GreenBook Future List Spotlight: Andrés Carriles

Outside of insights, what are your passions and interests?

Nothing beats a quiet afternoon watching football, I’m a big Patriots fan, I enjoy soccer, baseball, and basketball too, but only watching, I’m bad at playing.

I’m a Nintendo guy, I’ve spent over 400 hours playing Zelda Breath of the Wild and God only knows how many hours in Smash Bros Ultimate, since the Super Nintendo I’m loyal to Mario and Friends.

I’m also a craft beer enthusiast, I have had more than 600 distinct beers over the years, dark and strong stouts are my favorites.

I always listen to music while working, even when I like almost every genre, I’m a metalhead since I was a teenager, I listen mostly to black and death metal.

 

How has market research changed since you first started your career?

Here in Mexico until a few years ago, the research was completely traditional, the fieldwork was made with surveys printed on paper on the street, we had to use package delivery services to send the completed questionnaires from one state to another. Now, market research has migrated to modern ways of obtaining data, like online surveys, panels, passive data, audio matching, etc. and thus, the data integration techniques have become more common.

In addition to that, the use of statistical models to answer business questions has been standardized, a few years ago it was rare to see it, and most models were little understood by the industry. Now it’s not only added value, it’s a must, the industry now understands the need for a better analysis, how the different techniques work, and what kind of business questions they can answer.

 

What do you think the key characteristics or qualities of a leader are? How does this play into MRX?

A true MRX leader:

• Is genuine, communicates with transparency, makes complex things simple, and acts with integrity.
• Empowers others to unleash their potential, a leader shares their knowledge and gives confidence and trust to create an environment for people to grow.
• Understands their clients’ needs and focuses on their abilities to deliver fast and actionable solutions.
• Constantly seeks new ideas and knowledge to be innovative and generate as much value as possible.
• Drives change, a true leader does not have a comfort zone, is willing to take some risks and explore new methodologies and techniques.

 

What challenges do you see facing newer MRX professionals as technology advances?

In fact, the unpredictable advance of technology is a great challenge in itself, I think that we’ll see new ways of obtaining information, both declared and passive, the digital environment of people will be more and more relevant to the industry, tracking this information will be crucial for years to come. The main challenges that this will bring are the handling of large amounts of digital information, the use of sites and apps is typically tracked as text and new professionals will have to learn how to handle and get insights from this data, but caring about the protection of personal data, which is and will be crucial.