What problems are brand-side researchers trying to solve? What insights technologies and techniques are they deploying? Where are they skilling up and allocating resources?
The answers await you – and you’ll get them directly from the source – at the Insights Association’s Annual Conference, April 8-10 in Atlanta.
Here are the top brand-led sessions generating the most buzz heading into the event.
1. So, You Want to Sell To Me
In this lighthearted, but brutally honest session, Karen Kraft of Johnsonville will share advice to research service providers – exhibitors or not – on how to successfully sell to corporate researchers and will help her fellow corporate researchers be open to new partners. Attendees will learn the tactics that work in getting corporate researchers' attention, what drives them nuts about the research selling process, how some of the bad behavior is driven by corporate researchers' own bad behavior, and the benefits of being open to being sold to.
2. UX & MRX: A High-Tech Love Story
Nina Jennings is Manager of UX Research in Core UX at Google. Her husband, Barry Jennings, is Director of Commercial Cloud and Business Planning Insights at Microsoft. He’s MRX, she’s UX. They work at two of the world’s largest and most influential tech companies. Intrigued? We were, so we asked them to join us to share their thoughts on how and where UX and MRX intersect. What practitioners in each function can learn from one another. How they are using AI and where they see its future potential. We don’t know just where the conversation will go – so, you’ll need to hear it for yourself.
3. Elevating the Customer Experience Journey Through Longitudinal Research
Rachel Tallis will share the intricacies of consumer-centric research within Altria's CXO organization and the narrative behind crafting a proprietary panel for consumer experience journeys. Delve into the unfolding journey of this dynamic collaboration, navigating milestones and challenges, while gaining insights into the profiles of individuals undergoing longitudinal research. Rachel will lead an exploration of the invaluable role of community in extracting quality responses from members throughout the entirety of their complex journeys and translating these data points in real-time, over time.
4. Beyond Human Insights: Navigating the World of AI and Synthetic Respondents in Market Research
Among the most intriguing applications of AI in market research is the gathering of data via “synthetic respondents”. Rather than asking real consumers or business decision-makers a series of survey questions, questions can be asked of these modeled respondents to gather input. But how accurate and useful is it? Find out as Kikke Riedel, Vice President, Strategy & Insights at MilkPEP, shares new research (both qualitative and quantitative) that compares the answers received via traditional surveys and questions with consumers versus those received via synthetic respondents. See the differences, plus learn how synthetic respondents can best be used in market research, and when they should be avoided.
5. Bringing Research to Life with Research Friday
Are your hard-earned insights not receiving the attention or action they deserve? Take a page from Vivint Smart Home’s winning playbook. Jan Dawson walks us through how the Research & Insights team brings research to life for the entire organization with its popular Research Friday when people from across the company join a 90-minute session to hear recent research, conduct and watch replays of customer interviews, and people in other functions are trained on how to use research. Leave this session with the ability to create far greater leverage for the research you're already doing; raise the profile of your research team within your organization; and raise the level of research literacy within your organization.
6. Unleashing the Power of GenAI: Purina’s Journey to Faster and Better Insights in Pet Food Innovation
The Purina Insights team is leveraging Generative AI in a wide variety of ways to achieve faster and better incremental insights and expedite their innovation pipeline. With the goal of accelerating identification of relevant territories and business propositions in pet food, Purina is utilizing GenAI to uncover unmet needs and generate and develop wet dog food territories into ideas and then to concepts. Join Michael Shapiro on a deep dive into how GenAI has enabled Purina to go beyond its standard research insights to inform communications, product innovation, and competitive intelligence.
7. B2B Reimagined: Methods for Engaging Millennials for B2B Research
The millennial CEO is here. According to Pew Research, there are now over 11 million millennials in upper management positions in the US. While there is significant research to understand Millennial consumer trends, we must not overlook that Millennials started their careers during the Great Recession. This has not only shaped their buying behavior as consumers but also their buying behavior as business decision-makers. Sarah Park details recent B2B projects conducted by Salesforce's Customer Insights Team, to better understand and appreciate the B2B Millennials who are now leading organizations. Key learnings include: Motivating B2B millennials to participate in market research (Go beyond the ‘incentive’); Innovative research methods that engage B2B millennials (Understand the ‘why’); Technologies for ‘gamifying’ B2B research for millennials (Go where they are).