COVID-19 Insights Leaders Roundtable: Edition 10

Lenny Murphy: There are a few key questions that we’ve been tracking from the get-go for the past 10 weeks and the one that we always start with is what’s happening right now within your businesses? We’ve certainly seen that as a changing response for the past few weeks and now, that we’re moving into a beginning of a – end of lockdown in many places, moving into a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis, it’s particularly interesting to know where you are now. Being a southern gentleman, Shanon, I’m actually going to pick on you first then we’ll go around and get that current update on what you guys are seeing in your businesses.

Shanon Adams: Okay. I’m happy to go first. I always count us as fortunate. I think the story has been obviously, mixed in the industry really depending on what side you’re on and what sort of customer. You’re servicing, of course. We are very focused on the consumer side and because of that, we have seen really tremendous business increasing during this time. None of us really knew to go into March how this was all going to shape up and what side we were going to see ourselves on. I’m thankful to say that if we’ve had this call maybe a month and a half ago, it might have been we’re still looking and seeing and learning. We’re always doing that but can confidently say I think we’re past that period and what we’ve seen is really interesting and is really two camps. Because of the types of clients that we serve, we’re focused on the quantitative side. We didn’t see as much impact this fall. Obviously, doing in-person focus groups required great adapting because we were already in quant and on top of that online quant, we see ourselves as like we were not waiting for a pandemic for everyone to join us over here but we really do empower the sort of distributed, more agile, and I know that’s a word a lot of people are using, but I mean it’s become so much more important when so much is changing so fast. I think what we saw was – I always say that our profession is an evolution, not a revolution, became much more of a revolution during that time and seeing more people looking to get the answers quicker because I think our response was, “Wow, what do I do now? Do I keep doing research? Can I keep doing research?”I’m thankful to say that most of our customers didn’t have to make that decision. Instead, it was move and I think that’s a really big – a response really to how fast you can really do research now. First movers were what is the impact on those? Obviously, we saw massive changes in consumer buying patterns. I’m sure you’ve covered that ad nauseam but now, it hasn’t really stopped. The velocity hasn’t stopped. The world has changed. I know we’re going to talk a lot about what we think the next few months hold but I don’t think that – we don’t really call it the new normal. We sort of call it the next normal is upon us and luckily, we’ve been able to continue to grow business during this time. As you said, everybody took a great pause and then we just sort of moved and luckily, we’ve been on the good side of this, if there is any at all, and been able to unlock a lot of value which I think is super important for people to see the value in moving fast and being able to get to those insights quicker and make a lot of decisions in the market as the market changes so rapidly.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. That’s great. I’m going to circle back in a minute on a follow-up question but actually, Anouar, I want to get your take since you’re also a digital-first solution focused on consumer behavior. Have you seen the same experience that AYTM has and have an acceleration of research as people want to really understand what’s happening with consumers over the course of the last few months?

Anouar El Haji: Yes. That’s an incredibly good question and I think there are two aspects to it. As a client, you want to make sure that you’re on top and that you always have a good understanding of the consumer and ideally, even predictive but at the same time, you don’t want to take a moment of measurement that’s going to be really biased. It’s not going to actually inform you of what type of decision to make in a couple of months from now or that might have an impact in a couple of months from now. What we have seen mostly is that even though some of our customers – well, actually, most of our customers are thriving in these times as we’re focusing mostly on CPG companies. They’re also at the same time a bit hesitant saying, “If we measure right now in a behavioral manner, are we capturing something that we can actually make decisions on?” Now, initially, the answer to that question was, well, currently the situation is so extreme that it’s even first – it’s affecting everyone personally and everyone can easily understand that seeing their own purchase behavior-changing that this is true for everyone else but right now, we’re already in a phase where we’re indeed, as Shanon calls it, the next normal where, okay, we’re getting to a stage where it becomes increasingly important to get a good understanding of how preferences have moved and shifted for various reasons. You want to launch products. You want to position them differently. How you should do that? How do the preferences look like right now? As a result of 3 that, we see exactly what Shanon is seeing is that acceleration of actually need for insights. That, again, that puts us in a good position especially with our behavioral approach where we really try to get as close as possible to repurchase behavior but at the same time, you need to be cautious in the sense, at the end of the day, you want to be able not to only understand what’s going on right now but also get an insight on what might happen in the coming months. There is still a lot of uncertainty but fortunately, from what I’ve seen so far from customers is that they are willing to embrace that uncertainty. There are many ways to tackle that uncertainty in the interpretation of the data but that is really a good thing because it tells you that the drive and the need for innovation and the need for insights is more than ever so it outweighs the uncertainty and that’s I think generally a very, very good sign.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. That is great. As a method man, there’s an order here, so, Anil, thinking about the – we’ve heard a lot of this. A lot of clients are – and I think Anouar hinted at this. Looking at historical data to try and establish a benchmark for comparison now with ongoing changes. Playing much more on the data analytics side, what have you been seeing on how folks are rethinking utilizing both new and existing data sources?

Anil Kaul: Okay. Yes. I think a very interesting time from a data perspective because if you think of data analytics, all the models, tools that have been put together for forecasting sales or forecasting any of the things just stopped working once COVID hit. They didn’t make sense. There was nothing historically in the data that would be able to inform you what is going to be happening where so, I think that was certainly a big change because there was so much uncertainty and there were so many different things happening in the markets. If you look from a CPG perspective, that whole issue went away from worrying about what competition is doing to moving to can I focus on my supply chain and my and figure out which particular skills are going to be in demand versus which other ones that I’m going to deemphasize? There was a whole lot of this panic that happened about what are we going to do? Now, what I see is that most of our clients have tended to have two parallel teams running together. There is one team that is focused on figuring out what do we do today? How do I ensure that I am able to use data to figure out what is going on in the market so that I can quickly respond to that? Then there is 4 a separate team that is getting ready for, and I’ll use Shanon’s term, the next normal. That’s the team that is now basically saying, “Let’s figure out what will consumers look like in the next normal? What are they going to be really caring about? Which of the changes – behavior changes, mental-moral changes that we are noticing right now? Which ones of those will persist and so on?” We have seen these two parallel pieces going on. A third thing I would add to that is that this is certainly a change that has shaken up a lot of companies. In fact, we do a lot of work, for example, in the food service and hospitality sector, two sectors that have been hit really, really badly.

Lenny Murphy: Yes.

Anil Kaul: We, while we’ve been doing a lot of work with them, generally, as a sector, I’ve seen them struggle about data and technology. I’ll say there’s always trying – everybody would agree they need to do it. However, it was always that people are going to push it later. We’ve got other things to take care of. I’ve seen a lot of change happen in that particular – in those industries about the moment we are ready, we all have data and technology into what we do. Similarly, about mobility data and trying to figure out from mobility data when is a particular location or a particular geography area going to open so that we can get our supply chain ready. Even, for example, one of our clients that sells to restaurants, we’re building a model predicting which of the restaurants are likely to survive based on financial metrics that we never used to think about. It is actually changing how people are looking at the market, what they’re doing quite a bit, and how it used to be earlier.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. I think that is really interesting and now, Bob, with more of the strategic view. If I had to characterize what I’ve heard so far, what we’ve heard is there’s been a big focus on tactical, what happens now while, Anil, as you mentioned, beginning to shift into a strategic view, what happens more into the future and what does that look like. Bob, I would argue that’s probably a key focus of your customers in Brunswick Group so what do you…

Robert Moran: Definitely.

Lenny Murphy: How’s that been playing out for you?

Robert Moran: Sure. I think for the listeners, it’s important to understand that my team is embedded in a wider consulting firm and so, that’s how our work gets done. Now, I can look at how we managed it. I think we’ve mirrored what our clients have been doing. I’ve written a little something in the research world on this which is that our clients are managing across three-time horizons, the immediate transition, the operational continuity, and then post-pandemic growth. Anil talked about this when he was saying that two different – in many cases, clients have two different teams running the now and running the future. That’s what our clients are doing and that’s what we’re doing. If you look at our transition, our transition follows – as a business, our transition follows very much those horizons. First, we had to make sure that our employees were safe when we transition them to remote work and then how we handle that, people working remotely sometimes in less than ideal situations around the world, in different parts of the world. We had to shift any kind of qualitative data collection to virtual data collections instead of in-person so that was a quick shift. Then we had to deal with a surge in crisis work, specifically, in survey research but also in analytics. I focus and I think most of the people in the research world are focused on how we increase analytics work and really drive that business but in reality, this created a huge surge of demand for basic survey work. Many of the things that we talk about over the years in terms of trends in market research have only been accelerated. For example, we’ve been doing a lot faster work and it’s lucky that I started out in political polling because we built the team for speed. It’s a quicker shift and that’s what clients want. We’ve seen a lot more work on the foresight side where we’re pulling trends forward and analyzing alternative futures for clients. We’ve done a ton of that kind of work. I’ll just close with one last point because we’re all business people here. Just like everybody on this call, we track our proposal pipeline in terms of the number of proposals and the dollar volume. We are barely off the 2019 proposal volume but higher on the total dollars proposed which is very interesting because at this point last year, we had 181 proposals at the door. We have 157 this year but they are a larger ticket. This gets to a bigger point which I think we’ll all talk about in terms of our takeaways but one of my big takeaways is just how amazingly resilient humans are and how when everybody is a bought-in team, how fast you can adjust and keep the business going. I couldn’t be prouder of the people I work with and how well they’ve been able to transition. I’m amazed at how well it’s worked out.

Lenny Murphy: That is all incredibly – what I hear from everybody is not just hope but maybe a little bit of, we’re back, baby, or at least getting there which is definitely different than what we’ve heard in the past. If I’m overstating that, feel free to jump in and say, “Oh, we didn’t go that far, Lenny.” I think that’s my key takeaway. Now, Bob, you mentioned this so we’ll start with you on this that what have you learned as a leader through all of this? Obviously, we’ve all had to adapt and you mentioned a lot of things you’ve done from a business standpoint but what’s the one big growth area for you, the, “Aha, I didn’t expect to have to deal with this and now, I’m a better leader because I’ve now dealt with it.” Anything that you can zero in on that?

Robert Moran: Well, you know me. I’m a straight shooter, Lenny. I think I’ve learned a ton from this. I’ll just keep it to two. The first is just call it data-driven and agile people aware and if you’re really focused as a team, you can pull this off but I think the second is around – to be honest, around love. A lot of us work very tight with our teams. I love my team. I love the people on it. I hired basically every last one of them and I love them. When stuff like this happens, you worry about the people on your team and I just think that after this is over, we are just going to be a tighter family than we were when we started and I think a lot of people have gone through this. Socially, at the end of this, we are going to demand a lot more social solidarity because of this.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. That’s a common theme as well. We’ve all gone through this together. Now, Anil, you mentioned before we started that you’re on a trip to India and they got stuck there. You’ve been running your business from a whole different location than you used to so I suspect there have been some interesting implications for you.

Anil Kaul: Yes. I think for me, the biggest learning is being that how productive and connected are our team has been even though we have all been in locations that are not typically close to each other. In fact, what I found was very similar to what all the same people are feeling a lot more closer but I’ve also noticed people that are more relaxed, they are a lot more productive and we are still able to work together on problem-solving and so on. All this work from home and away from each other physical piece hasn’t had the kind of impact that I thought would have if everybody was working from home. That’s been a very interesting lesson that I have learned because there is still a lot of work that can be done through this. However, it’s almost been 3½ months since we’ve been doing this. Everybody wants to meet people. We just want to get back to seeing people – each other. I think that’s certainly very big learning and for me also, the same thing because essentially, because I travel quite a lot even when I am in the US so I’m used to going – meeting remotely and I think that’s the thing if I’m in a different time zone but I just realized that if I’m in California, I would be doing – meeting exactly the same banker on a computer but just not time. That’s actually been a very nice experience which I had not expected before this.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. You’ve discovered your own comfort with agility then. Would that be a good way to sum that up?

Anil Kaul: Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: Now, Anouar, being an earlier-stage company, that brings all of its own roller coaster components. Do you throw this into the mix? Did I expect that roller coaster just became one of the crazy loops? Like, oh, I’m going to puke kind of ride. At least if you’re me, I don’t like roller coasters. What’s been the big learning for you with ramping up an early-stage company through this?

Anouar El Haji: Yes. That’s a really good question. Fortunately, we have been growing quite a lot in the past few years and so, even though we were still often considered just an early-stage startup, we’ve been able to – thanks to our customers, be able to grow quite organically without any institutional funding. That puts us already in a very good position earlier this year. We were very much ready even though not anticipating something like what’s going on right now. The bigger challenge for me was more in terms of the team. In the sense of suddenly, you’re forced to work from home. I mean something very interesting about Veylinx is how distributed we are. We are a relatively small team but we’re quite distributed in the sense our engineering team is completely remote. We have a sales office in New York and then suddenly, we’re also starting to work completely – working from home. We already had various discussions about how to deal with this and one way to – I mean to work remotely before this even happened. One of the biggest challenges was how do you compensate for the fact that you don’t have these moments of 8 interactions that aren’t structured, aren’t planned? At least I see very few people starting a Zoom meeting just spontaneously. I mean we’re relatively young. We’re very much accustomed to using all these various tools. Suddenly, you’re facing these dynamics and challenges that we weren’t faced before. The way we used to tackle these, it is let’s make sure that we have once per month or once in two months a moment where we all get together so that we interact organically. That has helped in the past but now that’s not an option anymore. One of the things I’ve been challenged as a leader is how can I make sure that even though there are – technically speaking, there are lines of communication but that we’re also making use of them to their fullest potential to make sure that we’re still able to interact organically. That for me has been really a challenge. That was, in the beginning, like, whoa, this is a completely new situation and I discuss this with the management team and how can we encourage better interaction. The solutions weren’t straightforward. We had to iterate on those and that was definitely something that was for us a bit of a process where the clear solution wasn’t obvious but now that we’re getting accustomed to it, you’re starting to see there are different types of personalities that you need to tackle in different ways but at the same time the common theme is you need to overcommunicate. I mean this is already true when you’re a large organization but surprisingly, especially true when it comes to a smaller organization because you’re also at the same time, trying to work on the fundamentals. In some, what I would say, that’s been definitely a rollercoaster is I was anticipating that as a young company, very accustomed to using various technologies that we wouldn’t have these types of challenges, being able to – working remotely, suddenly, it turns out, it’s not that straightforward. There is a human element that needs attention and you need to be on top of that.

Lenny Murphy: Okay. That’s all really – so, now, Shanon, like – and full disclosure, I know aytm very well. I’m an advisor so I’m going to dip into my personal knowledge here for a minute. You’ve always been a virtual company and built a culture beyond that but now, you’ve had to scale, right? You’ve done well during this.

Shanon Adams: Yes.

Lenny Murphy: I expect that’s a whole other set of challenges on onboarding folks and scaling up during all of this. What have been some key takeaways from that perspective?

Shanon Adams: Well, first off, it’s really fascinating to spend a decade building a business virtual and then suddenly, everyone else is moving to remote so our perspective was sort of bizarre in the sense that, whereas everyone else was seeing the sudden seismic shift to being home, wake up on that Monday morning when your company had decided everyone was going to work from home, all of us woke up that Monday morning and life was pretty much the same which I’m really thankful for. I can’t really express gratitude enough that I know a lot of the challenges that others have spoken of like we had solved those years ago and also, the type of population that we have. Our teams, we hire people who are great over communicators, who are really agile and adaptive in their approach too because working remotely, it’s a necessary evil. One thing that’s new in all of this – well, two things really, as you said, Lenny, we’re obviously scaling and we’ve been scaling for the last year and a half and so, there were some moves that we made there, specifically, but second to is it’s one thing to work from home, it’s another to work from home when all of your children are home and you’re homeschooling them. Your spouse is home also working from home and maybe not in a situation where they’ve always worked from home. My husband is a civil engineer. He worked in an office and then he came to be home and so, he was going to – his company was going through battles that other companies are while I’m over here just trying to find my little piece and quiet in the corner again. From a social perspective, it’s sort of funny to have the way you socialize with the people in your own home change when you’re so used to being isolated and on your own. We weathered the professional side, obviously, pretty easily. It wasn’t really a massive shift but obviously, the importance of what goes on outside of your home. I can’t say this enough. When you work remotely, it can be very isolating. We have wonderful tools and programs in place to keep you all connected. Others have talked a bit about like heart-centered work and love and empathy are such a big part of our core values here. That’s not something that just came to pass because Lev and I and David are just the nicest people. We are very nice people but it’s because we – empathy is…

Lenny Murphy: I can vouch for that. She’s right. She’s right. Go on, Shanon.

Shanon Adams: We are very nice people. Empathy is very important and more so important when you work remotely. It’s very easy to be angry at someone you don’t have to face in person. It’s very easy to snap judgments on text because the text has no voice and action. It’s something we’ve gotten very good at because we understand that. It’s interesting to hear that other companies are coming to realize that and I can definitely say there are many other benefits to that just in how you operate and how you connect and relate to the people who work for you. One of the biggest areas is what happens when people don’t have the ability to blow off steam or when your whole sales team can no longer go be personally with their clients. We’ve had to adapt to that too and we try it. The good news is because we have such an open heart-centered environment, we were able to build new programs and engage with our teams in different ways to be able to be that for them so we saw more their life move into slack, more their day-to-day, participating more in some of our hobby channels and culture-oriented channels. We sort of stuck together like, “Okay, I can’t go socialize or be with my outside family so I’m going to be with my AYTM family as my time away from the fact that my children are everywhere and things like that.” That was fascinating. On the scaling side, we had planned to make a bunch of hires then all of this happened. Nobody really knew what was going to happen. We actually paused and we took a pause. I think everyone did. It’s good to assess your surroundings and figure out what’s going on. For us, preservation of team, I can’t say it enough. We are very focused on preserving our team and so we froze hiring during a time when we really needed to not. We needed to make a bunch of hires. We sat with that for about a month and a half, assessed it was safe, came up with a good new hiring plan, still spacing them out. It’s amazing to watch the teams adapt during this time. I can’t say enough how thankful I am for them. Our business grew. We didn’t see anything drop off. There might have been I think a quarter of beat for everyone but in general, it was business as usual and then basically, an onslaught in some cases. They didn’t have the resources they needed to do it. They worked very long hours. Luckily, we’re aided in our nimbleness and quickness with great technology. It allows us to do a lot more with less people but that pause really brought us all together. I guess we’re in the foxhole together. It’s the best way to explain it, tending to each other’s emotional needs and other things. We’ve since unfrozen hiring. I don’t think that we’ve ever hired so rapidly before. One of the things that was interesting was during the freeze, didn’t mean we stopped conversations or stopped looking around for people. Unfortunately, there were layoffs that occurred. It didn’t occur at our company. There were people who were or had chose 11 to leave because maybe they saw that the businesses that they were in were not running as efficiently. I think we all showed our cards a little bit on the runway. We showed our cards on how financial management happens in businesses and employees got to see for themselves sort of what do business values? Do they value the preservation of staff? Do they value what do their investors want? We didn’t have that consideration here but there’s been great talent in the market both good and bad and I think that’s for good and bad reasons. We’ve been able to pick back up on our scaling exercise. We’re full speed ahead at this point but it’s been amazing to see the talent that’s in the market and really looking for a change as well as those who’ve now been working remote which is a great benefit to us. People who understand the challenges and what it’s actually like now and I think we’ve proved a lot of points about what work can be done remotely. It’s possible. We’ve built a business around it to do it. It’s not easy but it’s something you can do long term if you choose to keep those a part of your culture and I would tell people to definitely do that. It can have huge benefits as well.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool. Now, I want to move into the last topic we cover and that is what comes next. While we’re talking about this, we’re going to throw another wrinkle into. Obviously, the last two weeks have seen a whole new dimension to the unfolding of this crisis. Even though it may not be directly related, I personally think there’s – the lockdown certainly contributed to the explosion from an emotional standpoint so I did consider another dimension but we have this whole other issue around social unrest particularly in the US but also globally. As we’re talking about the future, let’s factor that in. Is this a new wrinkle that has implications or not? Again, I want to avoid the political component on this but simply think about from the insights industry, is it another oh-crap moment or is it just, well, okay, here’s something else and now, we’ll factor this into the future as well? Bob, being the resident futurist, I know that is one of your core roles. I’m going to start with you again because that’s what you do. What is your take on what comes next?

Robert Moran: Sure. In terms of what comes next, we’ve developed what we call the post-pandemic path model for clients and it has several stages and so, I’ll walk you through the stages. Stage one is safety and hygiene, how you create confidence-building measures for consumers, for employees, et cetera around safety and hygiene. That’s step one. Step two is resilience. We talked a lot about resilience today, how you make your business and society more resilient to exogenous shocks like the one we’ve experienced. The third phase is recovery, that’s economic recovery but also, psychological recovery. The fourth phase which we believe society and our clients and we will go through is an intense focus on fairness and solidarity. Now, it’s interesting we have this as the fourth phase and we created this model even before the events of the last several weeks and our theory is is that once society – and we actually look back in time to look forward and what we found is once society goes through an intense moment like this where it realizes that as a society we’re dependent on each other, there is a coming together and also, a realization that as humans, we need to ensure that our society is operating fairly. I think there’s going to be a huge push on fairness and solidarity. That’s stage four. Stage five is local support. I’m not saying de-globalization. I’m saying as a fundamental building block coming out of this, there’ll be a heavy emphasis on supporting coast communities, supporting the communities you sell to and do you have workers in? How do local communities become more resilient and how do you as an employer work with communities and help them be more resilient and help them come back so there’ll be a huge effort on local support. The next is a connection, reconnecting, and then the final is a celebration. It’s important to note that we went back and looked at the previous lenses and other large-scale events and when these things conclude, there is usually a way of celebration and also an explosion of new and somewhat disruptive ideas and so we think that that’s something we should look for. Those are the phases of our model and then we think that clients need to think through how they meet, exceed, and lead in each of these phases with internal and external stakeholders.

Lenny Murphy: That is exactly what I was hoping for. You and I, we can have an offline conversation about this for hours but we don’t have the time for that now. That’s a great framework. Now, going a little more pragmatically, the – or not pragmatically, a little more – drill down a little bit. What changes do we think stick within that framework? We’ve all talked about work from home. I would note that this is probably a fairly permanent change. Companies have adapted. They’ve realized they can do it and we’ll probably see a much more mature component of the workforce that works virtually so that’s one of my bets. Anil, what’s one of your hopes? What do you think we’ll see a lasting – well, even a short – considering a short-term change that we’re still – over the next couple of months or longer-term implications? This probably really is the new normal in some way, some fundamental change in how we function overall.

Anil Kaul: Lenny, you asked me a question and obviously, talking about because one of the things that we’re doing internally is there is so much different content that’s been produced around the industry about what the new normal will look like. What are the changes that will continue and stay so what we decided to take was we said, “Let’s use our AI tools and have them go through all this content and tell us what is the prediction?” So, that first thing there’s actually a whole piece that is going to be coming up pretty soon which looks at that but I’m happy to highlight a couple of things that are coming which seem to change that haven’t traditionally happened even in economic recessions that we’ve had and things like that. I think the voice from that, that’s coming all the way clearly is that big focus on purpose and authenticity which is where consumers are saying that I want to know who you are as a company, as a brand, and are you authentic to what you’re seeing you are? In fact, since you mentioned about the social appeal we’ve been having the last few weeks, I’ve noticed in the last two or three days that there are organizations where leaders have resigned because the organization was in social media talking about inclusion, talking about getting all parts of society who walk but that’s what they were doing internally, right? I think when I saw that, I saw that this is exactly what is coming out when we are looking at what people are saying about what is happening on the consumer side for brands. That’s one very different from what I’ve seen in the past. The second piece that’s happening which I think affects companies a lot is that the definition of stakeholders is becoming much broader. This is kind of a moment that had started before but now has become a lot stronger where the people are asking through their – saying to the company, asking through their brands, asking through themselves, “What are you doing which goes beyond the profit or they were beyond the shareholders? Are you taking care of your community?” That this whole focus on local which Bob mentioned about coming out very, very clearly, it’s not a xenophobic version of it that I don’t like global so I want local. It’s actually a very different version of which is that I care about my local community, about my local stores, about my local businesses and I want to help them. I want [Audio Gap] their conversation. I think that is another piece that is coming out very, very clearly. These are the two things 14 that I would highlight and as I said again, we will be coming out with a detailed paper on other stuff that we want. That’s all.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool, very cool. I love how we’re processing common themes here from multiple perspectives. That’s why I love these roundtables. That’s a good segue then. Anouar, you focus a lot on behavior and you mentioned before the changes in human behavior. What’s your take on what that means for the future overall? What behavioral changes are we going to continue to see and what are the implications for the research industry?

Anouar El Haji: Yes. I often get the question of making predictions on what people are going to do. Interestingly, people are surprised when I say, “Actually, I often don’t know.” I mean the way, how I see it that I think this is also one of the reasons why I started Veylinx is because I want to enable others to know and myself to know but what I measure today might not be the same in two, three months from now and we have to be – I think we need to be humbling that. This is a very similar theme we saw also back in 2007, 2008 when it came to the financial crisis. You have all these sophisticated models, all these sophisticated ways of trying to predict behavior and then time and time again, you figure out that you actually don’t know and then suddenly, you have these major changes and what we saw in the last few weeks, we saw headline after headline. Who would’ve guessed that toilet papers would be so much in demand? I didn’t see a single report on that last year that in these extreme situations that toilet papers would be that much in demand. I think more on a meta level, what is going to change is the increased humbleness across the industry where it becomes so much more important. Okay. We don’t know and that it’s an acceptable answer but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to do anything. That means there’s a lot of work to do, to have a better understanding and there are ways to do that. I think that’s a really good thing. It’s a good thing for the industry. It’s a good thing for our customers that we all become more humble when it comes to these radical changes and we shouldn’t assume that, oh, this is a once in a lifetime event. From what we understand and this is just purely focusing on the virus on its own, it might happen again. There might be a second wave, a third wave and that might elicit completely new other consumer behaviors because people might decide, if it’s happening a second time, it might happen a third time and that means there’s suddenly an uptake in purchasing a particular product category. We don’t know but what we can do is be on top, making sure that we measure and making sure that we’re able to have a good understanding and that we don’t look back and think, “Oh, this is something we would not have been able to know in a timely fashion.” I think that is almost a social responsibility of the industry is really to empower our customers to enable them to know so that they are on top of the needs of the everyday person and really providing them in extreme situations.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool, very inspiring. It reminds me of when we’re talking about being the voice of the customer that actually, now, we’re more than a voice. We’re also the drivers of understanding the customer in multiple ways to answer that I-don’tknow question. You know this is not something that comes naturally to many of us, certainly not me. Anybody who knows me personally can attest to that so that’s a great point as well to own, we don’t know. Very cool. Shanon, why don’t you wrap us up? What does the future look like from your perspective?

Shanon Adams: Well, first off, I always say we’re a curiosity-based industry, right? We’re actually not in the business always of having answers so it’s okay to say, “I don’t know but I remain curious.” I think staying that way is important because things do change so rapidly but it’s also quite nuanced. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the shared experience. It’s such a deeply human thing to have the whole world affected by the same thing but obviously, in our individual homes and communities and regions, those shared experiences are quite nuanced and so, I think the discussion about what’s going on inside of local communities, that can be vastly different depending on where you’re located. Clients are really smart to drill down into those locations and better understand what is truly going on there. What are the needs of people in their various locations as well as their own situations? The human experience is such a diverse thing. First, I think that’s really super important is to continue this focus on humanity. We have gone through a lot together but we’re each still living our own lives much in the way we did before and dealing with our own challenges and obstacles. It doesn’t matter where they were talking virus specific. I mean there’s always going to be something which leads to the big overarching theme I think for us is it will always be something. This concept of being in reaction mode to what’s going on around you, I think we’re learning through this process that that’s not okay. We have to be proactive. We 16 have to be proactive in better understanding our clients and customers, what’s going on with them and build better tools to make being proactive easier and better structure and do more ongoing analysis. We sometimes I think get a little too comfortable being reactive. I look forward to that. One of the things that you had mentioned was what is the new normal? When is the calm coming back? I think it’s about becoming more comfortable with the fact that the calm we thought we were in was not real anyways. There is always changing worlds, some things going on around us and I think just better preparing ourselves for being able to react to those things in an effective manner and quickly but see them, see ahead and plan ahead for them versus just always being back here reacting. That’s one thing with friends I love seeing is less about taking a reactive stance and more about taking a proactive one because they have a deep and meaningful opportunity to impact many communities across the world. It’s a pretty big awesome responsibility and obviously, the insights industry plays a role in that because we’re able to help them better do that. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how research is deployed. The idea of redefining the stakeholder is very true. People who need a guiding light with research really affects across organization now and it’s important that we do that listening and continue to do it not just during these times but pretty much always.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool. So, we’re all preppers now then, right? So, contingency plans and…

Shanon Adams: Right. You’ve got to be.

Lenny Murphy: Yes.

Anil Kaul: I’m heading to my bunker right now.

Lenny Murphy: If you saw my garage, you would say, “Oh, my God, Lenny.” It’s certainly a whole new pantry. Yes. Anyway, last chance to interject. Anything that you would like to mention that I didn’t bring up or something that you think is important?

Robert Moran: Lenny, I think there’s an important point that often gets lost in the shuffle and that we don’t talk about enough in our industry which is that the insights industry is really the bridge between businesses, corporations, decision-makers in businesses and consumers and the people. Embedded deep in the insight industry as a core value that we never really talk about but is a core value is the idea that we are all equal and that our opinions, our attitudes, our beliefs matter and that business leaders need to take into account what we think. I think we never really talk about this as a business but of course, if that wasn’t true, the insights industry wouldn’t be in existence. In reality, it’s a proof point that all of us including business decision makers believe that at a certain basic level, we’re all equal and our opinions count and we just don’t talk about that enough.

Lenny Murphy: It’s very cool point, Bob, very cool point. We are about as egalitarian as it comes, isn’t it? Aren’t we? Interesting. Anybody else? No?

Shanon Adams: I agree with Bob. We’re a business that’s driven by humanity and their opinions and what they care about and what matters to them. That continued focus on what they think and they feel and need is so important there’s humans behind every survey. Behind each data point is a person and that person is living their life and it’s such a fascinating perspective and it is. It’s kind of the fuel that drives us here. We have to remember that and I think too often, we forget it. It just becomes numbers on a board but it’s not about that. It’s very human-centric and driven environment based on opinions and thoughts and feelings. I think it’s a really good perspective.

Lenny Murphy: You guys are giving me a lot to think about. Oh, go ahead, jump in, please.

Anil Kaul: Oh, sorry, Lenny. I just wanted to add quite a slightly different perspective on a different topic. I think this is a great opportunity for the insights industry to really embed itself into day-to-day decision making in organizations because I see this is an opportunity where naturally, everybody from the CEO onwards realizes that we need to keep a very close tab on what are consumers thinking? What direction are they going to go? This provides an opportunity where you’re now able to build that bridge and the link between insights and information that the insights teams deliver to final decisions that they’re taking and finding a way of connecting those so that those decisions can be made much more faster in an agile manner while this information is coming in instead of sitting there and taking six weeks before we can tell you what’s going on. We will literally tell you every day how things are 18 changing so that organizations can then change its path in a quick manner. I do think this is actually a very historic opportunity where if we play our cards right, that the world or the insights industry will look very different two years, three years from now. Sorry, it’s a very different perspective than what we were talking but I think it’s also important.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, absolutely. Anouar? Everybody else jumped in. Do you have any final thoughts?

Anouar El Haji: Yes. I would like to stress the importance of – and maybe it’s a more of a practical point is that when we look at the different changes, most of the changes that have caught our attention are behavioral meaning that we say a lot, we think a lot, we share a lot and especially now see what we see in all kinds of different conversations, on Twitter and elsewhere but at the end of the day, what matters and what really makes the headlines is behavior. I think one thing we can do as an industry is really to put that behavior in focus, to make sure that we’re able to provide meaning, to provide an understanding of why people are behaving the way they are. Right now, we are mostly focused on just mentioning that things are changing but I think we have a big responsibility in making sense of the situation as well. That’s truly a responsibility and definitely, that is something – moving forward, I think that’s something I also expect many of the stakeholders to request from us. Not only mentioning the different changes but also a deeper understanding of why. I truly believe that we, being insights leaders, can contribute a lot to that and in that sense, we’re very much challenged and myself, I really hope to tackle that challenge.

Lenny Murphy: That is great. I’ve often talked about that we are the keepers of the “why” and sounds like that’s more important than ever. Very aware of time for our listeners and for you guys, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for all of your great insights and thank you for all the great work that you’ve been doing on behalf of your clients and the world. We do make a difference and I think this is a time where that has become incredibly apparent, the difference research makes. I’m proud to be part of the industry. I’m proud to have you guys, colleagues, and thank you. On that note, everybody, be well, stay safe, stay sane in these crazy times, and look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks, everybody

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