer those big business questions. That is a strong recommendation that I would do. But the problem that I see with insights is we are far from the business, we're far from the P&L…

Ryan:

Especially the COEs.

Julio:

Because we're stuck in methodology and we're stuck in the insights world, we're not thinking about the business implications. So as I have conversations with our customers around trying to elevate them, what I try to tell them is the following, the actual answer is not that relevant, but the business implication really, really is. What are instances in your business where if you say A is bigger than B, B is bigger than A, or they're both the same, that would have a dramatic impact in terms of their business? We use this example a lot, but I just think it's a good one. Many organizations spend a lot of money on spokespeople or celebrities and so forth, tons of money. The research aspect of it is completely relevant. It's how much they pay them and how much they pay every time they air that ad.

If you can go to the business and say, hey, when we use this celebrity it's better. Or when we don't use this celebrity it's better. Or no difference if we use the celebrity, regardless of the answer it's really valuable for the business. Because they can either justify the amount they're paying or stop paying it. That's the point. It's not the research implication, it's the business implication. And if our COEs would understand that, it could have such a bigger impact because now they have all the data to back it up.

Ryan:

That's right. That's right. And those are some of the helping the company leverage, so your first point is macro level methodology. Your second point is helping the business surface macro themes to help them make more money, save more money. 

I was in Mexico City two months ago, I think. By the way, I love Mexico City. And there was a round of applause because the global insights person was there, because that's new. You can't sit, it's like I had something happen internally where we were making a decision in Boston about what happened in Singapore, yet the people who made the decision hadn't been to Singapore in three years.

So if part of the job of a global team is to macro level set up a system and enable, well, you have to actually know what each specific team, each specific brand, each specific country's P&L pressures are, and what their cultures are. Because how the hell are you going to catch somebody in stride if you don't actually know their job? And I think that's one of the things I want to see more of from global and central teams, whether that's in insights and marketing, Julio, is really make sure that the system you're creating is able to meet the subjective nuance of the difference between a French business and a Sri Lankan business and an American business. Because we mustn't kid ourselves, they're not the same. They're very, very different businesses. Very, very different cultures and so on.

Julio:

And you know what's really cool, Ryan, there's been a progression since I joined Zappi, which was about seven years ago. So my job was, I was in a central role and I would go to regions and stuff and that was okay. I also managed my own region. And it was all disconnected. I'm big on empathy, so I would travel and I would really understand it and talk to customers in the region and stuff, but it was completely disconnected. And then I joined Zappi and it's like, oh cool, there's a system. But frankly that system was absolutely closed and inflexible. You need to set this whole thing up globally. And that was problematic because markets are different and business needs are different.

But now we are in a world where we can, it's really exciting for me because you can have the best of both worlds. You can have that global connection with that local nuance without actually breaking the system. 

So you no longer need to compromise. Before it was that tension between global and local was really big. Is like yeah, I understand that globally you want for all of us to operate the same. But the truth is, again, I'm in Colombia and things are different. And if I just go with the global norm, it doesn't work for me. I need to adjust it and localize it. Now you can do both. You can have global consistency in some things, drive flexibility so that locally you can do it, so you don't lose anymore. It's actually wonderful.

Ryan:

It's true. Well, and that's the difference. I think if you start to disintermediate the way you get the data to answer the question from the brains you hire to help you make sense of it. Thinking about it, I think this is disintermediation of the legacy of a full service market research company. You could have a global system that runs off of Black Swan trends, Streetbees for consumer pulses, Zappi for innovation ad testing, Qualtrics for experience management and all your knowledge management sits in Lucy. I don't know, I'm making it up. That can be global with local nuance. But this is how you use the Turkish market research agency to your advantage, because that person knows your Turkish business. You say, here's my data stack, now I want you to consult me.

That person's going to get paid better to do that work and you're going to get the best of them, versus expecting them to do field and tabs, which is most of their job and only give you a little tiny bit of thinking. It's another way to use this and think about the differences between the way you get the answer and the brains you bring into your company to help you sharpen it. Because the insights people are under-understaffed. This is an exciting time. 

So Julio, I have a pivot to end this conversation. Because Julio's going on a panel in five minutes. You are but a lifelong market researcher. You are somebody who comes across very confident, because you are very confident. You manage a very big global organization. You're responsible for our whole entire revenue number. Appreciate you by the way for that.

I want you to give some advice to people who are listening to this and whether they're young in their career or they've been around but they're being asked to do the following. Be a better storyteller. Be more comfortable challenging stakeholders in marketing. Connect what you do to the business. Be more assertive, more confident. Give some advice to the people listening that are like, wow, Julio comes across us so confident. And by the way, the reason I'm asking him to do this is, I know on good authority, he did a power pose before he walked into this to give himself the strength to do this. And you do a lot of things to give yourself what comes across as very natural charisma. I think you could really give a gift to our audience and help them think through how to elevate their game a little bit. And this was not on the discussion guide list, so I want to see what you think on your feet, which I know you hate.

Julio:

I like the curveball. I like the curveball. You also just said one of my tricks, which is do a power pose.

Ryan:

Take us through. We got four minutes, let's hear this answer. I'm excited.

Julio:

I anchor a lot of stuff on empathy. Understand what your audience cares about. Stand in their shoes for a second and try to understand what they really care about, what their life is like, because what you want to make sure that you do when you're either assertive or something is you want to link this to why they care. 

If you're saying something they don't care about, you can be of service as you want, it's not going to land. So understand your audience, understand what really matters for them, number one. Number two, understand the detail and how that detail connects with what that audience cares about. Again, let's go back to research. They don't care about the methodology, they care about their outcome, business outcome.

If you're able to connect those dots, then that's okay. You understand the details of both, you're able to connect them. Don't be afraid to say that you don't know, know what you know, but if somebody asks you a question or something, just say, I don't know. That's okay. You don't need to know absolutely everything.

Ryan:

Let me just give a quick build on this, because I also come across as very confident. We just did a strategic investment with a private equity company. 

The truth is, I know employees, I know customers, I know sales, marketing, product, finance words not really my thing. I'm very comfortable yesterday in a call asking one of our board members who's speaking superfast at me using a bunch of acronyms. Can you please slow down? Can you tell me what each of these acronyms means and why it's important? And you wouldn't think somebody at either of our levels would be comfortable doing that. 

But you have to be comfortable doing that because if you just nod and I know what you're talking about, then you're going to miss the conversation. Anyways, carry on. But that happened to me yesterday and I had no pause doing that. Because I was like, I don't know what the hell she's talking about.

Julio:

And now you learned, right?

Ryan:

And now I learned a bunch of new things.

Julio:

By asking the question. Exactly. And then the fourth thing that I was going to say is, do a power pose. If you don't know what that is, I suggest that you search for-

Ryan:

Mr. Power pose.

Julio:

... Cuddy's TED talk. It's f*cking great. The truth is, once you do a power pose for a few seconds, endorphins get to you and you feel a lot more confident and then the world is your oyster, you're able to enjoy it. If you want to talk about that, hit me up. I'm very passionate about that. I'm very passionate about making sure that your point lands and the delivery of that is important. So just let me know. I'm happy to chat through and give you some tips and tricks that I tend to do.

Ryan:

And next time you see Julio at a conference, have him show you his power pose, because it's pretty badass. Let's get a quick one for the YouTube audience. You got a quick power pose for us?

Julio:

I'll do it. But this one's called the Starfish one. I'll just stand like that, really big, for a little while and then it gets to your head. That's my preferred one.

Ryan:

I love it. Julio, this was fun. I'm glad we did this. Thank you. I hope everybody enjoyed the conversation as much as I had having it. I love this guy. It's a pleasure to bring our rifts with you that we have anyway. We probably would've done this anyway today. 

But folks be intentional, calibrate your systems, elevate your game, democratize the insights, and sit above the data. We're going to be all right as an industry. We can bring empathy to this matrix my friends. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you for listening. Julio, thank you for doing this and have a wonderful day everybody.

Julio:

Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan:

Bye everybody.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan Barry:

Okay, cool. So ladies, how was listening to my one-on-one with Julio masked as a podcast?

Patricia Montesdoeca: 

It felt so deja vu. I mean, I had the pleasure of working with the two of you day to day, day on day for four years and having Julio be my boss. It was comfortable, it was a lot of new stuff, a lot of some stuff I knew. It was great. It just felt good. I loved it.

Ryan:

Yeah, I enjoyed it. And I even learned a few new things. And it was funny, after we recorded, I was in the office with Julio and his team, and he said, "Our interview helped me crystallize a few things that have been stuck in my head." So it's funny, the power of just sometimes talking something out, and that ability to, you talk something out and then you're like, "Oh, that's what I was trying to say this whole time. This was lodged in my head, or whatever." So Patricia, what were some of the key takeaways you had?

Patricia:

Sometimes the podcasts give you really solid chapters of knowledge. There were a couple of really big ones, and there were just some that I cannot let go, because they were so important. You know, you guys talked about faster is not everything. And this is one of the things I thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, of course. Faster is not everything. 

So we ended up, as researchers, myself included, perpetuating the problem. And I thought to myself, "Oh my God, that is so right." And then he went on, you essentially laid out, "Past, president, and future, where are we at? Tell me, tell us." And he said, "Past, we were gatekeepers of the voice of the consumers." And this is a blend of what you and he said. "We controlled. That's why we were so nitpicky."

Aside, just a pause. I had a customer once, an insights person tell me that the font of the questions wasn't the right one, because it wasn't on equity for them. I'm like, "Yeah, I think we're focusing on the wrong thing." "Just saying, the color and..." Anyway, moving along. So we've only focused on what we could control, because the only thing we could control is methodology. That's the past. In the president we have digitization-

Ryan:

What a word. I know.

Patricia:

That's a hard word for me.

Ryan:

You're not the only one. What a mouthful.

Isn't digitization supposed to make life easier? The word's supposed to make life fucking easier, but nobody can pronounce it, myself included. Can we come up with something better, people? Using technology to make our lives easier, and the word's too complicated.

Patricia:

Using technology to make our lives easier, and there you go. And now anybody can connect to the data. So the problem is we're still thinking project first. We're still thinking we own the data. But technology is solving an old world problem. But we don't want to perpetuate it. So what's the future? Let's ask, why are you always in a rush? Why are we always the last link to this chain? What part of the process is broken? How can we help you solve or fix this problem? That's why. 

Because we start asking these questions, then we can create a future where there's a system to answer these questions. Because if we don't change the way we think about it, then we're going to be still back in the past, where we're just doing everything faster, and we're never going to get out of the cycle.

That series of... the minutes of conversation that you two had to crystallize this, but I thought to myself, "Oh my God, that is so right. Sometimes we perpetuate the problem by saying, 'Sure, I can get that to you in 24 hours.'" So I love that. And then, the whole time you guys talked about, and I'm never going to get out of my mind now, the difference between testing an ad and making better advertisement. That is precious. We don't want to be testing ads. We don't want to be looking for an effective ad. We want to have better advertising. And the purpose of research is to basically help people, help companies improve their creatives, improve their innovation, improve everything, right? 

So we don't want to waste. Waste is when you ask a question, get an answer, throw away the data, because we already answered the question. We have to learn. We have to build the future. We have to build it by learning from the past, and not asking the same question again and again, but learning from it so that we can advance, we can apply and turn ad testing into learning. That phrase is also a drop the mic phrase. Turn ad testing into learning.

And I'm going to wrap this up with the way you wrapped it up. You were brilliant. Because you and he know each other so well, you've been talking in riffing for so long. Yeah, you. Because the two of you are really connected. You are very similar and very different, but you're very connected. So you were able to, in the end, and I know that you threw him some curveballs, and I know you asked him some things and he just took it like a trooper, right?

Ryan:

And you know he hates that.

Patricia:

But you at the end kind of wrap it up. Yes, I do. I do know he hates that. But you wrapped it up beautifully. One: What does that mean? Don't go with the norm just because it's the way it's always been done. Challenge it. Challenge the brief, challenge the way it is. Ask yourself the questions. Don't just be an automatic pilot.

Number two, create a process. The less you as an insights person are needed, and everybody else involved does what they're supposed to be doing, the better it is. So that, number three, you can democratize the insights, everybody else can do the insights. So that number four, you can sit above the data and do the hard stuff, do the strategy, do the thinking, take the company to the next level. Help them do better advertising, better innovation, not just is it blue or is it red, right?

And then that's number five. All this is possible because you bring empathy. Think about who you're talking to. Not only externally, your consumers and your shoppers, but also internally. Who are you talking to internally? Who are your stakeholders? Make sure that you are empathetic to them as well. Because all of this does number six, it elevates your game. And in order to elevate your game, you have to be the better person, be the bigger person. Think strategically. Start small, think big, and don't forget the power pose.

Ryan:

The power pose. For those of you not watching on YouTube, it's probably worth subscribing to our YouTube…

Patricia:

The starfish.

Ryan:

…just to watch Julio's starfish at the end. That was epic. Yeah, that was a really fun conversation. And I think the way he ended it segues nicely into our next episode. So thank you, Patricia. Full disclosure, we're going to be recording our next episode in about an hour. We got that going for us. You're going to get to listen to it two weeks later.

But our next episode is with Rob Volpe, the CEO of Ignite 360, and the author of Tell Me More About That. I've gotten to know Rob through the CEO Summit, which is something that Merrill Dubrow and Steve Schlesinger put on in the Insights Association, and he's wonderful. And you know what we're going to talk about, ladies? We're going to talk about empathy for a whole hour.

Patricia:

Yep.

Ryan:

Because AI plus data plus empathy is how you drive customer centric growth in the future. And Rob and I are going to talk about the most important part if you're an insights and marketing professional, empathy. So I'm very, very excited to bring you that conversation up next. We've got a lot more good conversations coming on our podcast this year. Beautiful thing. Ladies, I wish you well. To our listeners, I hope you have a great day, and we'll all talk soon.

Patricia:

Bye!