My guest today is Pepper Miller, a principal consultant and an award-winning market researcher and speaker. 

In 1995, Pepper founded Hunter-Miller Group, a market research and marketing strategy company. She followed this by being the lead consultant in the largest study about African Americans in 2008. It was called the Black American Today Segmentation Study. 

Today, Pepper is the president of the Hunter-Miller Group, author of, “Black Still Matters in Marketing,” and co-author of, “What's Black About It?”  

Find Pepper Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peppermiller 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/peppermiller

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

This Episode is Sponsored by:

This episode is brought to you by Momentive. You may have heard that SurveyMonkey’s parent company recently rebranded as Momentive, a leader in agile insights and experience management. The Momentive AI-powered insights platform is built for the pace of modern business so you can deeply understand your market, elevate your brand, and build winning products faster. 

Momentive offers 22 purpose-built market research solutions that incorporate an AI engine, built-in expertise, sophisticated methodologies, and an integrated global panel of over 144M people to deliver meaningful insights in hours, not months. Momentive also has a team of market research consultants that can take on anything from research design to custom reporting as needed, so you can spend more time shaping what’s next for your organization.

To learn more, visit momentive.ai 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hi, I'm Jamin. You are listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. My guest today is Pepper Miller, a principal consultant and an award-winning market researcher and speaker. In 1995, Pepper founded the Hunter Miller Group, a market research and marketing strategy company. She followed this, by being the lead consultant in the largest study about African Americans in 2008. It was called the Black American Today Segmentation Study. Today, Pepper is the president of the Hunter Miller Group, author of Black Still Matters and What's Black About It. This episode is brought to you by Momentive. You may have heard that Survey Monkey's parent company recently rebranded as Momentive, a leader in agile insights and experience management. The Momentive AI powered insights platform is built for the pace of modern business so you can deeply understand your market, elevate your brand, and build winning products faster. Momentive offers 22 purpose-built market research solutions that incorporate an AI engine, built in expertise, sophisticated methodologies, and an integrated global panel of over 144 million people to deliver meaningful insights in hours, not months. Momentive also has a team of market research consultants that can take on anything from research design to custom reporting as needed so you can spend more time shaping what's next for your organization. To learn more, visit Momentive. AI, that's M-O-M-E-N-T-I-V-E. AI. The Insights Association seeks to recognize as laureates outstanding, peer-nominated members with distinguished careers and contributions who have advanced and benefited the Insights Association. This is considered a life-time recognition of distinction in the field rather than a reward for a specific achievement. Pepper, tell me what does it mean for you to have been acknowledged by the Insights Association as an IPC laureate?

[00:02:10]

Pepper Miller: Honored and humbling. Thank you for nominating me, Jamin. I know you had something to do with that.

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Vignesh Krishnan, CEO of Research Defender. 

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Vignesh Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vignesh-krishnan-08846aa/ 

Email: [email protected]  

Website: https://researchdefender.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hi everybody. Another interview from SampleCon. This is actually the last interview that I'm doing at the show, live on the show. I'm with my good friend Vignesh. SampleChain been rebranded Research Defender. Huge honor to have you.

[00:00:19]

Vignesh Krishnan: Thank you.

[00:00:19]

Jamin Brazil: What do you think about SampleCon?

[00:00:20]

Vignesh Krishnan: It's great. It's my favorite of the year. I was fortunate enough to go to the first one and I think I've been managing to go to each one since. I have to admit I might have snuck into a few. But that was because I was in New Orleans and the hotel was down the street and so on and so forth, so you just go to meet friends. It's great so far. And I love Pasadena, I love the hotel. It's great.

[00:00:41]

Jamin Brazil: Of course SampleCon started by Patrick Comer and crew at Lucid. Then was it Fulcrum? No Federated Sample.

[00:00:47]

Vignesh Krishnan: Federated Sample.

[00:00:48]

Jamin Brazil: Federated Sample. I always call it Fulcrum, I don't know why.

[00:00:50]

Vignesh Krishnan: That's the other division that they had. But I think it's all rolled up into this one.

[00:00:54]

Jamin Brazil: Lucid. Anyway, so of course it gives you probably access to the show if you needed it. So you weren't being too sneaky?

[00:01:01]

Vignesh Krishnan: Exactly, yeah.

[00:01:02]

Jamin Brazil: It's not like me in high school, sneaking into the movie theater?

[00:01:04]

Vignesh Krishnan: No, exactly.

[00:01:07]

Jamin Brazil: So Research Defender, tell us about it?

[00:01:09]

Vignesh Krishnan: So our job is to help improve the data quality in the industry as well as fight fraud. We do a few other things including helping suppliers and buyers increase their conversions, because as you can imagine it's a pretty highly connected industry via API's. So a lot of the work we do is on that front trying to fight fraud. Like I said, increase data quality, increase conversions. Just have a better cleaner healthier ecosystem specifically on the quant side, but we do qual work as well obviously online.

[00:01:38]

Jamin Brazil: So when you think about the issues of fraud, what do you think is driving it?

[00:01:42]

Vignesh Krishnan: It's easy, money. So that's usually the fundamental driver. Because if there isn't that, then there is no incentive and hence you don't have fraud. So I would say that continues to be the biggest one. I think there are some theories about potentially changing opinions and so on and so forth like we saw around the election situation again in the last few years. I personally don't think that's the biggest driver around fraud in the industry. I simply come, think it comes down to incentive.

[00:02:10]

Jamin Brazil: Monetary framework. That's right. On social media I've been experiencing about 18.5 percent fraud. By fraud I define that as somebody says they are somebody else. In other words they are not who they say they are. Sometimes it's,

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Timothy McCarthy, General Manager at Imperium.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Timothy Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-mccarthy-3423a553/ 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://www.imperium.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey, everybody. I am joined by Tim McCarthy, GM of Imperium Sample.

[00:00:09]

Tim McCarthy: Yep. Not Sample.

[00:00:10]

Jamin Brazil: Just Imperium. Just Imperium. Just Imperium.

[00:00:11]

Tim McCarthy: Yeah.

[00:00:12]

Jamin Brazil: Got it. Sorry about that. We are live on the floor of SampleCon. I'm super jazz to be here in person, how about yourself?

[00:00:19]

Tim McCarthy: Absolutely. I think everyone's been dying for this to happen over the last two and a half years. People haven't even been able to get in front of their customers in their own offices or in their offices, right? So this is a great, great opportunity to meet up with potential customers, current customers that you haven't seen in forever. And it's been a really good time.

[00:00:35]

Jamin Brazil: That's outstanding. I know, it's- I'm very simple for SampleCon for- I mean, it's a risk in some ways, right?

[00:00:41]

Tim McCarthy: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:00:42]

Jamin Brazil: Putting this on.

[00:00:43]

Tim McCarthy: Yeah. They put out that olive branch and people grabbed it, it was nice.

[00:00:45]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. That's right. What do you think about the show so far?

[00:00:48]

Tim McCarthy: Show's been great. I really like the way SampleCon kind of approaches their conference. And it's not overly content heavy where you're constantly just sitting and listening to people present about how good their company is. They try to make it thought provocative, like thinking about things, panels, and give a lot of time to interact. There's 15, 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, just meet up with everyone. So I really like the format of that and I think it's what's needed right now. People need some time to just talk rather than just sit and watch someone present to. And the content that they put together is fantastic and I think they've hit nail on the head in terms of things that people are really interested in and changes that happened over the last year and a half that people haven't been able to get together and talk about.

[00:01:28]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. For sure. There actually hasn't been any that I've heard anyway, like sales pitches from the stage.

[00:01:32]

Tim McCarthy: No. Absolutely not. And that's the nicest thing. It's like you have a whole array of people on that stage and most of them are even competitors and they're just talking about what's next, what's been going on, and how can we improve the industry.

[00:01:43]

Jamin Brazil: So the COVID pandemic, shelter in place, what's your big learning?

[00:01:48]

Tim McCarthy: So COVID was interesting for me because I started working as a GM at Imperium starting March of last year. So I came on board, shelter in place happened. And I was like, all right. I had all these plans to get our teams together and meet up, so it was a lot of Zoom meetings and phone calls and a lot of that over the last couple of years. We focus in fraud prevention and data quality services,

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Ted Pulsifer, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at Schlesinger Group.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Ted Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedpulsifer/ 

Website: https://www.schlesingergroup.com/en/  

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Ted Pulsifer, we are live today on the show floor of SampleCon.

[00:00:07]

Ted Pulsifer: Hi, Jamin. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:09]

Jamin Brazil: It's 2021. This is my first live event. How's it going for you?

[00:00:13]

Ted Pulsifer: It's great. This is my first live event in about a year and a half other than a couple select meetings, so it feels wonderful.

[00:00:22]

Jamin Brazil: It's just so nice to be able to see people. What do you think about the show so far?

[00:00:25]

Ted Pulsifer: So far it's great. This is a perfect time. I just got done hosting a panel and have done some other events we sponsored, and so it's just been great to switch gears and be a participant and start looking and observing. And it's been great. Really good conversation. A lot of new faces. I had a panel of three and two of them were first-time SampleCon attendees, which speaks about their growth.

[00:00:43]

Jamin Brazil: Yes, for sure. What do you think about the pandemic in terms of how it's impacted you?

[00:00:50]

Ted Pulsifer: It's interesting. So we sold our business to Schlesinger and actually finalized that in February of 2020, so I kind of felt like the last person to get a table at their favorite restaurant if you will. And we just walked into that, and then of course didn't see anything coming. So unfortunately a lot of the plans and everything that we had to collaborate with our qualitative business and our quantitative business sort of got put on hold, the in-person work. But a couple of advantages that we had is a lot of clients in our business that do traditionally in-person qualitative work that were interested in doing digital qual, but "maybe I'll try it later," they were all sort of forced to do it immediately if they wanted to hear from their customers. And we also saw the cadence, the need to hear from customers evolve from maybe quarterly to monthly, and in some cases daily. We ran a ton of surveys around COVID and started doing a lot of qualitative events on change of purchase habits, everything, parenting across the board. So we actually saw it as somewhat of a business accelerator.

[00:01:49]

Jamin Brazil: So interesting. You've got a lot of - thinking about Schlesinger as one of the big names inside of the industry from both a size and also from a reach perspective and just the fact you've been around so long, how is it working for them?

[00:02:04]

Ted Pulsifer: It's great. It's really interesting because we went from this seven- to eight-year-old startup that was really based on technology and did a lot of work in one sort of segment of the market, which is online consumer and B2B, and then found ourselves part of a 50-year-old organization that was started by our CEO's mom in her house. And so just to live that experience of the best of the old, the best of the new. And so now our - some of the positives that we have is we've got a lot of relationships, a lot of qualitative customers that we can start working with and bring them value from t...

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Roddy Knowles, VP, Product and Research Innovation.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Roddy Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roddyknowles/ 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://feedbackloop.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey, everybody. I am joined by Roddy Knowles. My God, man, we've known each other a long time.

[00:00:09]

Roddy Knowles: Has been a long time. Yeah.

[00:00:10]

Jamin Brazil: Feedback Loop is where you are. Tell me about Feedback Loop. Let's start there.

[00:00:14]

Roddy Knowles: Sure. So we're an agile research platform for rapid consumer feedback. And, so, to unpack that a little bit, agile research is something that everybody's been talking about over the last couple of years, maybe a bit of a buzz word, but that's what we've been doing, really, from the onset, is focusing on doing research in agile way to support teams that work in an agile way. So one of the things that differentiates us is we work with a lot of non-researchers, really geared towards doing- Towards providing a platform for non-researchers to use. It has guardrails in, so they can conduct research safely, get fast, easy, reliable data. Work with research teams too, a lot of them [INAUDIBLE] multiply what they are doing to support teams that need to move fast, product teams, marketing teams, teams like that. So, yeah, that's pretty much what we're up to in a nutshell.

[00:00:52]

Jamin Brazil: Is it predominately quant?

[00:00:54]

Roddy Knowles: We just- You weren't in the panel, Jamin, we were talking about, is it quant, is it qual, is it neither?

[00:00:58]

Jamin Brazil: I know

[00:00:59]

Roddy Knowles: I'd say it's neither. I call it agile research. It's really interesting, if you talk to UX researchers, they might say, "This is quant because the sample size if 50." But, for more quant researchers, they might, like I said, "This is qual because of certain elements of sample size or quotas that-" How we're approaching that, whatever. So depends on who you ask. I'd say it's neither. And I say it honestly doesn't matter that much

[00:01:24]

Jamin Brazil: Side note, Mom, if you're listening, I am attending the conference. I would've been in the session, except I was doing the podcast.

[00:01:29]

Roddy Knowles: Yeah. Well, we all have our priorities. Yeah.

[00:01:32]

Jamin Brazil: Good. So what do you think about the conference so far?

[00:01:37]

Roddy Knowles: This is my first SampleCon, so did not attend when I was on the Research Now side. Now that I'm allowed to attend, I'm here. So that's good. It's been fun. So it's been good. It's been good to have in person conference again, obviously. I am having a little bit of a flashback, I'd say, to what I've seen at other conferences where we get on stage and we talk about these cool things and then, what are we gonna do next? So, now, that's what's sort of in my head, is where do we take these conversations? It's fun to hear them. There seems to be a lot of sort of alignment on what the problems are. We're not solving anything on stage or providing solutions. So my question for us, maybe for you, for everybody, is like, where do we go from here? What are we gonna do next? I'm excited to be here, cool. But, now what?

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Patrick Comer, Founder and CEO of Lucid. 

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Patrick Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/comerpatrick/ 

Website: https://luc.id/  

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:04]

Jamin Brazil: Hey, everybody, I have with me a special guest - Patrick Comer - Who has been a dear friend of mine since I started in the industry - Well, not technically in 1996, but right around 2000 working at OTX. And we've sort of been - I would say - Brothers growing up in -

[00:00:19]

Patrick Comer: Brothers in arms since the beginning.

[00:00:21]

Jamin Brazil: In arms, that's right. Yeah, no kidding. I remember when you started Lucid Fulcrum, I think -? Is that right?

[00:00:25]

Patrick Comer: It was Federated Sample. Because I'm really good at branding.

[00:00:26]

Jamin Brazil: Federated, Federated. That's right. Federated Sample. Lucid certainly nailed it.

[00:00:30]

Patrick Comer: Yeah, much better.

[00:00:31]

Jamin Brazil: Much better. And also, the godfather of SampleCon, where we are blessed to be today. Welcome to the show, sir.

[00:00:39]

Patrick Comer: I'm super thrilled to be here. I've never done a podcast in front of everyone else. Slightly awkward. You can hear all the background noise of how awesome things are going.

[00:00:49]

Jamin Brazil: It is a packed house.

[00:00:50]

Patrick Comer: Yes, it is.

[00:00:53]

Jamin Brazil: A lot of energy. I've done quite a few interviews so far. Everybody is so thankful that we have the opportunity to be able to get together. Seriously, thank you for starting this.

[00:01:03]

Patrick Comer: Absolutely. It's wild to see it so energetic and passionate after you're out of the situation. I remember telling Rachel early on that we'll know SampleCon is successful when I'm no longer involved. And to see such a strong board, to see such strong and passionate sponsors, and to really see the entire industry all together here is worth that risk. Because you can imagine how they get you. Is that really the right choice? Are you supposed to let go? Are you supposed to let everyone else run the baby? The desire was it would be a neutral ground. Territory for all. That we could have a real conversation. Sometimes you have to realize the only way to make that happen is to get out. What is also incredible is Rachel and the board have taken it to a level that we never would have if it was just Lucid. I didn't understand that it would expand far greater than I would have imagined by letting it go.

[00:01:57]

Jamin Brazil: It's been three years that you haven't run it, but there has only been two sessions, or two instances, you haven't. What is it like for you attending and not being in charge of it?

[00:02:06]

Patrick Comer: Oh, so much better. So much less stress to not actually - It's much better to be the attendee than to run it. Just ask anybody who has run a conference before. You have to let - Or I have to let the agenda - The primary reasons that we're here be in everyone else's hands. It's no longer my story, or the things that I think are important are the things that are important. Literally, it's us, not just what I'm coming up with.

[00:02:32]

Jamin Brazil: SampleCon is this - There is not another space inside the market research space that is...

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Mario Carrasco, Co-Founder & Principal of ThinkNow. 

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Mario Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marioxcarrasco/ 

Website: https://thinknow.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Everybody, day two of SampleCon. I have Mario Carrasco, ThinkNow. Sir, welcome.

[00:00:11]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: Thank you very much. Good to see you, Jamin.

[00:00:13]

Jamin Brazil: Good to see you again.

[00:00:15]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:16]

Jamin Brazil: Wow.

[00:00:16]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: First in person.

[00:00:19]

Jamin Brazil: What a joy, huh?

[00:00:19]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: I don't think I saw- I don't even-

[00:00:21]

Jamin Brazil: Have we not met in person?

[00:00:22]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: Think I saw your- We have.

[00:00:23]

Jamin Brazil: We have. I thought so.

[00:00:24]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: We have. But I was on your podcast during the pandemic.

[00:00:28]

Jamin Brazil: That's right.

[00:00:29]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: There was no video.

[00:00:30]

Jamin Brazil: There wasn't any video. And I never do video on my podcasts. Yeah. And the reason why is I'm ugly.

[00:00:39]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: I don't do video. I've never said that out loud, but that's exactly why I don't do video either.

[00:00:46]

Jamin Brazil: I mean, it adds a whole 'nother layer of complexity, honesty.

[00:00:49]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: Right. Right.

[00:00:49]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. Totally. And, then-

[00:00:50]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: You're self-aware about how your face looks when you say things, which is unnecessary.

[00:00:56]

Jamin Brazil: Exactly. Thank you very much for that. And, on top of it, it adds a whole layer of complexity to production, which we're just not set up to be able to cope with. But, yeah. Having said that, we are live in person. What do you think about the show?

[00:01:11]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: It's amazing. I mean, it's great to be around people. I was super anxious, to be honest, coming in. I'm somewhat of an introvert by nature, but the pandemic has made me appreciate these in person experiences more. So I'm soaking it in. It's nice.

[00:01:29]

Jamin Brazil: Yesterday, I- So I'm an introvert. And I actually have a little social anxiety when it comes to these kinds of events. You're nodding your head. It was hard for me, I'm not gonna lie.

[00:01:40]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: No

[00:01:40]

Jamin Brazil: It was- And I had gotten used to flexing that muscle pre-COVID, but having a whole year and a half where I didn't have to, I was- It really made me feel like the first time, that kind of sort of fear and will they like me? Like it's a high school or some stupidity like that, right?

[00:01:55]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: Yeah. Well, so, for me though, I think I went the opposite way in the pandemic. I much more grateful now. I think I used to just not look forward to these at all. I went begrudgingly. But, now, I'm thankful.

[00:02:11]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. You can have it.

[00:02:13]

Mario Xavier Carrasco: I'm appreciating it. Yesterday was difficult though because I'm here local. So I got here eight am, meetings all day, and I didn't have a hotel room.

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Jonathan Kurzner, EVP - Head of Americas at Cint.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Jon Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-kurzner-86277411/ 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://www.cint.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey, everybody. I am live today at SampleCon. My guest, Jon Kurzner. VP or GM -

[00:00:10]

Jon Kurzner: EVP of the Americas.

[00:00:11]

Jamin Brazil: EVP of Americas. It's a big area.

[00:00:13]

Jon Kurzner: Huge, yes.

[00:00:14]

Jamin Brazil: Cint. Welcome.

[00:00:16]

Jon Kurzner: Thanks. First SampleCon. Great to be here.

[00:00:19]

Jamin Brazil: Good. Welcome. What'd you do before Cint?

[00:00:21]

Jon Kurzner: So I worked at a company called Ernest Research. It was doing alternative data products, so selling the stuff into corporates, financial firms, and consulting firms. And so that's what attracted me to come here, marry that world up with what's going on in market research.

[00:00:34]

Jamin Brazil: Very cool, very cool. So what do you think about the show?

[00:00:36]

Jon Kurzner: It's been a great show. So I joined as I said last year in the middle of the pandemic, so this has been a great opportunity for me to not only meet people at Cint, which has been the first time meeting in-person, but also a bunch of people that I've talked to on Zoom and emailed with and put some names with some faces. So really enjoyed it.

[00:00:51]

Jamin Brazil: That's awesome. Favorite - have you been able to attend any sessions?

[00:00:55]

Jon Kurzner: Yes.

[00:00:56]

Jamin Brazil: Do you have a favorite callout moment in the session so far?

[00:00:58]

Jon Kurzner: So the conversation around talent, hiring, retaining, office spaces, just trying to make sure that we're doing everything we can in order to put people in a good spot now that we're hopefully coming toward the end of this thing I think has been the biggest theme here. We touched on it in a couple of the different sessions, so it's been great to compare notes and hear what people are thinking and saying.

[00:01:17]

Jamin Brazil: That's really cool. COVID, how did it impact you guys?

[00:01:21]

Jon Kurzner: So I guess high-level, look, at the end of the day, Cint, we're trying to automate the process for insights-gathering. And so when companies are looking to see "should we digitize, how can we create technology in a way to interact in more efficient manner," that works really well for us. And so the types of conversations we're having both with our clients, with our supply partners around making that stuff easier and building a process on top of our technology I think has worked really well for our business. And it's just been a great kind of initial foray into the space for me.

[00:01:52]

Jamin Brazil: Who's your ideal customer?

[00:01:54]

Jon Kurzner: So we have a whole bunch of different people that we work with. It's a very good question. So I don't want to leave anybody out. But the conversations I'll say -

[00:02:01]

"Anyone who spends money with me."

[00:02:03]

Jon Kurzner: That's it. Anyone with a research question, we'll take him and I'll talk to him. But I think when we're at our best, it's talking about building a process on top of o...

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Howard Fienberg, Senior VP of Advocacy at Insights Association.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Howard Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardfienberg/ 

Website: https://www.insightsassociation.org/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey, everybody. Live at SampleCon. Howard Fienberg, Insights Association, D. C. lobbyist. It is a pleasure to finally put a face to the name, sir.

[00:00:11]

Howard Fienberg: Likewise, Jamin. Nice to see you in person.

[00:00:13]

Jamin Brazil: Yeah. We're at SampleCon. What's it like being with people?

[00:00:17]

Howard Fienberg: It's kind of cool. Been very excited to be here and to just talk to people in person. And I've had a lot of fun.

[00:00:25]

Jamin Brazil: A lot of people, a lot of market researchers, don't fully- Including myself- Don't fully understand the role that you've played in maintaining our rights to be able to gather information from consumers and for consumers to be able to give us information that we can use to inform business decisions among the brands that we love. Tell us a little bit about your job and what you're doing.

[00:00:50]

Howard Fienberg: So I play the role of the all purpose representative for the insights industry. And that means that I am meeting with members of Congress and senators and their staff and state legislators and trying to make them aware of the industry itself, which most people aren't aware. I mean, as most folks that are listening to this podcast probably know, even getting your clients to understand what it is that they're talking to them about can be a bit of a challenge. Policy makers are in a similar boat, sometimes worse, because other than talking to them about political polling, it's something that is completely oblivious to them. So I am trying to explain to them, "All right, well here are the Insight Association members in your constituency." And that gets their attention a little bit like, "Oh, potential voters. I'm gonna pay attention to that." But it's a lot about niche policy issues that even a lot of the policy makers don't fully get their heads around, things like data policy, stuff that's bread and butter for the daily operation for almost everybody and certainly in this industry. But, also, other just business issues of taxation. Is there gonna be an extra tax on your- The sell of data or the- Just the revenue of an insights company because they're- Happen to touch a certain state's consumer data and they're gonna get a little excise tax added on for that to punish you for doing research with their- People in their state.

[00:02:18]

Jamin Brazil: And, of course, they don't frame it as punishment. They frame it as, this is the state where the value is created.

[00:02:23]

Howard Fienberg: Exactly. Therefore, we're extracting the value from you because you’ve extracted the value from our citizens.

[00:02:29]

Jamin Brazil: Exactly right.

[00:02:30]

Howard Fienberg: That is exactly how New York puts it.

[00:02:32]

Jamin Brazil: So let's talk about a specific example, which you've kind of already talked about one relative to taxation at a state level. Which I can only imagine how complex our world gets if that actually went through. Are there any other specific examples of where you've had to step...

Welcome to the SampleCon 2021 Highlights Series. Recorded live in Pasadena, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors, speakers and attendees at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Don Golden, CEO of Precision Sample.

More about SampleCon 2021: https://samplecon.com/

Find Don Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dongolden/ 

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://www.precisionsample.com/ 

Find Jamin Online:

Email: [email protected] 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music: 

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com 

[00:00:00]

Jamin Brazil: Hey everybody. I am live at SampleCon. Apologies for the background noise. I am joined today by Don, Precision Sample is the name of the company. Don, welcome to the show.

[00:00:12]

Don Golden: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

[00:00:14]

Jamin Brazil: What do you think about the show?

[00:00:15]

Don Golden: The show is great. It's been a long time since we've seen everybody. Everybody calls it SampleCon, I call it sample reunion because I'm running into folks that I've been working with for ten, 15-plus years. So a lot of old faces, but some new faces as well. And I think it's just great to be back in person. Everybody is so tired of the Zooms, and all that.

[00:00:36]

Jamin Brazil: Totally. One of the – it's interesting, you're a self-identified OG of the sample space, I think I can say that. How has COVID impacted us as an industry?

[00:00:46]

Don Golden: I think it's business as usual for the industry really. And even more so, I think that – so I've heard some stories while I've been here about the major packaged goods companies, the C-level is more connected to the insights divisions than they are before, and we're seeing it with the sample demand. Customer habits are changing and the big research buyers know it, and so there's just more research going on. So as an industry, I think, unfortunately, it's a really unfortunate event, but I think it's actually – it's pushing the industry forward because there's more need for our services than ever. Personally, the way that we're working, what I learned from this is that the office is still there, but it's empty. And the team was just so efficient during the whole pandemic, that the way that Precision Sample works now is, we were always a highly remote company, but now, everybody just works where they want and I think we have a happier team, and it's working for us.

[00:01:47]

Jamin Brazil: That's great. Do you think you're gonna wind up having localized team events?

[00:01:52]

Don Golden: Yeah, absolutely. We've always been – the Precision Sample team is about half of us are in Denver, the US team, and about half of us are right across the country. So we always do, not last year, of course, we do it once a year, get everybody together. And we're gonna do it this year, so I think everybody is pretty excited for it and then we'll just continue with that.

[00:02:10]

Jamin Brazil: I look forward to seeing that on LinkedIn, that will be fun.

[00:02:13]

Don Golden: Usually, there's a couple of pictures that leak out.

[00:02:15]

Jamin Brazil: So Precision Sample, talk to us, tell us about the business.

[00:02:19]

Don Golden: The business is – we had a good year. April and May, I think everybody in the sample space was pretty scary. We were off by about a quarter of where we expected to be, but since then –

[00:02:31]

Jamin Brazil: And that was April, May 2020?

[00:02:33]

Don Golden: 2020, yeah. And then since then, it's just been gangbusters and we've been growing,