Data Horizons: Exploring Insights, AI, and Emotional Tech

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In Episode 43, a diverse array of topics unfolded, from industry updates to insightful discussions on AI advancements and the shifting landscape of the data economy. The episode began with exciting news, including the release of a new insights practice report, an upcoming webinar with NewtonX, and the launch of The Research Heads, a pioneering research agency led by Karine Pepin. The partnership between YouGov and Havas underscored the merging of data assets to understand consumer sentiments.

The conversation then delved into recent AI breakthroughs, such as the Cloud AI Assistant launch and Apple's Project Greymatter. A whimsical anecdote highlighted the expanding capabilities of AI technology.

Addressing the emotional aspect of tech, the episode explored nostalgia for digital pets like Tamagotchis, particularly among younger generations. OpenAI's recent developments, including free custom GPTs and major content licensing deals, sparked discussions on their disruptive impact on business models and the evolving data economy.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript 

Lenny Murphy: And we're live. And we're live. And we are live. We did it, Karen. We did it. So. We did it.

Karen Lynch: The thing is, people must be really tired. This is the other dead horse that we beat all the time. It's like, are we ready? It's because when we log into this, Lenny and I are just, did, did, did we start right? You know, you know, we just start and then we have to often, you know, stop ourselves. So it's a pleasure to be talking to other people and not just each other.

Lenny Murphy: I'd much rather talk to everybody else. No, I'm teasing. I look forward to our conversation.

Karen Lynch: I know this is a highlight of both of our weeks. So I'm never taking offense at that because it's not accurate at all.

Lenny Murphy: And especially on a busy day like today, right? For our audience, I started my day with a long conversation with Mark Hardy from Walmart Luminate. Stay tuned for Tuesday.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and if you want a little pre-work before Tuesday, we do have a podcast episode with Linda, from Data, talking about all of their data ventures there. So if you want to get up to speed quickly before next week for Lenny's big reveal, check that out, have a listen, and then you'll know what's coming on Tuesday, or you will be more apt to hear it on Tuesday when more comes at you.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, there is an embargoed press release, and I'll have some context around that, that comes out on Tuesday on their next product launch and next shift. I will say, you better get used to talking about Walmart in the context of the Insight space on a regular basis. So, but anyway.

Karen Lynch: But anyway, but anyway, so that's sort of a shameless plug to check our website, the insight section where we publish our articles. There'll be one there next week, which is, you know, another segue into another shameless plug, right? Let's talk about grit. Yes.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Grit this week, the, uh, the, the grit, uh, insights practice report, uh, came out, uh, for those who there's, the unabridged and the abridged version. We recognize it's a big one. As we talked about before, it is so big because effectively we doubled our analysis because we're now looking through the lens of kind of what we think of as the traditional Insights buyers and newly identified for us, a sample provided by our friends at NewtonX, which we'll get to in a second as well, of buyers who don't fit within the Insights organization. And it is incredibly, Incredibly informative. So this is an important one guys Also, we got lots of compliments on the writing style which I would love to take credit for but I can't shout out to Nelson Whipple. He is such a great gifted clever And enjoyable writer and the vast majority is Nelson. So even with the big massive 300-page report We've had to reach out and say this is a fun read.

Karen Lynch: That's a good combination Yeah, it really is it really is so yes kudos kudos to the team that that puts this together too and hopefully it's in all of your hands, but if not Karley shared the Link there where you can go to download it and take a look yourself So and you'll be talking about one aspect of this with our friends at Newton next will you not?

Lenny Murphy: We are so they asked me to do a webinar with them coming up And we're talking about you know about data quality so And I won't spoil it, but they deserve a shout out. I mean, Newton X has known a panel. They recruit. They custom recruit for B2B samples. And tie that to grit. I mean, what was interesting was that they recruited per our specifications. What we found through their methodology was that they were not the usual suspects. So that's just an anecdotal example of a great quality sample. With unempanelized, non-traditional folks that we were surprised by the results, which was a good thing.

Karen Lynch: And by traditional, I mean, traditional to us. And, you know, like that's, that's what we're talking about when we use that word. This is, these were not people in our audience as we know them in our list, you know, our list of who our audience is. These were people outside of that. That's why it's so interesting to us to have people that, um, meet again, some specifications that are like, all right, these are different for us. Yeah. Yeah. Which means they're different for our audience.

Lenny Murphy: It is. And it was just hugely impactful. We'll we'll anyway, but yeah, doing a webinar with them coming up on the, uh, we'll dive a little more into, uh, examples of good data and quality data and why it's important, and particularly for B2B, and I don't think we talk about that specifically often enough. So yeah, that's coming up too. All right, you want to talk about the announcement of the winners of the Betsy Jane Peterson Award?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, Betsy Jane Peterson Award. So I don't actually know this award. I've never been a member of the Insights Association. But I do love, you know, credible awards. And this one has a nice prize at the end of it or award for these award winners, which I really like, So Ilka Fisher, Market Research Analyst at Virginia Lottery. Thomas Norris, Jr., Community Insights Analyst at the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, and Eva Toro, Agency Lead Strategic Insights at Reddit. So each of them will get an enrollment fee for the principles of market research course presented by the University of Georgia's MRII program. So I think that's great. What a great benefit for winning this award, and hats off to them.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. So love it when that happens. And, you know, and as a board member of the University of Georgia program, as well as Michigan State. So I'm putting both out there. It's great that those people get exposure and opportunity to engage in this program.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Speaking of exposure, I'm just gonna segue to everything that we're doing today. Right. So, you know, we give a lot of exposure to our first competition, our insights, innovation competition winners, but it's because they keep doing things that become newsworthy. Right. So, zappi is the best startup, at the SaaS Stock USA, highlighting its innovative approach to integrating AI within market research strategy. So like, go Zappi, once again, being recognized and honored for some really tremendous work.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. And if you're not subscribing to Steve Phillips, CEO of Zappi, to his LinkedIn series, thinking about AI and the implications of AI, and he was talking about this, Before yeah, I became cool really encourage you. I mean, it's just that they are just doing a lot of thinking And implementing that within the business as many businesses are so I don't want to take away from everybody who's doing cool stuff. Although I don't know as many people Publicly talking about the implications on a consistent basis the way Steve is, it's just a good, just a good read. Check it out. Yeah well-deserved, well-deserved, well-deserved.

Karen Lynch: And, you know, and if, you know, if Zappi talking about AI and how they're innovating with it isn't enough, Toluna also innovating with AI, big surprise there. So two big players to be checking out. So Toluna introduced Smart Cloud, which is a breakthrough tool that extends beyond simple word analysis to extract deeper meaning. I didn't get to read too much into this one, but, you know, leveraging AI to enhance insights, that is the name of the game right now. 

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, to Luna, I'm sure that they are, like many I, in the transition from, you know, like our scales to open ends, right? And they're building the infrastructure to be able to form that analysis. So to make it easier to take unstructured data in this, this is beyond text analytics, right? It's text analytics on steroids. So yeah, I mean, that is so much innovation, right? And we Tons and tons of startups, but also leaders in the industry continue to incorporate that and these new tools and rolling them out. So the trains left the station long ago.

Karen Lynch: We've talked last year at some of the podcast episodes we had, we were talking about the watchers on the wall. And I'm sitting here and thinking, oh, you and I are the watchers on the wall right now. We are watching this space. And we are seeing the moves that are being made. So thank you for tuning in and listening to us talk about this week after week. But also kudos to yourselves for joining us on that wall, watching what's going on. So. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Don't we like the night watch? Yeah. I don't know. Are we, you know, the white walkers or a little bit afraid of heights?

Karen Lynch: So I don't know why I want to go too far with that analogy because I have me up pretty high now seeing everything. So anyway, you know who else is watching? Look, I'm really, I must be caffeinated today because I keep coming up with the segues. But you know who else is watching? Our friend Karine Pepin is watching, right? So let's shout out what she announced this week, her new research agency, The Research Heads, co-founded with colleagues Amy Spencer and Nicolita Siegel. So, I mean, We know Karine and we have been talking about her. She is passionate about data quality for sure and response to experience and all of that. So I'm really excited to see what they do. Check out their website. You know, pay attention to this. It's a big deal for them. It's a big deal for Karine and we are, you know, we're excited for her and, you know, and to see where she takes her business.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Big, big, big shout out. Hats off Karine. If you're focused on data quality. You could probably, they're probably the first people to talk to, so. Cause she is no joke when it comes to that topic.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, for sure. I think it takes it more seriously than almost anybody in my, in, in, in my, in my orbit. Right. So with the exception, maybe Carrie Hecht, you know, who also takes it very seriously, but you know, those would, if you were to ask me, which I just assumed you just did, those are the two I would say top of the list. Right. So yeah. Kudos to you. All right. Other insights, industry news.

Lenny Murphy: Do you want me to talk about that? Yeah. All right. So YouGov and Havas, a global data partnership. So expanding the markets. And it's just a great example of the integration of data assets. YouGov has a large, very large panel. They store lots of data, lots of profile information. Now extending that with Havas, which has lots of agency data. They're connected to the YouGov brand index as well. I mean, that is the world that we are in, is data synthesis, right? And creating that end-to-end view of the consumer journey and attitudes and everything we've been talking about for years, we are seeing it play out now. And people really, and again, AI. Even as I talked about here, I assume that part of the unlock to make it easier to do that is the advances in artificial intelligence that just enable it to happen. So look for more and more of that. And again, shout out to you, Gav and Havas for expanding on that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. So speaking of YouGov, we're going to share a link to something that we came across this week. For those who are interested, we won't dig too deep into the findings of it, but they've published something, Trust in Media 2024. It's worth a read if you are somebody paying attention to Trust in Media in 2024. And Leti and I are very aware and aware that this is going to be, if it isn't already, an interesting year for political polling and for all things on the table for data when it comes to politics. We are going to keep it very objective and focus on the data, but we will also be addressing some of the things in a way that will empower you to take it all in if you choose to. How'd that go?

Lenny Murphy: I think it was good. Can I build off of that? I think we're on safe ground. It is not. It's a touchy subject, right? But the reality is the insights industry includes polling, and it's fundamental. And understanding people's perspective, whether you agree with it or not, is irrelevant. That's not the point. It's to understand people's perspective, which has commercial implications, right? Everyone, not only just as individuals, but every business on the planet, you know, wants to understand the currents where things are going. And this is the year where that's a big one. And it's going to be weird. It already is weird.

Karen Lynch: And it can be weird for us. We will manage this elephant in the room because it's going to be joining us every now and then. But we are going to focus on the data, on the methods, on the practices. And we also invite you, people listening, to shoot us an email. If there's an article you want to write about political polling or about political research of any sort, about kind of focus groups and exit interviews and all that sort of stuff. If you would like to cover that, please reach out to us. If you have a strong specialty in this area, we'd love to connect with you. We are going to be actively curating some content this year because it will be of special interest to our audience when we keep it laser focused. We won't be going further than that. We're going to stay laser focused on what it means for the industry.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely, it went slow context to that real quick in We were part of a debrief with ARF Where we brought in? Collectively multiple pollsters As well as non-traditional Approaches, you know, they were not based on polling to Kind of do a post-mortem if you will on you know, the what works, what doesn't work? You know, do we need to, you know, kind of rethink our approach and predictive value? That's really fundamentally what it was about, was the predictive value of polling. And that was a great conversation. It had nothing to do with the outcome of the election. What it had to do was the ability to predict the outcome of the election.

Karen Lynch: And even, I remember in was at 2017, a Qual 360 event in DC, and it was at the Gallup organization, and they also shared you know, lessons learned from polling at that time and, you know, the way questions were worded and how they might have, how they may have, you know, put out results or put out predictions that weren't actually what happened because maybe the questions weren't quite right, the sequence wasn't quite right, you know. It's a great study in our craft and that's what we're here to talk about today.

Lenny Murphy: It really is. And it's one, it's just kind of easy to get to just because it's all public, right? It's not about, you know, we don't want to talk about the, you know, the results of our ad test, right? That's confidential. You're like the Effie Awards, that type of stuff. That's a little, you know, this may be emotionally charged, but it is one of the best examples that we have of the, the, the impact and the accuracy of our craft. Yeah. And that's why we're, we promise, it's not going to eclipse AI in No, no way. Right. Or unless we see, you know, AI predictions that are spot on who the hell knows, but everybody will know if Karen and Lenny can talk about it, you know, things are okay.

Karen Lynch: It's when you and I can't that maybe everybody should worry.

Lenny Murphy: So yeah, it's a boy, just what a weirdo. I can say it. 2024 like 2020, hold my beer.

Karen Lynch: Let's just see, shall we? Yeah, let's hope we don't get to that part. But anyway, let's talk about some of these AI developments because there's so many of them. I think that I was having a phone call yesterday as we talked about where we'll be having our IIEX AI event in October. Call for Speakers went out. If you didn't get it, you can email us and we can send that out to you. The website is not quite, we still have last year's up. Our new website hasn't gone live yet, but the Call for Speakers did go out and we can share that with you if you'd like it. The link for that, Karley, I don't know if you can find that. That's probably deep in the, I don't know where. Anyway, but I was talking to somebody who's going to speak and we were talking about agents. Antropic launched Cloud AI Assistant that has agents involved, AI bots to assist people with daily activities. So that is a current reality that we're on the forefront of, not just streamlining workflows, but enhancing productivity in a major way. And it's going to be it's just going to be. So this is no longer hypothetical or speculation about when it's coming. It's here. Workflows and work streams are going to be massively impacted by this new development with AI. We can't even keep up with the advancements, I don't think, Lenny, but we are going to try our damnedest, right?

Lenny Murphy: We're going to try. Well, and the other question is to move more to the agents is now the individual consumer level adoption of those agents. What does that do when the agents are making your decisions for you based on your preferences? You know, order, purchase, you know, navigating appointments, you know, those are all, as you said, we're there. And that has implications for us, for our industry. So are we going to get to a world where we have agents interviewing agents? Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Karen Lynch: I mean, yeah, it's all going to be interesting. Anyway, pay attention to these sorts of things and what it could mean to your businesses and your workflows and your offerings, right? So because the reality is friends, it doesn't stop there. Another thing that was unveiled this week, that's a big advancement. Apple unveiled some new AI functionalities, you know, again, in their phone, it's called Project Greymatter. I love when projects have names. It's like one of my favorite things. Like, I really, I love, you know, I used to work with Kellogg's and they used to name all of their qual projects like they would have a specific name for it. It was like my favorite thing. I just love a good code name. I think I want to start code naming some of our initiatives here at Greenbook. Anyway, we should, right? Why? There's nothing in our way. We can do that, right?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, absolutely. I'm all in.

 Karen Lynch: Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Anyway, so, you know, voice memo, transcription, AI photo retouching, like it's just, we are going to be getting AI assist in our daily lives, whether we want it there or not, it's going to appear there. So starting with our phones, you know, it's just.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. That is the logical place. Absolutely.

Karen Lynch: This next one, talk about this bootloader studio. This is a huge innovation that's coming our way.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it's a startup. I think they're out of HPEC. They raised five million seed funding to develop emotional intelligence AI models, enhancing human device interactions. Now, their first play is a commercial one around digital pets that are responsive to your emotional needs. But this type of work has been done in a while, but Affectiva, Kind of pivoted a few years ago into building their emotional measurement models into cars into lots of devices to make them worse. Excuse me. I'm sorry too much coffee to make them, you know interactive and responsive to your moods and of course unconscious measurement in research is you know that to get to the why and is a big deal. We see those models scaling into AI. Did I ever tell you the story? I'm sorry, I have to divert for a second. I have to divert for a second. I have to, I have to tell this real quick. So, uh, uh, about a month ago, we especially had to buy a new car. So, uh, it was one of those situations where like, well, okay, just get my new car. Because you have a big family. You're very limited. Right. Right. So anyway, so, you know, buy a new car and it's, you know, fully loaded with all the AI stuff anyway. And my wife was, we were going somewhere, and Google just came on and was giving directions, right, the, the Google Assistant. And my wife, she didn't like it. And she said, you know, F off, Google. And it came back and said, Just because I'm an AI doesn't mean you have to be rude.

Karen Lynch: I love being an AI.

Lenny Murphy: Now, which set my mind up even more, right? But so this idea.

Karen Lynch: It's funny that you say that, though, because if I recall, maybe it was like six months ago or something, Siri snapped back at me, and I'm like, oh, no, we're not playing. And then it stopped. It was almost like they released that, and then they dialed it back really quickly because people didn't like it. So I talk back to Alexa. I don't think she's plugged in up here. I talk back to Alexa all the time. And I'm like, no, no, I didn't ask you. I don't love the intrusion if I don't invite the conversation in.

Lenny Murphy: But it measured, even at that point, it measured that she, you know, the language, you know, it heard her, it translated, oh, she used an expletive, she's angry, you know, and it responded in that way. And that's not even using the stuff we're talking about now.

Karen Lynch: I know. Well, let's talk about this a little bit more, though, this particular development from this studio, because the article mentions Tamagotchis now.

Lenny Murphy: for dating ourselves.

Karen Lynch: My kids, well, my kids who are now young adults loved their Tamagotchis and they used to give them to me to take care of when they were like, mom, I have to go to school and I can't have this. Can you keep my Tamagotchi alive during the day? Like, I mean, I had, I was tasked with taking care of their digital pet. And I remember it clearly. And I think I told you my son, my oldest son has a Spotify playlist of songs that are pretty emotive. And the playlist is called My Tamagotchi Died So Now I'm Emo. It's a good playlist. But my point is, like, this was a big part of our lives. My kids loved them. So these are, you know, these are Gen Z kids. They're not millennials. They're, you know, early Gen Z kids, and they love Tamagotchis. And the idea of having a digital pet, but they love games that are, you know, enticing them to care for something and the emotional cues, I can see it, I can picture it. And Fascinating stuff. So I love that one.

Lenny Murphy: It is fascinating. And yeah, there's a whole other that'll be to see how that goes, forming emotional attachments with, with digital presences. But the, but the core, the application, the technology has applications that are a little more pragmatic for the for sure, for sure.

Karen Lynch: So, you know, speaking of tools, so these openings have been very busy. Yeah. You think it's like, where do we even start this week? So, they launched free custom GPTs for chat, GPT users. Um, I happen to know just because I don't think we have a link for this, but, um, they also launched GPT for education, uh, that they're rolling out for, uh, you know, college professors to use with their students. So it was like a year ago where people were like, can you use it in school? Are your professors going to like it? We were asking our college age kids, are they letting you use it in class? And now they're like, let's just nip that in the bud and give it to universities. So again, not even a year, but at least a year later and suddenly it's going to be like, oh yeah, it's going to be in our universities. Today's students will be trained on these platforms because they're like, nope, it's going to be mandatory. So I think there are just two really exciting things there. And the other big development with open AI is their content licensing deals, which Some people may not think it's relevant, so I want to connect some dots for them. But I think you had found the article that was talking about the Wall Street Journal's licensing deals. And then yesterday, it was announced by Vox Media and The Atlantic. We've talked before about how there's been lawsuits with The New York Times. So large media companies are striking deals for their content to be used in their training. This is a big deal. This is important.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, we talk about the data economy, and we often think about that at the individual level. But this is an example of the data economy in action, right? These publishers, there are huge implications around all of this. So we question, you know what? We think almost like companies like Google can never be disrupted. This disrupts the business models of companies like Google. So they will adapt.

Karen Lynch: I'm sorry, I'm interrupting. They are adapting. It may not be to everyone's liking. There were some other news stories about Google. You could look it up, Google and search and all that other stuff that may not be relevant to everybody, unless you're a content marketer who pays attention to search like we do at Green Book, right? Because we have a big part of our practice. So we're paying attention to some of the search implications, but a lot of businesses who may be looking to rank, there's also some relevance there too. It is a disruptive time.

Lenny Murphy: It's part of the path to purchase. Yeah, right. I mean that's you know, there's so you tie those things back and but here's you should connect dots, right the Data is the new oil You could and data is not just the individual level data. We think about it. It is also content built off of data, which we would think I was reporting or journalism or you know, whatever all of those things fuel the AI, and there's massive opportunities for that, the data has value. And we're seeing a play out right now with these, these deals, right, they are paying for access to the information. And what is that? Is that any different than us rewarding, paying respondents for their time? Yeah, I would argue it's not it's part of the it is Uh, that we are seeing this new economic system deploy and develop very rapidly of paying for access to information. Uh, uh, the next big step will be seeing how that plays out and evolves even more at the individual level. So, uh, and we're not talking about small money. I mean, the, the, the news corp, uh, yeah, news corp deals 250 million. Yeah. Would that become a new monetization strategy for other businesses to monetize their internal information, their internal content in new ways? If you're P&G, does that become something meaningful? Maybe. Do pay attention. We are part of the data economy as an industry. This is a component of that. It's rapidly, rapidly changing.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. So how do you navigate some of this stuff? We have some resources that we'll share with you all before we wrap today. Forrester put out a great report, When to Use Generative AI in Consumer Research. So for those of you who are, you know, still getting on this bandwagon with us, you might want to check that out. It's, you know, it's, it's Forrester reports are credible and certainly they appreciate what we do and we appreciate what they do. So check that out. And then we also have two links that we can share that are about mitigating some of the risks because people are still navigating that space as well. We're well aware of that. So two different links. So Karley, if you want to throw up both of those links, they lead to two different sources. And we talk a lot about the risks on this live stream. The best thing that we can say to you is also do your own due diligence, check out the resources that we provide so that you can feel fully up to speed. Because Lenny and I can tell you all the time, here are the risks, here are the rewards, but you need to form your own opinions about what you do with all this information. So we're kind of putting it out there for you.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep. And I think that's a wrap, isn't it?

Karen Lynch: Well, we should always talk about IIEX Europe, right? Because it is the next big event. Thank you so much, Karley, for putting this up again. 25th, 26th, guess what? There is some AI on the agenda. No. But it's a respectable amount. It's not, you know, over the top, although everybody will be talking about it. But we have some, you know, great partnerships, we have some great speakers. And, you know, we're excited for it, as the calendar ticks to June 1 tomorrow, then it's like, okay, it's this month. So we'll, of course, be excited. And yeah, LATAM is down the road in September. As I said, we have our AI events that will be virtual in October. So yeah, so we're gearing up for Isn't that weird? I mean, tomorrow's June 1st. I know. I know. It's crazy. Crazy. Well, on that note, it's 12:30. So we started on time and we're going to end on time. We are so good at what we do. How about that? Audience, let us know. I think we're getting better, at least this week. So thank you guys. Thank you so much for being here. We'll talk to you all next week for another episode. Take care. Have a good weekend. Bye bye. Bye.

Links from the episode:

Ditch the bad data, with Greenbook’s Lenny Murphy as your guide 

Winners of Betsy Jane Peterson Award Announced 

Zappi has been honored as the Best AI Startup at SaaStock USA 

Toluna introduces SmartCloud 

Karine Pepin announces the launch of a new market research agency, The Research Heads 

YouGov and Havas Extend Global Data Partnership 

YouGov - Trust in Media 2024 

Anthropic Launches Claude AI Assistant 

Apple unveils new AI functionalities in iOS 18 

New startup builds digital pets for Apple's Vision Pro 

OpenAI Introduces Free Custom GPTs for ChatGPT Users 

OpenAI and WSJ's Massive Content Licensing Deals 

Vox Media and The Atlantic 

When to use Generative AI in Consumer Research 

Mitigating generative AI risks 

How to build trust in data during the age of AI