From Mentorship to AI: What’s Driving Change in Market Research

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy the Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

Episode 64 highlights the vital role of mentorship in market research, inspired by Caroline Thompson's reflections as an MRS mentor. Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy discuss programs like WIRE, emphasizing that mentorship benefits professionals at all career stages, and informal relationships can shape growth just as much as formal ones.

They also explore key industry shifts, including Nielsen’s move to first-party live streaming data, the approval of T-SAPI for smoother survey data exchange, and AI’s growing impact on research and marketing strategies. The episode wraps up with a focus on integrating qualitative insights with quantitative data and previews Ray Poynter’s “State of Insights 2024” webinar, along with an update to a biweekly meeting schedule for the holidays.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

IIEX North America

IIEX APAC

IIEX Europe 

Stay Ahead of the Curve! Subscribe to The Exchange Newsletter on LinkedIn Today! 

Transcript 

 Lenny Murphy: Hello, Karen. 

Karen Lynch: Hello, Lenny. We're pre-recording this for the audience on a Thursday.

Lenny Murphy: Karen has a conflict on Friday. So just know that. Sorry we're not live. Know that. Sorry we are not live.

Karen Lynch: I'm actually going to see my college students this weekend. So taking a Friday to spend with those little ones in my life is so little, really. But yeah, so a nice family weekend for me ahead.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool. Very cool. That Karen, I talked about this, we just want to just kind of put it out there. We know that there's a conversation to be had about polling and the potential impact on market research. This is not the week to do that. We will address it at some point. So just know if I was expecting us to get in there because it's just a Zeitgeist hot topic, whatever. Fine. But we're going to push back. A little bit before we do that. So we're gonna talk about other stuff, but we're not gonna talk about that. Give us all time to kind of unpack and all of that down the road. So Karen, good?

Karen Lynch: Well said, thank you.

Lenny Murphy: Thank you. All right, well, let's get into it. Let's get into the other things. Let's get into the other things. So, all right.

Karen Lynch: So yeah, so, you know, Lenny, you had found this article from Caroline Thompson and it was three things I learned as an MRS mentor. And I just thought that it was very timely that you shared that because, and Karley will share that link as well, but the overlap with a piece like that coming out at the same time that I know that WIRE sent out their applications for potential mentees to join the WIRE mentorship program. So those two things I think are hand in hand and Karley will share the link for that, but for, you know, kind of young women in particular in the industry, but really anybody kind of new to the industry can participate. They are not gender specific. If a young man really wants a mentorship, he can certainly have some. I think the majority of the mentors are members of WIRE. And I myself have been one for several years, different mentee each time. And you can also talk to WIRE and become a mentor in the year 2025. But this is the time to lay the groundwork for all of that and give back in one way if you are kind of at that place in your career, or kind of bind up for a little bit of assistance if you are in that part of your career.

Lenny Murphy: So anyway, a timely article, a timely thought piece. It is. And I've learned a little bit of mentorship through my association with the two university programs, UGA and Michigan State. But the times I've done that, it was incredibly rewarding. So I encourage you, you know, folks, think about it. And there's another example, right? I mean, there are opportunities. There's WIRE. There are educational programs. Most of the trade associations, I think, have some type of mentor program. So get involved.

Karen Lynch: 

Well, yeah, I mean, even Content Marketing Institute, they had a mentorship program that I participated in when I was new to content marketing, coming out of research practice, and coming into Green Book. And I was like, you know what, I'm new to content marketing in this way, you know, for a company like a media company. And I was like, I can be a mentee. So that was really interesting because I was paired with somebody who had been in that industry for a long time, kind of focused there, but I was, you know, at the age that I'm at, and it was actually really helpful for both of us. So I don't think you, you know, I don't think you're ever too old to ask for a mentor either.

Lenny Murphy: In my opinion. Much to their chagrin, probably, but I claim Simon Chadwick and even Ray Poynter as mentors for me. I think that they would not claim that back, but that was my perspective. And yeah, I still, there are still people, Larry Friedman, who is on our board. I go to Larry not as often as I should, probably. Well, I'll shout out to Susan Griffin, I probably go more often than I should. Absolutely, Susan Griffin. Yeah, I mean, pass it on, folks. Pass it on, pass it on.

Karen Lynch: Yes, pay it forward to anybody that you can and recognize that you may not even know you're a mentor, right? But your conversations are inspiring and uplifting. And people like Lenny and myself are grateful. And anyway, so yeah, so get involved in that way. It's very rewarding and very helpful. Good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: All right, we want to give it to you, Yeah, there's a lot.

Karen Lynch: There's a lot. There's always a lot, right? I guess we say that every week that there's a lot going on, but I don't know much about you. You have, you know, are very tuned in. I talk about this week after week kind of, uh, you know, media research and, uh, you know, advertising and how that plays out. But, um, I don't know why this first article is, um, as critical, but the media rating council approved Nielsen's integration of first party live streaming data into its So talk to me about that. I don't mind. This is one instance where I'm like, explain, because I don't really track this one.

Lenny Murphy: It's the shift from, uh, asking questions to behavioral data. So in this case, Nielsen, you know, they are the standard media ratings council sets the standards for all advertisers on, you know, trying to understand audiences. Nielsen, of course, uh, major dominant player in that space. Um, uh, and for a while, it was just, you know, has been trying to integrate different data streams because the media ecosystem is so fragmented, how we consume across multiple devices. Many of those devices now measure themselves. In this case, I believe the focus is on smart TVs. Roku, it'd be an example, right? I don't know if they're specifically in this, but that type of thing. And integrating that data rather than a channel per se, uh, where somebody is reporting their media consumption, uh, that they are passively measuring that across multiple devices. So I think this is interesting because we continue to be in this, this world of, uh, kind of omni channel data. And it's not always about asking a question and increasingly it's more efficient, uh, and potentially even more, uh, more accurate, uh, in many ways to measure behavior. And this is one very prime example of that. Then. So that's what caught my eye. We'll see more of this type of stuff emerge, not just a media, it's a no brainer media. But it also makes sense in product usage. Another example, things like that. Yeah, cool. Cool.

Karen Lynch: Well, and then just I'm gonna just do the same thing, like go right into the next one, because this is where I'm like, Yep, nope, I'm not tracking this one either.

Lenny Murphy: Well, this was a little outside of my head.

Karen Lynch: I don't know what the reason is.

Lenny Murphy: But this week, I'm like, I got nothing here. That's all right. Yeah, this one inside the association, endorses T sappy t s a p I, if I'm not pronouncing it correctly. It's an open source API standard for exchanging survey data between different platforms. This gives into things like ISO, and there's probably applications as well for GDPR and all of those things. It's just the association saying, we think this is a good standard for an API structure, which is how different systems exchange information to make sure that it's secure, standard, and should help with interoperability. If everybody adopts this type of thing, then it's not, if you're a buyer, and you are utilizing some in-house solution for data integration. Right now, you may be working with five different suppliers, now have five different standards, and it's just a big pain in the ass to get all that information in by going this route. Hopefully, everybody adopts this and it just streamlines the process. It just makes it easier for interconnectivity between multiple platforms.

Karen Lynch: Cool. Good, good explanation. Thank you. The next ones are a lot easier. Partnerships. Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you want to go with the user interview? You know, it's funny because from the outset AI, anyway, it's, you know, these are the ones that make perfect sense based on the conversation that we've had lately. So user interviews partnering with outset AI, which is, you know, an AI moderated research Um, what's interesting outset was just actually, we recorded a podcast. I was the host of that one with their client, um, away, you know, the luggage company. So we just had this conversation with them where they shared this real use case of their platform. So if anybody's interested in that, we can also. Uh, share the link to the podcast episode with outset and away. Um, so, you know, the partnership with user interviews, that makes sense to me. Um, let's get some AI integration. Because if you're not up to snuff with your own platform, partner, right?

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Well, and so this is an AI first, more of a qualitative scale platform, right? I mean, my God, you can't, you know, you can't walk two feet without bumping into one of these companies now. There's just so many that have emerged because it's such a kind of no-brainer use case. It may not be great from what we're used to, you know, but for a user interview, I think that's a perfect use case. So for UX, why not?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It makes perfect sense. So anyway, super cool. And then another partnership. So Realize ad testing platform or tool Realize has partnered with a content generation platform called Grip, which I didn't know anything about Grip when I saw this. I was like, oh, that's interesting. So attention optimized ads for CPG So do you know GRIP? Have you heard of them?

Lenny Murphy: Because I know we know Realize. I think GRIP is just one of the many marketing platforms out there. Yeah. Yeah. AI-generated, you know, not only, but optimized for visual intensity, those types of things. Realize, they have a massive database. They've launched a while back a AI solution that is effectively visualizing to test an image without needing to test it with people. Now, no-brainer to connect those types of solutions into marketing platforms. So creatives, while you're in the creative process, you're optimizing that there. Also, no-brainer to then take the finished creative and then test it and test that on those key factors that Realize focuses on, which is gonna be, you know, emotional intensity and visual intensity specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff.

Karen Lynch: Um, so a couple, you know, a couple of new kind of launched product features, but also just, we want to shout out Sint and wish them luck with, they have a brand, not only kind of a, a new research platform that they're launching the Sint exchange, which sounds very interesting. Doesn't it?

Lenny Murphy: At least they didn't call it the, uh, the, renovation exchange. Yeah, exactly.

Karen Lynch: But yeah, they're also refreshing their brand identity. And, um, I think when that's, you know, that's happened before where we find out that one of the, one of the partners in the ecosystem is, is, you know, changing things up a little bit. We're like, best of luck because you know, you know, kind of changing that random, whatever you want to call it, a brand renovation or a brand relaunch or whatever you're doing. Um, good luck. We know there's a reason, and we hope it all proves fruitful for you.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Uh, so look for new logos. Um, and, and they also, they also knew their new research platform that yes, the SIM exchange. So there's two, two in one. So yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh, the meltwater meltwater for a minute.

Karen Lynch: No, I don't know.

Lenny Murphy: Meltwater. So there's another one where I was like, well, I don't know. Meltwater.

Karen Lynch: I mean, there was a lot that I was like, I don't really know about this company. So what do you know about melt, meltwater? And they have some new ideas. Features out?

Lenny Murphy: What do you know? Their social media analytics platform has been on for a while, I think they get bought by some company that does press releases. And I'm sorry, the name escapes my right the minute. Anyway, the integrating AI around their consumer intelligence to extract more information from social media feeds. Again, another no-brainer is the application of AI technologies to enhance the type of information and certainly the speed and analytical capabilities around a variety of social media data sources. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Good for them.

Karen Lynch: And then, yeah, Fathom released something called Stat Assist. I like these names, by the way, just for the record. I like a good name. But to help identify statistically significant differences in open-ended survey responses. So that I think is really interesting because it is going to determine it, right? It is going to make some decisions there about, anyway, the survey response. It's just an interesting way of phrasing it. So what do you think about this one?

Lenny Murphy: I actually am more interested in your perspective as a qualitative researcher. So how would you have used this? Right? It says open end survey responses, but I'm sure it works just as well within the kind of macro qualities of those types of things. So what? Well, first, coding is a pain in the ass. So if it replaces coding, it allows you to get there. Sure. Great.

Karen Lynch: But I think there's something I'm curious about. This is the label of kind of statistically significant differences, because when it comes to open, as a qualitative researcher, what you're looking for is often the thing that's an outlier, because there might be some real insight to that. If you're looking at qualitative data and somebody says something that doesn't track with what anybody else says, as a moderator, you want to probe that, you want to understand that, because that might be a real good nugget, and have a new line of questioning you should go after. So I'm curious about this platform and would wonder how it is defined, and again, you know, doing a little more research would help us rather than just the summary here, but how does it know, you know, what are the outliers that are statistically significant, right? What is it saying there? Anyway, and that's just probably a dynamic of quality scale in general, like, you know, but anyway, yeah, it's to me, it's a way to learn more to see how it's determining that there's something that is significant.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Yeah, I mean, kind of imagine how you would do that. If they if you coded, you know, and identified words and themes, etc, etc. And put that in there, I could see how you could get there. Yeah, determining. So why is it just so significant that 90% of the people said red and 10% said blue, right? Is it just that simple or is there more depth to it?

 Karen Lynch: Regardless. You may use some other colors this week, huh Lenny?

Lenny Murphy: Sorry, that was not even in my mind. That's a redhead wearing a blue shirt. I mean, but anyway. Purple and green, friend, purple and green. Joker colors, right? Yeah, that was good, Karen.

Karen Lynch: It's all good.

Lenny Murphy: All right. Anyway, statuses, really cool that we're seeing AI come into kind of the foundational aspects of research for analytical capabilities. So, okay.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, everybody just saw that elephant. We mentioned it just ran across the screen. Remember, I'm still here. Anyway, All right. On moving on.

Lenny Murphy: Did you get a chance to read this?

Karen Lynch: I didn't, but I want to. I just haven't gotten there yet. I don't know.

Lenny Murphy: I don't know this guy. He's a VC. Joe lawns. Um uh wrote a really uh really neat uh piece on transforming b2b service industries in the ai services wave lessons from palantir in the new age of ai now those may not be familiar palantir palantir was a I pray I was cool right um doing it for a long time biggest their biggest customers the government um uh they came to come to the four in kind of the big data wave, incorporating multiple data sources to locate bad guys, right? That's how they were used, like terrorists, to identify terrorists. That was their first big thing. Anyway, big company, multi, multi-billion dollar valuation. It's one of the most valuable companies in the world. And the application here is thinking about the, just think of a big tech company that everybody, well, much as BP or SAS? No. They're still very service-oriented in incorporating service in the world of AI, specifically when we think of AI as a threat to service, potentially to some elements of a service organization, of human functions. And this is really talking about the optimization of technology, service, and AI across the board to make it a better experience. It's a very insightful, very interesting article. If you're a tech company out there that struggles with the service piece, I think this would be really useful. If you're a service company struggling with the tech piece, I think this is really useful.

Karen Lynch: So good perspective. Yeah, that's cool. And again, like, excuse me, take from it what you will, right, for where you are on this journey, right? But we've also needed to be on the journey, you know, a million times. So, um, yeah, pretty cool. No, I will dig into that one. So thank you. You know, speaking of AI and being on the journey and being on the journey, well, you know, here we are back to user interviews again. So we mentioned them earlier because they're partnering with outset AI, but it's interesting that they've also released this AI and UX research report for 2024. So, um, you know, free free report to download and check out what their pulse is on AI in UX specifically. And hats off to them for sharing it out. I know a lot of the kind of partners in the industry do put out these reports that they're like, our research has shown this and I will share it out with all of you. So it's always worth checking it out and seeing what they're finding out because that shared intelligence helps us all become intelligent.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, and I would say specifically what I did was look at this in the context of the Qualtrics report, and grit, of course. And looking for the commonality, and there's a buttload, which is great validation, right? Okay, we're not all drinking the same Kool-Aid, right? More than likely, we're reporting this stuff accurately, but also the differences, and particularly this, I thought, when you combine this with, combine those three reports to see the shifts that are happening happening in kind of this adjacent category of UX, this adjacent category of CX, the broad category of market research, that, you know, we encapsulate some of that, those two, just really interesting that that how they're doing that. And I think the user interviews specifically because it has applications for qual. So, really interesting stuff, I thought.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, good, good. And then also speaking of Ray Poynter, right? Like I mentioned, there's a lot of things coming full circle here, but NewMR announced they have a webinar coming up, the State of Insights 2024, right? So, you know, that one, I don't know what the exact date is. We have the registration link, I think, that we'll be sharing. What do you know, you know, anything more about this? Is this something that he's done every year? I don't have a recall right now.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I mean, so Ray used to be part of the team on Grit for many years, and then we just kind of streamlined processes. And he saw some gaps of things that we weren't necessarily capturing within Grit, because Grit's just this big, massive beast. So he launched his own study that's been really good. It's much smaller, more focused. And Ray does this every year. It's a great effort. It's very complementary to Grit. And he recently did that, focusing on AI. Because Ray's focusing on AI a lot right now, and doing a webinar where he'll talk about the results.

Karen Lynch: Do you know off the top of your head, because I haven't clicked on the link, what the dates are of that one?

Lenny Murphy: I don't off the top of my head.

Karen Lynch: I'm going to look it up real quick. New MR, State of Insights. Let's see if it comes up that quickly. The State of Insights. Nope, that was not recent. No, I'm not going to be able to pull it up. The reason why I asked, I'm just trying again. I'm just it's got to be here right on his page. Um, but can we click on the link? I don't know if I can click on the link for some reason. Should be in our original exchange links. But it should be Yeah, it is right here. When is this? The reason why I'm asked here is Tuesday, November 19. Okay, so I think it's Tuesday, November 19 10 o'clock Eastern, so 3pm London time. So before that's what I was getting at. Right. So tell it, tell it, that's a little bit before the grit forum and, uh, that's going to be a good one to punch for people if they want to get a very holistic view.

Lenny Murphy: Right. It would be. So you go, I, I, I'm actually glad you said that I will, uh, try and squeeze that in before we do the grit forum. Uh, if you're an attendee and just connect dots, right. I mean, it should just stay forever. We get a lot of complaints at Grist. So damn big. It is. We try and capture a lot, but, and we've just, we just took that bullet. It's like, all right, we want to be as comprehensive as we can be. And the only way to do that is two surveys a year. And we still need a lot that we want to explore on the floor. So I am, I am pleased that there are other folks that build off of that and augment it. And it's always useful. So the work that SMR does, the GMR, SMR report, I look forward to. That's data we do not collect. If we did, the GRIT would be an hour long, right? So I'm really glad, and we should support other efforts to do research on research from other folks, and here's an example of that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and just, you know, to be clear, while we do get some people saying that the GRIT report is too long, we do get probably equal numbers, if not more, saying that it's too long. The comprehensive nature of it. So, you know, like, like, you know, the comprehensive nature of the grid is fantastic.

Lenny Murphy: So yeah, so it's more the survey I was thinking about than the, than the reports as long as it needs to be to be to deliver the it's more the survey itself.

Karen Lynch: So I'm just putting it together again, sorry, a little delayed here. But if the new MR webinar is at 10am Eastern, the grid forum is on the exact same day, also the 19th, but at 1pm Eastern. So make sure you are clear this is the same day. You'll have the one followed by the other. And if you can block your calendar for the new MR one, you're going to have some new color to add to the grid form. So that's pretty cool. Yes.

Lenny Murphy:  And Karley, you want to add the link to the grid form? And by the way, if you ever want to see me pulling my hair out, then that's a great time to do that, because I am moderating. Well, I'm conducting one session, then moderating in three panels, all back to back to back to back. And those three panels all have different constituents and different topics. It is, I feel like I run a marathon after every GRIT forum, but a very cool way to condense, understand, and get key insights out of the forum that is composed, so you'll know, our listeners, the commentaries, writers within the Report. So they, you know, senior people and from all of those companies who come in and they give their perspective on very specific aspects of the report. And I always find it really interesting and impactful. And most of our attendees do as well. So yeah, I can do both. Cool. So yeah. Thank you, Karley. We kind of threw that out to you, but because we're prerecorded, she has some time to pull some other links up there. Should we now? Talk about our new cadence. Our new cadence for sure is really the last thing we have to talk about. So holidays are coming sooner than we can possibly comprehend. Somebody just booked me for something on January 30th, but I'm like, hold up. That is a long way out, but here we are. So yeah, we are officially in it, friends. So we're going to be switching to a biweekly cadence. We will not, wait, okay, so tomorrow's the 8th, and then we will meet again live in two weeks, and then we will meet again live in two weeks, and so on and so forth, and follow a bi-weekly cadence for a couple weeks, see how that goes. Yep, so we'll do, we're gonna do our best to keep everything to 30 minutes, which you know, we're 30-ish minutes. We're 30-ish. We're 30-ish. Way to describe it. Cadence will still be tracking everything. And we will do our best. But I know we do have a few people who really look forward to this every Friday at noon. But with holidays, et cetera, et cetera, it just doesn't make sense because it would be just erratic. So we're just making the call. Yeah. And we'll get through the holidays and then we will go from there. We will go from there. So we will see you all in two weeks. Have a great weekend, folks. I'm sure you will not be having as much fun as me as I will be down in college town. But I'm sure the rest of you can figure out something fun and lighthearted to do this weekend. Enjoy. You're not going to go to any frat parties or anything. Well, never say never. No, these kids are not in that scene. So they have a very different college experience than I had when I was there back in the day. But yeah, no, but I'm not above a college bar. I think, to me, there's almost nothing more fun than sporting games on the television and kids making bad decisions all around me while I just laugh and watch. So all good, all good. It's probably a good lesson for life in general to take from that. Watch the bad decisions. Everybody take care. We'll talk to you in a few weeks. All right. Bye everybody.

Links from the episode:

Three things I’ve learned as an MRS mentor 

Women in Research (WIRe) offers a mentorship program for researchers in various locations and remote opportunities 

Ad testing tool Realeyes partners with content generation platform Grip 

Cint releases its new research platform, the Cint Exchange  

Meltwater introduces several AI-powered features to enhance social and consumer intelligence capabilities 

Fathom releases “Stat Assist” 

The AI Services Wave: Lessons from Palantir in The New Age of AI 

User Interviews releases the “AI in UX Research Report 2024” 

NewMR Webinar “The State of Insights 2024” 

The Insights Association endorses TSAPI 

User Interviews partners with AI-moderated research platform Outset AI