Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

Mike Bloxham joins Sima in a discussion involving consumer data,  consumer behavior, viewer perceptions of video content at an emotional level, and how this is used.

Mike is the Senior Vice-President of The Global Media and Entertainment Division at Magid. He is involved in the development of different services and products that get taken out to the market place, and liaison and delivery around different types of projects, such as qualitative, quantitative, development issues, or understanding performance of particular products in the market place

The State of Media Purchasing

There’s a large-scale move towards making use of data. We’ve gained use to more granular data as a result of technology, with a better ability to integrate different datasets. 

This has enabled us to look across broader spans of data to gain deeper insights about consumers, about behavior, and about how the media will function with regard to consumer direction and engagement, which is incredibly important.

Some think, however, that the pendulum has swung towards the opportunity that data represents, a little too fast and a little too far, and somewhat at the expense of the insights side of the business.

"Emotional" DNA

It’s imperative to address the human side of why people behave the way they do, both why they engage or why they do not engage, with the different offerings available to them. If this is not done, you’re not getting the fullest picture.

EmotionalDNA® is a product has been on the market for about five years and can be accessed on a syndicated basis, as well as on a custom basis.

It’s a large-scale, systematic, quantitative assessment of viewer perceptions of video content at an emotional level. It’s a viewer-derived portrait of the emotional tonality of the video lens. 

Measuring Viewer Engagement

Magid spent 18 months in the development of EmotionalDNA® before it became available on the market place. During that process, Magid arrived at 36 key attributes, or descriptors, that people use. 

Their research is still ongoing and utilizes around 1,000 people a week, who are not from the same town. Over the course of a year, they have research from over 50,000 people. There are currently over 3,500 shows in the dataset and more than 200 networks and platforms.

At the core of the exercise, they ask people about seven shows that they have watched in the last several months, and ask one key question: “Out of the following 36 key attributes, or descriptors, which of these terms would you use to describe the show?” The viewer can choose as many terms as they would like, which are then used to conduct a factor analysis.

Advertising and Changing Behaviors

Horizon Media was the first agency to buy into the EmotionalDNA® product, and have integrated it into many of their planning and buying procedures. 

Mike discusses one metric within the product, intentionality, and how Horizon Media might it use it as a proxy for engagement. He goes on to say that some advertisers are driven by engagement, and so the intentionality score becomes something which is indicative of that.

An overview of different metrics and different TV shows provides a fascinating glimpse as to how the underlying power of television, and of video, actually impacts audiences. That’s what TV and advertising is all about: moving audiences.

 

Quick links to connect with Mike Bloxham:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Sima listens in today as Steve Danziger interviews Vignesh Krishnan and Alex Leger, and their discussion about how technology involves our interactions in data quality and respondents’ experience, and how the technology discussion shapes our agenda going forward.

Steve Danziger is Executive Director of Paradigm Innovation Labs, which gives us the marriage of technology and operations, and other avenues throughout the company.

Vignesh Krishnan is the CEO and Founder of SampleChain, LLC, a software company focusing on quality and fraud management issues and market research.

Alex Leger is the SVP of Product at Market Cube, which helps out on things like technology sample and the like.

Technological Advancements Speed

The speed of our industry’s ability to adapt to advancements in technology is a lot quicker than we give it credit for.

Vignesh notes that as recently as 6 years ago, he does not recall any companies doing API deliveries for his company. Today, over 98% are being delivered by API. He further observes that almost 100% of the companies with which he’s familiar is at least investigating machine learning in some form, at the least using a big database to manage high volumes of data.

Although not as quick to adapt as ag-tech or finance, Vignesh believes that the technology industry is its own worst critic, and is still ahead of other industries in terms of the speed of embracing advancements. The technology industry may not have the innovation or technology budgets of the ag-tech and finance industries, but being aware of these factors can go a long way.

The Rise of Big-Data, Online Mobile Survey Data

As the industry evolves, Vignesh stresses that we must be cognizant of the fact that we are literally sitting on a gold mine. Other large data companies might be able to tell you what happened up until this moment, whereas we can ask intent questions, such as ‘What is this group of respondents going to do tomorrow?’ or ‘What is their sentiment, going into the next month or quarter?’

We continue to make these investments and ensure that we’re gleaning all the data as it’s coming through.

Industry models have lowered the barrier of entry into this space. We’re seeing more players interact and source respondents for this type of data collection. Steve feels that this puts more pressure on us to be more diligent about the impact that these sources can have on the quality of survey data.

8 Billion Dollars and Growing

Out-of-home advertising is growing! It is the only traditional channel that is on the upswing, and there are a few reasons for that. People are moving around in urban environments in different ways than they have before, more people are living in big cities and taking mass transit, and they are being exposed to opportunities to the channel more than ever before.

Data Quality and Different Types of Fraudsters

There are basically two different types of fraudsters: those on the sample side, and those on the client-side, as Alex explains. They can be broadly grouped into unorganized individuals, who may provide fake answers to surveys that they’re taking, and organized humans, who may be operating out of other countries, behind VPN’s, or going deeper into the tech side of things so they can cheat. 

There is a third category that is not human, but bots; a machine doing all of the cheating. As Sima points out, the people who develop these bots benefit from getting all of the inside notes for populating surveys.

From the client perspective, it’s just bad data that is produced in the system.

Mitigating Duplication & Location - A Look Back

Using CAPTCHA’S when building a survey program makes it very difficult for a bot to navigate, but it seems that the number, letters, and pictures are getting more difficult for even us humans to discern.

Browser-based validation checks have been an industry standard. A digital fingerprint is when a user accesses a website, and they’re sending across a lot of information. Alex explains how this is useable. 

Future Industry Methods

New techniques that are being employed to mitigate fraud that builds on existing checks borrow ideas from the ag-tech and finance industries. A lot of those companies are now using behavior metrics, normative metrics, longitudinal metrics. 

A lot of companies in our space, Vignesh finds, are using reconciliation rates and purge rates, making sure that none of that information is lost and is funneled back in to their algorithms, ensuring that all of the data sets that exist are taken into account, before, during and after the survey experience, and tying them all in together.

Where the Human Element Plays In

Humans are great at pattern-matching, and at finding distinctions. But, even as machine learning becomes better, we will still have to use our street intelligence. 

Quick links to connect with Steve Danziger:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Quick links to connect with Vignesh Krishnan:

LinkedIn

Quick links to connect with Alex Leger:

LinkedIn

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

The President of Geopath, Kym Frank, sits down with Sima Vasa for today’s chat. They discuss the history of Geopath, how they use eye-tracking studies, and location data

The Uniqueness of Geopath

Geopath is a unique organization founded in 1933, as a joint venture between The Agency Trade Association, The Advertiser Trade Association, and the Out of Home Advertising Association. This organization was founded as the Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement Inc., and rebranded in 2016 as Geopath.

Their core organizational mission is two-fold: 

to independently audit all out-of-home advertising inventory across the United States. For example, making sure a billboard is where it’s supposed to be, or checking the angle to oncoming traffic, or perhaps verifying whether it’s a digital or printed format. Goepath performs this work across all varieties of out-of-home advertising: billboards, benches, city kiosks, subways, bars, restaurants, airports, and malls. They currently audit about two million pieces of inventory across the country. 

to measure how many people are exposed to those pieces of inventory. Geopath just recently overhauled their measurement system to go along with their new name. This new system focuses more on the geographic pathways that people are taking across the country as they intersect with out-of-home advertising.

Eye-Tracking Studies

Eye-tracking studies are performed by Geopath to determine the probability of somebody making eye contact with an out-of-home advertisement. Although it may sound futuristic, it’s just a matter of putting eye-tracking goggles on people to help identify what drives them to make eye contact with an ad. 

It could be the size, the angle to oncoming traffic, many different factors that drive a person to make eye contact. Not everyone who walks or drives by an ad will look at that ad, so Geopath is trying to be responsible about the way that they’re measuring the channel. 

This will be helpful as out-of-home starts entering a more audience-based buying programmatic ecosystem, which is where we’re starting to migrate to, as a culture, today.

8 Billion Dollars and Growing

Out-of-home advertising is growing! It is the only traditional channel that is on the upswing, and there’s a few reasons for that. People are moving around in urban environments in different ways than they have before, more people are living in big cities and taking mass transit, and they are being exposed to opportunities to the channel more than ever before.

Harnessing the Power of Local Data

Geopath is overhauling the measurement system. The core is built in aggregated and anonymized location data from mobile devices throughout the entire United States. Geopath also uses information from connected car dashboards, specifically speed information. This is useful because if you pass a digital billboard doing 60mph, you’re only able to see a certain number of ads on that billboard, which rotate every 8 seconds. But if you’re stuck in traffic or moving a lot slower, you will be able to see more of those rotations. 

These factors really go into play in Geopath’s measurement system, as they are harnessing new audience demographics, psychographics, and computer graphic information. 

The information provided better enables them to target the kinds of consumers that advertisers are looking for, and makes them super-relevant for the consumers as they’re passing by.

The Buzz of Changing Behavior

Geopath anticipates more opportunities to approach advertisers with good stories about the people that they’re trying to communicate with, and in ways that they’ve never been able to do that before. 

This should shift the way advertisers think about out-of-home, and it positions this channel as innovative and technologically savvy. As the oldest medium, it’s gaining a lot of buzz about how innovative the channel really is, and budgets are starting to migrate from other channels. Eventually, this is expected to cross both the national and local landscape.

Quick links to connect with Kym Frank:

GeoPath

Twitter: @kymfrank

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/kymfrank

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

CEO and Founder of MindSpark Research International, Nikki Lavoie, joins Sima Vasa today. They discuss the two niches that Nikki has found work really well together for her Paris-based company: 1) international qualitative research and 2) UX research.

MindSpark: Born Out of Necessity

From a young age, Nikki Lavoie knew she wanted to travel around the world. With a background in market research, both qualitative and quantitative, she accepted a job in Paris but eventually outgrew it, and was ready to move on to something else. 

Not quite ready to return to working in the States, her options for breaking into the local job market as an American abroad were limited. 

Starting out as a freelancer 5 years ago, she quickly began taking on more projects than she could handle alone, and thus, MindSpark Research International was born. 

“I got offered a job in Paris, and surprisingly, I actually almost said ‘no’. Somewhere, that little phone conversation got to me, and I was like, ‘Your 15-year-old self would be furious if you said no to this job’." Nikki Lavoie

Qualitative Research

Nikki shares how she truly enjoyed working on the quantitative side of research and studies. She found herself fascinated by the things she saw in the data, but it left her with more questions. Qualitative doesn’t answer every single question one could possibly have, but it’s certainly more immersive.

“Qualitative research: that’s where all the good stuff is!” - Nikki Lavoie

 

Human connections and having really deep conversations about research topics are fulfilling and useful for the client because you’re using what you’re learning about them to help better their life or their situation in some way.

“Heartbeats before spreadsheets.” - Nikki Lavoie

 

An Impactful Story

Some interactions can be instantaneously meaningful, and some interactions are impactful in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. Nikki provides an example.

“This whole ‘Don’t connect with people’ and ‘Don’t get emotionally involved’ - I don’t believe in that. I don’t personally function with that was as a researcher because people can feel that, when you’re holding back from them. And then they hold back from you.” - Nikki Lavoie

Asking questions and enjoying the conversation can help you learn a lot from the researcher perspective, but it also enables you to give back in a meaningful way to the people with whom you’re conversing.

UX Research

The terms “qualitative research” and “UX research” are sometimes used interchangeably. To confuse things even further, there’s “market research”. Nikki sets the record straight on these terms, and how companies are going into qualitative research with the same goal: to connect with users and understand them. 

“From MindSpark’s perspective, all qualitative research is user research, and UX is user research. The point of user research is to empathize with the user, not to just observe them but to really feel what they’re feeling, experience what they’re experiencing so that you can take that on and go forth and do something useful with it.” - Nikki Lavoie

The contentious part of the terms concern infographics comparing market research and UX, in which there are a lot of differences. Market studies are not the same as user research. 

Quick links to connect with Nikki Lavoie:

MindSparkLab.com

Facebook - MindSparkLab

Twitter - MindSparkLab

LinkedIn - Mindspark Research International LLC

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

In this episode, Sima Vasa converses with Chief Evangelist for Quantifind, Malcolm De Leo. He shares with us how Quantifind detects signals to help predict outcomes, how he embraces innovation in his career and how he enforced the philosophy of “Corporate accountable, locally responsible.”

Chief Evangelist 

Malcolm serves as a Chief Evangelist for 20 years now, 5 years of it has been spent with Quantifind. He proudly shares that his main focus is to help the company drive sales through understanding and developing use cases and defining how they can scale and grow these for repeat sales.

“I've spent probably my entire time in Silicon Valley, helping people understand how to use data intelligently so that they can make better decisions faster.” - Malcolm De Leo 

Extracting Signals From Data

He further shares that Quantifind's core competency is finding signals and noise — they take unstructured data and build mathematical algorithms that create intelligent flares that signal extraction. Further, Quantifind's goal is to identify used cases in a larger organization where they can extract that valuable signal from that data.

“Unstructured data has grown 85% every 3 years. Companies who are able to find that 10% of the data that matters or extract the signal from that data—are the ones who are gonna win.” - Malcolm De Leo

 

Decision-makers of companies rely on these signals to assist them in reacting, most specifically, in reacting to relevant events. Clients of the company not only include brands but the government as well, sending signals for fraud or money laundering.

 “If you are using traditional means that are out there, around collecting social data day by day, you may react to how much people talk. You may react to how passionate they feel about something but, if it’s not tied to something like viewership or revenue (an outcome), you may be reacting to the wrong things.” - Malcolm De Leo

 

Philosophy of innovation

Sima Vasa digs deep into Malcolm’s philosophy of innovation. Malcolm shared that his first and foremost priority is aligning culture strongly. He follows his philosophy of “Me, We and the Enterprise.”

He believes that the enterprise sets the tone for everyone. However, the “me” or the individual is equally important because he/she must understand his or her own process of innovation and interaction with others. This leads to the concept of “we” where collectively, they can work together to drive the needs of the enterprise.

“If you can align those three things, you start to get a much more systematic culture.”  - Malcolm De Leo

Sima and Malcolm discuss more corporate culture and innovation as well as trends in the insights space.

Quick links to connect with Malcolm De Leo:

LinkedIn - Malcolm De Leo

LinkedIn - Quantifind

Twitter - @innovationmuse

Twitter - @evangelistdna

Instagram -@innovationmuse

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Today’s episode is our second for our two-part series with guest Merrill Dubrow, the President, and CEO of M/A/R/C Research. He shares with us what gets him excited, especially after serving the industry for 25 years. Merrill Dubrow, a thought leader, also gave some relevant advice for industry professionals that is definitely worth listening to. 

Getting and Staying Excited 

For someone who has been in the business for 25 years, financial gain is not entirely something to be excited about. He candidly shared with our host, Sima Vasa, the main thing that excites him is moving things forward, in terms of the whole enterprise or the insights association.

“The reality is I love moving the business forward. We got a nice pipeline of products that are coming out over the past year and they're all having success. We want to continue to have partnerships — the right partnerships.” - Merrill Dubrow

Moreover, Merrill said he gets excited mentoring people — having the ability to move people's career forward. 

On Mergers & Acquisitions 

Merrill shared his opinion on the recent trend of mergers and acquisitions in the insights industry. He says this is not going to change as it is largely driven by investors. However, he warned that it could change a lot of the dynamics of the company.

“I think the M&A it not going to slow down at all. I was approached not soon after I transacted this company, I could've sold it, told them I'm not gonna do that. Everybody is for sale and those aren't are still getting approached.” - Merrill Dubrow

He further continued saying that company goals are not all financial. As for himself, he refused to transact M/A/R/C because, at his age, his focus is giving back to the industry. 

Advice for Insights Executives 

Merrill gave two pieces of advice for insights executives and those who are starting out their careers in the industry. For insights executives, he points out the importance of staying on trend but carefully choosing which technology to pursue. 

“I’m not saying don’t go after technology. Go after the right technology  — for your staff, for your clients  — so you can build a business that is profitable and long-standing. Don't go after a shiny toy because everybody else is going after it, I think that the wrong way.” - Merrill Dubrow

Additionally, she then shared the importance of joining associations and increasing networks. It is a form of continuous learning as well as an avenue to give back to the community.

“If you have a large pool of contacts and if you are involved in an association, you will see what's coming next, you'll see the cutting edge methodologies are.” - Merrill Dubrow

 

Quick links to connect with Merrrill Dubrow:

LinkedIn - Merrill Dubrow

Twitter - @merrilldubrow

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn 

Twitter

infinity-2.com

 

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Today’s guest is Merrill Dubrow, the President, and CEO of M/A/R/C Research. He shares with us some important industry perspectives on automation and the consultative role of insights companies. This is an episode for industry professionals who wish to stay relevant in this field of work.

Six Decades of Excellence

Merrill Dubrow has been leading his company towards its 6th decade. He has a passion for building strong relationships and a mission to drive innovation. Through the years, he has witnessed the evolution of the insights industry. 

Particularly, he mentions in this episode how the automation of information gathering such Do-it-yourself information kiosks, has done a massive impact on the industry. Merrill further shared that clients want responses quicker and faster, and yet want them a lot less expensive. 

“I think that’s the future, I think that’s really where it’s going and you’re gonna hear a lot of clients building storefronts and a lot of companies coming out with platforms such as Zappi ⁠— that’s where it’s gonna be headed in the next 3-5 years.” - Merrill Dubrow

Insights Companies and Management Consultancy Firms 

Sima posed a very important question about the gap ⁠— as it relates to higher-level analysis or consultation. Most of the time, management consulting companies are usually in charge of integrating business strategy based on these analyses. However, Merrill provided his point of view on this gap.

“Two things ⁠— if clients are gonna continue to use DIY platforms, they need analysis and consultation. If they do, shame on the insights. The company such as mine and other large research insight companies out there haven't done their job. If we have, that work would come to us.” - Merrill Dubrow

In addition, Merill stated that in reality, clients need companies to come in for consulting and marketing. This is something that insights companies have not yet done in the past and if they continue to not meet this client demand, the business will go elsewhere. 

“There are a  lot of things happening to a lot of companies because the balance between today and tomorrow, you can’t minimize that symmetry. It is the biggest challenge ever. It’s one thing to know where the industry is going it’s another thing to position your Titanic-of-company to get there and it’s not easy at all.” - Merrill Dubrow

Challenge to Stay Relevant

Merrill points out the importance of staying relevant in the industry. He discusses the significance of keeping clients, employees and staying on top of industry events. 

“The reality, when you talk about longevity, it’s relevancy. You got to be relevant. You gotta be relevant in three marks — clients, employees and industry.” Merrill Dubrow

He gives a blow-by-blow account of how to stay relevant in this industry. Some pointers he raised are offering new products and services to clients, making sure fitting Project managers assists them and likewise, keeping these employees happy, by engaging them with a positive corporate culture.

 

Quick links to connect with Merrrill Dubrow:

 

LinkedIn - Merrill Dubrow

Twitter - @merrilldubrow

 

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

 

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

 

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Today’s guest, Chief People Officer Nicole Patel joins Sima Vasa to discuss the recruitment process and employee retention at LUCID. Further, she shares the processes they employ within the organization and the culture they promote that is centered on openness and transparency. 

 

Nicole and LUCID

Lucid was founded in 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana and currently has offices in New Orleans, Gurgaon, London, New York, and Sydney. Nicole has provided much support to the growing company, as she helped grow Lucid's staff by 500%.

Before joining LUCID, Nicole spent 15 years in human resources across multiple industries. After working in corporate financial benefits at Baker Hughes, she spent the next 12 years in financial services at Lehman Brothers and Neuberger Berman. Ultimately, Nicole left financial services and moved to New Orleans and has been at Lucid ever since.

Growing and Retaining People

Nicole and her team pride themselves in growing the company — from 30 to 50 percent, growth in customers and revenue and definitely because they hired the right people. LUCID is always on the look-out for smart, quick and hardworking folks. 

Nicole shares in this episode the five values of LUCID and how they, the People Department, discuss these during the interview process and performance review process. Further, Nicole believes that this set of values attracts the right people. 

“We have a bi-weekly, all-hands meeting for the entire company — where someone talks about their favorite value and how they feel adhering to that value and how they aspired to be better at that value.” - Nicole Patel

Corporate Culture at LUCID

Nicole shares how they maintain the Lucid Culture across all the offices around the globe and also integrate local culture. They value individual identities and they allow freedom of expression. Employees foster unique identities as long as they don’t deviate from LUCID values.

“The key is finding the right balance of your brand and your culture, resonating and being consistent globally, across all occasion, while also allowing for these locations to have their own identity, based on the country or city they are in or based on their point of growth.” - Nicole Patel

Additionally, she shares a method of getting feedback from employees. It is through a software that tracks employees' current outlook in their career and for the company as a whole. For other information about recruitment and retention of employees as well as the promotion of culture based on transparency and openness, listen to this episode. 

 

Quick links to connect with Nicole Patel:

LinkedIn - Nicole Patel

Website - LUCID

 

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Today’s guest entrepreneur Jason Krantz of Strategy Titan joins Sima Vasa to discuss a wealth of information about data analytics and insights in the B2B space. He shares his personal experience in having a balance between technical and business skills. Further, he discusses how these skills helped him navigate the elusive HVAC industry.

 

The Immense Power of Analytics

With over 10 years of business analytics, data science, and strategic leadership experience, Jason Krantz recognized the power of analytics early on his career. He also has extensive executive experience in sales and marketing strategy design, financial reporting, market research, price management, and supply chain optimization. 

“It's amazing, it continues to amaze me. The raw power of data, analytics and the ability to generate insights and ultimately helps inform strategy and in the end, drive financial results.” - Jason Krantz

He pursued entrepreneurship and founded his company, Strategy Titan, which helps companies "weaponize" data and transform it into a competitive advantage. Further, he was recognized as an HVAC “Top 40 Under 40” in 2017.

 

The Balance Between Technical and Business Skills

In this episode, Krantz points out the importance of striking a balance between data analytics and business skills. A company may have the best data engineers but without strong business knowledge, it would be challenging to provide value for the data analysis.

“By understanding the business strategy, you can go into an initiative⁠—crystal clear⁠—into how exactly what you are working at is going to help a specific segment of the business.” - Jason Krantz

Analytics, by itself, cannot deliver certain results for a company, such as a price increase, for example. However, if the analytics team would proceed with exploratory analysis and understand the challenges of the channel or of a region, then they would be equipped with sound decisions. This places data into context.

“Now its that process of understanding and presenting the case to the business in a manner which they can understand it but also see the opportunity.” -Jason Krantz

 

Navigating the HVAC Industry

Sima Vasa, our host, shares her admiration for Krantz as he successfully navigated the HVAC Industry⁠. In the market research world, HVAC is considered a category considered a difficult industry. Krantz pulled out a number of powerful insights from data sources, which aided stakeholders in further understanding the industry.

“If you can answer any five questions about your business, your market, channel, whatever it is, what questions would you ask? Virtually everything that we ask is market-centric.” - Jason Krantz 

He shares more on this interview, his personal experiences and success, the process that he made for data curation and how he managed to handle the HVAC executives to gather insights. 

Quick links to connect with Jason Krantz:

LinkedIn - Jason Krantz

Linkedin - Strategy Titan

Website - Strategy Titan

@strategy_titan - Twitter

 

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

LinkedIn

Twitter

infinity-2.com

 

Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

In today’s episode, Sima Vasa sits with Executive Director of Client Development at Paradigm Sample Katie Sands, together with Sr. Consultant for Sampling at Burke Inc., Brad Franz. Both are considered next-generation of leaders for the market research industry. Together, they discuss perspectives on data collection and shifts in the industry both for clients and the overall market. 

 

Next-Gen Leaders

As a member of Paradigm Sample, Katie Sands has cultivated a diverse portfolio of accounts—ranging from market research, technology, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods companies. She is the Executive Director of Client Development. Her colleagues consider her a very passionate person⁠—when it comes to her job in the market research industry.

Likewise, Brad Franz is considered another next-gen leader. He’s been working at Burke Inc. for 12 years and is currently Sr. Consultant for Sampling. He is considered to be highly skilled at Quantitative Research, Market Research, and Online Research.

 

Shifts in Data Collection

Franz shares that in the last several years, there has been a very observable shift in the world of market research. Primarily, the changes are now focused on delivering quality data. Sands agreed to this shift as historically, she observed that when quality is not a concern, the pricing would come into play.

“There’s a pendulum swing back to the idea of quality and how data collection and sampling is really the foundation of those insights.” - Brad Franz

In the past, market research agencies drove the price very low and very competitive. Clients are more open to discussing the inclusions and range of a project and what is driving the prices. Moreover, they are more open to considering higher-priced samples in exchange for better quality data.

 

Focus on Quality

Franz stressed the importance of having conversations on what quality means. Through this, clients and researchers are able to define the expectations about price, field time, overall research objectives and the impacts that they can have along the way.

Vasa also shared her personal input in this episode. She shared how companies can propose quality data to clients: by looking at both the input and output side. This means that focus should not only be on choosing and targeting the right respondents but preparing the questionnaire as well. 

“Balancing the client needs and respondent engagement, that something that all three of us is passionate about. I'm optimistic that we're finally getting to a point where we can start focusing on respondent engagement because the impact is starting to showcase itself in the higher quality.” - Katie Sands

More discussions on perspectives on data gathering and collection, as well as respondent engagement are in this episode. 

 

Quick links to connect with Katie Sands and Brad Franz:

Katie Sands - LinkedIn

Brad Franz - LinkedIn

 

Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below!

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