How JDE Peet’s Uses AI to Transform Market Research – with Sarah Snudden

In this episode, Greenbook’s Karen Lynch sits down with Sarah Snudden, Head of US Consumer Insights at JDE Peet’s, for a lively conversation spanning career journeys, coffee obsession, and cutting-edge AI innovation. Sarah shares how her path led from Clorox and Seventh Generation to premium beverage insights at JDE Peet’s, and how she’s using AI agents to explore white space innovation and generate impactful product names.

They also unpack key takeaways from IIEX North America, including the evolving role of emotion in insights, why AI must serve research—not define it—and how industry connections fuel continuous learning. A must-listen for insight pros navigating fast-changing tech and business needs.

Key Discussion Points:

• Sarah’s career evolution from Clorox to Keurig to JDE Peet’s and her passion for premium coffee brands like L’OR and Tea Forté
• Using AI agents for innovation: how One Strategy Studio’s modular model helps identify white space and accelerate naming
• The changing conversation around AI in research: moving from hype to practical use cases
• Takeaways from IIEX North America, including standout sessions, trends, and why human insight still matters
• Advice for researchers ready to experiment with new tools: start small, focus on outcomes, and skip the tech jargon

Resources & Links:

• JDE Peet’s
• One Strategy Studio
• IIEX North America

You can reach out to Sarah Snudden on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Sarah Snudden for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I am happy to be hosting today. It’s Karen Lynch. As you all have heard me before, I’m head of content at Greenbook, and I’m really excited to be chatting with Sarah Snudden, who I’ve known for a few years now. I’ve had the pleasure of, you know, having dinner with her after an IIEX event, and just kind of always having her in my orbit. Just excited to introduce all of you to her. She’s the head of JDE Peet’s US consumer insights. And if you also have been listening for a long time, you know I’m a bit of a coffee fanatic, I would say. I’m more than a fan; I’m more of a fanatic. So, super excited to be talking to you. Sarah, welcome to the show. 

Sarah: Thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. We should probably introduce your beautiful dog because if this is the first video version—

Karen: Like, the first video podcast—that’s Maggie. Maggie frequently makes appearances. So yes, I tilted to her, thank you. She’s a good girl. 

Sarah: She’s wonderful.

Karen: And she really is attached to my hip, especially after a week away at IIEX North America. When I’m away, she definitely has, kind of, the secondary human in my husband, where he’s—like he’ll do when I’m not home, but she then will be attached to my hip for, you know, the next several weeks.

Sarah: I totally know the vibe. I have a small black poodle mix named Zuzu, who is also my primary work mate. She—I can hear her crunching in the other room on something, so she’ll possibly make an appearance, too. But I’m glad to be here. As you mentioned, my work right now is with the JDE US part of the organization. So, I don’t work with Peet’s. They’re a separate business unit out of the Bay Area. I’m in the Boston-based office. I do all things coffee and machines for a brand called L’Or. Which I will say very badly because I have many strengths, and speaking French is absolutely not one of them. But it means ‘The Gold,’ and it is a wonderful brand that you will find in Europe especially, and sometimes you bring those brands to the US, you know, a little cross-pollination. We also have a system, a machine that works with it, too. So, the other brand we have that I should not shortchange is Tea Forté, not to give a—it’s a really beautiful brand. It—

Karen: Beautiful, beautiful—yes, I was going to say, like, the kind of triangular—

Sarah: Pyramids.

Karen: Beautiful.

Sarah: Yes, yeah. And so, I work in the premium beverage space I think is safe to say. I came—before that—from Keurig, so I’ve been in the coffee space for about 12 years. I’ve been in the world since 2012, of coffee. And I came up from cleaning toilets and fighting laundry stains at Clorox, and at Seventh Generation. So, I worked my way here, you know? I didn’t just get born into the world of premium beverage. I fought my way through Force Flex trash bags and Clorox toilet wands in the earlier part of my career. And I’ve been on the scene in insights more or less since about the year 2000. I got my start at Pillsbury back before they merged with General Mills in 1999. So, that was my start. My first career break was I got the—my colorful 20s were more or less behind me, and I had figured out that—I told my—I worked for a temporary agency because my colorful 20s were indeed colorful—it’s a whole other podcast, probably—but I told my temp agent at Kelly that I wanted to work in market research, and he should let me know—Duane Butenschoen, thank you—and they got me in at Pillsbury. And Steve Loring, who is a wonderful guy that I worked for, one day, came up and said, “Snudden, you’re not going to be a temporary admin your whole life, are you?” I said, “No, I want to grow up and be a big market researcher like you.”

Karen: [laugh]. 

Sarah: But I said, like, “I don’t want to—you guys are really snobby about the B school thing and going to business school and MBAs, and realistically, Steve, I’m pretty sure I can learn it on my own if I go agency-side first.” And he was like, “Snudden, you got it all wrong. You any good at standardized testing?” And I said, “Well, yeah, I’m kind of a nerd.” He’s like, “Study up for your B school entrance exams, hire on full time with us, we’ll write you nice letters of recommendation, you’ll go to business school for free.” So, I did the Madison program, and it was amazing. Like, that was a really lucky break. And when I came out, I ended up at Clorox, which honestly I liked a ton because I got to do—I very quickly figured out that I worked well on the fuzzy front end. And Clorox had a lot of these really wonderfully Type A-plus linear, analytical, straight-line kind of people, but the fuzzy front end really threw them off. And my colorful 20s worked in my favor in ways that I generally learned quickly not to say out loud in that piece. Because I always have been super curious about why people do what they do. And from Clorox, I went to Seventh Generation, which got me to Vermont, where I’m currently sitting. And then that transitioned to the Keurig Green Mountain coffee world, that got me into the coffee cup.

Karen: It’s so funny because I remembered, at a very young age, you know, being a coffee fan, saying, “I know I will have arrived as”—I was a qualitative research consultant, right, so I knew I was like—and I worked for a lot of big CPG companies, you know, Kellogg and Nestle and Pepsi and Frito, and you know, all of these, you know? Like, I really learned my way around, you know, people’s kitchens. But I knew, I wanted to, like, land a coffee client at one point. So, like, there was one day, I think it was 2017 and I had started working for a vendor, and, you know, they nailed Starbucks as a client, and I was like, “I have arrived,” like—

Sarah: It’s pretty amazing.

Karen: Doing the research I was born to do, you know [laugh]? So, there’s something wonderful about coffee because it’s just a great category because it’s both functional, pragmatic and it’s also very emotive and sensorially wonderful. So, I imagine it’s exciting to work on.

Sarah: It’s really funny, I went through a Keurig—really, it was four different versions of Keurig in the time I was there, and I inherited some qualitative ones when my manager abruptly quit. And it was a moderator I hadn’t chosen, but, like, the show was on, and so I stepped in. And I gave her feedback on the guide, where I was like, “Hey, you know, we’re really not talking about the emotional benefits at all here.” And she was like, [pause]“Emotional benefits? No, coffee is all about energy.” And I was like… and I really thank Clorox for the training they gave me because I was like, if there’s emotions around disinfecting and cleaning your toilet and taking out your trash, I guarantee that that there are emotions around your coffee. And she rolled her eyes and was not happy with me, but I prevailed. And the consumers went on to speak very emotionally about their coffee brand relationship.

Karen: Yes. Well, I’m sure Brigette, who’s you know behind the scenes producing right now, is smiling because she knows how I feel about coffee. Anyway, I was disappointed this year—we just returned from IIEX—my disappointment was that you and I didn’t even, like, have, like, a single meal together or five minutes to chat [laugh]. 

Sarah: I literally saw you on the first day, and I could tell you were going so fast that I was like, “You know what, I know”—one of the things I love about our industry is it is small, and, you know, you really get your connections going. And sometimes IIEX is, frankly, so overstimulating. And I enjoy that. I’m an extrovert who works alone, but it’s a lot even for me sometimes. And you know because it’s also a huge change of gears. I was psyched that I had a voice this year because sometimes I don’t get to talk that much in my day job. And there have been years where I just come back, like. My talk was— But I had to be really careful to make sure I still had some wind left in my sails. Can I just say I’m an IIEX super fan? I did have to miss one during the pandemic, that one in-person session, but I’ve been, thanks to Brent Snyder, who, like, made me aware of it back in, like, 2013 in Philly, that was another career lucky break for me. Because at that point, I was about 13-ish years into my career and starting to see the cracks in the walls. And I had fought so hard to figure out what to do with myself as a grown up—this adulting thing is hard sometimes. 

Karen: [laugh]. It’s really hard.

Sarah: —and I really had soul-searched. And when I discovered, like, you could get paid a decent corporate salary to literally be, like, “Why do the people do what they do,” which was kind of a hobby of mine that I was not making much money at, I was psyched. I knew I’d found the relationship for the long haul. And there were those moments, though, when I was, kind of, more of an army of one at Seventh Generation, and you start to see the cracks in the wall. And some of the cracks that are coming through now in terms of, like, how the sausage is made with respondents and surveys and all the things. And I have to say that when I got to IIEX the very first time in Philly—the North American first time—I was so jazzed that for, like, six months, like, it charged my batteries up in such a big way. I was like, “Other people see it too. Other people see it too.” Like, I’d found my people, like, the people who are solution-oriented, the innovators, the people who are looking to take things to the next level and the next stage. And that made my heart so happy. Lenny has always been really good, also, about making sure that I—and Greg, too—where on years where I didn’t have much budget to work, with I could find a job. I was like, “I’ll wipe tables. I might sleep under the table.” But I love that about our industry, too, that we find ways to get the right people there and play the long game.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. And we do, for people listening who are, you know, like, gosh, I really need to get there next year because, you know, granted, we have other events throughout the year, but you know, if that’s your thing, like, there are certain people that, you know, just reach out to me. We can figure out maybe you can share a track, or, you know, somehow or another, be a part of the scene, even if times get tough. And you know, this is why we’re doing a lot of work right now with Insights Career Network to offer them space for people. Because we know this industry, if—you know, there’s people that just come here and they stay here. I mean, I joined this industry in the ’90s, for heaven’s sakes. I’ve known no other industry, really, professionally, other than this one, and I have seen for you know, three decades, how people show up for each other. And those people that come and stay, they tend to be the people that will lift each other up because we all work collectively—especially in the IIEX audience—to lift the industry up, right? That is a value that we all share. And so, those people with that mindset that you just described, we all recognize that it’s the combination of all of our brains together in that space that actually drive change. So. 

Sarah: A hundred percent. And so, that actually is a decent segue to how my talk came about because one of the things that in my client-side roles that I’ve had is always this focus on innovation in the product or brand experience, and also the brand strategy. In the client-side world, insights is very often, not always, rolled in with marketing, and so being the literal redheaded stepchild in the—and also figurative—in the marketing family has been a good experience for me in terms of thinking about what’s next. And IIEX really helps me think in my own field about how things innovate and how the strategies come about. So.

Karen: Yeah, cool.

Sarah: And that’s a good thing. 

Karen: So, we’ll get into that. So, let’s kind of stay high level because the talk itself was, you know, AI-Magining White Space. So very—

Sarah: Yeah. AI-Magining, yeah. 

Karen: AI-Magining White Space. And you were with Dave Carruthers, who, you know, I did have the— 

Sarah: He’s very shy [laugh]. Also, red hair.

Karen: [laugh] privilege of saying hello to, why don’t you just start with, kind of where the talk, kind of the idea for it came from. Like, give us the… genesis of it.

Sarah: So, very often on the client side, you’ve got a core portfolio of things, and that’s, like, you what you do well, and what you’re selling and focused on. And then you’ve got these people who have to try to stretch beyond that. It is really hard if you have a position where it’s like, keeping everything, like, humming through stores and through channels, and, you know, dealing with the real products in the real world, something’s almost always kind of on fire, or you’re almost always reacting to something. And then often because of that, there’s an innovation group that kind of pulls out a little bit differently, or is separate from the day-to-day wranglings of the business. I call it white space because I think it’s about, when you think about where the writing is on the page, the white space is the margins. The white space is the blank page. You know old school paper reference, yes. But you know, those of us who are around in the 1900s, we remember the paper, but the white space really gets us, you know, into newer terrain. So, I’m not the sportiest person, but if you think of core as, like, a base hit, you’re updating—maybe you’re doing some marketing innovation. You’re saying a new claim, you’re redoing your bottle, you’re coming out with maybe the next flavor of the thing, that’s kind of the base-hit space. And then you’ve got your doubles or your triple hits, you know, where you get a couple bases out of the deal, or maybe more, that’s more like the stretch area. You’re still on the playing field, but you’re getting a little more, but it’s higher risk, higher reward. And then if you think about, like, swinging for the fences, the home runs, the over the fence, that to me, is the more provocative, really white space because you’re trying to take what you do and think about how to get more business synergy out of it, essentially. 

Karen: So, you know, I don’t know if you remember, like, you’re there the morning of day one, and I’m like, I’m such a baseball fan, so I’m so with you for this metaphor. And just, like, wanted—

Sarah: You can explain the rest to me, but I can get the basics. I had a nephew who was really. 

Karen: Oh, my goodness because when you’re trying to go for those home runs, right, and get to that place, if you’re a Mets fan, you want that great big apple to, you know, rise up out of the machinery there and smoke to come out and have the fireworks or whatever else happens, but often, to get that power you often do swing and miss. So, to me, I think that’s also a part of it is you have to recognize that it is also high risk, right? Huge reward, high risk. So anyway, with you for the metaphor. Thank you.

Sarah: Yeah, and so essentially, you know, for those of us lucky enough or old enough who came through, you know, our early years in corporate America and got these opportunities to do innovation, you used to get to go in this carved-out time and really be away from your desk. You would watch the people do the thing. You would follow people who stretched your thinking about kitchen cleaning. I had one of my own adventures where I got to go to Chicago away from my office in Oakland, and follow the food inspector around for the day because we were thinking about kitchen cleaning. I followed the guy who runs the huge hotel kitchen at the Sheraton. He can have banquets to see 3500 people, and runs an all-night kitchen and two other restaurants on site. You know, all those people who kind of stretch your brain to really think bigger, and now, increasingly, in a world where you don’t have the people power, you don’t have the budget, you don’t have the time, I’m afraid, a lot of the white—the trying to stretch beyond the core ideas, it gets harder and harder because you’ve got often you’re trying to pull in people who have day jobs doing really core things, and, you know, they’re trying to make time to think, like, every idea is a good idea, except for we still have to then fit it back in our own bottle that we already have in the lines we are—it’s hard to do. And one of the things that this AI agency model that I talked about does really well is it’s not as attached to the real world. So, the other great thing about using AI in this way is I know my coffee space really well. And so, when I was able to give this a try, those core things that it came back with, I was like, that’s good. That’s spot on. That’s really—the AI agents were going out to kind of scrape the internet and, you know, find the bits and pull them all together to be the consumer basis, the face validity was really remarkable. And then when you get to the core area, AI is good at stretching and imagining things. And you get to the really more provocative ideas that are the hardest ones for humans to do, and it’s actually really—that’s easy for AI. And in the end, you’re not using AI to validate or quantify or anything like that. You’re using it to stretch your thinking. So, this particular model, in the way that ONE Strategy Studio has thought about the different jobs, the different agents that do the different pieces that come together to be the final result, it worked really well. And if your alternative is, we could just try to recycle what we already have and have the workshop and get the Post-It notes, and have an off site, or to do something like this, it’s so fast, and if you can make the resources happen to do, like, honestly, less than a day of a focus groups to—and you get it right back. And if you don’t like some of the ideas, you say, give me a little more of this, but a little less of that, and the iterations happen fast, too.

Karen: It’s like—so having facilitated more than one of those sessions— 

Sarah: [laugh]. I’m sure you have.

Karen: [laugh].

Sarah: Graphic recorder, you know.

Karen: It’s like, you’re basically the facilitator, and the AI is, like, an ideal group of participants because it answers, it does what the facilitator wants, instead of getting attached to an idea. You know, we used to say all the time, like, you can fall in love with an idea, but don’t marry it because there’s another good-looking one right around the corner, you know? And like, AI—

Sarah: Or it could be lonely for a while. There’s not too— 

Karen: Exactly, [laugh] exactly. Let’s take a step back with me, Sarah, and kind of explain then you know how you and Dave happened upon this collaboration. Had you worked with him before? Did you kind of know what ONE Strategy was doing? Like, what brought you two together? Or were you simply exploring tools and found them?

Sarah: I mean, kind of, both because I’m kind of, if I had a market research type in a typing tool that I kind of imagine—and to be fair, I’ve imagined this because I’m just like that—I’m kind of a scout. I like to be the bee that’s out ahead of the hive, and I work really well if I can get paired with someone like Brenda Armstead at a Keurig who supports finding newer, better ways, and would give me the runway to, kind of, you know, go out and do the pilots. And I found ways in worlds where I don’t have always that exact kind of backup like I did at Keurig to kind of continue that. So, part of how I do it is there’s certain industry people that I follow that are maybe more like taste makers, or I saw them have a really breakout, kind of, run in their first company. And Dave is like that. I keep an eye on him because he’s just got that serial innovator thing. But in terms of, like, the more taste maker, the champions of up and coming things, [Kristi Zuhlke 00:20:48] is one that I really—like, and that’s how I heard about this one. And Susan Griffin is another one that I—I kind of like, sometimes you cheat off someone else’s homework, and I—well, I actually invest a lot of time keeping current and taking calls and meeting people who have new ideas, having also someone who’s got more focus in that area that I can kind of take a hot tip from, works really well.

Karen: Yeah, I love that. I—

Sarah: Obviously, you guys at Greenbook would be another, not to bury the lede, but I think I got my initial hot tips from just being around the Greenbook Gen2 world.

Karen: Yeah. Well, thank you. I feel like I’ve had this conversation before about, you know, part of my role here at Greenbook is, you know, speaker curation. Like I’m paying attention for a very different purpose right now. And you know, when I talk to people like yourself, it’s like, it’s a lot of effort to stay fully versed. And I love when brands come to our event because they kind of fuel up, right? But it’s a whole ‘nother type of moving through our industry, if you are staying current beyond just once a year, you know, keeping those conversations up and talking to people, not just for what they could do for you right now, but who are they and what’s their thinking that’s going to move it all, you know, move your work forward. 

Sarah: Yeah. And I actually really love the cross-pollination, the matchmaking. Like, if I have more spare time, I am always trying to think, you know, who you should talk to, like that matchmaking, you know, connecting the innovative new forces with the world of people who need innovation in their forces is exciting.

Karen: Yeah, I love that quality. It’s a great quality. So, you set out on this kind of adventure with Dave, to kind of use AI in this way. You had a successful outcome, it seems. Pros and cons for doing it, but anything that you can, kind of, like call out specifically that, you know, either an example from that work that just kind of highlight how it all turned out for you?

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, obviously you don’t get to give away the big surprises in the pipeline, but I will say, honestly, the ideas that came out, especially in the core space, and how—we’ve done multiple projects. One, I made the agents kind of take a twist and think about naming. And they really did a good job on the naming piece, too, and that’s a little easier to talk about because in the end, sometimes the naming decision gets made from a whole different direction. But when I think about how those names came back, I was like, oh, they have picked up on the logic that made certain competitive brands what they are. They have essentially named things that we’ve looked at that we know are off the table for whatever reason.

Karen: Right, right.

Sarah: The agents that were coming back with the ideas, again, the face validity was really good for an application like this.

Karen: Yeah. I think that’s interesting because the naming work that I’ve been involved with in the past is among the hardest in my experience, among the hardest in the kind of ideation space. Because, like, people, like, lose steam—people, participants—like, lose steam for it because it you need, like, hundreds of names, you know? So, you know, again, I think about that as a use case. I’m like, oh, that actually would be a great use case for AI because it won’t have the fatigue that individuals get just continually trying to stretch and mix and match ideas and again, all the tools that a facilitator can bring out cannot account for stamina. 

Sarah: Yeah, and think about this: it can even do it, you know, in the language. So like, there’s a lot of espresso Italian overlap, but we are a French brand, so I could say, “All right, give me a little more frenchiness,” and the AI—

Karen: Yeah. And it knows what to do.

Sarah: Could do that, and maybe way better than I could. As I acknowledge it, I’m great with Spanish, I have Japanese, kind of like a colorful talking parrot, but I don’t have that. You know, like, it’s hard to find respondents who’d just be, like, oh yes, here’s some ideas that are more Frenchy.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s definitely a brain drain. So, I really, I love that use case, so I’m glad. You know, so talk to me about kind of the journey than you were on then. Did you have concerns before you started? Was it—how did you say, “You know what? We’ll take this risk.” Because you must have had something that was, you know, kind of like the what ifs, the wonders, the how is this all going to turn out?

Sarah: Yeah. So, technically the naming one was pretty perfect because we didn’t have a lot of time, we had, like, some people, you know, in one part of the organization that were on their path, but we’re in the US, and it was supposed to be, you know, a really big, important launch for our market. And there’s always the things when you’ve got different markets and different people speaking different languages that you have to, kind of, self-advocate, so you don’t end up with the, “Chevy Nova: the car that doesn’t go.” So, we were kind of having that moment, and honestly, we had a little bit of money, but not a lot of money that we could spend. And I think one of the other things that is good to think about, if you’re trying to stretch into new space, is sometimes really making your case for why you need a pilot with the money you have, is sometimes vendors and people who are selling products and services can find a way to meet you where you are. And the naming case was one where we were able to do it for a little—I was an early user. That is one of the benefits of getting to be the scout, sometimes, is they’re looking for people to—

Karen: Pilot the program.

Sarah: Pilot and kick the tires and take the ride with them and tell them what could be better. So, in this case, the naming one was how we got in the door. And I was truly blown away, like I said, by how well it synthesized this space.  

Karen: That’s great. That’s great. That’s great. So, if you’re thinking about the audience, people listening, who are willing to say, you know what, maybe this is my turn to take this risk. You know, maybe I’m going to take a chance and I’m going to partner with a new supplier, or I’m going to check out a new, you know, AI method that I’ve been curious about, or whatever, what’s the kind of stellar advice for somebody who’s been there, done that, like, taken that first step? What advice would you give?

Sarah: I think the biggest, hardest lessons for client-side people, especially, but honestly, supplier-side needs to know it, too, is nobody cares about how. Nobody cares. Like, I have an organization that is—I mean, they want it to be legal and viable and all the things that wouldn’t get you in trouble, but beyond that, do not talk to them about how your engine works. What my organization wants, and what a lot of organizations want, especially with those really, you know, driven people at the top who are trying to make a lot of business action happen, is be brief, be bright, be gone. Like they want the implications. I’ve spent a lot of time really learning how to boil it down and having to let go of, I get really excited sometimes about what’s in the insights engine, but that is not what my audience wants to hear. And in the spirit of really trying to be the gift of understanding, you know, like, the products we create are trying to do that, and my role in the organization is also to do that. So, I think, you know it’s, more practically, thinking about your organization’s tolerance for risk. I wasn’t putting any of our proprietary data out into an AI large language model that could be found by other models. Like, so this was a really nice use case to kind of get some experience because I got, frankly, all the benefits of AI without really a lot of risk.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. So that’s, you know, that’s really it, is—start there [laugh]. Start with something that doesn’t feel like you’d, you know, be jeopardizing company intel or secrets or you know.

Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, that kind of transitions to—and you know, a surprise that I had at IIEX this year because, you know, there have been times in our industry—and I’ll take automation as another example—where—and last year, as I felt, was kind of, closer to this, where it was like, AI, AI, AI, AI, you know? Like, it was a lot of just, like, people saying, like, “AI: we got it.” You know? Like, “You want it? We got it.” Automation was similar, back in the day of, like, none of us client-side people are sitting around, you know, looking out the window and thinking, “Yeah, you know, I really wish I had more automation.” Or like, “You know what I’m craving this afternoon? More AI.” Like, that is not a job that we’re trying to do. That is, like, an engine detail. And it’s an important detail, but we are thinking about, like, I need to get concept tests done faster. I need to be able to add tests in a way where I’m not committing to get to do it one time because my product life cycle will give me four weeks, and I can choose if that’s going to be at the beginning before we go into creative development, or the midpoint when I’ve got, like, a, you know, a wire draw—you know, like, a sketch, or the end when I’m going to be mailing the ad, and it’s a disaster, you know, like, I’m sending it out into the world. So, I think, this year I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t seem—and maybe you were coaching people behind the scenes not to just be, like, AI, AI, AI, AI. I thought it was going to be more of that, and…

Karen: Yeah, move the conversation forward. Well, and so yes and no. Some of that was by design. You know, we had a lot of calls for speakers that, or calls for speaker submissions for this event in particular, that were what the conversations were last year, and I rejected those because I was like, we are so beyond talking about AI as an entity out there. And, you know, we’re actually beyond listening to vendors, I think, who were saying, “But we have an AI feature.” It’s like, yeah, no [laugh] we don’t care—

Sarah: Neat.

Karen: —like, that's great. We use mobile phones too, you know, similar sort of analogy. Like, at one point, people were talking about mobile research and how important it was, and it’s like, yeah, but at the end of the day, whether you’re getting it, you know, through some sort of, you know, mobile interaction, or whether you’re, you know, sitting people down in a focus group room, from the end of the day, it all comes down to the objectives you’re meeting, so let’s go back to that. And I think most of the speakers that delivered, you know, that had kind of winning call for speaker submissions, it was that, that they were like, “We’re back to research use cases. And yes, we happen to use AI to get there.”

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Karen: And that’ll be where we are. I mean, we have an AI event coming up, which I’ll probably call you about, just to pick your brain to make sure that we elevate that conversation. But, you know, we’ll be talking more about agents, and the, you know, the bigger conversations about, again, we’re so beyond, you know, whether to use AI and all that, but now we have to get very tangible. 

Sarah: One of the things, I mean, from last year and this year that I like because for me, it helps me, also… I like to have really smart friends when it comes to the sample part. I used to tell Lev at AYTM, like, I want someone else to think about the monsters under the bed in terms of how the respondents come through. But one of the applications for AI that I also really think is important is in the qual space, and using that moment where you’re able to get actual consumers that pick up their phone—or respondents—that pick up their phone and tell you the story, or show you the brewer on their countertop, or show you where they keep their tea, I really like Conveyo and, like, what Bolt are doing. GetWhy I don’t think was there this year, but that notion of trying to quality quant in a way that’s also really fast, and it gets me straight to the sizzle reel. So, when I think about, like, how to get that consumer voice really a seat at the decision-making table, on the client side, making decisions about how brands and products are going to evolve, I’m excited about those things. In terms of getting the actual consumer voice literally kind of shortcutted all the way right into the CEO’s ear, I think that’s a really exciting AI development too, that has an important job to do. 

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool. Which is going to lead me into kind of this next question about any other trends you saw there, or kind of, you know, emerging methods, or even just conversations that are pushing us further into the future? Anything else come to mind?

Sarah: I would say that one of the big learnings I’ve had at IIEX over the years that I continue to kind of bank on is thinking about how, where there’s emotion, you’re so much more likely to get action. And so, thinking about how that’s played out across, like, not just our industry, but culture, I think you know, is interesting. I like what—also thinking about mind states, that for me is one that, honestly, I continue to wrap my head around because it’s a new behavior to pause and think about, how do you activate against a mind state? So, I always love to see what Will Leach is up to. And he had a really great, you know, again, trained using AI to do particular jobs that help the human strategy go faster, go further. And I like what he’s doing with Bevi, formerly known as Mindi, and that was one of my conference favorite talks.

Karen: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. I agree that, you know, it seems like, you know, back in the day, when we were all getting our degrees.

Sarah: [singing] In the year 2000. Sorry, [laugh].

Karen: You’re so much younger than me, which is making me feel like, oh God, I’m so old. Anyway, it’s fine. Because I was doing—

Sarah: I was just a late bloomer [laugh]. 

Karen: You were—[laugh].

Sarah: Just the colorful 20s, remember? 

Karen: You were a child in the ’90s. Anyway, all good things. When you’re studying consumer behavior, and it’s like, that’s basically what all of the, kind of, marketing programs and marketing research programs all talked about back then, was consumer behavior. And then we get into the marketplace, and, you know, we talk about consumer insights, and we talk about the voice of the customer, and we talk about shopper insights and shopper behavior. And then it’s like, when people start to talk about, like, behavioral insights or behavioral economics, we’re all like, “Oh, that’s very important.” And it’s a whole different—like, our brains, we’re, like, we have to, you know, engage our brains in these conversations. And on some level, it’s what we’ve been talking about all the time, but I think the key difference is understanding the mindset, to your point, but also then how it’s going to influence the future action, like, what’s about to happen because of where the consumer is. And that’s the piece that is really hard for all of us to wrestle, right, the predictive angle— 

Sarah: You know, I’m going to differ with you on this one—

Karen: Oh, yay. [laugh].

Sarah: —because I… I think I was really lucky to get amazing qualitative training early in my career. Lisa Fortini-Campbell, who used to teach at Kellogg, and Gina Fong, who’s continued, and was Professor of the Year at Kellogg, and was in qualitative when everyone—you know, right now, like, in the business schools, a lot of the people are really into the big data sets and behavioral in that way that isn’t the human way. And I think there’s a really important job to be done of deeply understanding the people part. So, when you were saying, like, “Oh, there’s the consumer and the shop,” or whatever, I think I’m a little bit of an essentialist because I was lucky to have that training early on, and the fact that you’re really getting at why do people do what they do. One fantastic thing about Clorox when I was there was they used to really make us go deep. And we would go out into homes, but we weren’t allowed to come back and say what the findings were about laundry stains or trash bags, unless we could also really say, “Okay, so there’s, like, the behavior we’re immediately interested in, but then that takes place in the context of the kitchen or the laundry room. That takes place in the context of the home, and the home takes place in the context of their broader life goals.” And you know, these are the processes that don’t get the artisan—you know, you don’t get the time and space anymore. And I feel so lucky that I got that indoctrination of really making sure that if we came up with marketing piece, we had to think about how that worked all the way through; we had to thread it from the most basic product features all the way up. And of course that stuff is still practiced. But when I think about, like, disinfecting, and you think about there’s people who are proactive and reactive, and you start to see those patterns in a different way—there’s people who I do it for me versus I do it for others—you see, like, the same behavior can be coming from a very different motivation. And all that, to me, is still so fascinating.

Karen: It’s absolutely fascinating. Absolutely. I don’t disagree. Were you involved—I don’t know if you remember this. It was, IIEX a long time ago, pre-Covid, where Clorox shared the water project. Do you remember that one?

Sarah: I do. And I left Clorox probably when the roots of that were still going. It’s funny because one of the pieces, if you get to know these people more broadly, and this is—I’m proudly championing someone else’s work on this one—but when you go out and do those interviews in home and you talk to people about water, one of the insights that was really wild for them was there are certain people who just remember with such fondness the experience of being a kid and drinking out of the hose, like, the literal garden hose. And I’m actually one of those people. So, I know it might sound weird in our filtered, more indoor world now, but yeah, that deep learning of really getting out there… is what I wish we could all still do more of and we need to still try to use the tools we have to get there. Yeah—

Karen: in-home research. I did my fair share of ethnography, too, and there’s nothing quite like it. But what I loved about that one, and the reason why I bring it up, kind of connecting dots from what you just said, is, they focused on water, period. Like, they focused on water as it—because it interacts with all of their products, right? There’s a water component to it. And I thought that was very interesting to me is not so much focusing on how they’re cleaning, but just water in general as an everyday component and an everyday need. And of course, it fed into some philanthropic work that they were doing, so it had this big, higher, lofty goal as well. But I think about that often when I’m involved in cleaning. I think about the water use as well as a piece of the puzzle, and had never really thought about that before, so it was one of those paradigm shifts for me, is thinking about how people use and what their behavior is around water, which is, like, foundational thinking for how people then use the cleaning products on top of that. And I’m like, I love that foundational stuff. So. 

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, Clorox really did some good work in that space. And one of my favorites—and it’s short—is—and this, again, I’m championing someone else’s work; in fact, it was Gina Fong and Pam Emmerich—they were out looking at the people who use Pine-Sol. And if you do the quantitative assessment of what do people want in a product, it’s a light, fresh scent, but if you go out and really spend time with the heavy Pine-Sol users, those are people who. That cleaning is a badge value. You’ve got people, like, out cleaning their steps with Pine-Sol because it says this person has their act together. Like, they believe in getting your arm involved. These are not the cleaning-wipe Swiffer people. 

Karen: Yeah [laugh].

Sarah: And knowing those distinctions in a world where we’re all trying to be more, you know, readily available mentally in all the spaces, but there’s that counterbalance of really know your heavy users that I feel like is still one of the creative tensions in insights and in marketing that still keeps me coming back for more.

Karen: It’s so interesting. You know, this is—as predicted, Sarah, I was like, you know, we usually record for about 40 minutes, and I’m like—but when I enjoy a conversation, I tend to go over that. And I’m sitting here thinking, “Oh, here I am, going over that.” So, let’s kind of get towards a place where we’re wrapping up, to respect our listeners' time. But first, you know, kind of capturing the, was there anything else on your tick list about your talk, or about IIEX that you’re like, you know what, I really want to make sure we cover this before we get off? 

Sarah: We mentioned Dave Carruthers, but Jonathan Williams is really the ONE Strategy—sorry, ONE Strategy Studio piece. We should probably give him a little shout-out, too. Charlotte White also did a great job on helping us keep the pieces flowing in the right direction. Yeah, I think this year I’ll continue to, you know—I’m honestly still processing, [laugh] you know? It was only a few days ago. And I tend to take a lot of calls after the fact, too, because sometimes you can do the demo right there on the floor, but to really, like, think or have a meaningful chat, you know, it takes a little bit of follow up. So, yeah, I think I’m still processing, you know? Maybe if it was Magic 8 Ball, I’d be like, “Reply hazy. Try again later.”

Karen: Oh, I think we have a—oh, I gave it to my daughter. Somebody was handing out those 8 Balls. Mmm, I’m not going to remember who it was. It was over by the charging station… it’s fine. It’s fine. Anyway. So, let’s wrap with this question that I love to ask people. You know, we’re the future of insights. We say that at Greenbook all the time, and I’d love to kind of check that one out there. What do you think, Sarah? What do you think the future of insights is? 

Sarah: Oh, gosh. You know, I’ll boil back to some key themes I’ve already mentioned. For me, it’s always deeply about, why do people do what they do? You know, and often there’s context and other pieces wrapped around it, but that’s the fundamental question. And I think the balancing force on that is still the faster, cheaper, better. And I kind of think all things, realistically, have to be in play. I feel like the business landscape right now has gotten, frankly, a lot harder, and I think the eye on how organizations are trying to be efficient is happening in a really rapid way right now. If you look at, sort of, circling back to the, our industry tries to take care of its own, I’ve got a lot of friends who have a lot of great experience that are looking for their next thing. And yeah, I’m hoping that as we continue to evolve and figure out the jobs to be done in the faster, cheaper, better world, we still get to keep answering that ‘why do they do what they do’ part. 

Karen: Yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much. Sarah, if anybody wants to reach out and find you, what’s the best way for the—oh, my gosh, I have a cat appearance, too.

Sarah: Oh, that’s nice. Who do we have here, the cat? 

Karen: That’s Finnegan. I have a Maggie and a Finnegan because—

Sarah: Okay. And this is?

Karen: This one’s Finnegan. 

Sarah: All right, sure.

Karen: And then the Golden Retriever is Maggie because I married—

Sarah: Oh, oh. Oh sorry, Ma—I thought you were saying you had two cats. I was like, ohh.

Karen: No, no. I have Maggie and I have a Finnegan because apparently, like you know, I married into this Irish name, and apparently—I’m going to have a Liam, the next pet or something.

Sarah: Live it up. I like it.

Karen: Where can people find you?

Sarah: LinkedIn. I’m actually quite attentive to LinkedIn, and that’s the easiest way to find me.

Karen: Fantastic, fantastic. Sarah, thank you so much. I knew I’d enjoy this conversation and now—

Sarah: Thanks.

Karen: I’m just going to pretend that it happened under the tent at lunch [laugh].

Sarah: Yeah. Well, you know, I’m all for the virtual tent. So.

Karen: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.

Sarah: My pleasure.

Karen: And thank you to our editor, Big Bad Audio. Thank you for helping whatever you’re going to do to help us with video, too, this time, so I appreciate that and all that you do. And of course, not just to Sarah, to Brigette, our producer, and to all of our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.